I've always wondered why the PSP was never given a hard drive, especially considering the success of the iPod which ultimately proved a successful HDD consumer device is possible. Ripping out the UMD and putting a 60GB drive in makes quite a bit of sense. You could then offer PSP format films on each DVD disc and it wouldn't necessitate a new medium.
Ok, so in reality the UMD is only there to stop piracy, but you could get a lot of UMD 1.8 GB films and games on a 60GB drive, then have some kind of iTunes-like system to choose what of your collection is on there. Heck, even being able to play PSP stuff on your PC might be possible, and it'd mean that Sony could offer games online via their store and authenticate them ACC-style. iPods have proved that people are happy to take a selection of stuff away on a device without being able to edit/change it away from their home computer.
Instead, I have a device which has become a bit of a white elephant. Some of the games are good. I'd like to watch films on it, but can't be arsed to buy anything as they're a) too expensive and b) the titles are crap, but also because c) like Minidiscs they take up so much damn room! Consequently, my PSP normally gets left behind on a trip in favour of my iPod. Sony need to fix that in order to make the PSP really take off, especially for film watching.
Yes, there's a slim possibility it's a Photoshop job, but it's sure as hell a lot more fun to look at that a Slashdotted site. heck, even Engadget had the Treo 700p featured back in February!
You see, the key to Apple was product differentiation. I don't think people really understand what Apple has taken on when it moved to Intel.
Essentially it's moved its entire product lifecycle up a gear. You'll see newer, faster Apples appearing much more frequently than you used to, because Intel release interim speedbump chips throughout the year - maybe as many as 5 or 6. For Apple, this is a good thing.
But, Intel also releases a new platform technology every year or so, so when Yonah's successor Merom is released, Apple has no choice but to do the same, otherwise it has a marketing dilemma of people doing a like-for-like speed comparison between a Yonah Mac and a Merom PC.
Now, we know that comparing Macs to PCs is apples and oranges, but Joe Public doesn't know that and would possibly plump for a fast new Dell over what on paper looks like a slower, older Mac.
The other downside is that by keeping up with Intel releases, Apples are going to date a lot faster. In a year, the 15" Macbook Pro will be a slow Macbook Pro assuming Apple keep up with Intel. Now it may not be slow to use as OSX software doesn't seem to bloat as fast as PC stuff, but it could potentially cause confusion for new buyers.
The bottom line is that essentially, Apple have rescinded some of their control over their product line development. While they can innovate on peripheral elements such as illuminated screens, magnetic power cords and the like, the core of their machine is now owned by Intel and they are going to have a much tougher time exhibiting the kind of product differentiation that they have been able to in the past.
By virtue of its name the MacBook is a low-end version of the Pro. Fair enough, but the specs are pretty much going to be identical to the Pro version I guess, except with a lower end GFX card, less storage, smaller screen, slower CPU. I've suddenly stopped finding Apple hardware releases interesting.
Three or four years ago, it was kind of nice because there was a certain sense of innovation there and you really didn't know what to expect, but now I get a certain sense that Apple's product releases are going to be mainly governed by speedbump releases of Intel's CPUs from now on...
new Intel CPU == new Apple laptop, so expect to see a new range of Pros when Merom is released towards the and of Q3 this year, a new Xserve when Kentsville is out, and a new bunch of pro desktops when Conroe is released... unfortunate, but probably true.
When you're sat on a $40 billion slush fund, I didn't think you had to justify making a loss. I mean, the money's there to be spent taking the company into new markets, right?
So what M$ and Ballmer did was exactly right. Heck, I bet Sony'd love a $40 billion slush fund right now, then they could offset PS3 losses against it. In fact, any company would love to do this - all to often you hear about a single product bombing and taking a whole company with it...
I have a PC with a ATi 9800 Pro in it which I use for gaming. I've had this since 2003 and it still plays a mean game of Battlefield 2 when I feel like it. If it runs a bit slow then I plonk the resolution down. This is by far the best way to get your game to run faster. Anyway, bottom line is - it runs whatever current game I'd care to buy for it.
Now I've thought about upgrading, but two things have hampered me. The first is strictly technical - I have an AGP machine, so there's not a huge amount of difference over a 9800 Pro whatever I plug in there because it'll always be limited by the bus speed.
The second is probably more of a personal thing - I've got mates who have the latest and greatest GFX cards in their machines, but I'll be damned if I can tell the difference between their games and mine. Sure, it's a slightly higher res, but are there any bonus features like fog or smoke? No. Better anti-aliasing? No. I spent my hard-earned cash on a Dell 20" widescreen monitor and I can assure you that as far as gaming experiences go, this added to mine much more than a new GFX card would.
