Good reference, I'm not sure why this is a big deal. There are so many GUI CD burning aplications on Linux (K3B, Arson, etc.), music players with library management (amaroK, RhythmBox, Zinf, Muine, etc.), and programs to sync with the iPod (as you mentioned). I suppose iTMS may be valued for some, but with the CD burning and audio not working well, it will be hard to listen to any tunes you buy from their outside of an iPod.
A number of people have replied to me with your argument, and I fail to see the validity of it. You can block ads with Opera too; via proxy/hosts file technology that will apply to all browsers on your computer, a custom CSS file, or the built in filter.ini thing. You can even turn off animated GIFs. You can have Opera's interface ad be a 'good' ad, as you describe it, via Google... so the ad, in your opinion as you stated it, wouldn't be an issue.
I'm reluctant to answer the feature question, as I imagine it would encourage an Opera/FF flamewar with anyone who is still trolling around (myself included). However, Opera has managed to implement a FULLY customizable interface, eMail and IRC client, password manager, spell checker (I believe it uses aspell), notepad, fancy bookmark manager, etc. in less space than FF (even without the extensions you would need for equal functionality). Plus, how cool is the new voice thing they're doing with IBM?
Well, most of the ad blocking solutions will effect all browsers... including Opera. I believe they use hosts files to simply block certain domains, which are known to carry ads. This isn't a comprehensive fix, however, as advertising goes beyond banners. I don't believe Google's text ads are blocked (which are the same ads Opera can display), not to mention the ads simply missed by the hosts file. You can't escape advertising.
Hmm, the article got the cost of Opera wrong, too. Opera is completely free, it is just that the free version is ad supported. I don't understand why people are so turned off by this, it's not as if you're web browsing experience isn't overcome with advertising, anyway.
I'm not sure how you could prove or disprove that statement, but I think there are certain subjective evidences all would agree upon. I mean, have you never seen someone that isn't a hardcore Nintendo fanboy playing a GBA? I'm sure. Loyal fanbase or not, their products still appeal to the mass market...
I found the selection of browsers to be depressingly lacking, but the pick of the bunch was ThunderHawk. I believe it uses some funky incarnation of KHTML, and in any case it renders infinitely better than PockteIE and the others built off of that. It also displays pages in landscape form, so you never have to scroll horizontally. It is a commercial product, unfortunately.
PocketMVP is the best among the media players I've tried. If you have add in a gig or larger flash card, it's sweet to watch full length DivX/etc. movies and TV shows on the go.
The AvantGo service lets you download web pages to your PPC for later viewing, in an especially easy manner. It's great for reading the news on the bus, or wherever a wifi network is not available.
There are a few GBA emulators and the like which might be worth looking into, but I've found the games situation to be unfortunately poor. The best of what I've bought is Sim City 2000, which took the porting impressively well. If you're as big a fan of the series as I am, you should definitely check that before any other.
Troll or not, the parent raises a good point. Anyone can, and is encouraged to, write articles for Wikipedia. They are able to filter out obvious fake information (perhaps someone writing an article about cheese under the title 'Modern Transportation) through peer editing rather well, but subtle biases are easily ignored or even accepted. Fortunately for them, the competition is no better. Intentional or not, even the best commercial encyclopedias let some false information slip through. It's an unfortunate consequence of the media.
Or, at least that's my reasoning for keeping off that Brittanica set...
Well, Newsforge did put it under the humor section... It wasn't meant to be a buyer's guide, or anything.
How Do They Plan To Support All Players?
on
MP3s From The Phone Box
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· Score: 4, Insightful
"Under the plans, anyone owning an iPod or portable music player would be able to go into a phonebox and download a song while out shopping or on a lunch break."
Well, just about every player has a different method of song transfer. Many require databases to be constructed, and there are so many obscure models out there... Most don't have Line-Ins to record off of, so what are they going to do?
I believe Nintendo changed these things due to marketing concerns, and certainly not government pressure. So, I'm not quite sure what you're getting at...
I want to know more about that Socks the Cat game from the article. Does anyone have more information about it?
Hmmm, most iRiver players (such as the iHP series) support ogg. I would be very surprised if this didn't, I imagine it's an error that it is not listed.
I suppose it was necessary, but nice that they used a Pentium M to build it though, eh? Many a/.er has complained that desktops with low power usage would lighten everyone's energy load.
