It seems that game journalism in the UK is alive and well for some time now. Personally I haven't got much contact with Edge; primarily with another thing from their publisher - Official UK Playstation (1) magazine (well, it was PL edition...mostly translated). Over a decade ago.
Even then, in comparison to other mags here, it was the only one worth taking seriously. First and foremost, written by people who know how to write; and/or who don't assume that they are bought by kids mostly unable to read (well, the target for PS1 back then was 20+, in opposition to other gaming systems). With design laid out by people who know how reading material should look like.
Also pretty unbiased reviews, close contact with devs/insight stories (as far as is reasonable in a console magazine) and original content loosely related to game phenomena. I guess large part of that stems from their close relationship with SCEE - they were the "premium" mag, the only one with a CD, without need for favors from gamedevs, expensive & with little ad space; and SCEE wanted good games to be promoted on their console.
Overall pretty close to what you describe (though at the end, when PS2 came out, something broke...seems PS1 was delegated to status of budget console/for kids)
BTW, apparently there's a good reason Edge reminds you of older NextGen (after wiki): "Between 1995 and 2002, some of the content from the UK edition of Edge was published in the United States as Next Generation."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bidet (as a sidenote, I consider the act of smearing the feces on your buttocks (fundamentally, that's what it is) quite disgusting)
But...a lot of trees used in industry come from, basically, plantations, so it's not so bad as you put it.
In fact, it worked so great that Nintendo lost most of big 3rd party studios/exclusivity, and all but the best N64 games had soap in place of textures.
And when you think about it, if you have fast enough connection, it does make at least some sense - video editing is something that does require high CPU power, but only in short "bursts" (which fits nicely with shared server farm) / you don't do it very often.
What, thousands of man-hours for games? Look around you, majority of people don't play games (or at least you wouldn't call them PC games - Peggle, Solitaire, etc.; that is a typical PC game)
Nowadays majority of time of average user is spent in the browser. Heck, I even see a trend of listening to music "from the cloud". Convince them that writing (no, they don't need MS or even Open Office, formatting with Tab, Space & Enter, styles unknown to them) or presentations (they are a travesty usually anyway...) can be also done in a browser...and there's your market for Chrome OS.
Having said that, I also think that Chrome OS won't succeed on "large" machines. But I also suspect that those using today cheap laptops for all their (pretty basic) needs will, in some part, shift towards using smaller form factor.
I have a cat. The worst thing it would be able to do to me, if it wanted to, are skin cuts. Average dog (and I'm talking about a dog, not some glorified living toy) can do much worse, even if not trained.
Furthermore, as I've said, dogs usually don't wander around; they're either on private terrain, or with an owner. So it's not only what the animal can (or can't, in case of toy dogs) do, it's also a confrontation with the owner.
Yes, it is our nature to be violent, but it's also a bit worse than that in this case, which I'm trying to show... Cats aren't perceived by humans as danger at all. They almost always run away when feel threatened. Dogs too often aren't that easy...
(those stats should also take into account stray cats?...though I guess they are treated more like a plague for wildlife in Australia)
From what I see in people, the only reason why cat haters appear more frequent is because a cat is basically helpless against human (it can only run away...which further induces/strengthens some kind of sick joy in some people); it probably won't strike back, and definitely won't be a threat.
I perceive cat-hatred as one of the things that show our true nature as a species.
But it's much harder to be openly a dog hater. Some potential over-the-top ones learn quickly that it won't do them any good, tempering down their tendencies. "Moderate" ones have more reason to feel some respect towards the dog (or its owner, given that dogs usually either are on walks with them, or guard their property)
BTW, not sure how it is @your place, but here (central European country) cats outnumber the dogs.
Nokia e61, plus many other from N-series, have screensizes comparable to your Clie...in some newer ones probably bigger. They are sill not good for reading books.
And that's not how you put things; sure, transflective might be good enough for you, but you've painted the picture that e-paper isn't really better. It is. It's as close as we can get to paper, comparable to cheap newspaper...which is still much better than any LCD (one poster said "it's purpose is to read in direct sunlight", which perhaps made you to point out transflective; it's not better only in sunlight, that's a side effect of being as similar to paper as we can get - completely passive in any lightning conditions, ideally just smooth surface with text, no polarizers/etc.)
