You are missing the point. If you are going to vibrate the phone, you use stored energy. If you want to "Capture" some of that vibration and turn it back into energy, then you DAPEND that energy, thus meaning that 1> Some of the Energy you used to vibrate the phone is lost and 2> some of the vibration is lost, and 3> some of the energy is lost again trying to store the vibration.
So, if you want to make you vibrating phone last longer, spend less energy making vibrations. The gains from this are far greater than any attempt (no matter how you do it) to recapture the energy.
As another poster said, one useful application would be making the phone capable of charging itself if placed on an external source of energy (such as some loud or vibrating surface).
For starters, they have a wider range of markets that they like to kick around. That automatically gives the, more potential to do harm, but I won't stop there.
First off, Sony likes to strong-arm the competition in almost EVERY area they are involved in. Will I deny that they make some great products? No. But making a good product doesn't mean that you are justified in killing off competition one way or another.
Some of the things they do (such as price fixing) I have no problems with. When you are as big as Sony you can afford to take some losses and of coures you should be allowed to.
But then they turn around and do things such as use their dollars to pull weight in dealing with large groups (of which they are members) and they do things that even their own hardware operations doesn't like.
I really wish I had the time to post all of the links to everything that makes Sony evil, but if you're really interested you can do the web-searches and find plenty to satisfy yourself.
One good example though is a reminder that Sony IS a Member of both RIAA and the MPAA, and that TWICE now they've been ordered by the courts to stop strong-arming the market into artificially inflating the cost of CDs and BOTH times they responded by forcing the prices up even higher (the complete opposite of the court's decisions). There's no shortage of references. Visit Google.
Oh, and yes, Sony does -TRY- to strong-arm third parties in much the same way Nintendo used to. Only there are more third parties and it's harder to get away with. Still, there is some strength in market dominance. Dispite the fact that there are a lot of developers very unhappy with Sony right now they kind of have to support the PS2.
(One counter point -- As far as I'm aware, Nintendo did not infringe on ANY of Atari's IP. Sega did lose a lawsuit for doing that very thing, are you sure you do not have your facts skewed?)
Look, everyone here at Slashdot should realize Sony is a big evil megacorp akin to (or worse than) Microsoft. Sony goes through some really big lawsuits all the time, some of them for doing some really fucked up shit.
It's not news. It's Sony. So, while I hope Marvel comes out ahead through all this (either by gaining more money, correcting the situation, or taking Spiderman from Sony altogether) I still can't help but wonder what exactly Marvel expected from Sony?
Contracts? In the hands of an evil entity like Sony, contracts don't mean anything that money can't change.
Ethics? There is no ethics in business.
Plain old common sense? HAHAHAHAH
You know what they say about dancing with the devil....
Yup. Lots of cool things you can do with these awesome toys. It's a shame that all of the really fun and geeky stuff you can do legally gets overshadowed by rom kiddies.
BTW - in case anyone hasn't noticed, the F2A now comes in USB.:D
I love the F2A, but my biggest problem with it is that too many people will abuse it for ROMS (let's not lie to ourselves here) and few people will use it for PD Roms or Demos, or neat toys just like this.
That's why I bought mine. It's a cool toy to let me tinker with GBA Programming, playing around with PD stuff, and basically just using my GBA for something other than the games I can buy a store.
Having that freedom and the ability to do all kinds of neat things with my GBA awesome, and for that reason I'm glad the F2A is available.
Too bad there will always be the little ROMZ kiddies though.
"Well, we've consumed one fourth of the food and water, and we're only one fifth of the way through the mission. We're going to have to vote someone off of the ship."
Earthlink was giving away free web-cams with a one year subscription a few years ago.
Only Earthlink could tell us how-well that went, for sure, but considering that they managed to aquire several other ISPs, and considering they're still around, I'd say it probably don't work out too bad for them.
It does not play GBA games. It plays Gameboy Games, and to limited extent, Gameboy Color Games. There is an entire world of difference.
While I will give credit to the GP32 for being a nice machine, I will definately say I have seen no proof that the machine is actually THAT much superior to the GBA, and it's main real advantages come from having a vast amount more memory.
