Indeed, a few apps on Android offer an annoying 'manage back button' option that forces 'back' to mean something other than 'the screen I was just on'. It seems they think its the 'up a level' button on a folder browser or something. With how Android's multi-tasking works, I love the combination of unmanaged 'back' and hold-home-for-recent-apps functionality. I can hold home, jump to Facebook, send a message, hit 'back' and be back on the app I was using a moment ago. Then when an SMS comes in, I can click it through the status bar, reply, and hit back again to get my GPS nav screen (or whatever) I was on a moment ago, all without interrupting the apps in question.
Those who think iOS is all in all more polished than Android seem to have no concept of actual power-use of a smart phone. They seem to always use a couple little apps and rarely at that. When i tell someone I can do 75% of my computing for a day on my phone, they rarely believe it. (The other 25% is time spent coding... and I prefer my larger screen and keyboard for that).
Fantastic game, loved every minute of playing Valkyria Chronicles, and it required some actual thought to get through (unlike many FF games). I love my turn-based strategy games and strategy RPGs, and am glad the Japanese bother making them.
Why does everyone who sees a request suddenly feel they are obliged to make the change? This is a total red herring and irrelevant to the argument at hand.
A) A user who is not a coder is fully permitted to make a request or complaint about code B) Said user is also permitted to expect basic functionality from software they've acquired through a distro or other channel purporting to provide functioning software B.1) Self-compiled software marked beta or otherwise incomplete is obviated from the above C) Developer who whines about users making requests and not doing it themselves is missing the point entirely
Obligation doesn't fit in there anywhere. I wish EVERYONE (and I include Linus) who's ever said "fix it yourself" or "show me the source" would give it up. Sure, "I don't have time to fix that" is a perfectly valid response instead, but "fix it yourself" is not always valid and is rarely polite.
Because not everyone's a coder, and not being a coder doesn't preclude you from having requests or needs.
I'm sick and tired of the 'show me the code' mantra even as a coder. I write software for a living and I know what it means to pick up a piece of code I've never worked on before and try to find a bug. I've done it with device drivers and regular software. Digi's serial board drivers gave me a headache one year.
Picking up random pieces of code to fix an error is just asking for problems; aside from the time requirements, there's the real possibility of introducing new bugs due to lack of familiarity.
In a large software project, it makes very little sense to waste one person's 4 hours working on a bug fix when a regular maintainer could've done it in 15 minutes. Hypothetical, but often true in my experience.
Those of us in Canada aren't always fond of the United States pretending it is America, when it is in fact the United States of America, but we usually just put up.
That said, the gp is still correct; I'm in America, as a Canadian. So are the Mexicans that haven't crossed into Texas, the lack of geographical knowledge south of the border notwithstanding.
I had this exact debate with a good friend recently. When i pointed out that solar panels actually degrade with time, that their output lowers with time, and that the math gets a little more complex, he didn't quite believe me.
I seem to recall one solar power company saying their panels can be expected to generate 50% of their original power levels after 20 years. That's not nearly as terrible as the turnover rate in smart phones, but its still worth factoring in as you mention.
You're not familiar with how bright the sun is, are you?
A reference I've used before at Engineering toolbox lists even an overcast day at 1000 lux, equivalent to the lighting required in an OR. Normal interior light levels are 1/4 of that, and full daylight is 10x brighter yet.
Removing 80% of full daylight is not so bad, assuming you don't live in a ship with tiny portals to the exterior.
Strangely, my local hardware store stocks small solar panels used for charging batteries or other devices already. Idiot proof solar power has been here since solar calculators... although yes, wiring into the grid is harder, that need not be how its done.
Switching to Gnome 3 slowed down my workflow tremendously. I no longer have "last window I used" switching; I have to toggle between ALT-tab and ALT-`... I've lost rapid access to my system's status in my gnome-panel applets, and modal dialog handling has changed for the worse.
I'd rather have a faster tablet with a smaller screen that's easier to carry around, thanks. My wife can fit a 7" tablet in her purse no problem. I carry a 5" Dell Streak with me everywhere and use it as my current Kindle device regularly.
10" tablets are not the be-all and end-all of tablet sizing.
The Onion's story was an excellent summary of the event in advance I believe.
During a highly anticipated media event held today at the Apple corporation’s world headquarters, CEO Tim Cook announced the new iPhone 4S is good and people should buy it. “It’s a good phone,” said Cook, walking out onto a stage and gesturing at a picture of the device projected on a large screen behind him. "It's got e-mail, the Internet, and you can get apps on it. Everybody should get one. It's good." After standing in place for another four seconds without speaking, Cook walked off stage, at which point the houselights came up and all in attendance were asked to please file out of the auditorium.
