I'm in the same boat as this guy. I have no love for Apple. They can't even make a decent UK-spec keyboard, for fucks sake. There is nothing more annoying than a Mac user telling me my keys are 'all switched around'. I bought a Mini off eBay to develop a game for the phone, but as soon as I'm done, it's going straight back on eBay. I can't stand it.
I felt the same about the phone too. The main problems were Apples horrible marketing, and Apple fans.
It turns out that the phone is actually very good. My last 4 phones were HTC WinMo smartphones, the most recent was a Touch Diamond. It was fucking atrocious. They tried (like everyone else) to rip off the iPhone interface, and while it works fairly well on a brand new, just rebooted phone, performance soon degraded past the point of frustration. And yes, I was clearing out background tasks, it didn't help. The whole experience was terrible. I removed the 'touch' UI, and went back to the standard winMo interface, and it was better, but I still didn't use it for anything more than a telephone, it was unresponsive.
My brother had an iPhone (which I naturally derided him for for quite some time), and tried it after the 3.0 update. It did everything I expected. The touch/interface was spot on. You didn't have to go far to find apps, some of the games were quite excellent (seriously, flight control is the shit), and I didn't have to ask a single question about anything, it is the very essence of intuitive.
Now I have a mail app that covers 5 mail accounts, an IM client that covers 6 IM accounts, and a ton of other shit. This may have been possible on WinMo, but I really couldn't be arsed to look. Before the iPhone, nobody was offering unlimited internet on phone plans, so there was no real reason to get an IM client.
My next phone will probably be an Android, because I do like HTC's phones, but they tried to make WinMo into something it wasn't and they failed. Hopefully they can do better with android. I've still got 18 months to go on my 3GS though, so I'm not too worried yet.
I can understand the general dislike for the iPhone, but Slashdots general seething hatred of iPhones is really getting out of hand. Seriously, take a step back, you're making the console wars look like a game of tiddlywinks.
I assumed you hunkered down and worked hard, like you suggested (hence 'doing what you did'), but I didn't expect you to be offended by it.
In fact:
"Maybe I can understand the anger at the trust fund babies that just had money handed to them"
Covers most of what I said.
Basically, If everyone hunkers down, works hard to get their scholarships, etc., there won't suddenly be more scholarships available. Working hard at something isn't always enough.
You should still be allowed to be angry that the rich people don't have to hunker down and hope they can be one of the lucky ones to get a scholarship/grant, or infact, make any effort at all. If you have enough money, you don't even need to pass to 'pass'.
So the rich aren't technically 'holding them down', but there is definitely a disparity in effort based on parental income.
And if everyone did what you did, not all of them would get scholarships. Higher education is a very limited resource, especially to those without money.
3. They don't. I too used to think they did, but they just max it out with compression, and various other audio tech. This means more volume without ever needing to touch the volume knob. There is loss of quality, but I very much doubt they give a shit.
I agree with 2, but they need to cover alcohol as well.
Giving it to the person complaining just seems wrong, and makes the US legal system look like a joke. They should get whatever expenses they incurred * 2. The rest goes to a charity that will help many people, not just one.
This is the first first post I've EVER seen on slashdot that is both appropriate, and accurate.
The lack of a physical standard is going to be the biggest problem. Hell, even a choice of 3-4 standards would be better (numpad&no-touch/touch&homebutton/sliderkeyboard/joystick&touch). There are simply too many hardware options, and it's still a new phone, imagine what it will be like in two years, when I'm going to be alooking for a new phone. WinMo has the same problem.
The other problem is the lack of quality control on the store. I could probably knock up an Android app that will upload user contact details to my secret stash, and hide that beneath an app that just downloads pictures of girls in bikinis. Restricting app access to user data is one of the benefits of a locked-down, app-approving environment. Information may want to be free, but when it's MY information, I want that shit locked down.
PCs have hardware abstraction to cover different video cards, motherboards, etc. etc. There is no hardware abstraction that can make a touch-screen app work on a device without a touch screen.
The biggest drawback to writing apps for Android is the number of different hardware specs.
Does the phone have a trackball? joystick? 4-button d-pad? How many buttons does it have on the face? Does it have any at all? does it have iR? Bluetooth? I'm sure the list goes on. Then you need to make sure it's running a compatible version of Android.
With an iPhone it's more like: Is it an iPhone? Y/N. Is it running the latest patch? Y/N.
The biggest drawback to coding for the iPhone (for me) is that you need a Mac, and I hate the fucking things. As soon as I finish my app, I'm selling mine, and I'll be glad to see the back of it, and it's retarded keyboard layout.
I have an iPhone now, as it was the best phone available at the time. When this runs out, I'll buy whatever is best then. Hopefully two years is enough for another company to work out how to make a half decent, user-friendly UI.