Maybe it's me getting old, but hardware upgrades now tend come when I buy a new PC, and be a notch under the top o' the range. Although having said all this, I just picked up a Inspiron 9400 for work which did come with a GeForce 7800 in it, which I guess'll be useful for um.... spreadsheets *cough*
You have to remember that the key to the Revolution is the controller - something that can easily be added to other systems in the future. Remember when the PS got analog sticks? Well, that's the Revolution's downfall - that all these amazing new games rely on the controller. So what's to stop Microsoft and Sony coming out with - not a copy - but something similar?
But if it's a resolution issue with images, than I'd consider it an image format problem, which impacts on a far bigger scale than just websites - icons, desktop scaling and the like.
The solution would be to develop a new image format that can gracefully cope with scaling, or a format that contains metadata describing the image parameters - a bit like the RAW + embedded jpeg option you find on some cameras.
Either way, I don't consider it to be a web standards issue as such.
The article is way off because of one simple reason:
The browser determines how HTML is rendered.
And that pretty much sums it up. This is not a web standard that has to be introduced on a element level within a page - that would be useless as you want to upscale the whole thing. This is a browser rendering issue pure and simple, and can be handled however the browser writers see fit.
However, before thinking about upsclaing, they need to think about a few 'related' issues:
Please sort out downscaling so that my web pages can take up less desktop space and still work
And someone sort out printing from web pages! I am fed up of having words missing off the right-hand side. Plus the last page is also useless, always containing just the footer...
"Basically the Thinkpad is rebranded Packard Bell"
Ah sorry, that's not true.
Packard bell are owned by NEC, and Lenovo used to be known as Legend. They are not the same company, nor linked. However, they may use the same ODMs (Original Design Manufacturers) for some of their kit - IIRC the 3000 series Lenovo is made by Compal who also makes a lot of the HP kit.
However, the Thinkpad range has always been manufactured by Quanta. They also make laptops for Sony and Dell and are well respected in the industry, along with other top-tier ODMs like Celestica, Flextronics and Wistron.
...but I had lectures from him and he's really rather good and certainly knows his stuff. If you want to knock him for his name then fine.
A psychopharmacologist is interested in why and how chemicals interact with the brain and nervous system, so it's quite within his mandate to speculate on how something like 'synthehol' should theoretically be possible. Invariably you tend to find that postgraduates in the UK have to write papers on how something is theoretically possible in order to attract funding for research.
These papers are in the public domain, so if some Sci-Fi fan for LiveScience breaks the news with the sensationalist title "Hangover-free Buzz: Star Trek's Synthehol Now Possible" while at the same time quoting passages from the paper like "Some "partial agonists" of GABA-A receptors already exist; bretazenil and pagoclone were developed as anti-anxiety drugs. These drug molecules are instantly reversible by the flumazenil, used as an antidote to overdoses of tranquillisers.", I'd wager that you should be shooting the messenger here, not the scientist.
...but he's talking about those technologies from a business perspective.
Let's have a look at PCI Express. Early in 2004 it had competition from PCI-X - PCI extended - however, Dell here are discussing the implications of swapping from PCI to PCIe. Now, at the time, PCI-X was seen as an interim measure, but Dell skipped it, instead opting to use PCIe across their desktop range. See, they didn't 'invent' it, but a big company like Dell deciding to run with a specific technology is going to have an impact. No doubt we'll probably see the same with ExpressCard, which seems to be standard on pretty much all Dell laptops released since Fall last year - point me in the direction of another manufacturer who's committed to ExpressCard and not still releasing PC card stuff - HP? Lenovo? Fujitsu? Toshiba?
Right, 64-bit extensions. Again, they didn't invent it, but I know that they had an instrumental role in convincing Intel (who needs 64-bit computing?) to add EMT 64 extensions to the Xeon range. That might have been partly forced by Dell's customers asking for 64-bit availability, but you cannot deny that with a big player like Dell dumping out 64-bit Xeons, it did give the market a huge kick up the arse - and one that I'm pretty convinced Intel wouldn't have done on their own. Remember, they stubbornly sat on their hands for ages insisting point blank that 64-bit was not the way to go and that if you wanted it, you had to buy Itaniums (*shudder*).
Wireless? The only evidence I can find that supports this is that Dell were the first company to offer an 802.11b wireless card in a desktop config. I don't for once think that drove any kind of market force as it was an option on the Dimension desktop line, but his points in the article that they stopped Intel marketing that awful HomeRF standard might be justified.
So it's not really 100% bullshit - the guy has some valid points. Yes Dell has helped promote a couple of standards over the years - USB 2 first appeared on Dells, Centrino laptops first appeared as Dells, they were second (behind Apple) to ship LCDs as standard with PCs. However, they've also bombed in other areas: they still don't have a coherent Mediacenter PC and seem to offer the OS on anything you'd want, and they don't have a tablet option. Now if they could pull their finger out and try to push those down people's throats, we might be getting somewhere.