The Seagate drive has the SSD on-board, at full SATA2 speeds. There's no lack of comparison here.
As for using "any" SSD as I said before, its still true -- buy one of OCZ's own previous flash drive models and do the same thing, or anyone else's high performance solid state drive. There's nothing special about *this* drive at all as far as I can tell, its all in the software.
As another poster said, you've got your facts wrong.
Also, using a good old fashioned watch, I timed loading a save game in various games on my PS3 after switching to the Momentus XT 500GB drive. First time loading a specific save: 35s. Second time: 18s. Third time: 15s. It was then consistently 14-15s thereafter (Fallout 3 has fairly disk-heavy loads, so it seemed a good test).
I'm sure I imagined that just like you imagined the test you saw was pertinent and your argument valid.
First off, this already exists -- Seagate makes a series of drives that have built-in SSD storage for this very purpose. I have one of the 500GB model in my PS3 in fact.
That said, this isn't a drive technology at all; its software. Any SSD would do, including a CF card in a card reader. The only trick here is to do a dual layer disk cache, much like L1 and L2 function on CPUs.
Nothing new here really, but nice that they've done it.
Umm, if your best insights into Microsoft's innovations are those they stole from third parties over 30 years ago, you should brush up on your tech news a little.
Hopefully, you're trolling and this is intended to be funny.
Unfortunately, I think you believe what you've said, and didn't notice that Metro is a wide screen version of Win7Mobile which itself is not dissimilar to Android's applet system with a fixed width.
I'm sorry, these gradual evolutions are not innovations. Microsoft has had many of these minor babysteps toward innovative thought in its time (like the much maligned tab strip system). The mouse and GUI were innovations (by Xerox, not Apple or MS), the Internet was an innovation, and so on.
Do yourself a favour and boot up a LiveCD of Gnome3, then an old version of Enlightenment, then tell me about how innovative Microsoft is.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed, a few apps on Android offer an annoying 'manage back button' option that forces 'back' to mean something other than 'the screen I was just on'. It seems they think its the 'up a level' button on a folder browser or something. With how Android's multi-tasking works, I love the combination of unmanaged 'back' and hold-home-for-recent-apps functionality. I can hold home, jump to Facebook, send a message, hit 'back' and be back on the app I was using a moment ago. Then when an SMS comes in, I can click it through the status bar, reply, and hit back again to get my GPS nav screen (or whatever) I was on a moment ago, all without interrupting the apps in question.
Those who think iOS is all in all more polished than Android seem to have no concept of actual power-use of a smart phone. They seem to always use a couple little apps and rarely at that. When i tell someone I can do 75% of my computing for a day on my phone, they rarely believe it. (The other 25% is time spent coding ... and I prefer my larger screen and keyboard for that).
FFX2 is a direct sequel in plot to FFX. That makes it a main sequence game, even if its a sequel. It was also a great game.
Entertaining if you don't bother with improperly numbered sequels like X2 (which isn't the same as 12).
Fantastic game, loved every minute of playing Valkyria Chronicles, and it required some actual thought to get through (unlike many FF games). I love my turn-based strategy games and strategy RPGs, and am glad the Japanese bother making them.
Why does everyone who sees a request suddenly feel they are obliged to make the change? This is a total red herring and irrelevant to the argument at hand.
A) A user who is not a coder is fully permitted to make a request or complaint about code
B) Said user is also permitted to expect basic functionality from software they've acquired through a distro or other channel purporting to provide functioning software
B.1) Self-compiled software marked beta or otherwise incomplete is obviated from the above
C) Developer who whines about users making requests and not doing it themselves is missing the point entirely
Obligation doesn't fit in there anywhere. I wish EVERYONE (and I include Linus) who's ever said "fix it yourself" or "show me the source" would give it up. Sure, "I don't have time to fix that" is a perfectly valid response instead, but "fix it yourself" is not always valid and is rarely polite.
Because not everyone's a coder, and not being a coder doesn't preclude you from having requests or needs.
I'm sick and tired of the 'show me the code' mantra even as a coder. I write software for a living and I know what it means to pick up a piece of code I've never worked on before and try to find a bug. I've done it with device drivers and regular software. Digi's serial board drivers gave me a headache one year.
Picking up random pieces of code to fix an error is just asking for problems; aside from the time requirements, there's the real possibility of introducing new bugs due to lack of familiarity.
In a large software project, it makes very little sense to waste one person's 4 hours working on a bug fix when a regular maintainer could've done it in 15 minutes. Hypothetical, but often true in my experience.