As I said, Apple isn't making poor business decisions, it's just unfortunate for the consumer that they leave out features. I also said the the iPod was overpriced *as compared to the rest of the market*... The average price of a player is much lower than that of the iPod. It's not a personal feeling that $300 (for the smallest model) is quite high, there are only a few other players that expensive. Most of the 20GB models from Creative, Archos, DI, Rio, Dell, Phillips, etc. are closer to $200. Just look at a relatively accurate list from Reseller Ratings, that's how it is.
There are a lot of things Apple probably should do with the iPod. It's overpriced (as compared to the rest of the market), won't play formats it could (Ogg is the obvious one), is missing optical ports and any inputs (thought it was for audiophiles...), lacks the basic feature of an FM reciever/transmitter, no longer/doesn't come in the largest and smallest sizes, etc. They even block the transfer of music with iTunes... They've left these simple additions that most other players sport to third party addons, which add expense and bulk to the player (and cannot be used simultaneously). It seems like they're going out of their way not to change anything, even when everyone else has. Certainly it's not hurting them, but it's unfortunate for the consumer.
This poor record regarding innovation/adoption predicts that they will not be adding cameras anytime soon.
Being 13th among PC games at that point is nice and all, but it's not quite the popularity 3+VC achieved. I prefer the earlier games myself, but the newer two are clearly MUCH more popular.
Wouldn't it be easier to use some sort of RFID to tell the cars of changes in speed limits/etc. than relying on feeble image recognition technology? Without knowing much about the subject, it seems like that would be more resistant to weather conditions as well. In either case, it seems like a much better addition to cars than black boxes and OnStar GPS tracking...
Well, the/. article wasn't implying Linux isn't ready for the desktop... it was noting that it has yet to recieve mass adoption, which is true. I, and thousands of others, use Linux as their desktop. As you said, it works wonderfully. However, the other 6 billion people on earth don't (most of them don't use Windows either, obviously). The point here was that this is a free (OSX isn't) OS aimed at the infamous Joe User.
Re:Joe Sixpack is looking for "useful life"
on
Less Might Be More
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· Score: 5, Insightful
One thing I was surprised to find recently is that those in the know and those in the not seem to have radically different interpretations of 'dead'. I say this after hearing someing I had met comment that they're buying a new computer. She was very upset because the one that had just 'died' was only a few months old. The way she described the 'deadness' reminded me of whatever the Windows virus was that rebooted your PC right after you started up (not certain that was the problem). She was probably ready to go out and buy a horredously overpowered and overpriced PC without reason, just months after doing that same thing. That brings up another point, maybe Joe User needs tons of power just to run all of his malware:)
In either case, educating these consumers could save them a LOT of money. This conversation was held on college campus, on that note...
Well, adblocking techniques have existed for a long time, and are available for just about all browsers... including IE. The target demographic of any upstart browser is the uninformed IE user. The kind of person who's taskbar is filled with hundreds of unnoticed IE instances in the form of pop-ups (unders in that case?). You and I can certainly rid our lives (to a certain extent) of internet advertising, but as it is, without a well marketed and simple solution, the masses cannot.
The fact that such a thing doesn't exist is proof that people have learned to live with and expect ads. What do they care if yet another sits atop their browser?
Good observation. There are a lot of Opera users (myself included) who don't mind them, either. They take up littel screen real estate and are easy to ignore. Worst case sceario: they lead you to a good deal on a product, or something.
The browsing experience is full of ads to begin with. Pop ups, click throughs, banners, flash ads, etc. For an IE user migrating, the trade off of pop-ups for another banner is a good one.
Now to see if Google can throw together something worth switching to...
There are lots of places to order live CDs online. I've seen some free promotional ones, but I'm sure you'd only pay a few bucks at most.
A little article or tutorial would be nice for you, but jumping right into it with a LCD would tell you *so* much more. Particularly because no article will tell you how well Linux will work with your hardware setup out of the box (nor will one LiveCD, but better than nothing), compatability lists aside. I can't imagine anything that would confound a Mac or Windows user booting into Linux for the first time, no need to worry about that.
