he bottom line is that all of these outlets have an agenda. It is up to the individual to watch, listen, read, and them make an informed desicion.
While NPR does have some liberal leanings, they do a very good job of presenting both sides of an issue and presenting things in a mostly unbiased manner.
Ya the Discovery Channel has kinda tanked the alst few years. American Chopper was good for like 2 episode, and Monster Garage for maybe 2 ro 3 episodes.
However, I never get tired of Junkyard Wars and Myth Busters. Myth Busters has to be the best show ever. They should get Adam and Jamie to do a show where they build crazy stuff to demonstrate simple to mildy complex science. I can't say that I hav learned a whole lot of science from their show, but it is extremely entertaining!
Yeah, it sucks to essentially pay for demos, but such is life..
It's probably still cheaper than having broadband... DSL is at least $35 a month in most places, and you can get dial up for $10 or less. I am sure than a subscription to said magazine is less than $25/month.
Except Planetside has nothing to do with sports? It's a pure first person shooter, with some marginal character development added in. It's a fun game for sure, but I would never say it is a MMOSports game...
MS could definately go for a two tiered attack with the Xbox... first do a PSone style redesign of the current Xbox, dropping manufacturing costs, and in the proccess reduicng size, one of the big XBox compaints. Sell it SUPER cheap. Under $99. Make it the default choice for budget gaming. Include as many freebies as possible to still be profitable (or at least lose no more money than need be). Things like the PopCap games and voicemail you mentioned are good starts. I would add some sort of online demo system to let people play demo versions of games for free (via a download and timeout system).
Launch the Xbox 2 right around then as the premier gaming console. Also, drop the price of the system just as the PS3 and Revolution come out. Could work... adding a third line of the system, with XBox1 hardware, a bigger HD, and video input with at least some of the features from MS Media Center Ed. for a decent price could be a good strategy as you mentioned.
I meant to say the it lead me to believe that the REvOLUTION would have built in wireless networking. While the rest of my post made it pretty clear what I was talking about, I will corrent that typo here, so even you can understand.
Fils-Aime also confirmed that the forthcoming Nintendo DS handheld could potentially be used to link up with the GameCube console, and will almost certainly boast link features with the Revolution platform.
That's what I was most interested to see in this article. This leads me to believe that the DS will have built in wireless networking capabilities, and given the low cost of ethernet hardware, I would bet that it will also have a port for wired broadband. I suspect that the NRevolution will likely function as a wireless AP for nearby DSes. My biggest question is wether or not the Revolution will be backward compatible with the GC. That's something that Nintendo has never done (with it's consoles) and I think may be important if MS decided to ditch backwards compatibility in the XBNext and Sony sticks with it for the PS3.
Ditto for movies, concerts, sports events... if you want to get a refund, you have to show the receipt.
The difference being that none of these items have any conenction to my identity. If I buy a ticket to a movie I can give it to someone else and it is still valid. An ID like this carried an inordinate amount of information about it's bearer.
My story is pretty similar... I couldn't have been more than 8 when I played Zelda for the first time (on a black and white TV, cuz the color one was being used by 'adults') and seeing that 255 limit. I saw it again in some other game (can't think of what it was - Zelda dominates my early NES memories). I decided then to go to the library and get some books about computers to see if I could figure out why there was this 255 limit on... been a geek ever since...
Man I miss that gold cart. It would be awesome if either the upcoming GBA Zelda or the first DS one was made as a gold cart and had an unlockable copy of the original NES Zelda. (I would buy a DS for a gold cart Zelda alone!)
Allow donors to give as much money to a candidate as they desire. Then the campaign will be more competitive.
Yes, this will be great. Let's cut to the chase and just let each corporation with over $10,000,000 in assets pick a rep and send him to Washington. Why bother the people with the laborous task of having to go to the polls and vote every year?
