Don't know about elsewhere but in the UK you don't have a specific 3G contract. Data use is data use, regardless of whether it's 3G or GPRS. If 3G is available you'll get 3G speeds; if not you'll drop back to GPRS.
The "user is an idiot" mentality wins out because there are more users who are idiots than not. I agree with you that most people already have a music collection, but the chances are that only a proportionally small number of people have it stacked full of FLAC or Vorbis.
Your accusations against iTunes don't hold too much weight with me since its collection management is second to none, the ripping format can be easily changed (although AAC is a codec that a lot of players support these days anyway) and you can set whether or not to automatically synchronise.
I think you're in a minority of people who don't want to use music management software to deal with their music. Nothing wrong with that - I had an iRiver H120 for a good few years and worked on that principle - but for me it's just so much more convenient to use something like iTunes/Winamp/WMP.
Easy? Jesus Titty Fucking Christ. Easy is Joe Public being able to plug it in and automagically copy his files across and then unplug it and play the music, not some geek manually copying across music to a mass storage drive in formats that very few people actually use.
I'm not saying that parents should shirk the responsibility of checking what their child is doing - far from it. I'm just suggesting that having the shops refuse to sell violent games to minors (or at least inform the parents that the game is violent if it's the parent making the purchase) would be a good thing.
Anyone who is coming out with comments along the lines of "In a free society we shouldn't have to do this" needs to get their heads out of their asses. The reality of the situation is that there are a lot of incompetent or ignorant parents who don't know or don't care what games their kids play.
In the UK we have a legally binding classification system for games controlled by the BBFC - the same lot who classify films prior to release. If you sell an 18 rated game to someone under 18, you're breaking the law. It's not ideal but it's better than nothing. I'm not sure what the deal is if you buy an 18 rated game for someone under 18.
Obviously the bone of contention here will be the argument over whether or not the state has a right to say what citizens can and can't do. Given that there are already age restrictions over the sale of alcohol, tobacco and glue (not to mention the restrictions over voting, shagging and marriage) I don't see the restriction of sale of violent games to be a problem. But then, I guess I don't have a written constitution to protect;-)
I don't get it. Every time a law like this rears its head Slashdot goes nuts. Why shouldn't the sale of violent games to minors be restricted? It needs a combination of responsible parenting and responsible selling to prevent minors playing unsuitable games.
Parents can't and shouldn't be watching what their kids are doing 24 hours a day so it's up to the retailers to ensure that they're not selling GTA to 10 year olds and the parents to make sure that their kids aren't playing GTA.
According to the Lik Sang website it's only $200 at the moment.
Incidentally, my DS Lite arrived last week and it's really, really nice. Buy one immediately!
I'm not sure I see why it's bad or "cheap" that the phone saves contact information to the SIM card. In fact my fancy, shmancy Nokia 6600 requires some special shenanigans to move contacts to the card if, for example, I wanted to switch to another phone. Apparently it gets confusing if you move your contacts to the card because the phone will continue to save new contacts to its internal memory and you need to keep track of that. Why not just use the permanent, removable storage for such vital information? Or better yet, have the option to copy it to both places (but only display it once, which it can't currently do)?
The problem with saving to the SIM card is that you can only save 1 number per SIM entry, so it takes up 3 of your 100 spaces to store home, work and mobile numbers for one person. Saving numbers to the phone's memory means that you store the information under a single contact, i.e. one entry can have 3 phone numbers, email address, postal address, etc.
The synchronisation thing can be a pain, but applications such as Floats Mobile Agent on Windows and iSync on OS X do a good job.
I'm sure I read about this somewhere recently, but I can't remeber if it was fact or just rumour and innuendo. I'll repeat what I remember reading and present it as fact;-)
On top of that Sky are touting some HDTV channels but where is the pricing for them?
I heard that the price is likely to be an extra GBP10 over the current service, so around the GBP50 per month mark (I think) for the all-you-can-eat package.
When is the service and the HDTV rolling out?
2006. I'd think they'd try and have it out by May at the latest, since their big hope is that the BBC and ITV will broadcast their coverage of next year's World Cup in HD. This would be a massive selling point for early adopters, but relies on the Beeb and the Other Side playing ball.
How many channels are there?
Initially, I think they're going to go for Sky One, Sky Sports and some of the movie channels. Not sure about the PPV stuff.
When will Sky+ go HDTV?
I would guess that the HD box will be an updated Sky+ box (presumably with a substantially bigger hard disk that the current 40/160GB models).
I wouldn't put it past Sky to bend the early adopters over and rape them for every penny they have.
You can pretty much guarantee it!
A poll conducted by the group backing the Blu-ray next-generation DVD standard shows that the technology is supported by a majority of consumers, putting rival HD DVD on the defensive.
Shock horror, the Blu-ray guys have come up with a poll that says their product is better. Next story please...