I'd prefer a basic two button mouse, but with capacitive surfaces on the two buttons. These could then be mapped to whatever, including gestures. drag up/down on both buttons = zoom, drag up/down right button = scroll, clockwise circle on left button = fast forward media, yadda yadda. Maybe even keep the scroll wheel, I dunno.
The manufacturer of that video card decided that they wanted Windows computers to work well with that card and committed substantial resources to writing a driver that allowed Windows to function with that video card.
Yes, and because of that, 'it just works'.
Otherwise you could say that nothing 'just works' with anything.
And they didn't 'decide' to make Windows drivers, they have no choice. Nobody buys a shiny new graphics card for Linux. Their userbase is Windows users. Maybe not exclusively, but in the interests of making a profit, it might as well be.
I make the same changes as you do on first boot. Icon view drives me up the fucking wall. Detail view all the way, unless it's images, then I go for thumbnails.
The first thing I install on every version of Windows is Directory Opus. It's shareware, but is a superb explorer replacement. There's not a lot it won't do. Without wanting to sound like a shill (too late), I would advise this to anyone that still likes to find their shit manually. Detail view offers levels of detail far beyond what most people will need, thumbnail view is sweet. It has a built in image/video viewer, and audio playing capabilities.
If I'm not mistaken, I used to use a version of it on my Amiga back in the day, and it was central to everything I did back then, and it still is today.
There may be free Explorer replacements out there, but I found this one first in my search, and never bothered to look again.
It also does the neat thing of only highlighting the filename when you go to rename a file, which would solve most of the issues caused by having viewable file extensions.
10 million active subscriptions. They do not count unpaid accounts in this number.
They *do* keep old accounts, so users can go back for expansions/whatever in the future. But those accounts are not counted with these 10 mil.
Your rockbox recommendation encouraged me to type three words and look it up.
I'm impressed. I just installed it on my iRiver 320, and now I can do things that iRiver deemed inappropriate, like charging while using it as a hard drive. (Damn you, iRiver).
It looks better, it starts quicker. No real complaints at all.
At least I wasn't the only one who could hear that. I could tell if the TV was on in my bedroom from the other side of the house.
As for the rest of the topic..
My mother got an HDTV before I did. Then my brother, then I finally got one myself. Most of my friends still don't though, and if I look around the office, only about 4 people out of 30 have one. This is in the UK though. We don't have much in the way of broadcast HDTV yet. They are mostly being bought by people with a 360 or PS3, as far as I can tell.
At what point does an FPS become non-generic? I'm truly interested, as this seems to be what any fancamp (wii/360/ps3) says about the FPS's on other consoles.
As far as consoles go, Resistance is sweet. Good selection of weapons, nice maps, and 40-player online matches, with nearly all the game modes you would need. Availablility of keyboard/mouse is a plus, too.
Gears was good and looked awesome, the cover system was nice, too. But the tiny maps and 8 player online max really limited it for me.
Halo3, I'm probably not even going to bother with, the vehicle controls were and are a total nightmare, and the weaponry doesn't realy hold any interest for me. The people I've played it with online are also a major downside for the franchise.
UT3 I *might* get. I've always liked the weapon set in UT, particularly things like the shock rifle and goo gun. I'll have to see some more screens/details first. I've also done some mapping for UT/UT2k3/4, and being able to play these maps on the PS3 seems like a nice touch.
Killzone2 looks nice, but I'm not going to get my hopes up.
Same here, I thought it was just an age based thing. ie. fanboy = person, fanboi = child. I never used the 'fanboi' variant anyway, because it looks retarded.
It's rare, but slashdot has taught me something today.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm in the same boat as this guy. I have no love for Apple. They can't even make a decent UK-spec keyboard, for fucks sake. There is nothing more annoying than a Mac user telling me my keys are 'all switched around'. I bought a Mini off eBay to develop a game for the phone, but as soon as I'm done, it's going straight back on eBay. I can't stand it.
I felt the same about the phone too. The main problems were Apples horrible marketing, and Apple fans.
It turns out that the phone is actually very good. My last 4 phones were HTC WinMo smartphones, the most recent was a Touch Diamond. It was fucking atrocious. They tried (like everyone else) to rip off the iPhone interface, and while it works fairly well on a brand new, just rebooted phone, performance soon degraded past the point of frustration. And yes, I was clearing out background tasks, it didn't help. The whole experience was terrible. I removed the 'touch' UI, and went back to the standard winMo interface, and it was better, but I still didn't use it for anything more than a telephone, it was unresponsive.
My brother had an iPhone (which I naturally derided him for for quite some time), and tried it after the 3.0 update. It did everything I expected. The touch/interface was spot on. You didn't have to go far to find apps, some of the games were quite excellent (seriously, flight control is the shit), and I didn't have to ask a single question about anything, it is the very essence of intuitive.