So, before you're moronic enough to read bullshit into what he said, sit back and have a think about how a company's size can dictate whether technologies succeed or not, then think about what didn't succeed but could've, like Itanium, HomeRF and PCI-X...
Currently, OSX runs well on a limited selection of hardware - it's all chosen by Apple - and non of it at the time of writing can support third party AGP,PCI or PCIe cards. Opening up OSX for all PCs is going to cause all number of problems for Apple - firstly by making sure that OSX supports pretty much an infinite number of hardware configurations, and secondly to support people directly who are having problems.
One of Apple's strengths is its control of the hardware its OS runs on. Throw this away and you're also throwing away a large chunk of OSX's stability...
...because the Intel Mac Mini has the Intel GMA950 onboard graphics which use system memory and the performance is pretty bad, even by PC standards. Sure, you can get Half Life 2 to run, but you aren't going to get performance even matching a low-end PC with a dedicated graphics card. The G4 Mac Mini had the Ati 9200 chip - which in the PC arena is a low-end laptop chip - which was much better than Intel's current offering.
The iMac however, would fare a lot better as it's got a dedicated ATi graphics chip which is on par with mid-range PC stuff, although then you've locked yourself into a machine with a built in monitor and no ability to upgrade the CPU or anything.
The other bit of bad news is that dual-core doesn't have much impact on games - they're not designed to be run on multi-core chips and will invariably only use one core. So, don't be under any illusions that you'll be playing the latest and greatest PC games on a dual-core Mac Mini, you won't. A Mac Book Pro or a iMac however would not have any problems at all, but you'd lose the upgrade path and it would cost you a fair few pence (at which price you could get a faster PC laptop and a Mac Mini!).
What would I do? Get a moderately good graphics card for your PC (A 9600XT or X600) and buy a Mac Mini, but please don't get a Mini for games, because I think you'll be disappointed, although as the owner of a dual-core Dell, I definitely recommend saying "fuck it, give me dual core!" - because for multitasking apps, it's the mutt's nuts!
Won't more critical technologies limit how fast we can transmit data, such as switch fabrics?
To effectively use incredibly fast end-user technologies, some absolutely incredible switches and routers would need to be designed, otherwise all this is for nothing. I mean 2.5 Gb per port on a 24-port switch would require a 60 Gb backplane - way higher than anything available today.
And as someone who managed a medium-ish sized network (250+), we currently find that setting a lot of peripheral users to 10-full gives much better performance than setting them to 100-full, simply because our switching fabric - coupled with the number of users - can handle this a lot better.
So although this is possible, wouldn't it be more suited to backbones, rather than having a client-heavy network?
These kids have never seen a computer, then it's best to get them familiar with what 90% of the planet uses, regardless of your own viewpoint. That way you're giving them a headstart on the way to getting useable computer knowledge that will enable them to at least get a job using a PC with Windows and Word on it...
Linux and Macs have to be decision that's made on a personal level, because they are in the minority. If one of these kids turns round and says to you "you taught us in Linux, why the hell didn't you teach us to use the most common OS - Windows?", you're screwed. That'll just look like you forcing your views on them, and that never goes down well with anyone, ever.
That might sound harsh, but I guarantee that very few of us are using Linux because it was the first OS we landed on. Most probably used Windows and had to look for something better - look at it from that angle, and use that as a basis. The high fliers will instantly want mroe than you give them.
As far as I'm concerned, if M$ are closing holes that shouldn't really be there, that's a Good Thing (tm).
I mean, these same spyware companies don't make a mint off other OSes do they, so why should they piggy-back a specific one? Isn't that essentially making money from a weakness? And if the weakness is removed, well... game over I guess, until M$ falls at the next hurdle and people make cash out of it. I mean, Mr. Norton seems to have had it quite easy for a while now...
"Nothing worse than a fanboy making execuses for the product they worship day and night over. Look at this nonsense you posted. No "killer" game + prolonged console shortage + lackluster average game catalog + fanboys conducting spin control for a rushed console = failed launch"
I certainly wouldn't consider myself a 'fanboy' of the 360, and I don't worship it - it doesn't have a little ring of candles around it, or a shrine devoted to it in my house. I bought it because I like what it does. I wouldn't call the launch games 'lacklustre', they're damn good, but there's no killer title like Halo that makes the console a must buy for anyone right now. And in my defence as a so-called fanboy, I'd like to point out that I never really coudl figure out what made Halo a killer game - it was a bog-standard FPS with a jeep.
"So in other words the Xbox 360 was not ready period. Cut the crap and apolisgist nonsense--the Xbox 360 was rushed in more ways then one. The Xbox 360 is as much failure as the PSP"
I don't consider either a failure, and in the same vein I don't consider Apple products (iPod Mini?) which always seems to have a hyped launch, but fail to deliver on quantity.
There's no denying that all these products are good ones technically. They certainly aren't failed products, but just ones that have had poorly managed launches. That doesn't make them failures.
