At my French university you could go study abroad for one year. The US were amongst the choices, you could even go to Berkeley or something like that. The beauty of this system was that you would pay the same tuition fees whether you went abroad or not, so basically you could go to Berkeley for one year and only pay your cheap French tuition fees* . OTOH, US students who came here paid their regular (indecent) US tuition fees...
* about 500€ per year, or even nothing if you have a scholarship, which is not really hard to get if you (or your parents) can't afford the tuition fees.
No, you can now *buy* the Beatles on teh iPhone. You could get them on the device from day 1, provided you had ripped your Beatles CDs or illegally dowloaded the mp3s.
Well for starters HTML5 is superior for us (non-flash) web developers. It's also superior for geeks who use exotic OSes. And from a normal user's perspective, I said there was no obvious difference (i.e. most users can't tell whether they are on a flash site), but Flash seriously lacks in accessibility :
you can't select/copy/paste text if the developer didn't bother to implement it
you can't zoom
you can't middle-click to open a link in a new tab
if you've focused the Flash content you have to click elsewhere in the window to give the focus back to the browser and be able to use keyboard shortcuts (to create a new tab for example)
I could go on. And as an added bonus, Flash is CPU-hungry and crash-prone.
The difference between a CRT and flatscreen TV is obvious. People see LCDs in stores, or at a friend's house, and that makes them want to switch. And then there's marketing of course.
The general public doesn't know, and doesn't care whether a site is made in Flash or HTML5. You can't wait on the users to switch to HTML5 sites.
Because a jailbroken iPhone is the best smartphone on the planet, except maybe for the n900 and suchlike, but I spend enought time tinkering with computers at work to do it on my phone. Once jailbroken the iPhone just works.
Maybe I should have been clearer : Spotify mobile is my main music player (I know, Android and other platforms have a version too), and by games I don't mean Snake, I mean the shitload of dedicated iPhone games, and the shitload of ports. Know a lot of phones that run GeoDefense, Plants vs Zombies, C&C Red Alert, Street Fighter IV and GTA:Chinatown Wars ?
There really, really cheaper alternatives if all you're looking for is a phone. Plus their batteries last more than a day.
Not sure what you're calling "nonsense". All I know is that I used to travel with a cellphone, an mp3 player, and a Nintendo DS, and now I only have my iPhone in my pocket. And I can check my email and IM my friends from about anywhere.
I thought the inability to multitask (corrected, apparently, in iPhone OS/4) would bug me, but it turns out it's a non-issue.
I use Spotify all the time, it has completely replaced the iPod app on my iPhone. But there's no way I'd pay 10€/mo. if I couldn't background the app. Having to pause my music to answer an SMS, or to check my email would be very, very frustrating. The next major version indeed corrects that, but not if you own a 3G like I do. Except if you jailbreak and enable multitasking, that is;)
Other cool (non-essential) JB apps are:
Music Controls : allows you to control about any music apps with pop-up controls, headphones remote, lockscreen,...
Quick Reply : double-tap the notification, and the sms appears, along with the keyboard in case you wish to reply, all without exiting your current app.
3G unrestrictor : tricks certain apps (spotify, youtube, appstore,...) into thinking they're on wifi.
tethering apps (and custom carrier settings) : share your 3G connection without any aditionnal fee (YMMV, my carrier doesn't seem to notice or to care).
Never said PC gaming was cheap:) Hardware may be more expensive, but as I said I pay (much) less for my games, so if you play a lot of different games as I do, it evens out in the end.
My last upgrade was a GTX275 which I bought almost a year ago, and even new games run fine. And if I turn off FSAA, I'll be able to play 2010 and 2011 games just fine. And I buy most of my games for 20-40€ (last purchase : L4F2 for 25€), or even cheaper as Steam has lots of indie games and oldies for less than 10€ (recently bought BG&E for 5€).
I fear that instead of releasing new controllers, they'll dumb down games (à la Halo) : huge crosshair or auto-targeting, slow IA, auto-regenerating HPs,... That's what kids are used to, after all. One more reason for me to stay away from consoles.
Does your "etc." include proper counterparts to Super Smash Bros. series, Mario Kart series, and Animal Crossing series?