Ya I think I actually mentioned something like this in a different thread, but ya, Palm or someone who is licensed to distribute the PalmOS (hm... the return of Visor?), should do this. My little idea tho would be to sell the basic cart all of the basic Palm apps and also a little (4mbs or so) of flash space for names, addresses, bookmarks, etc. Market it for $30-40. Then sell DS style blank carts (not actual blanks, but carts with a very small access program - so they could only be used w/ the PalmOS cart - and lots of extra space set aside for 'saves'). Sell them in increments of 4, 8, 16, 32 and 64 megs. There's actually flash carts that are 128 megs as well, so that'd be possible. These would be sold seperately as expansins for music, misc. data, more applications, backups, whatever. I think'd it be a big hit and selling expansion carts will keep money coming in over a longer time.
It would be interesting to see some companies who are not video game makers or not console game makers get together and do a DS for adults marketing campaign. Perhaps go as far as for Palm (or I'll say it again) or a reborn Visor to license the DS from Nintendo and just change the case and the box and bundle PalmOS cart with it rather than Metroid. Maybe incluse a thicker stylus for larger adult ahands and a nice leatherish case or something too. Sell applications for it via their website to wireless load onto your DS, and get other companies in on it to make some "Rated: M" games.:P
All the more reason to give up SUVs, think of the people thinking of the environment! Think of the people giving the finger to the middle east buy not buying as much oil. Think of the terrorist revenue reduced! Stop driving SUVs. (gawd I think I need to shower again...)
But think if the Bush's and Cheneys! How will they afford to have their ranches and servants and whatnot after they are kicked out of the Oval Office (knock on wood)?! We have to keep guzzling gas so they can afford to live the lifestyle that the elite have become acustom to!
Oh wait, we get to pay their pensions for the rest of their life now... go buy a smart car.
/gets 30 mpg as it is and would kill to double that, even if the car was twice as geeky lookign as a Smart Car.
I think you misunderstood me -- I chose the iBook. ; ) I was just pointing out the differences, which is what the OP asked.
Yup, I know, I was just pointing out that the differences that there are, are quite small.:)
If I had one, I would use it for my CF->PCMCIA adapter so I wouldn't have to deal with an external USB reader (and its cord).
Ah, that would be pretty usefull if you used flash media on a regular basis. Still can't think of anything else I would use it for, tho.
the weight, CPU, and video hardware would be the biggies
The video card is no doubt the biggest one for most people. I think that the difference in CPU speeds are small enough that the casual user would never notice. The higher quality screens in the higher end models do look quite a bit nicer than the iBooks... To me the PB is a typical Apple. It is an extremely nice machine, in all respects, and you pay for that quality. The iBook ont he other hand is the Dell of Macs, imo. It's pretty well built, has all the features that you will need, if not everything you want, and for a really good price.
Appleworks is really good (better than OpenOffice?), but I don't use an office suite enough to notice. Anything I need fancy formatting for gets marked up as HTML in TextEdit and then gets "printed" as a PDF : ), and I have exactly one spreadsheet file.Appleworks is pretty decent. Can't say much better about it... if you were to compare Appleworks to OOo running on Windows or Linux, OOo would win hands down. However the Apple XServer doesn't integrate very well with Aqua, imho, and is also a little slow (I assume it doesn't take advantage of QuarzExtreme) when viewed side by side with native apps. Because of this, on a Mac I would choose Appleworks over OOo, until there is better XWindows support in OSX or until there is a native Aqua build. Sadly, MS Office X (I think that's the one I was running) was horribly unstable, so I used Appleworks most of the time).
While I love Advance Wars for the GBA, sadly it does not count as a killer RTS for the DS, as it only satisfies 1 of the 3 letters in RTS. Sure it's a great strategy game, but it's not in Real Time.:)
A killer RTS game for the DS can't be a grid based game, because that wouldn't exploit the touchscreen to it's fullest, an area of control where other console RTS games are sorely lacking.
Much of the Democratic litigation centers on how various states are interpreting a new provision in the federal voting law that gives voters who believe they are registered -- but whose names don't appear on voter rolls -- the right to cast so-called provisional ballots.
WTF. You have had four years since the last election to register. You have had four years of multiple state and local elections and primaries to go and verify that you are properly registered. If you decide not to be involved in the process, then don't expect the process to involve you.