The GP32 prides itself on being an opened platform to develope for, and that's a good thing. Yet, if you take a look at the homebrew dev scene on the GBA, you will see that it appears quite some degree more active than the GP32 ( See for yourself. )
Taking a look at PD roms available from just one good source you see that the GP32 has 115 while the GBA has a whopping 521. That's not counting GB/GBC roms as well (302).
Given that the GP32's strong point is the opened developement that it relies on, even that advantage doesn't weigh in well when you consider that the scene is much larger on the GBA.
The GBA also has a much stronger commercial following, and a whole slew of other advantages (GC connectivity, lower price, and easier availability, etc) it isn't so easy in the end to say that the GP32 is "superior" to the GBA.
A great machine, yes, but not a GBA killer. Not by far.
I ran/run a server for a while (opened to the public) that only allowed server side characters.
The module was a remake of the classic Bard's Tale and it was/is more than half way done. (more info)
Interest in it has died down since the PC players seem to have grown tired of it (it is, after all, about a year old). But those that did play were limited to the types of items available within the Bard's Tale universe.
This created two types of players, those that got pissed because they couldn't find insanely powerful items and those that were happy because the game was exceptionally hard for a single player to wander around in.
I would probably get back to work and finish/polish the whole thing up if I didn't think interest in it was almost totally dead. Or I might would give the project up to someone else to finish if they can convince me they'll do it justice.
Either way, I think Neverwinter Nights was an awesome game, and I did sink hundreds of hours into it while I was into it the deepest.
But I definately agree, don't play with groups that allow client side servers unless you want to play with grossly overpowered players in invariably stupid campaign worlds.
You can do it legally but is that really what they're pushing?
Some broadband providers bank on the fact that you won't use a whole lot of bandwidth. Since the legal music downloads make up a small percentage of all of the bandwidth usage, it's a pretty safe bet that the providers actually DO hope that's how you're going to do things, since if you do things that way, you won't be doing nearly as much.
...old though it may be, Nintendo has done something similar with The Ocarina of Time and a previously unreleased Remix for experts called OOT: Master Quest.
If you reserve Zelda: Wind Waker you get a free OOT/MQ disc at any store that is participating.
I picked mine up, and it's pretty much exactly what it sounds like. OOT remixed for the gamecube and pretty much given away free to Zelda fans. I love seeing things like this.
Square has been remixing their early Final fantasy classics and selling them for about $30. This is fine, I suppose, if you are truly a fan of the old games. But I'm thinking the games are so old they really aren't even worth $30 unless you are just a Final Fantasy Fan that absolutely WANTS to replay the original in a remixed form. And while the games are great, I think the number of people who will pay $30 is much smaller than the number who would play the game if it were included free with something like Final Fantasy X-2.
I love retrogaming, and I embrace every attempt the developers make at giving me the option to play my classic favorites. But oviously I would like to see more companies go the "Free Classics" route.
I have both, and find myself playing Vice City more simply because it's newer, but it doesn't seem that it has as much. Sometimes I'll play it just to "Find a new package today" or something like that.
GTA Vice City is a good game without a doubt, but in the end I think that GTA3 was a better game overall. Vice City also had a few more bizarre bugs than GTA3, but I don't guess that's really important.
What matters is that they're both great games, even if I personally think 3 was better than VC. I hope the series moves forward and doesn't become very ho-hum.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, they are round for safty.
If they were any other shape, it would likely be possible to turn them some degree so that the cover could fall into the hole.
Have you ever lifted a manhole cover? Can you imagine one of them falling on a worker?
All they would really have to do to protect themselves is slightly modify the name.
Starberry Schortcake isn't a trademark, as far as I know.
You are missing the point. If you are going to vibrate the phone, you use stored energy. If you want to "Capture" some of that vibration and turn it back into energy, then you DAPEND that energy, thus meaning that 1> Some of the Energy you used to vibrate the phone is lost and 2> some of the vibration is lost, and 3> some of the energy is lost again trying to store the vibration.
So, if you want to make you vibrating phone last longer, spend less energy making vibrations. The gains from this are far greater than any attempt (no matter how you do it) to recapture the energy.