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Good reference, I'm not sure why this is a big deal. There are so many GUI CD burning aplications on Linux (K3B, Arson, etc.), music players with library management (amaroK, RhythmBox, Zinf, Muine, etc.), and programs to sync with the iPod (as you mentioned). I suppose iTMS may be valued for some, but with the CD burning and audio not working well, it will be hard to listen to any tunes you buy from their outside of an iPod.
A number of people have replied to me with your argument, and I fail to see the validity of it. You can block ads with Opera too; via proxy/hosts file technology that will apply to all browsers on your computer, a custom CSS file, or the built in filter.ini thing. You can even turn off animated GIFs. You can have Opera's interface ad be a 'good' ad, as you describe it, via Google... so the ad, in your opinion as you stated it, wouldn't be an issue.
I'm reluctant to answer the feature question, as I imagine it would encourage an Opera/FF flamewar with anyone who is still trolling around (myself included). However, Opera has managed to implement a FULLY customizable interface, eMail and IRC client, password manager, spell checker (I believe it uses aspell), notepad, fancy bookmark manager, etc. in less space than FF (even without the extensions you would need for equal functionality). Plus, how cool is the new voice thing they're doing with IBM?
Well, most of the ad blocking solutions will effect all browsers... including Opera. I believe they use hosts files to simply block certain domains, which are known to carry ads. This isn't a comprehensive fix, however, as advertising goes beyond banners. I don't believe Google's text ads are blocked (which are the same ads Opera can display), not to mention the ads simply missed by the hosts file. You can't escape advertising.
Hmm, the article got the cost of Opera wrong, too. Opera is completely free, it is just that the free version is ad supported. I don't understand why people are so turned off by this, it's not as if you're web browsing experience isn't overcome with advertising, anyway.
I'm not sure how you could prove or disprove that statement, but I think there are certain subjective evidences all would agree upon. I mean, have you never seen someone that isn't a hardcore Nintendo fanboy playing a GBA? I'm sure. Loyal fanbase or not, their products still appeal to the mass market...
I found the selection of browsers to be depressingly lacking, but the pick of the bunch was ThunderHawk. I believe it uses some funky incarnation of KHTML, and in any case it renders infinitely better than PockteIE and the others built off of that. It also displays pages in landscape form, so you never have to scroll horizontally. It is a commercial product, unfortunately.
PocketMVP is the best among the media players I've tried. If you have add in a gig or larger flash card, it's sweet to watch full length DivX/etc. movies and TV shows on the go.
The AvantGo service lets you download web pages to your PPC for later viewing, in an especially easy manner. It's great for reading the news on the bus, or wherever a wifi network is not available.
There are a few GBA emulators and the like which might be worth looking into, but I've found the games situation to be unfortunately poor. The best of what I've bought is Sim City 2000, which took the porting impressively well. If you're as big a fan of the series as I am, you should definitely check that before any other.
Troll or not, the parent raises a good point. Anyone can, and is encouraged to, write articles for Wikipedia. They are able to filter out obvious fake information (perhaps someone writing an article about cheese under the title 'Modern Transportation) through peer editing rather well, but subtle biases are easily ignored or even accepted. Fortunately for them, the competition is no better. Intentional or not, even the best commercial encyclopedias let some false information slip through. It's an unfortunate consequence of the media.
...
Or, at least that's my reasoning for keeping off that Brittanica set
Well, Newsforge did put it under the humor section... It wasn't meant to be a buyer's guide, or anything.
"Under the plans, anyone owning an iPod or portable music player would be able to go into a phonebox and download a song while out shopping or on a lunch break."
Well, just about every player has a different method of song transfer. Many require databases to be constructed, and there are so many obscure models out there... Most don't have Line-Ins to record off of, so what are they going to do?
I believe Nintendo changed these things due to marketing concerns, and certainly not government pressure. So, I'm not quite sure what you're getting at... I want to know more about that Socks the Cat game from the article. Does anyone have more information about it?
Hmmm, most iRiver players (such as the iHP series) support ogg. I would be very surprised if this didn't, I imagine it's an error that it is not listed.
I suppose it was necessary, but nice that they used a Pentium M to build it though, eh? Many a /.er has complained that desktops with low power usage would lighten everyone's energy load.