So if the state, county, or precint fark up and I get left off the list, even though I am a registered voter, I shouldn't get to vote? What kind of communist asshat are you? A Republican/Democrat (chose one) election official could make a convienient mistake if they happened ot work in a predomonantly Republican/Democrat (pick the other) area and leave some voters off the list, giving the statewide count an advantage the way they want it.
Voters who are not on the registrar who show up have to sign an affidavit statign that they are legally eligible to vote, and registered to do so. These provisional ballots, and they are checked by election officials within 3 days of the election, to assure they were registered before hand. If you were in charge those voters who did get involved but were for whatever reason (be it accidental or intentional) left of the list at the polling site would NOT GET THEIR VOTES COUNTED. That, my friend, should be what gets the WTF.
A gamers PDA would be a good way to market the DS to an adult crowd, but the bread and butter of the handheld gaming market is kids. Kids don't want a PDA.
All it will take to make the DS a 'must have' is one killer app in each of couple of genres. A killer RPG that uses the second (touch) screen for all the menu's and whatnot. The FFIII remake has that possibilty. A RTS game using the touch screen and extra space for the obvious things would make all of the thousands of RTS junkies to go and buy what is possibly their first console system. Metroid may just be the killer FPS that handhelds have been waiting for. Adding a good MMORPG to the system would be the icing. I think the DS's odds are a lot better than the Virtual Boys...
It's mostly the little details that are better with a Powerbook. Powerbooks (except for the 12") have PCMCIA slots; iBooks don't.
I was looking at that when I got mine, and can't for the life of me think what I would do with a PCMCIA slot. There's a built in modem and ethernet, the WiFi goes into its own special slot, and you have firewire and USB for connecting other devices... I'm not being condesending, but what do you use your PCMCIA slots for?
Powerbooks have a mini-DVI connector; iBooks have mini-VGA. Powerbooks can stretch the desktop over an external monitor; iBooks can only mirror.
As mentioned above, the iBook can mirror with a simple, safe hack. I don't see the appeal of the DVI connector, the quality isn't really that much better, and if you were looking for something with excellent desktop monitor performance you probably wouldn't want an iBook OR a Powerbook.
Powerbooks have Firewire 800, iBooks only have 400.
That I will give you is a biggie, but imho, the only biggie... Even that isn't huge unless you use either lots of DV equipment, or if you have tons and tons of stuff, mainly applications, stored on an external HD. Plus the lower cost PBs have Firewire 400 anyways...
Also, Powerbooks are, by default, a little bit better: WiFi and Bluetooth, faster CPU, bigger HDD, SuperDrive instead of Combo, etc., although you can add most of these to an iBook and still spend a bit less.
Like you said you can add all of these things to the iBook, and it is STILL cheaper than the same config in a Powerbook. The CPU speeds of the iBook can't be brought up to the PB levels, but it's close, and if you were concerned about a 10% or 15% increase in raw power, you should probably be looking at a desktop machine anyways.
There are still some other differences. The PB line has better video hardware available to it (more VRAM, arguably better card in general), and at the higher end has nice displays (higher res overall, plus more pixles per inch). Lastly, the PB has a potential for a little more RAM, I think the higher end PBs can go up to 1.5gb and the iBooks up to 1.25gb. The PBs are a tad lighter for the size, something like a quarter pound difference. In the iBooks corner, you do get AppleWorks free with it, which is pretty decent, imo.
At the risk of being redundant, both Mozilla 1.7.x and Firefox from something like.83 and up have ALWAYS worked perfectly for me on eBay, both in Windows and Linux. I have never had a problem beyond getting a message that says my browser doesn't support automatic rediretion, and to please click on this link to continue. (The browser SUPPORTS redirection I am sure, I have just chosen to disable it for security reasons).
I guess now we know what people are using the AOL IE; Opera using eBayers?
Well, as far as console goes, DS games are going to have to be a one of, however, I foresee a lot of PCDS action... a good RPG, RTS, or adventure game engine where the graphics and resolution could be scaled up and down depending on the system (which any good engine should do), and that uses a built in windowing system to display game information in small subwindows within the full screen game would lend itself to PC and DS equally well, and could be used on a ton of games. (If it isn't clear, a PC with lots of screen space would display the windows over the main game, and the DS would simply shift them to the second screen, levaing the main screen for game graphics. The two really aren't that different).