And no, I didn't buy a fscking clip-on front for it!
As far as I'm concerned, the 360 wasn't launched before it was ready, but before the manufacturing process was ready - not really a point for failure. Software always comes later and the game certification issues sound like classic come-to-market problems. However here in the UK, we also suffered from PSP shortages, although not to the same extent. Sony launched the PSP here over a year behind its Japanese launch, and we still seem to have a certain lack of decent games for it - month in month out I go to the shops and it's the same damn games!
That said, I own a 360 and I really like it. I didn't get mine in the first wave - there were only something like 50,000 allocated to the whole UK - but I did pick one up in early January and so far I'm pleased with what it does. Ok, so there's no 'killer' game, but I wouldn't consider myself a hardcore gamer, but the few games I do have I find entertaining and great fun with friends. I'm not realy 100% sure what people mean by a 'next generation game', I bought the console specifically for its online capabilities and its ability to be a media extender. In those respects it's very, very good, and Nintendo and Sony have a long way to go to catch up with the likes of Xbox Live.
I'd be interested as to what people exactly thought the 360, PS3 and Revolution were going to do for gaming really. Every time a console is released a wave of hype about its features appears. We never really found out what an Emotion Engine enabled the PS2 to do differently, and ditto for the obilgatory USB/keyboard/hard-drive attachments that are mooted for each machine. The PS3 for me seems a little ambitious and I'm a bit too old school to like the Revolution controller (I'm saying that without obviously having used one, the opinion may change). All I bought my 360 for was to play HD games against other people in my lounge and the rest of the world, and in those respects it's been a success for me, and evidently for all the other people I'm playing against...
As a Christian, and someone who's interested in science, how things work, biology and the like, I've never really had a problem with evolution and religion conflicting with each other. Equally, almost all other Christians I've met - and a lot of them are scientists or engineers, people that deal with fact - have likeminded views. In a lot of cases, many of us are baffled as to how this viewpoint that evolution is just 'wrong' came about.
It's nice to see people giving the issue some thought and prving that we're not all religious crackpots. I certainly don't believe the Bible to be 100% literal in its explanation of things to us. While my faith tells me that my God is a powerful force, I'm pretty sure that using the notion of 7 days of creation was a mechanism to get the idea across to people of that time. Do you really think people thousands of years ago would be able to grasp the notion of evolution? The book of Genesis would certainly be a few chapters longer...
The important point here though is that evolution is not creation. Both can co-exist quite happily.
I was actually a bit of a lucky bastard - I won a 26" HDTV just before Christmas. Here in the UK, HDTV is relatively new and there isn't anything that runs on it apart from - you guessed it - the Xbox 360.
As I'd won a £800 ($1500) LCD TV, I figured I'd get a 360 which finally arrived last weekend. All in all I'm pleased with it and very, very impressed with how Live fits in to the whole thing.
However, you're right in that in the past, a gamer might splurge on the initial console outlay, then buy the specific titles without worrying about which console they run on. Net loss; the price of 2 or 3 consoles. However, the new online model is really going to hurt gamers if - like you say - people decide to shell out on 3 online services... Personally I'll stick with Xbox Live because I'm happy with it and only what I'd term a casual gamer. In any case, Sony have some real catching up to do to come anywhere near it. People talk about Everquest being some kind of sign that they can do it, but Live is so much more than that. The way it integrates with the games, the console settings and the website is just awesome and for MS is pretty much in its second generation of the concept.
That said, if I didn't win that damned HDTV, I probably wouldn't have joined the ranks of console owners - however as of typing, the UK is still waiting for full-on HDTV rollout, so the HD games'll just have to do...
"Google has been transformed... into a multi-headed high tech beast which wants to get involved in everything"
And this is where it needs to be really careful, otherwise it will - by definition - start being the next Microsoft. Up until now they haven't done anything that I'd particularly object to, but as soon as they start using their gmail account system like a Microsoft Passport system for all their apps, I'll be outta there.
Google have already stated their world information-dominating objectives, and on its own that's something to be worried about, regardless of which company decides it'd be a nice mantra to have...
Maybe the Egyptians were onto something with hieroglyphics - we should have anything that looks remotely complex traslated into a series of small pictures and icons, or maybe even comics. Imagine that; a loan agreement graphic novel.
And as I type that, I'm looking at the giant icons Slashdot uses for its stories and thinking "hmmm... stick one of those at the top of each printed newspaper story and everyone'll figure out what it's about". For chequebooks and tips, well if you can't do that you either fail sociably or get stung badly. Maths, the choice is yours... probably.
I'm just wondering if you (or anyone else) has considered changing the speed of the scanner motor so you can do long exposure stuff. Capturing a sunset or something running from top to bottom would look absolutely awesome.
However, I guess you'd need to stop down dramatically for something like a 15 minute exposure of the sun...