Given that it was reported fairly recently that BitTorrent makes up 35% of all total internet traffic, I'm guessing that allowing it to be used unchecked on campus would increase bandwidth costs by a fairly significant amount too...
I have to disagree. Primeval is one of my favourite Onslaught maps. It's probably the most evenly contested map there is in the game and you can always guarantee that it'll be all out mayhem.
I agree that it's simple, but that's half the fun. Everyone meets at the middle node and it makes for a fun, intense battle.
Don't know where you've been buying your DVDs from, but these days, most new releases cost around GBP15 (less if you go to the likes of play.com). Still more expensive than their region 1 counterparts, but a bit closer than they used to be.
Sorry, I probably didn't give you enough credit after reading your original comment (figured you were still in the honeymoon period:-)
I have 3 issues with the device that I would like to see fixed:
1) The issue with playlists and the database not being able to cope with files longer than 51 characters. I find this to be an issue as I like to organise my music so that it is structured as ARTIST/ALBUM/TRACK# - ARTIST - TRACK NAME.
2) Database only supports mp3. I've recently started encoding my CDs as Ogg instead of mp3. At the moment I'm using the tree structure for selecting tracks. This is fine but I'd rather use the database. I know that there is 3rd party software to create a database but I find it kind of stupid that Ogg support is one of the device's main selling points but it doesn't support the format as well as mp3.
3) No on-the-fly playlists. This is an issue simply because just about every other contender to the iPod throne can do this (as well as the iPod itself).
I like the iHP-120 a lot - I think it looks great and it has amazing potential. I just wish that iRiver would get their fingers out and fix the real issues instead of including almost entirely useless functionality like the lyric support.
I did my fair share of research, apparently Karmas' firmware was beta quality at best, and that's a big reason I went with the iRiver
I don't think you can have done too much research then. I've had an iHP120 for a few months now and the firmware is holding back what would otherwise be a fantastic piece of kit.
Take a look on the iRiver forums and you'll find large numbers of disgruntled users.
Slashdot Mirror
On UK Apple keyboards, @ is Shift+2 (i.e. same as US). On every other UK keyboard, the same key combination gives you "
Don't know about elsewhere but in the UK you don't have a specific 3G contract. Data use is data use, regardless of whether it's 3G or GPRS. If 3G is available you'll get 3G speeds; if not you'll drop back to GPRS.
Is this what that Good AIDS versus Bad AIDS scene was all about?
The "user is an idiot" mentality wins out because there are more users who are idiots than not. I agree with you that most people already have a music collection, but the chances are that only a proportionally small number of people have it stacked full of FLAC or Vorbis.
Your accusations against iTunes don't hold too much weight with me since its collection management is second to none, the ripping format can be easily changed (although AAC is a codec that a lot of players support these days anyway) and you can set whether or not to automatically synchronise.
I think you're in a minority of people who don't want to use music management software to deal with their music. Nothing wrong with that - I had an iRiver H120 for a good few years and worked on that principle - but for me it's just so much more convenient to use something like iTunes/Winamp/WMP.
Easy? Jesus Titty Fucking Christ. Easy is Joe Public being able to plug it in and automagically copy his files across and then unplug it and play the music, not some geek manually copying across music to a mass storage drive in formats that very few people actually use.
Russian companys have no legal status in the UK.
Out of interest, how does that work when some of them are listed on the London Stock Exchange?
I'm not saying that parents should shirk the responsibility of checking what their child is doing - far from it. I'm just suggesting that having the shops refuse to sell violent games to minors (or at least inform the parents that the game is violent if it's the parent making the purchase) would be a good thing.
;-)
Anyone who is coming out with comments along the lines of "In a free society we shouldn't have to do this" needs to get their heads out of their asses. The reality of the situation is that there are a lot of incompetent or ignorant parents who don't know or don't care what games their kids play.
In the UK we have a legally binding classification system for games controlled by the BBFC - the same lot who classify films prior to release. If you sell an 18 rated game to someone under 18, you're breaking the law. It's not ideal but it's better than nothing. I'm not sure what the deal is if you buy an 18 rated game for someone under 18.
Obviously the bone of contention here will be the argument over whether or not the state has a right to say what citizens can and can't do. Given that there are already age restrictions over the sale of alcohol, tobacco and glue (not to mention the restrictions over voting, shagging and marriage) I don't see the restriction of sale of violent games to be a problem. But then, I guess I don't have a written constitution to protect
I don't get it. Every time a law like this rears its head Slashdot goes nuts. Why shouldn't the sale of violent games to minors be restricted? It needs a combination of responsible parenting and responsible selling to prevent minors playing unsuitable games.
Parents can't and shouldn't be watching what their kids are doing 24 hours a day so it's up to the retailers to ensure that they're not selling GTA to 10 year olds and the parents to make sure that their kids aren't playing GTA.