Also, the Pocket Edition Sony Reader will cost approximately the same as your Clie did in its heyday, and supports open formats, so it's not exactly a rip-off or lock-in. Sure, it does less, but, what it does do, it does it quite well. Which is also @the convergence you mention - sure, it's nice, but it doesn't really work well in some cases (jack of all trades and all that...I wouldn't trade a DSLR for cameraphone, however nice it would be)
Heh, I see you've missed something - I've been also using them for many years, on large part of mobiles that I've owned. (actually...I somehow require good transflective screen in a mobile now)
But...I would still never seriously attempt to read a book from such screen, they are only ok-ish as passive screens. Note: they can be, they weren't meant for longer reading sessions, but for relative legibility in direct sunlight while having fast refresh rates for UI; ultimately that it's all about, each tech having it's specific applications (for example...check Motofone F3 (mobile phone with E-ink); I can readily admit that it's absolutely horrible - the advantages of E-ink don't mean that much in this case, while it's disadvantages hamper the UI seriously)
Pixel Qi screen might be a bit more than passable, since it doesn't waste space for areas which can be only active...but still it's background color/characteristics mean it will be behind E-ink (though the difference might be small enough this time; and it will find its niche anyway, it's not only good for text)
Anyway, let's see...same cognitive mechanism as in conspiracy theorists? You are convinced that you've discovered something better that nobody knows about? (nothing horrible in that per se, because a) we all have helluva brain farts on regular basis (well, we aren't living in environment in which our minds evolved...) b) you can personally do as you please...) Hey, and you can shake head at all those stupid e-book reader manufacturers that ALL abandoned LCDs as soon as E-ink was available; you're smarter then them after all.
The difference between normal LCD and transflective is just unusable vs. passable/you can read if you really want to; don't kid yourself it's not.
I've seen transflective displays - Nokia uses them quite a bit (plus theirs are considered better than from other manufacturers), and I still wouldn't enjoy reading a book from one.
Seems Opera for Blackberry isn't very representative...hard to blame them given virtual non-existence of Blackberries outside North America (at the least - it definatelly worked great, also ~2 years ago, on my mobiles...both Opera Mini on "classic" S40 Nokia and Opera Mobile on Symbian S60)
You would really like the responsiveness of Opera in many-tabs scenario.
If you do check it out, remember to turn on "Window" menu in options (lists all tabs in current window, and is actually usable - you don't have to scroll through it like in FF, no matter how many tabs), "hold down right mouse button and move scroll" (hard to explain...but its great), and list of all tabs (in all windows) in sidebar (with search)
Some weird people value the results of actual real life usage more than benchmarks.
Try to run both browsers for a week or two, with 100+ tabs in several windows, and then you'll know which one's GUI remains responsive, which one treats your RAM gracefully.
Opera Mini has some relation to Opera Desktop, but is much further from it than Android is from Chrome; it is a JavaME app that requests Opera servers (running full Opera engine) to render/redraw/transmit pages to mobile phone in compressed & streamlined form.
Android browser equivalent would be Opera Mobile - as the other poster says: same engine, different UI.
But what's more, it dominates mobile browsing in developing markets with its Opera Mini. You might of course think that only smartphones in style of iPhone are relevant, but a billion people, or two, might disagree...
Well, if you say that you should love Opera - it really shines when it comes to UI responsiveness; lean & fast (where it counts; who here doesn't open pages primarily in background tabs?)
Slashdot Mirror
It seems that game journalism in the UK is alive and well for some time now. Personally I haven't got much contact with Edge; primarily with another thing from their publisher - Official UK Playstation (1) magazine (well, it was PL edition...mostly translated). Over a decade ago.
Even then, in comparison to other mags here, it was the only one worth taking seriously. First and foremost, written by people who know how to write; and/or who don't assume that they are bought by kids mostly unable to read (well, the target for PS1 back then was 20+, in opposition to other gaming systems). With design laid out by people who know how reading material should look like.
Also pretty unbiased reviews, close contact with devs/insight stories (as far as is reasonable in a console magazine) and original content loosely related to game phenomena. I guess large part of that stems from their close relationship with SCEE - they were the "premium" mag, the only one with a CD, without need for favors from gamedevs, expensive & with little ad space; and SCEE wanted good games to be promoted on their console.