Slashdot Mirror
I've always wondered why the PSP was never given a hard drive, especially considering the success of the iPod which ultimately proved a successful HDD consumer device is possible. Ripping out the UMD and putting a 60GB drive in makes quite a bit of sense. You could then offer PSP format films on each DVD disc and it wouldn't necessitate a new medium.
Ok, so in reality the UMD is only there to stop piracy, but you could get a lot of UMD 1.8 GB films and games on a 60GB drive, then have some kind of iTunes-like system to choose what of your collection is on there. Heck, even being able to play PSP stuff on your PC might be possible, and it'd mean that Sony could offer games online via their store and authenticate them ACC-style. iPods have proved that people are happy to take a selection of stuff away on a device without being able to edit/change it away from their home computer.
Instead, I have a device which has become a bit of a white elephant. Some of the games are good. I'd like to watch films on it, but can't be arsed to buy anything as they're a) too expensive and b) the titles are crap, but also because c) like Minidiscs they take up so much damn room! Consequently, my PSP normally gets left behind on a trip in favour of my iPod. Sony need to fix that in order to make the PSP really take off, especially for film watching.
Some more info here
Yes, there's a slim possibility it's a Photoshop job, but it's sure as hell a lot more fun to look at that a Slashdotted site. heck, even Engadget had the Treo 700p featured back in February!
You see, the key to Apple was product differentiation. I don't think people really understand what Apple has taken on when it moved to Intel.
Essentially it's moved its entire product lifecycle up a gear. You'll see newer, faster Apples appearing much more frequently than you used to, because Intel release interim speedbump chips throughout the year - maybe as many as 5 or 6. For Apple, this is a good thing.
But, Intel also releases a new platform technology every year or so, so when Yonah's successor Merom is released, Apple has no choice but to do the same, otherwise it has a marketing dilemma of people doing a like-for-like speed comparison between a Yonah Mac and a Merom PC.
Now, we know that comparing Macs to PCs is apples and oranges, but Joe Public doesn't know that and would possibly plump for a fast new Dell over what on paper looks like a slower, older Mac.
The other downside is that by keeping up with Intel releases, Apples are going to date a lot faster. In a year, the 15" Macbook Pro will be a slow Macbook Pro assuming Apple keep up with Intel. Now it may not be slow to use as OSX software doesn't seem to bloat as fast as PC stuff, but it could potentially cause confusion for new buyers.
The bottom line is that essentially, Apple have rescinded some of their control over their product line development. While they can innovate on peripheral elements such as illuminated screens, magnetic power cords and the like, the core of their machine is now owned by Intel and they are going to have a much tougher time exhibiting the kind of product differentiation that they have been able to in the past.
boring.
By virtue of its name the MacBook is a low-end version of the Pro. Fair enough, but the specs are pretty much going to be identical to the Pro version I guess, except with a lower end GFX card, less storage, smaller screen, slower CPU. I've suddenly stopped finding Apple hardware releases interesting.
Three or four years ago, it was kind of nice because there was a certain sense of innovation there and you really didn't know what to expect, but now I get a certain sense that Apple's product releases are going to be mainly governed by speedbump releases of Intel's CPUs from now on...
new Intel CPU == new Apple laptop, so expect to see a new range of Pros when Merom is released towards the and of Q3 this year, a new Xserve when Kentsville is out, and a new bunch of pro desktops when Conroe is released... unfortunate, but probably true.
When you're sat on a $40 billion slush fund, I didn't think you had to justify making a loss. I mean, the money's there to be spent taking the company into new markets, right?
So what M$ and Ballmer did was exactly right. Heck, I bet Sony'd love a $40 billion slush fund right now, then they could offset PS3 losses against it. In fact, any company would love to do this - all to often you hear about a single product bombing and taking a whole company with it...
I have a PC with a ATi 9800 Pro in it which I use for gaming. I've had this since 2003 and it still plays a mean game of Battlefield 2 when I feel like it. If it runs a bit slow then I plonk the resolution down. This is by far the best way to get your game to run faster. Anyway, bottom line is - it runs whatever current game I'd care to buy for it.
Now I've thought about upgrading, but two things have hampered me. The first is strictly technical - I have an AGP machine, so there's not a huge amount of difference over a 9800 Pro whatever I plug in there because it'll always be limited by the bus speed.
The second is probably more of a personal thing - I've got mates who have the latest and greatest GFX cards in their machines, but I'll be damned if I can tell the difference between their games and mine. Sure, it's a slightly higher res, but are there any bonus features like fog or smoke? No. Better anti-aliasing? No. I spent my hard-earned cash on a Dell 20" widescreen monitor and I can assure you that as far as gaming experiences go, this added to mine much more than a new GFX card would.
Maybe it's me getting old, but hardware upgrades now tend come when I buy a new PC, and be a notch under the top o' the range. Although having said all this, I just picked up a Inspiron 9400 for work which did come with a GeForce 7800 in it, which I guess'll be useful for um.... spreadsheets *cough*
They won't necessarily be inferior.