Well, I can't say anything about the Powerbook line, but I have a iBook G4 933mhz, with 640MB of ram. Running OSX 10.3(? - whatever it came with), it feels fine. Programs launch very quickly, save/loads fell the same as my P4 2.4ghz desktop. Using things where raw power comes into play, such as some of the more complex GIMP filters, you can see the difference. It's just lacks the raw computing power to do them almost instantly like my desktop can. That said, all of the interface tasks run very smoothly.
I atribute that to the QuartzExtreme deal they have where the menu/human interface effects are handled in the GPU. You get nice transparancy effects, very slick minimize/maximize animations, etc. For things like word proccessing, editing spreadsheets, browsing the web, checking email, listening to music, reviewing digital photos, etc, you won't know that there isn't a P4 2+ghz CPU in there. (I am even able to play Warcraft3 and Unreal 2003 without much issue on it).
You'll thank yourself for getting a Mac later, though, as the years go by and it is still a stable machine, with plenty of usable life left in it.
Re:Stick it in DVD players if it's cheap enough
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Dreamcast On a Chip
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· Score: 2, Interesting
That's a really interesting idea. Could let DVDs come with a bonus feature that is a game you play right from the settop DVD player. Also, if I am not mistaken, the Dreamcast could play MPEG2 streams without any issues, so one would think it could handle doing the decoding and post-processing for DVD playback as well. With the subtraction of cost for the MPEG decoder, the addition of this couldn't be THAT high... cheap enough to compete with the current generation of consoles easily.
The trick would be to get several major DVD distributers (FOX, MGM, etc.) to agree on the standard for the 'interactive game bonus features' so that lots of hardware makers could make and sell this as a new DVD+ or something... anywho, neat idea.
I can see why privacy advocates are concerned; even if there is no more information on the card than what is on a drivers license, it could be retrieved in a 'passive mode' (from the card holders point of view), as a LEO could just aim a reader at your pocket and grab your data. With a regualr ID card, he would have to ask for it and be granted my permission to see it (unless he has reason to arrest me).
On the other hand, the governemnt has a resonsibilty to develop ID systems so that it's citizenry can feel confident in both law enforcement/government agencies, and also with commercial transaction. RFID, however, is not the way to go about this.
Any technology that can even POSSIBLEY transfer data about the ID carrier without the carriers explicit permission is a terrible idea, and probably unconstitutional(sp?). I more reasonable solution would be some for of "SmartChip" like they use in Amex cards, military IDs, and cell phones. It can contain a good deal of data in an excrypted format (difficult to forge), but is only read when the card is placed in physical contact with the reading device, protecting the citizens privacy. Perhaps a PIN or biometric style decryption system could be used as well, so even if you read the card, you need to bearers interactive permission to read the data.
I would argue, in fact, that something like this could be better than a regular ID card. The printed material on the card could be limited to a picture, name, and signiture, allowing people to positively idetify that they are who they say they are, via signiture and picture. The rest of the data (address, citizenship, whatever else is going to be on there) could be viewable only via a reader, so it's not exposed to prying eyes as easily. Combined with the PIN/biometric idea above, you could even limit it by data type... writing a check? Show the ID, picture, name and signature all match on the check, you're good to go. Opening a checking account? Put yout card in the reader, and enter a PIN. That autorizes the reading agent to get some mroe info, such as address, SSN, DOB, etc. Trying to get a HAZMAT endorsement or a pilots license? Insert card and put left index finger on the reader, authorizing the other party more disclosure, up to whatever levels end up on the card.
The point of this while diatride is that a good ID system for both citizens and the government is one that is difficult to forge AND requires active authorization of of the bearer to view the data.
GOOD! Maybe a massive surplus of grain products will get the ball rolling on a biodiesel program.
Plus, the giant amounts of 'humanitarian aid' we send out generally does more harm than good. First off it completely undermines small nations economies, where food production is a large portion of the economic system. When you can go get food for free from the US aid workers, why would you buy it? And if no one buys food, why would you grow it? Just makes them completely dependant on food handouts, as there is no developed food production system.