No*, that's the reason I've got a Wii;) As Nedlohs says, I was comparing PCs to PS3 (and Xbox 360, as they are very similar).
I only use the Wii when friends come over, for solo and online play I use the PC.
*SFIV and Trackmania could be viable alternatives though. Trackmania wii is coming out soon, you should check it out if you haven't played it yet. Trackmania Nations is free, it's awesome on a big screen TV, very (very) fast and still looks good. The only downside is that there's no split-screen on the PC version.
The PC as a gaming platform is done.[...]PS3 offering unparalleled processing power[...]
Can I play every PS3 game in 1080p, 8xAA ? Didn't think so. On my gaming PC, I can. With an Xbox Controller and HDMI output, I can play Batman, GTA, etc. on my HDTV, sitting on my couch, with (far) better graphics than on any so-called Next-gen console. And with the same machine, I can play FPS, CRPGs, and strategy games with proper controllers (mouse/keyboard). Oh, and thanks to Steam's constant stream of special deals, I don't have to pay 50-70€ for each game.
Each time a console's price drops, I've had the temptation to buy one. But each time I quickly remember that I would hardly use it, except for playing the odd exclusive title.
My great-grand father was a pastor, my grand-mother and mother are protestants, but after going to sunday school and such I've become an atheist when I was a teen (for the reason you cite), and no one pressured me into reconsidering it. IMO the problem is the bigotry of the families you speak of, not that particular religion. BTW, there's "going through hell with your parents" and then there's "being harassed constantly and having your private life thoroughly investigated for dirty secrets to try and get you fired, jailed or institutionalized".
Speaking of my great-grand father, he was the kindest, most selfless man I've ever known (hid jews during WW2, helped develop a small pacific island,...). He most certainly never pressured his parishioners into giving him or his church money.
Anyway, my point was that despite all the crooked priests and bigot followers, mainstream religions are much less greedy and evil than cults like scientology. For example, you can get the bible for free or at a very moderate cost, and without giving out any personal information. Same with the Qur'an. Try acquiring scientology "courses" for free or anonymously...
Are you saying that catholicism should be forbidden because of what happened centuries ago ? Next you'll tell me I should be apologizing to every black person I come across for slavery...
I don't agree with most of the Catholic church views, and it certainly has major flaws, but *nowadays* the leaders of this religion are not motivated by greed and power (if they are, they're doing a very lousy job at it). Scientology obviously is.
As I say a couple of posts below, the purpose of CSS is to prevent you from copying the disk. If a simple dd invocation could allow you to copy the DVD and have it play on standard DVD players (which can decrypt CSS), there is no way it would have been chosen as the standard copy protection scheme.
See TheThiefMaster's post below, I think he's right about how CSS works.
Do you have any source to back up these claims ? They seem highly dubious to me. If you can copy the DVD to your HD this way, what would stop you from burning the ISO to a DVD-R ?And in this case, what would be the point of CSS if you could copy the disk using a standard unix command and an ISO-burning utility ?
Actually the TV tax only funds France Television channels, which do not produce reality TV shows (I guess that's what the "panel of boring middle-aged guys..." referred to). And there are no ads on these channels after about 8:00PM. In general, there are much less ads on french TV than on US or Australian TV (not sure about England) : there's "only" one commercial break during a movie.
But otherwise I agree with you, TV here globally sucks, I'd gladly pay £150 to see them produce Dr Who instead of the asinine Plus belle la vie... Thank god for eztv ^^
Of course I mainly use VLC, but when I bought my Macbook 3 months ago I thought I'd give the new Quicktime a try, and was surprised that it wasn't the pile of crap I remembered from some years ago.
I think QuickTime X is only available on Snow Leopard, so it's preinstalled, you just need to install a codec pack (Perian is pretty good). After that it works quite well, the UI is minimalist yet pretty : the video takes up the whole window (including borders) and the controls fade in if you hover over the video.
I was talking about the "copy DVD to HD" part, not the encoding part. The encoding itself takes longer indeed. But with disk space getting cheaper and cheaper I think I'll do away with the encoding, and just keep the VIDEO_TS folder in case I need to burn the movie to DVD later.