You have to remember that the key to the Revolution is the controller - something that can easily be added to other systems in the future. Remember when the PS got analog sticks? Well, that's the Revolution's downfall - that all these amazing new games rely on the controller. So what's to stop Microsoft and Sony coming out with - not a copy - but something similar?
But if it's a resolution issue with images, than I'd consider it an image format problem, which impacts on a far bigger scale than just websites - icons, desktop scaling and the like.
The solution would be to develop a new image format that can gracefully cope with scaling, or a format that contains metadata describing the image parameters - a bit like the RAW + embedded jpeg option you find on some cameras.
Either way, I don't consider it to be a web standards issue as such.
The browser determines how HTML is rendered.
And that pretty much sums it up. This is not a web standard that has to be introduced on a element level within a page - that would be useless as you want to upscale the whole thing. This is a browser rendering issue pure and simple, and can be handled however the browser writers see fit.
However, before thinking about upsclaing, they need to think about a few 'related' issues:
"Basically the Thinkpad is rebranded Packard Bell"
Ah sorry, that's not true.
Packard bell are owned by NEC, and Lenovo used to be known as Legend. They are not the same company, nor linked. However, they may use the same ODMs (Original Design Manufacturers) for some of their kit - IIRC the 3000 series Lenovo is made by Compal who also makes a lot of the HP kit.
However, the Thinkpad range has always been manufactured by Quanta. They also make laptops for Sony and Dell and are well respected in the industry, along with other top-tier ODMs like Celestica, Flextronics and Wistron.
...but I had lectures from him and he's really rather good and certainly knows his stuff. If you want to knock him for his name then fine.
A psychopharmacologist is interested in why and how chemicals interact with the brain and nervous system, so it's quite within his mandate to speculate on how something like 'synthehol' should theoretically be possible. Invariably you tend to find that postgraduates in the UK have to write papers on how something is theoretically possible in order to attract funding for research.
These papers are in the public domain, so if some Sci-Fi fan for LiveScience breaks the news with the sensationalist title "Hangover-free Buzz: Star Trek's Synthehol Now Possible" while at the same time quoting passages from the paper like "Some "partial agonists" of GABA-A receptors already exist; bretazenil and pagoclone were developed as anti-anxiety drugs. These drug molecules are instantly reversible by the flumazenil, used as an antidote to overdoses of tranquillisers.", I'd wager that you should be shooting the messenger here, not the scientist.
...but he's talking about those technologies from a business perspective.
Let's have a look at PCI Express. Early in 2004 it had competition from PCI-X - PCI extended - however, Dell here are discussing the implications of swapping from PCI to PCIe. Now, at the time, PCI-X was seen as an interim measure, but Dell skipped it, instead opting to use PCIe across their desktop range. See, they didn't 'invent' it, but a big company like Dell deciding to run with a specific technology is going to have an impact. No doubt we'll probably see the same with ExpressCard, which seems to be standard on pretty much all Dell laptops released since Fall last year - point me in the direction of another manufacturer who's committed to ExpressCard and not still releasing PC card stuff - HP? Lenovo? Fujitsu? Toshiba?
Right, 64-bit extensions. Again, they didn't invent it, but I know that they had an instrumental role in convincing Intel (who needs 64-bit computing?) to add EMT 64 extensions to the Xeon range. That might have been partly forced by Dell's customers asking for 64-bit availability, but you cannot deny that with a big player like Dell dumping out 64-bit Xeons, it did give the market a huge kick up the arse - and one that I'm pretty convinced Intel wouldn't have done on their own. Remember, they stubbornly sat on their hands for ages insisting point blank that 64-bit was not the way to go and that if you wanted it, you had to buy Itaniums (*shudder*).
Wireless? The only evidence I can find that supports this is that Dell were the first company to offer an 802.11b wireless card in a desktop config. I don't for once think that drove any kind of market force as it was an option on the Dimension desktop line, but his points in the article that they stopped Intel marketing that awful HomeRF standard might be justified.
So it's not really 100% bullshit - the guy has some valid points. Yes Dell has helped promote a couple of standards over the years - USB 2 first appeared on Dells, Centrino laptops first appeared as Dells, they were second (behind Apple) to ship LCDs as standard with PCs. However, they've also bombed in other areas: they still don't have a coherent Mediacenter PC and seem to offer the OS on anything you'd want, and they don't have a tablet option. Now if they could pull their finger out and try to push those down people's throats, we might be getting somewhere.
So, before you're moronic enough to read bullshit into what he said, sit back and have a think about how a company's size can dictate whether technologies succeed or not, then think about what didn't succeed but could've, like Itanium, HomeRF and PCI-X...
drivers.