Also, alot of the time the food ends up in the hands of militants who keep it from the people who need it, to further their political and military objectives. That's a whole different situtation, though.
Wasn't there a slashdot story about a smallish factory that could be built right onto a farm and fed pretty much any organic material and produce oil from it? Weren't they building the first one earlier this year? I seem to recall them saying that the first version was able to make 1000 barrels a day (or maybe 500), but at $50 a barrel right now, that's $25,000-$50,000 per day. I doubt that selling grain on the open market could touch that. (Of course it would all eventually stablize, but even at the current OPEC 'target' of $20 per barrel, that's $10k-20k a DAY, or somewhere between $3.5 and $7 million a year, of you can keep the factory 'fed' to capacity each day).
I don't see this as a moral dilemna...consider that as demand for Biodiesel rose, the price of food would rise. This would mean that land for which it was formerly unprofitable (or less profitable than some alternative use, say, building a condo on it) would be marshaled for this purpose. So the upshot is a slight increase in the cost of agricultural products...maybe. I think when you weigh this against the benefits (independence from Islamofascist oil, increased fuel efficiency) it's a no-brainer.
Exactly. The US for example produces (or is at least easily capible of doing so) more food than it's citizen could ever eat. That's why small farms go out business: they can't make enough cash per acre to stay afloat. However, if you could grow some cheap, hardy, high energy crop (corn comes to mind) and sell it as GAS, we would shift the BILLIONS of dollars we export each year into domestic hands. Sure, the oil companies would still make a shiatload of money off it (they'd likely own all the refinement and conversion factories, as well as the distrobution channels) but so would smaller farms, and, honestly, at this point there isn't much we can do to keep oil companies from getting richer.
The price of food wouldn't rise much, as we have too much of it as it is. We send out millions of tons of grain as humanitarian aid, mainly to keep the price of domestic grain at an artifially high level so enough farms can stay in business. Plus, this would allow countris that don't have a significant export product to make some cash growing grains (or con, or rice, or whatever it is that grows where they are) and selling it on the international market for either food or fuel. Either way, everyone wins.
There's also the added benifit of reducing net pollution. Yes, we're still burning fuel and releasing CO2, etc, but the gasses being released were ones that were semi-recently extracted from the enviroment by the growing plants, not ones burried in the ground for millions of years.
Sure, we'd still likely need fossil fuels, but we could significantly reduce our import of fuel, which would help us on so many levels that it is absolutely ridiculous we haven't started yet. Maybe if our government wasn't completely owned by oil company donations there'd be some hope of this.
Slashdot Mirror
While NPR does have some liberal leanings, they do a very good job of presenting both sides of an issue and presenting things in a mostly unbiased manner.
However, I never get tired of Junkyard Wars and Myth Busters. Myth Busters has to be the best show ever. They should get Adam and Jamie to do a show where they build crazy stuff to demonstrate simple to mildy complex science. I can't say that I hav learned a whole lot of science from their show, but it is extremely entertaining!
It's probably still cheaper than having broadband... DSL is at least $35 a month in most places, and you can get dial up for $10 or less. I am sure than a subscription to said magazine is less than $25/month.
Except Planetside has nothing to do with sports? It's a pure first person shooter, with some marginal character development added in. It's a fun game for sure, but I would never say it is a MMOSports game...
Launch the Xbox 2 right around then as the premier gaming console. Also, drop the price of the system just as the PS3 and Revolution come out. Could work... adding a third line of the system, with XBox1 hardware, a bigger HD, and video input with at least some of the features from MS Media Center Ed. for a decent price could be a good strategy as you mentioned.
I meant to say the it lead me to believe that the REvOLUTION would have built in wireless networking. While the rest of my post made it pretty clear what I was talking about, I will corrent that typo here, so even you can understand.