As another poster said, one useful application would be making the phone capable of charging itself if placed on an external source of energy (such as some loud or vibrating surface).
WebBrowser.
How is Sony more evil than Microsoft?
For starters, they have a wider range of markets that they like to kick around. That automatically gives the, more potential to do harm, but I won't stop there.
First off, Sony likes to strong-arm the competition in almost EVERY area they are involved in. Will I deny that they make some great products? No. But making a good product doesn't mean that you are justified in killing off competition one way or another.
Some of the things they do (such as price fixing) I have no problems with. When you are as big as Sony you can afford to take some losses and of coures you should be allowed to.
But then they turn around and do things such as use their dollars to pull weight in dealing with large groups (of which they are members) and they do things that even their own hardware operations doesn't like.
I really wish I had the time to post all of the links to everything that makes Sony evil, but if you're really interested you can do the web-searches and find plenty to satisfy yourself.
One good example though is a reminder that Sony IS a Member of both RIAA and the MPAA, and that TWICE now they've been ordered by the courts to stop strong-arming the market into artificially inflating the cost of CDs and BOTH times they responded by forcing the prices up even higher (the complete opposite of the court's decisions). There's no shortage of references. Visit Google.
Oh, and yes, Sony does -TRY- to strong-arm third parties in much the same way Nintendo used to. Only there are more third parties and it's harder to get away with. Still, there is some strength in market dominance. Dispite the fact that there are a lot of developers very unhappy with Sony right now they kind of have to support the PS2.
(One counter point -- As far as I'm aware, Nintendo did not infringe on ANY of Atari's IP. Sega did lose a lawsuit for doing that very thing, are you sure you do not have your facts skewed?)
Heh, I wasn't even thinking about that scene...
Look, everyone here at Slashdot should realize Sony is a big evil megacorp akin to (or worse than) Microsoft. Sony goes through some really big lawsuits all the time, some of them for doing some really fucked up shit.
It's not news. It's Sony. So, while I hope Marvel comes out ahead through all this (either by gaining more money, correcting the situation, or taking Spiderman from Sony altogether) I still can't help but wonder what exactly Marvel expected from Sony?
Contracts? In the hands of an evil entity like Sony, contracts don't mean anything that money can't change.
Ethics? There is no ethics in business.
Plain old common sense? HAHAHAHAH
You know what they say about dancing with the devil....
One step at a time bucko.
Send robbie out to Mow the Lawn first.
"Significant non-infringing uses".
:D
Yup. Lots of cool things you can do with these awesome toys. It's a shame that all of the really fun and geeky stuff you can do legally gets overshadowed by rom kiddies.
BTW - in case anyone hasn't noticed, the F2A now comes in USB.
You simply buy a Flash2Advance, sheesh.
I love the F2A, but my biggest problem with it is that too many people will abuse it for ROMS (let's not lie to ourselves here) and few people will use it for PD Roms or Demos, or neat toys just like this.
That's why I bought mine. It's a cool toy to let me tinker with GBA Programming, playing around with PD stuff, and basically just using my GBA for something other than the games I can buy a store.
Having that freedom and the ability to do all kinds of neat things with my GBA awesome, and for that reason I'm glad the F2A is available.
Too bad there will always be the little ROMZ kiddies though.
Flash 2 Advance
(Sounds like a good reality TV show to me.)
"Well, we've consumed one fourth of the food and water, and we're only one fifth of the way through the mission. We're going to have to vote someone off of the ship."
Earthlink was giving away free web-cams with a one year subscription a few years ago.
Only Earthlink could tell us how-well that went, for sure, but considering that they managed to aquire several other ISPs, and considering they're still around, I'd say it probably don't work out too bad for them.
It does not play GBA games. It plays Gameboy Games, and to limited extent, Gameboy Color Games. There is an entire world of difference.
While I will give credit to the GP32 for being a nice machine, I will definately say I have seen no proof that the machine is actually THAT much superior to the GBA, and it's main real advantages come from having a vast amount more memory.