Currently, OSX runs well on a limited selection of hardware - it's all chosen by Apple - and non of it at the time of writing can support third party AGP,PCI or PCIe cards. Opening up OSX for all PCs is going to cause all number of problems for Apple - firstly by making sure that OSX supports pretty much an infinite number of hardware configurations, and secondly to support people directly who are having problems.
One of Apple's strengths is its control of the hardware its OS runs on. Throw this away and you're also throwing away a large chunk of OSX's stability...
...because the Intel Mac Mini has the Intel GMA950 onboard graphics which use system memory and the performance is pretty bad, even by PC standards. Sure, you can get Half Life 2 to run, but you aren't going to get performance even matching a low-end PC with a dedicated graphics card. The G4 Mac Mini had the Ati 9200 chip - which in the PC arena is a low-end laptop chip - which was much better than Intel's current offering.
The iMac however, would fare a lot better as it's got a dedicated ATi graphics chip which is on par with mid-range PC stuff, although then you've locked yourself into a machine with a built in monitor and no ability to upgrade the CPU or anything.
The other bit of bad news is that dual-core doesn't have much impact on games - they're not designed to be run on multi-core chips and will invariably only use one core. So, don't be under any illusions that you'll be playing the latest and greatest PC games on a dual-core Mac Mini, you won't. A Mac Book Pro or a iMac however would not have any problems at all, but you'd lose the upgrade path and it would cost you a fair few pence (at which price you could get a faster PC laptop and a Mac Mini!).
What would I do? Get a moderately good graphics card for your PC (A 9600XT or X600) and buy a Mac Mini, but please don't get a Mini for games, because I think you'll be disappointed, although as the owner of a dual-core Dell, I definitely recommend saying "fuck it, give me dual core!" - because for multitasking apps, it's the mutt's nuts!
Won't more critical technologies limit how fast we can transmit data, such as switch fabrics?
To effectively use incredibly fast end-user technologies, some absolutely incredible switches and routers would need to be designed, otherwise all this is for nothing. I mean 2.5 Gb per port on a 24-port switch would require a 60 Gb backplane - way higher than anything available today.
And as someone who managed a medium-ish sized network (250+), we currently find that setting a lot of peripheral users to 10-full gives much better performance than setting them to 100-full, simply because our switching fabric - coupled with the number of users - can handle this a lot better.
So although this is possible, wouldn't it be more suited to backbones, rather than having a client-heavy network?
These kids have never seen a computer, then it's best to get them familiar with what 90% of the planet uses, regardless of your own viewpoint. That way you're giving them a headstart on the way to getting useable computer knowledge that will enable them to at least get a job using a PC with Windows and Word on it...
Linux and Macs have to be decision that's made on a personal level, because they are in the minority. If one of these kids turns round and says to you "you taught us in Linux, why the hell didn't you teach us to use the most common OS - Windows?", you're screwed. That'll just look like you forcing your views on them, and that never goes down well with anyone, ever.
That might sound harsh, but I guarantee that very few of us are using Linux because it was the first OS we landed on. Most probably used Windows and had to look for something better - look at it from that angle, and use that as a basis. The high fliers will instantly want mroe than you give them.
...sorry to be an ignoramus, but who?
As far as I'm concerned, if M$ are closing holes that shouldn't really be there, that's a Good Thing (tm).
I mean, these same spyware companies don't make a mint off other OSes do they, so why should they piggy-back a specific one? Isn't that essentially making money from a weakness? And if the weakness is removed, well... game over I guess, until M$ falls at the next hurdle and people make cash out of it. I mean, Mr. Norton seems to have had it quite easy for a while now...
"Nothing worse than a fanboy making execuses for the product they worship day and night over. Look at this nonsense you posted. No "killer" game + prolonged console shortage + lackluster average game catalog + fanboys conducting spin control for a rushed console = failed launch"
I certainly wouldn't consider myself a 'fanboy' of the 360, and I don't worship it - it doesn't have a little ring of candles around it, or a shrine devoted to it in my house. I bought it because I like what it does. I wouldn't call the launch games 'lacklustre', they're damn good, but there's no killer title like Halo that makes the console a must buy for anyone right now. And in my defence as a so-called fanboy, I'd like to point out that I never really coudl figure out what made Halo a killer game - it was a bog-standard FPS with a jeep.
"So in other words the Xbox 360 was not ready period. Cut the crap and apolisgist nonsense--the Xbox 360 was rushed in more ways then one. The Xbox 360 is as much failure as the PSP"
I don't consider either a failure, and in the same vein I don't consider Apple products (iPod Mini?) which always seems to have a hyped launch, but fail to deliver on quantity.
There's no denying that all these products are good ones technically. They certainly aren't failed products, but just ones that have had poorly managed launches. That doesn't make them failures.
And no, I didn't buy a fscking clip-on front for it!