That's what I was most interested to see in this article. This leads me to believe that the DS will have built in wireless networking capabilities, and given the low cost of ethernet hardware, I would bet that it will also have a port for wired broadband. I suspect that the NRevolution will likely function as a wireless AP for nearby DSes. My biggest question is wether or not the Revolution will be backward compatible with the GC. That's something that Nintendo has never done (with it's consoles) and I think may be important if MS decided to ditch backwards compatibility in the XBNext and Sony sticks with it for the PS3.
The difference being that none of these items have any conenction to my identity. If I buy a ticket to a movie I can give it to someone else and it is still valid. An ID like this carried an inordinate amount of information about it's bearer.
Man I miss that gold cart. It would be awesome if either the upcoming GBA Zelda or the first DS one was made as a gold cart and had an unlockable copy of the original NES Zelda. (I would buy a DS for a gold cart Zelda alone!)
Yes, this will be great. Let's cut to the chase and just let each corporation with over $10,000,000 in assets pick a rep and send him to Washington. Why bother the people with the laborous task of having to go to the polls and vote every year?
It would be interesting to see some companies who are not video game makers or not console game makers get together and do a DS for adults marketing campaign. Perhaps go as far as for Palm (or I'll say it again) or a reborn Visor to license the DS from Nintendo and just change the case and the box and bundle PalmOS cart with it rather than Metroid. Maybe incluse a thicker stylus for larger adult ahands and a nice leatherish case or something too. Sell applications for it via their website to wireless load onto your DS, and get other companies in on it to make some "Rated: M" games. :P
The ghost of Sonny Bono with haunt you forever, being sure that you know nothing will ever reach the public domain again...
But think if the Bush's and Cheneys! How will they afford to have their ranches and servants and whatnot after they are kicked out of the Oval Office (knock on wood)?! We have to keep guzzling gas so they can afford to live the lifestyle that the elite have become acustom to!
Oh wait, we get to pay their pensions for the rest of their life now... go buy a smart car.
/gets 30 mpg as it is and would kill to double that, even if the car was twice as geeky lookign as a Smart Car.
Yup, I know, I was just pointing out that the differences that there are, are quite small. :)
If I had one, I would use it for my CF->PCMCIA adapter so I wouldn't have to deal with an external USB reader (and its cord).
Ah, that would be pretty usefull if you used flash media on a regular basis. Still can't think of anything else I would use it for, tho.
the weight, CPU, and video hardware would be the biggies
The video card is no doubt the biggest one for most people. I think that the difference in CPU speeds are small enough that the casual user would never notice. The higher quality screens in the higher end models do look quite a bit nicer than the iBooks... To me the PB is a typical Apple. It is an extremely nice machine, in all respects, and you pay for that quality. The iBook ont he other hand is the Dell of Macs, imo. It's pretty well built, has all the features that you will need, if not everything you want, and for a really good price.
Appleworks is really good (better than OpenOffice?), but I don't use an office suite enough to notice. Anything I need fancy formatting for gets marked up as HTML in TextEdit and then gets "printed" as a PDF : ), and I have exactly one spreadsheet file.Appleworks is pretty decent. Can't say much better about it... if you were to compare Appleworks to OOo running on Windows or Linux, OOo would win hands down. However the Apple XServer doesn't integrate very well with Aqua, imho, and is also a little slow (I assume it doesn't take advantage of QuarzExtreme) when viewed side by side with native apps. Because of this, on a Mac I would choose Appleworks over OOo, until there is better XWindows support in OSX or until there is a native Aqua build. Sadly, MS Office X (I think that's the one I was running) was horribly unstable, so I used Appleworks most of the time).
A killer RTS game for the DS can't be a grid based game, because that wouldn't exploit the touchscreen to it's fullest, an area of control where other console RTS games are sorely lacking.
WTF. You have had four years since the last election to register. You have had four years of multiple state and local elections and primaries to go and verify that you are properly registered. If you decide not to be involved in the process, then don't expect the process to involve you.
So if the state, county, or precint fark up and I get left off the list, even though I am a registered voter, I shouldn't get to vote? What kind of communist asshat are you? A Republican/Democrat (chose one) election official could make a convienient mistake if they happened ot work in a predomonantly Republican/Democrat (pick the other) area and leave some voters off the list, giving the statewide count an advantage the way they want it.