I considered trying to do this once with a photo cap on Android ... store the accelerometer data in real time as the shutter was clicked.
Wasn't helpful without the algorithm they're using though.
Those of us in Canada aren't always fond of the United States pretending it is America, when it is in fact the United States of America, but we usually just put up.
That said, the gp is still correct; I'm in America, as a Canadian. So are the Mexicans that haven't crossed into Texas, the lack of geographical knowledge south of the border notwithstanding.
As I posted elsewhere, sunlight is very bright.
Blocking 80% of 107,500 lux is still brighter than the 100-150 lux recommended for workspaces.
I had this exact debate with a good friend recently. When i pointed out that solar panels actually degrade with time, that their output lowers with time, and that the math gets a little more complex, he didn't quite believe me.
I seem to recall one solar power company saying their panels can be expected to generate 50% of their original power levels after 20 years. That's not nearly as terrible as the turnover rate in smart phones, but its still worth factoring in as you mention.
You're not familiar with how bright the sun is, are you?
A reference I've used before at Engineering toolbox lists even an overcast day at 1000 lux, equivalent to the lighting required in an OR. Normal interior light levels are 1/4 of that, and full daylight is 10x brighter yet.
Removing 80% of full daylight is not so bad, assuming you don't live in a ship with tiny portals to the exterior.
Strangely, my local hardware store stocks small solar panels used for charging batteries or other devices already. Idiot proof solar power has been here since solar calculators ... although yes, wiring into the grid is harder, that need not be how its done.
Wishing I had time to make a build with Enlightenment support ... now that's a nice interface. Sigh.
Switching to Gnome 3 slowed down my workflow tremendously. I no longer have "last window I used" switching; I have to toggle between ALT-tab and ALT-` ... I've lost rapid access to my system's status in my gnome-panel applets, and modal dialog handling has changed for the worse.
Just since you may not have noticed; the Onion posted this long before the conference itself happened.
There's no walled garden, it has full access to the Android Market. It may even allow unsigned app installations (we don't know yet).
Why exactly are you spreading FUD?
I'd rather have a faster tablet with a smaller screen that's easier to carry around, thanks. My wife can fit a 7" tablet in her purse no problem. I carry a 5" Dell Streak with me everywhere and use it as my current Kindle device regularly.
10" tablets are not the be-all and end-all of tablet sizing.
The Onion's story was an excellent summary of the event in advance I believe.
The Seagate drive has the SSD on-board, at full SATA2 speeds. There's no lack of comparison here.
As for using "any" SSD as I said before, its still true -- buy one of OCZ's own previous flash drive models and do the same thing, or anyone else's high performance solid state drive. There's nothing special about *this* drive at all as far as I can tell, its all in the software.
You could all just give up and move up here to Canada where we actually have banking regulations that worked.
Just a thought.
As another poster said, you've got your facts wrong.
Also, using a good old fashioned watch, I timed loading a save game in various games on my PS3 after switching to the Momentus XT 500GB drive. First time loading a specific save: 35s. Second time: 18s. Third time: 15s. It was then consistently 14-15s thereafter (Fallout 3 has fairly disk-heavy loads, so it seemed a good test).
I'm sure I imagined that just like you imagined the test you saw was pertinent and your argument valid.
First off, this already exists -- Seagate makes a series of drives that have built-in SSD storage for this very purpose. I have one of the 500GB model in my PS3 in fact.
That said, this isn't a drive technology at all; its software. Any SSD would do, including a CF card in a card reader. The only trick here is to do a dual layer disk cache, much like L1 and L2 function on CPUs.
Nothing new here really, but nice that they've done it.
Those of us with excellent karma get the option to block ads explicitly with a tick box at the top of the site.
I don't -- I support websites I believe in.
Look up "survived bullet to the head" on Google and you'll understand.
At least one man has survived a shotgun blast to his own face. Use something chemically poisonous ... don't trust your body to fail when you damage it.
Umm, if your best insights into Microsoft's innovations are those they stole from third parties over 30 years ago, you should brush up on your tech news a little.
Hopefully, you're trolling and this is intended to be funny.
Unfortunately, I think you believe what you've said, and didn't notice that Metro is a wide screen version of Win7Mobile which itself is not dissimilar to Android's applet system with a fixed width.
I'm sorry, these gradual evolutions are not innovations. Microsoft has had many of these minor babysteps toward innovative thought in its time (like the much maligned tab strip system). The mouse and GUI were innovations (by Xerox, not Apple or MS), the Internet was an innovation, and so on.
Do yourself a favour and boot up a LiveCD of Gnome3, then an old version of Enlightenment, then tell me about how innovative Microsoft is.