As far as I'm concerned, the 360 wasn't launched before it was ready, but before the manufacturing process was ready - not really a point for failure. Software always comes later and the game certification issues sound like classic come-to-market problems. However here in the UK, we also suffered from PSP shortages, although not to the same extent. Sony launched the PSP here over a year behind its Japanese launch, and we still seem to have a certain lack of decent games for it - month in month out I go to the shops and it's the same damn games!
That said, I own a 360 and I really like it. I didn't get mine in the first wave - there were only something like 50,000 allocated to the whole UK - but I did pick one up in early January and so far I'm pleased with what it does. Ok, so there's no 'killer' game, but I wouldn't consider myself a hardcore gamer, but the few games I do have I find entertaining and great fun with friends. I'm not realy 100% sure what people mean by a 'next generation game', I bought the console specifically for its online capabilities and its ability to be a media extender. In those respects it's very, very good, and Nintendo and Sony have a long way to go to catch up with the likes of Xbox Live.
I'd be interested as to what people exactly thought the 360, PS3 and Revolution were going to do for gaming really. Every time a console is released a wave of hype about its features appears. We never really found out what an Emotion Engine enabled the PS2 to do differently, and ditto for the obilgatory USB/keyboard/hard-drive attachments that are mooted for each machine. The PS3 for me seems a little ambitious and I'm a bit too old school to like the Revolution controller (I'm saying that without obviously having used one, the opinion may change). All I bought my 360 for was to play HD games against other people in my lounge and the rest of the world, and in those respects it's been a success for me, and evidently for all the other people I'm playing against...
As a Christian, and someone who's interested in science, how things work, biology and the like, I've never really had a problem with evolution and religion conflicting with each other. Equally, almost all other Christians I've met - and a lot of them are scientists or engineers, people that deal with fact - have likeminded views. In a lot of cases, many of us are baffled as to how this viewpoint that evolution is just 'wrong' came about.
It's nice to see people giving the issue some thought and prving that we're not all religious crackpots. I certainly don't believe the Bible to be 100% literal in its explanation of things to us. While my faith tells me that my God is a powerful force, I'm pretty sure that using the notion of 7 days of creation was a mechanism to get the idea across to people of that time. Do you really think people thousands of years ago would be able to grasp the notion of evolution? The book of Genesis would certainly be a few chapters longer...
The important point here though is that evolution is not creation. Both can co-exist quite happily.
Obviously it's some kind of technology demonstrator
I was actually a bit of a lucky bastard - I won a 26" HDTV just before Christmas. Here in the UK, HDTV is relatively new and there isn't anything that runs on it apart from - you guessed it - the Xbox 360.
As I'd won a £800 ($1500) LCD TV, I figured I'd get a 360 which finally arrived last weekend. All in all I'm pleased with it and very, very impressed with how Live fits in to the whole thing.
However, you're right in that in the past, a gamer might splurge on the initial console outlay, then buy the specific titles without worrying about which console they run on. Net loss; the price of 2 or 3 consoles. However, the new online model is really going to hurt gamers if - like you say - people decide to shell out on 3 online services... Personally I'll stick with Xbox Live because I'm happy with it and only what I'd term a casual gamer. In any case, Sony have some real catching up to do to come anywhere near it. People talk about Everquest being some kind of sign that they can do it, but Live is so much more than that. The way it integrates with the games, the console settings and the website is just awesome and for MS is pretty much in its second generation of the concept.
That said, if I didn't win that damned HDTV, I probably wouldn't have joined the ranks of console owners - however as of typing, the UK is still waiting for full-on HDTV rollout, so the HD games'll just have to do...
"Google has been transformed... into a multi-headed high tech beast which wants to get involved in everything"
And this is where it needs to be really careful, otherwise it will - by definition - start being the next Microsoft. Up until now they haven't done anything that I'd particularly object to, but as soon as they start using their gmail account system like a Microsoft Passport system for all their apps, I'll be outta there.
Google have already stated their world information-dominating objectives, and on its own that's something to be worried about, regardless of which company decides it'd be a nice mantra to have...
I'm reading this and thinking about the earlier story about humans being hardwired for geometry.
Maybe the Egyptians were onto something with hieroglyphics - we should have anything that looks remotely complex traslated into a series of small pictures and icons, or maybe even comics. Imagine that; a loan agreement graphic novel.
And as I type that, I'm looking at the giant icons Slashdot uses for its stories and thinking "hmmm... stick one of those at the top of each printed newspaper story and everyone'll figure out what it's about". For chequebooks and tips, well if you can't do that you either fail sociably or get stung badly. Maths, the choice is yours... probably.
Absolutely fantastic images.
I'm just wondering if you (or anyone else) has considered changing the speed of the scanner motor so you can do long exposure stuff. Capturing a sunset or something running from top to bottom would look absolutely awesome.
However, I guess you'd need to stop down dramatically for something like a 15 minute exposure of the sun...