Voters who are not on the registrar who show up have to sign an affidavit statign that they are legally eligible to vote, and registered to do so. These provisional ballots, and they are checked by election officials within 3 days of the election, to assure they were registered before hand. If you were in charge those voters who did get involved but were for whatever reason (be it accidental or intentional) left of the list at the polling site would NOT GET THEIR VOTES COUNTED. That, my friend, should be what gets the WTF.
All it will take to make the DS a 'must have' is one killer app in each of couple of genres. A killer RPG that uses the second (touch) screen for all the menu's and whatnot. The FFIII remake has that possibilty. A RTS game using the touch screen and extra space for the obvious things would make all of the thousands of RTS junkies to go and buy what is possibly their first console system. Metroid may just be the killer FPS that handhelds have been waiting for. Adding a good MMORPG to the system would be the icing. I think the DS's odds are a lot better than the Virtual Boys...
I was looking at that when I got mine, and can't for the life of me think what I would do with a PCMCIA slot. There's a built in modem and ethernet, the WiFi goes into its own special slot, and you have firewire and USB for connecting other devices... I'm not being condesending, but what do you use your PCMCIA slots for?
Powerbooks have a mini-DVI connector; iBooks have mini-VGA. Powerbooks can stretch the desktop over an external monitor; iBooks can only mirror.
As mentioned above, the iBook can mirror with a simple, safe hack. I don't see the appeal of the DVI connector, the quality isn't really that much better, and if you were looking for something with excellent desktop monitor performance you probably wouldn't want an iBook OR a Powerbook.
Powerbooks have Firewire 800, iBooks only have 400.
That I will give you is a biggie, but imho, the only biggie... Even that isn't huge unless you use either lots of DV equipment, or if you have tons and tons of stuff, mainly applications, stored on an external HD. Plus the lower cost PBs have Firewire 400 anyways...
Also, Powerbooks are, by default, a little bit better: WiFi and Bluetooth, faster CPU, bigger HDD, SuperDrive instead of Combo, etc., although you can add most of these to an iBook and still spend a bit less.
Like you said you can add all of these things to the iBook, and it is STILL cheaper than the same config in a Powerbook. The CPU speeds of the iBook can't be brought up to the PB levels, but it's close, and if you were concerned about a 10% or 15% increase in raw power, you should probably be looking at a desktop machine anyways.
There are still some other differences. The PB line has better video hardware available to it (more VRAM, arguably better card in general), and at the higher end has nice displays (higher res overall, plus more pixles per inch). Lastly, the PB has a potential for a little more RAM, I think the higher end PBs can go up to 1.5gb and the iBooks up to 1.25gb. The PBs are a tad lighter for the size, something like a quarter pound difference. In the iBooks corner, you do get AppleWorks free with it, which is pretty decent, imo.
I guess now we know what people are using the AOL IE; Opera using eBayers?
Well, as far as console goes, DS games are going to have to be a one of, however, I foresee a lot of PCDS action... a good RPG, RTS, or adventure game engine where the graphics and resolution could be scaled up and down depending on the system (which any good engine should do), and that uses a built in windowing system to display game information in small subwindows within the full screen game would lend itself to PC and DS equally well, and could be used on a ton of games. (If it isn't clear, a PC with lots of screen space would display the windows over the main game, and the DS would simply shift them to the second screen, levaing the main screen for game graphics. The two really aren't that different).
I atribute that to the QuartzExtreme deal they have where the menu/human interface effects are handled in the GPU. You get nice transparancy effects, very slick minimize/maximize animations, etc. For things like word proccessing, editing spreadsheets, browsing the web, checking email, listening to music, reviewing digital photos, etc, you won't know that there isn't a P4 2+ghz CPU in there. (I am even able to play Warcraft3 and Unreal 2003 without much issue on it).
You'll thank yourself for getting a Mac later, though, as the years go by and it is still a stable machine, with plenty of usable life left in it.
The trick would be to get several major DVD distributers (FOX, MGM, etc.) to agree on the standard for the 'interactive game bonus features' so that lots of hardware makers could make and sell this as a new DVD+ or something... anywho, neat idea.