When I get a new DVD, it spends about 15mn outside its box (the time it takes to rip it), then goes back in never to see daylight again. I then watch the content on my HTPC running XBMC. Same goes for music.
The day I can't rip a DVD (or a CD for that matter) is the day I'll stop buying them.
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At my French university you could go study abroad for one year. The US were amongst the choices, you could even go to Berkeley or something like that. The beauty of this system was that you would pay the same tuition fees whether you went abroad or not, so basically you could go to Berkeley for one year and only pay your cheap French tuition fees* . OTOH, US students who came here paid their regular (indecent) US tuition fees...
* about 500€ per year, or even nothing if you have a scholarship, which is not really hard to get if you (or your parents) can't afford the tuition fees.
"Fin" means "(The) End" in French, maybe it was a pompous way of saying goodbye to her readers.
I do prefer your explanation though ;)
ZOMG U CAN HAZ BEETULZ ON TEH iPhone NOW!
No, you can now *buy* the Beatles on teh iPhone. You could get them on the device from day 1, provided you had ripped your Beatles CDs or illegally dowloaded the mp3s.
The article is about "awful systems". The Sega Saturn was awesome.
There's that, but see my other post about why flash websites suck for users too.
I could go on. And as an added bonus, Flash is CPU-hungry and crash-prone.
The difference between a CRT and flatscreen TV is obvious. People see LCDs in stores, or at a friend's house, and that makes them want to switch. And then there's marketing of course.
The general public doesn't know, and doesn't care whether a site is made in Flash or HTML5. You can't wait on the users to switch to HTML5 sites.
Because a jailbroken iPhone is the best smartphone on the planet, except maybe for the n900 and suchlike, but I spend enought time tinkering with computers at work to do it on my phone. Once jailbroken the iPhone just works.
Maybe I should have been clearer : Spotify mobile is my main music player (I know, Android and other platforms have a version too), and by games I don't mean Snake, I mean the shitload of dedicated iPhone games, and the shitload of ports. Know a lot of phones that run GeoDefense, Plants vs Zombies, C&C Red Alert, Street Fighter IV and GTA:Chinatown Wars ?
There really, really cheaper alternatives if all you're looking for is a phone. Plus their batteries last more than a day.
Not sure what you're calling "nonsense". All I know is that I used to travel with a cellphone, an mp3 player, and a Nintendo DS, and now I only have my iPhone in my pocket. And I can check my email and IM my friends from about anywhere.
I thought the inability to multitask (corrected, apparently, in iPhone OS/4) would bug me, but it turns out it's a non-issue.
I use Spotify all the time, it has completely replaced the iPod app on my iPhone. But there's no way I'd pay 10€/mo. if I couldn't background the app. Having to pause my music to answer an SMS, or to check my email would be very, very frustrating. The next major version indeed corrects that, but not if you own a 3G like I do. Except if you jailbreak and enable multitasking, that is ;)
Other cool (non-essential) JB apps are :
"Posted by kdawson on 14:55 Friday 02 April 2010"
That's what I see under the post title. Is that what you're talking about ? If so, yes, you can change the date format in your preferences.
Never said PC gaming was cheap :) Hardware may be more expensive, but as I said I pay (much) less for my games, so if you play a lot of different games as I do, it evens out in the end.
My last upgrade was a GTX275 which I bought almost a year ago, and even new games run fine. And if I turn off FSAA, I'll be able to play 2010 and 2011 games just fine. And I buy most of my games for 20-40€ (last purchase : L4F2 for 25€), or even cheaper as Steam has lots of indie games and oldies for less than 10€ (recently bought BG&E for 5€).
I fear that instead of releasing new controllers, they'll dumb down games (à la Halo) : huge crosshair or auto-targeting, slow IA, auto-regenerating HPs, ... That's what kids are used to, after all. One more reason for me to stay away from consoles.
Does your "etc." include proper counterparts to Super Smash Bros. series, Mario Kart series, and Animal Crossing series?
No*, that's the reason I've got a Wii ;) As Nedlohs says, I was comparing PCs to PS3 (and Xbox 360, as they are very similar).
I only use the Wii when friends come over, for solo and online play I use the PC.