According to the Lik Sang website it's only $200 at the moment. Incidentally, my DS Lite arrived last week and it's really, really nice. Buy one immediately!
I'm not sure I see why it's bad or "cheap" that the phone saves contact information to the SIM card. In fact my fancy, shmancy Nokia 6600 requires some special shenanigans to move contacts to the card if, for example, I wanted to switch to another phone. Apparently it gets confusing if you move your contacts to the card because the phone will continue to save new contacts to its internal memory and you need to keep track of that. Why not just use the permanent, removable storage for such vital information? Or better yet, have the option to copy it to both places (but only display it once, which it can't currently do)?
The problem with saving to the SIM card is that you can only save 1 number per SIM entry, so it takes up 3 of your 100 spaces to store home, work and mobile numbers for one person. Saving numbers to the phone's memory means that you store the information under a single contact, i.e. one entry can have 3 phone numbers, email address, postal address, etc.
The synchronisation thing can be a pain, but applications such as Floats Mobile Agent on Windows and iSync on OS X do a good job.
iEatBrainz? OS X only, but it works pretty well.
What did they spell wrongly? Or am I missing something?
You can already watch American Football in the UK - Sky Sports shows live NFL every week...
I'm sure I read about this somewhere recently, but I can't remeber if it was fact or just rumour and innuendo. I'll repeat what I remember reading and present it as fact ;-)
On top of that Sky are touting some HDTV channels but where is the pricing for them?
I heard that the price is likely to be an extra GBP10 over the current service, so around the GBP50 per month mark (I think) for the all-you-can-eat package.
When is the service and the HDTV rolling out?
2006. I'd think they'd try and have it out by May at the latest, since their big hope is that the BBC and ITV will broadcast their coverage of next year's World Cup in HD. This would be a massive selling point for early adopters, but relies on the Beeb and the Other Side playing ball.
How many channels are there?
Initially, I think they're going to go for Sky One, Sky Sports and some of the movie channels. Not sure about the PPV stuff.
When will Sky+ go HDTV?
I would guess that the HD box will be an updated Sky+ box (presumably with a substantially bigger hard disk that the current 40/160GB models).
I wouldn't put it past Sky to bend the early adopters over and rape them for every penny they have.
You can pretty much guarantee it!
And I thought I had it bad when my ape kept on crapping in the nursery playground...
A poll conducted by the group backing the Blu-ray next-generation DVD standard shows that the technology is supported by a majority of consumers, putting rival HD DVD on the defensive.
Shock horror, the Blu-ray guys have come up with a poll that says their product is better. Next story please...
Given that it was reported fairly recently that BitTorrent makes up 35% of all total internet traffic, I'm guessing that allowing it to be used unchecked on campus would increase bandwidth costs by a fairly significant amount too...
Isn't it made/published by Sega?
This one?
I have to disagree. Primeval is one of my favourite Onslaught maps. It's probably the most evenly contested map there is in the game and you can always guarantee that it'll be all out mayhem.
I agree that it's simple, but that's half the fun. Everyone meets at the middle node and it makes for a fun, intense battle.
I was under the impression that the double click patent actually only covered PDAs...
I'm guessing that the game itself will be binary-only too, so why the gripe about the drivers?
Don't know where you've been buying your DVDs from, but these days, most new releases cost around GBP15 (less if you go to the likes of play.com). Still more expensive than their region 1 counterparts, but a bit closer than they used to be.
Sorry, I probably didn't give you enough credit after reading your original comment (figured you were still in the honeymoon period :-)
I have 3 issues with the device that I would like to see fixed:
1) The issue with playlists and the database not being able to cope with files longer than 51 characters. I find this to be an issue as I like to organise my music so that it is structured as ARTIST/ALBUM/TRACK# - ARTIST - TRACK NAME.
2) Database only supports mp3. I've recently started encoding my CDs as Ogg instead of mp3. At the moment I'm using the tree structure for selecting tracks. This is fine but I'd rather use the database. I know that there is 3rd party software to create a database but I find it kind of stupid that Ogg support is one of the device's main selling points but it doesn't support the format as well as mp3.
3) No on-the-fly playlists. This is an issue simply because just about every other contender to the iPod throne can do this (as well as the iPod itself).
I like the iHP-120 a lot - I think it looks great and it has amazing potential. I just wish that iRiver would get their fingers out and fix the real issues instead of including almost entirely useless functionality like the lyric support.
I did my fair share of research, apparently Karmas' firmware was beta quality at best, and that's a big reason I went with the iRiver
I don't think you can have done too much research then. I've had an iHP120 for a few months now and the firmware is holding back what would otherwise be a fantastic piece of kit.
Take a look on the iRiver forums and you'll find large numbers of disgruntled users.