On the other hand, the governemnt has a resonsibilty to develop ID systems so that it's citizenry can feel confident in both law enforcement/government agencies, and also with commercial transaction. RFID, however, is not the way to go about this.
Any technology that can even POSSIBLEY transfer data about the ID carrier without the carriers explicit permission is a terrible idea, and probably unconstitutional(sp?). I more reasonable solution would be some for of "SmartChip" like they use in Amex cards, military IDs, and cell phones. It can contain a good deal of data in an excrypted format (difficult to forge), but is only read when the card is placed in physical contact with the reading device, protecting the citizens privacy. Perhaps a PIN or biometric style decryption system could be used as well, so even if you read the card, you need to bearers interactive permission to read the data.
I would argue, in fact, that something like this could be better than a regular ID card. The printed material on the card could be limited to a picture, name, and signiture, allowing people to positively idetify that they are who they say they are, via signiture and picture. The rest of the data (address, citizenship, whatever else is going to be on there) could be viewable only via a reader, so it's not exposed to prying eyes as easily. Combined with the PIN/biometric idea above, you could even limit it by data type... writing a check? Show the ID, picture, name and signature all match on the check, you're good to go. Opening a checking account? Put yout card in the reader, and enter a PIN. That autorizes the reading agent to get some mroe info, such as address, SSN, DOB, etc. Trying to get a HAZMAT endorsement or a pilots license? Insert card and put left index finger on the reader, authorizing the other party more disclosure, up to whatever levels end up on the card.
The point of this while diatride is that a good ID system for both citizens and the government is one that is difficult to forge AND requires active authorization of of the bearer to view the data.
Plus, the giant amounts of 'humanitarian aid' we send out generally does more harm than good. First off it completely undermines small nations economies, where food production is a large portion of the economic system. When you can go get food for free from the US aid workers, why would you buy it? And if no one buys food, why would you grow it? Just makes them completely dependant on food handouts, as there is no developed food production system.
Also, alot of the time the food ends up in the hands of militants who keep it from the people who need it, to further their political and military objectives. That's a whole different situtation, though.
Wasn't there a slashdot story about a smallish factory that could be built right onto a farm and fed pretty much any organic material and produce oil from it? Weren't they building the first one earlier this year? I seem to recall them saying that the first version was able to make 1000 barrels a day (or maybe 500), but at $50 a barrel right now, that's $25,000-$50,000 per day. I doubt that selling grain on the open market could touch that. (Of course it would all eventually stablize, but even at the current OPEC 'target' of $20 per barrel, that's $10k-20k a DAY, or somewhere between $3.5 and $7 million a year, of you can keep the factory 'fed' to capacity each day).
Exactly. The US for example produces (or is at least easily capible of doing so) more food than it's citizen could ever eat. That's why small farms go out business: they can't make enough cash per acre to stay afloat. However, if you could grow some cheap, hardy, high energy crop (corn comes to mind) and sell it as GAS, we would shift the BILLIONS of dollars we export each year into domestic hands. Sure, the oil companies would still make a shiatload of money off it (they'd likely own all the refinement and conversion factories, as well as the distrobution channels) but so would smaller farms, and, honestly, at this point there isn't much we can do to keep oil companies from getting richer.
The price of food wouldn't rise much, as we have too much of it as it is. We send out millions of tons of grain as humanitarian aid, mainly to keep the price of domestic grain at an artifially high level so enough farms can stay in business. Plus, this would allow countris that don't have a significant export product to make some cash growing grains (or con, or rice, or whatever it is that grows where they are) and selling it on the international market for either food or fuel. Either way, everyone wins.
There's also the added benifit of reducing net pollution. Yes, we're still burning fuel and releasing CO2, etc, but the gasses being released were ones that were semi-recently extracted from the enviroment by the growing plants, not ones burried in the ground for millions of years.
Sure, we'd still likely need fossil fuels, but we could significantly reduce our import of fuel, which would help us on so many levels that it is absolutely ridiculous we haven't started yet. Maybe if our government wasn't completely owned by oil company donations there'd be some hope of this.