*SFIV and Trackmania could be viable alternatives though. Trackmania wii is coming out soon, you should check it out if you haven't played it yet. Trackmania Nations is free, it's awesome on a big screen TV, very (very) fast and still looks good. The only downside is that there's no split-screen on the PC version.
The PC as a gaming platform is done.[...]PS3 offering unparalleled processing power[...]
Can I play every PS3 game in 1080p, 8xAA ? Didn't think so. On my gaming PC, I can. With an Xbox Controller and HDMI output, I can play Batman, GTA, etc. on my HDTV, sitting on my couch, with (far) better graphics than on any so-called Next-gen console. And with the same machine, I can play FPS, CRPGs, and strategy games with proper controllers (mouse/keyboard). Oh, and thanks to Steam's constant stream of special deals, I don't have to pay 50-70€ for each game.
Each time a console's price drops, I've had the temptation to buy one. But each time I quickly remember that I would hardly use it, except for playing the odd exclusive title.
My great-grand father was a pastor, my grand-mother and mother are protestants, but after going to sunday school and such I've become an atheist when I was a teen (for the reason you cite), and no one pressured me into reconsidering it. IMO the problem is the bigotry of the families you speak of, not that particular religion. BTW, there's "going through hell with your parents" and then there's "being harassed constantly and having your private life thoroughly investigated for dirty secrets to try and get you fired, jailed or institutionalized".
Speaking of my great-grand father, he was the kindest, most selfless man I've ever known (hid jews during WW2, helped develop a small pacific island, ...). He most certainly never pressured his parishioners into giving him or his church money.
Anyway, my point was that despite all the crooked priests and bigot followers, mainstream religions are much less greedy and evil than cults like scientology. For example, you can get the bible for free or at a very moderate cost, and without giving out any personal information. Same with the Qur'an. Try acquiring scientology "courses" for free or anonymously...
Are you saying that catholicism should be forbidden because of what happened centuries ago ? Next you'll tell me I should be apologizing to every black person I come across for slavery...
I don't agree with most of the Catholic church views, and it certainly has major flaws, but *nowadays* the leaders of this religion are not motivated by greed and power (if they are, they're doing a very lousy job at it). Scientology obviously is.
As I say a couple of posts below, the purpose of CSS is to prevent you from copying the disk. If a simple dd invocation could allow you to copy the DVD and have it play on standard DVD players (which can decrypt CSS), there is no way it would have been chosen as the standard copy protection scheme. See TheThiefMaster's post below, I think he's right about how CSS works.
Do you have any source to back up these claims ? They seem highly dubious to me. If you can copy the DVD to your HD this way, what would stop you from burning the ISO to a DVD-R ?And in this case, what would be the point of CSS if you could copy the disk using a standard unix command and an ISO-burning utility ?
I wasn't aware dd implemented DeCSS.
Actually the TV tax only funds France Television channels, which do not produce reality TV shows (I guess that's what the "panel of boring middle-aged guys..." referred to). And there are no ads on these channels after about 8:00PM. In general, there are much less ads on french TV than on US or Australian TV (not sure about England) : there's "only" one commercial break during a movie.
But otherwise I agree with you, TV here globally sucks, I'd gladly pay £150 to see them produce Dr Who instead of the asinine Plus belle la vie... Thank god for eztv ^^
Of course I mainly use VLC, but when I bought my Macbook 3 months ago I thought I'd give the new Quicktime a try, and was surprised that it wasn't the pile of crap I remembered from some years ago.
I think QuickTime X is only available on Snow Leopard, so it's preinstalled, you just need to install a codec pack (Perian is pretty good). After that it works quite well, the UI is minimalist yet pretty : the video takes up the whole window (including borders) and the controls fade in if you hover over the video.
I was talking about the "copy DVD to HD" part, not the encoding part. The encoding itself takes longer indeed. But with disk space getting cheaper and cheaper I think I'll do away with the encoding, and just keep the VIDEO_TS folder in case I need to burn the movie to DVD later.
When I get a new DVD, it spends about 15mn outside its box (the time it takes to rip it), then goes back in never to see daylight again. I then watch the content on my HTPC running XBMC. Same goes for music.
The day I can't rip a DVD (or a CD for that matter) is the day I'll stop buying them.