The GP32 prides itself on being an opened platform to develope for, and that's a good thing. Yet, if you take a look at the homebrew dev scene on the GBA, you will see that it appears quite some degree more active than the GP32 ( See for yourself. )
Taking a look at PD roms available from just one good source you see that the GP32 has 115 while the GBA has a whopping 521. That's not counting GB/GBC roms as well (302).
Given that the GP32's strong point is the opened developement that it relies on, even that advantage doesn't weigh in well when you consider that the scene is much larger on the GBA.
The GBA also has a much stronger commercial following, and a whole slew of other advantages (GC connectivity, lower price, and easier availability, etc) it isn't so easy in the end to say that the GP32 is "superior" to the GBA.
A great machine, yes, but not a GBA killer. Not by far.
Douglas Noel Adams
born March 11th, 1952
died May 11th, 2001
I know, different DNA, but hey...
I know. The story was 100% true.
:D
The screen shots were the April Fools bit.
I ran/run a server for a while (opened to the public) that only allowed server side characters.
The module was a remake of the classic Bard's Tale and it was/is more than half way done. (more info)
Interest in it has died down since the PC players seem to have grown tired of it (it is, after all, about a year old). But those that did play were limited to the types of items available within the Bard's Tale universe.
This created two types of players, those that got pissed because they couldn't find insanely powerful items and those that were happy because the game was exceptionally hard for a single player to wander around in.
I would probably get back to work and finish/polish the whole thing up if I didn't think interest in it was almost totally dead. Or I might would give the project up to someone else to finish if they can convince me they'll do it justice.
Either way, I think Neverwinter Nights was an awesome game, and I did sink hundreds of hours into it while I was into it the deepest.
But I definately agree, don't play with groups that allow client side servers unless you want to play with grossly overpowered players in invariably stupid campaign worlds.
There is always GTA3 for Gameboy Advance.
I have a T-Shirt that says...
"BOMB TECHNICIAN. IF YOU SEE ME RUNNING, TRY AND KEEP UP."
I wore it into an airport without even realizing what I was wearing (I was picking up a friend.)
Nobody ever said anything about the shirt.
...so now my programs that take a tenth of a second to start will take a whole second?
My god I don't know if I can handle such a waste of my productivity!
THANKS MICROSOFT!
But seriously.....has /. ever been defaced by e-vandals?
I think they call those "TROLLS" around here.
You can do it legally but is that really what they're pushing?
Some broadband providers bank on the fact that you won't use a whole lot of bandwidth. Since the legal music downloads make up a small percentage of all of the bandwidth usage, it's a pretty safe bet that the providers actually DO hope that's how you're going to do things, since if you do things that way, you won't be doing nearly as much.
I just have one thing to tell you...
...It's Pepsi twist... ...and that's not Mars you're looking at...
It's not water...
The sound of unzipping...
That's the network that RIAA/MPAA execs use to distribute revenues so that the artists see very little of it, right?
...old though it may be, Nintendo has done something similar with The Ocarina of Time and a previously unreleased Remix for experts called OOT: Master Quest.
If you reserve Zelda: Wind Waker you get a free OOT/MQ disc at any store that is participating.
I picked mine up, and it's pretty much exactly what it sounds like. OOT remixed for the gamecube and pretty much given away free to Zelda fans. I love seeing things like this.
Square has been remixing their early Final fantasy classics and selling them for about $30. This is fine, I suppose, if you are truly a fan of the old games. But I'm thinking the games are so old they really aren't even worth $30 unless you are just a Final Fantasy Fan that absolutely WANTS to replay the original in a remixed form. And while the games are great, I think the number of people who will pay $30 is much smaller than the number who would play the game if it were included free with something like Final Fantasy X-2.
I love retrogaming, and I embrace every attempt the developers make at giving me the option to play my classic favorites. But oviously I would like to see more companies go the "Free Classics" route.
I have both, and find myself playing Vice City more simply because it's newer, but it doesn't seem that it has as much. Sometimes I'll play it just to "Find a new package today" or something like that.
GTA Vice City is a good game without a doubt, but in the end I think that GTA3 was a better game overall. Vice City also had a few more bizarre bugs than GTA3, but I don't guess that's really important.
What matters is that they're both great games, even if I personally think 3 was better than VC. I hope the series moves forward and doesn't become very ho-hum.