As I said, Apple isn't making poor business decisions, it's just unfortunate for the consumer that they leave out features. I also said the the iPod was overpriced *as compared to the rest of the market*... The average price of a player is much lower than that of the iPod. It's not a personal feeling that $300 (for the smallest model) is quite high, there are only a few other players that expensive. Most of the 20GB models from Creative, Archos, DI, Rio, Dell, Phillips, etc. are closer to $200. Just look at a relatively accurate list from Reseller Ratings, that's how it is.
There are a lot of things Apple probably should do with the iPod. It's overpriced (as compared to the rest of the market), won't play formats it could (Ogg is the obvious one), is missing optical ports and any inputs (thought it was for audiophiles...), lacks the basic feature of an FM reciever/transmitter, no longer/doesn't come in the largest and smallest sizes, etc. They even block the transfer of music with iTunes... They've left these simple additions that most other players sport to third party addons, which add expense and bulk to the player (and cannot be used simultaneously). It seems like they're going out of their way not to change anything, even when everyone else has. Certainly it's not hurting them, but it's unfortunate for the consumer.
This poor record regarding innovation/adoption predicts that they will not be adding cameras anytime soon.
Being 13th among PC games at that point is nice and all, but it's not quite the popularity 3+VC achieved. I prefer the earlier games myself, but the newer two are clearly MUCH more popular.
Which 'both' do you speak of? There have been like 5 (1, London, 2, 3, VC)
Wouldn't it be easier to use some sort of RFID to tell the cars of changes in speed limits/etc. than relying on feeble image recognition technology? Without knowing much about the subject, it seems like that would be more resistant to weather conditions as well. In either case, it seems like a much better addition to cars than black boxes and OnStar GPS tracking...
Well, the /. article wasn't implying Linux isn't ready for the desktop... it was noting that it has yet to recieve mass adoption, which is true. I, and thousands of others, use Linux as their desktop. As you said, it works wonderfully. However, the other 6 billion people on earth don't (most of them don't use Windows either, obviously). The point here was that this is a free (OSX isn't) OS aimed at the infamous Joe User.
One thing I was surprised to find recently is that those in the know and those in the not seem to have radically different interpretations of 'dead'. I say this after hearing someing I had met comment that they're buying a new computer. She was very upset because the one that had just 'died' was only a few months old. The way she described the 'deadness' reminded me of whatever the Windows virus was that rebooted your PC right after you started up (not certain that was the problem). She was probably ready to go out and buy a horredously overpowered and overpriced PC without reason, just months after doing that same thing. That brings up another point, maybe Joe User needs tons of power just to run all of his malware :)
In either case, educating these consumers could save them a LOT of money. This conversation was held on college campus, on that note...
In the interview he stated that a LiveCD version is planned, so we will all have an easy way to see if it is appropriate for our systems.
Well, adblocking techniques have existed for a long time, and are available for just about all browsers... including IE. The target demographic of any upstart browser is the uninformed IE user. The kind of person who's taskbar is filled with hundreds of unnoticed IE instances in the form of pop-ups (unders in that case?). You and I can certainly rid our lives (to a certain extent) of internet advertising, but as it is, without a well marketed and simple solution, the masses cannot.
The fact that such a thing doesn't exist is proof that people have learned to live with and expect ads. What do they care if yet another sits atop their browser?
Good observation. There are a lot of Opera users (myself included) who don't mind them, either. They take up littel screen real estate and are easy to ignore. Worst case sceario: they lead you to a good deal on a product, or something.
The browsing experience is full of ads to begin with. Pop ups, click throughs, banners, flash ads, etc. For an IE user migrating, the trade off of pop-ups for another banner is a good one.
Now to see if Google can throw together something worth switching to...
There are lots of places to order live CDs online. I've seen some free promotional ones, but I'm sure you'd only pay a few bucks at most. A little article or tutorial would be nice for you, but jumping right into it with a LCD would tell you *so* much more. Particularly because no article will tell you how well Linux will work with your hardware setup out of the box (nor will one LiveCD, but better than nothing), compatability lists aside. I can't imagine anything that would confound a Mac or Windows user booting into Linux for the first time, no need to worry about that.
Why not just try a live CD for a few days? Slax, Knoppix, PCLinuxOS, MandrakeMove, etc. will all give you an idea of what it will be like.
Yah, it's too bad they failed to mention the Sim City franchise. Some people say they're God games, I've always thought they were God's games...