Overall pretty close to what you describe (though at the end, when PS2 came out, something broke...seems PS1 was delegated to status of budget console/for kids)
BTW, apparently there's a good reason Edge reminds you of older NextGen (after wiki): "Between 1995 and 2002, some of the content from the UK edition of Edge was published in the United States as Next Generation."
Well, perhaps; was just pointing out that there is standardized solution to the problem.
Me...I just always try to take quick shower afterwards.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bidet (as a sidenote, I consider the act of smearing the feces on your buttocks (fundamentally, that's what it is) quite disgusting)
But...a lot of trees used in industry come from, basically, plantations, so it's not so bad as you put it.
In fact, it worked so great that Nintendo lost most of big 3rd party studios/exclusivity, and all but the best N64 games had soap in place of textures.
...and on a site of apparent supporter of most fringe proposals that are promoted by religious nutjobs or those that feel peer review is unfair.
Configuring email program took insignificant amount of time compared to the time saved thanks to
a) access everywhere
b) finally "doing email right" in comparison to both native and web clients at the time when Gmail went live
My email usage skyrocketed for no other reason than switching to Gmail.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaltura - there you go
And when you think about it, if you have fast enough connection, it does make at least some sense - video editing is something that does require high CPU power, but only in short "bursts" (which fits nicely with shared server farm) / you don't do it very often.
What, thousands of man-hours for games? Look around you, majority of people don't play games (or at least you wouldn't call them PC games - Peggle, Solitaire, etc.; that is a typical PC game)
Nowadays majority of time of average user is spent in the browser. Heck, I even see a trend of listening to music "from the cloud". Convince them that writing (no, they don't need MS or even Open Office, formatting with Tab, Space & Enter, styles unknown to them) or presentations (they are a travesty usually anyway...) can be also done in a browser...and there's your market for Chrome OS.
Having said that, I also think that Chrome OS won't succeed on "large" machines. But I also suspect that those using today cheap laptops for all their (pretty basic) needs will, in some part, shift towards using smaller form factor.
I have a cat. The worst thing it would be able to do to me, if it wanted to, are skin cuts. Average dog (and I'm talking about a dog, not some glorified living toy) can do much worse, even if not trained.
Furthermore, as I've said, dogs usually don't wander around; they're either on private terrain, or with an owner. So it's not only what the animal can (or can't, in case of toy dogs) do, it's also a confrontation with the owner.
Yes, it is our nature to be violent, but it's also a bit worse than that in this case, which I'm trying to show... Cats aren't perceived by humans as danger at all. They almost always run away when feel threatened. Dogs too often aren't that easy...
(those stats should also take into account stray cats?...though I guess they are treated more like a plague for wildlife in Australia)
From what I see in people, the only reason why cat haters appear more frequent is because a cat is basically helpless against human (it can only run away...which further induces/strengthens some kind of sick joy in some people); it probably won't strike back, and definitely won't be a threat.
I perceive cat-hatred as one of the things that show our true nature as a species.
But it's much harder to be openly a dog hater. Some potential over-the-top ones learn quickly that it won't do them any good, tempering down their tendencies. "Moderate" ones have more reason to feel some respect towards the dog (or its owner, given that dogs usually either are on walks with them, or guard their property)
BTW, not sure how it is @your place, but here (central European country) cats outnumber the dogs.
Then retain her DNA until pet-cloning will be affordable? ;)
Nokia e61, plus many other from N-series, have screensizes comparable to your Clie...in some newer ones probably bigger. They are sill not good for reading books.
And that's not how you put things; sure, transflective might be good enough for you, but you've painted the picture that e-paper isn't really better. It is. It's as close as we can get to paper, comparable to cheap newspaper...which is still much better than any LCD (one poster said "it's purpose is to read in direct sunlight", which perhaps made you to point out transflective; it's not better only in sunlight, that's a side effect of being as similar to paper as we can get - completely passive in any lightning conditions, ideally just smooth surface with text, no polarizers/etc.)
Also, the Pocket Edition Sony Reader will cost approximately the same as your Clie did in its heyday, and supports open formats, so it's not exactly a rip-off or lock-in. Sure, it does less, but, what it does do, it does it quite well. Which is also @the convergence you mention - sure, it's nice, but it doesn't really work well in some cases (jack of all trades and all that...I wouldn't trade a DSLR for cameraphone, however nice it would be)
It's fun, you should try it sometimes.
Heh, I see you've missed something - I've been also using them for many years, on large part of mobiles that I've owned. (actually...I somehow require good transflective screen in a mobile now)
But...I would still never seriously attempt to read a book from such screen, they are only ok-ish as passive screens. Note: they can be, they weren't meant for longer reading sessions, but for relative legibility in direct sunlight while having fast refresh rates for UI; ultimately that it's all about, each tech having it's specific applications (for example...check Motofone F3 (mobile phone with E-ink); I can readily admit that it's absolutely horrible - the advantages of E-ink don't mean that much in this case, while it's disadvantages hamper the UI seriously)
Pixel Qi screen might be a bit more than passable, since it doesn't waste space for areas which can be only active...but still it's background color/characteristics mean it will be behind E-ink (though the difference might be small enough this time; and it will find its niche anyway, it's not only good for text)
Anyway, let's see...same cognitive mechanism as in conspiracy theorists? You are convinced that you've discovered something better that nobody knows about? (nothing horrible in that per se, because a) we all have helluva brain farts on regular basis (well, we aren't living in environment in which our minds evolved...) b) you can personally do as you please...) Hey, and you can shake head at all those stupid e-book reader manufacturers that ALL abandoned LCDs as soon as E-ink was available; you're smarter then them after all.
Sure, JS speed is part of browser performance nowadays, but isn't synonymous with it.
As an Opera user, you should be well aware of this... (ability to handle gracefully large number of tabs, responsive UI, etc.)
So he would live and be able to write about it?
The difference between normal LCD and transflective is just unusable vs. passable/you can read if you really want to; don't kid yourself it's not.
I've seen transflective displays - Nokia uses them quite a bit (plus theirs are considered better than from other manufacturers), and I still wouldn't enjoy reading a book from one.
E-ink otoh is...good.
They are giving up - SE phones are transitioning to microSD now.
Or built in LaTeX for extra points? (even e-book readers should be fast enough nowadays for it...)
Seems Opera for Blackberry isn't very representative...hard to blame them given virtual non-existence of Blackberries outside North America (at the least - it definatelly worked great, also ~2 years ago, on my mobiles...both Opera Mini on "classic" S40 Nokia and Opera Mobile on Symbian S60)
You would really like the responsiveness of Opera in many-tabs scenario.
If you do check it out, remember to turn on "Window" menu in options (lists all tabs in current window, and is actually usable - you don't have to scroll through it like in FF, no matter how many tabs), "hold down right mouse button and move scroll" (hard to explain...but its great), and list of all tabs (in all windows) in sidebar (with search)
And yes, Opera has Adblock built-in, you just have to provide it with a list... http://www.fanboy.co.nz/adblock/opera/
Some weird people value the results of actual real life usage more than benchmarks.
Try to run both browsers for a week or two, with 100+ tabs in several windows, and then you'll know which one's GUI remains responsive, which one treats your RAM gracefully.
Since when "JS speed" is synonymous with "browser speed"?
Yes and no.
Opera Mini has some relation to Opera Desktop, but is much further from it than Android is from Chrome; it is a JavaME app that requests Opera servers (running full Opera engine) to render/redraw/transmit pages to mobile phone in compressed & streamlined form.
Android browser equivalent would be Opera Mobile - as the other poster says: same engine, different UI.
Uhm, it is steadily gaining market share in some areas, even on desktop
http://www.ranking.com.ua/en/rankings/web-browsers-groups.html - over 30% in Ukraine, similarly in Russia, and not bad at all in few other countries in central Europe
But what's more, it dominates mobile browsing in developing markets with its Opera Mini. You might of course think that only smartphones in style of iPhone are relevant, but a billion people, or two, might disagree...
Well, if you say that you should love Opera - it really shines when it comes to UI responsiveness; lean & fast (where it counts; who here doesn't open pages primarily in background tabs?)