Now I have a mail app that covers 5 mail accounts, an IM client that covers 6 IM accounts, and a ton of other shit. This may have been possible on WinMo, but I really couldn't be arsed to look. Before the iPhone, nobody was offering unlimited internet on phone plans, so there was no real reason to get an IM client.
My next phone will probably be an Android, because I do like HTC's phones, but they tried to make WinMo into something it wasn't and they failed. Hopefully they can do better with android. I've still got 18 months to go on my 3GS though, so I'm not too worried yet.
I can understand the general dislike for the iPhone, but Slashdots general seething hatred of iPhones is really getting out of hand. Seriously, take a step back, you're making the console wars look like a game of tiddlywinks.
I assumed you hunkered down and worked hard, like you suggested (hence 'doing what you did'), but I didn't expect you to be offended by it.
In fact:
"Maybe I can understand the anger at the trust fund babies that just had money handed to them"
Covers most of what I said.
Basically, If everyone hunkers down, works hard to get their scholarships, etc., there won't suddenly be more scholarships available. Working hard at something isn't always enough.
You should still be allowed to be angry that the rich people don't have to hunker down and hope they can be one of the lucky ones to get a scholarship/grant, or infact, make any effort at all. If you have enough money, you don't even need to pass to 'pass'.
So the rich aren't technically 'holding them down', but there is definitely a disparity in effort based on parental income.
And if everyone did what you did, not all of them would get scholarships. Higher education is a very limited resource, especially to those without money.
3. They don't. I too used to think they did, but they just max it out with compression, and various other audio tech. This means more volume without ever needing to touch the volume knob. There is loss of quality, but I very much doubt they give a shit.
I agree with 2, but they need to cover alcohol as well.
Totally agreed.
Giving it to the person complaining just seems wrong, and makes the US legal system look like a joke. They should get whatever expenses they incurred * 2. The rest goes to a charity that will help many people, not just one.
It would make the accuser look less greedy too.
This is the first first post I've EVER seen on slashdot that is both appropriate, and accurate.
The lack of a physical standard is going to be the biggest problem. Hell, even a choice of 3-4 standards would be better (numpad&no-touch/touch&homebutton/sliderkeyboard/joystick&touch). There are simply too many hardware options, and it's still a new phone, imagine what it will be like in two years, when I'm going to be alooking for a new phone. WinMo has the same problem.
The other problem is the lack of quality control on the store. I could probably knock up an Android app that will upload user contact details to my secret stash, and hide that beneath an app that just downloads pictures of girls in bikinis. Restricting app access to user data is one of the benefits of a locked-down, app-approving environment. Information may want to be free, but when it's MY information, I want that shit locked down.
PCs have hardware abstraction to cover different video cards, motherboards, etc. etc. There is no hardware abstraction that can make a touch-screen app work on a device without a touch screen.
The biggest drawback to writing apps for Android is the number of different hardware specs.
Does the phone have a trackball? joystick? 4-button d-pad? How many buttons does it have on the face? Does it have any at all? does it have iR? Bluetooth? I'm sure the list goes on. Then you need to make sure it's running a compatible version of Android.
With an iPhone it's more like: Is it an iPhone? Y/N. Is it running the latest patch? Y/N.
The biggest drawback to coding for the iPhone (for me) is that you need a Mac, and I hate the fucking things. As soon as I finish my app, I'm selling mine, and I'll be glad to see the back of it, and it's retarded keyboard layout.
I have an iPhone now, as it was the best phone available at the time. When this runs out, I'll buy whatever is best then. Hopefully two years is enough for another company to work out how to make a half decent, user-friendly UI.
Yes, they do. Do you pay extra on top of your ISP bill to use a PC on the internet? If so, do you need any bridges?
I'd prefer a basic two button mouse, but with capacitive surfaces on the two buttons. These could then be mapped to whatever, including gestures. drag up/down on both buttons = zoom, drag up/down right button = scroll, clockwise circle on left button = fast forward media, yadda yadda. Maybe even keep the scroll wheel, I dunno.
I use Winkey.exe, and I can crack open a cmd/powershell with Win+C/Win+V. Do I qualify?
The manufacturer of that video card decided that they wanted Windows computers to work well with that card and committed substantial resources to writing a driver that allowed Windows to function with that video card.
Yes, and because of that, 'it just works'.
Otherwise you could say that nothing 'just works' with anything.
And they didn't 'decide' to make Windows drivers, they have no choice. Nobody buys a shiny new graphics card for Linux. Their userbase is Windows users. Maybe not exclusively, but in the interests of making a profit, it might as well be.
Yup, still necessary.
I make the same changes as you do on first boot. Icon view drives me up the fucking wall. Detail view all the way, unless it's images, then I go for thumbnails.
The first thing I install on every version of Windows is Directory Opus. It's shareware, but is a superb explorer replacement. There's not a lot it won't do. Without wanting to sound like a shill (too late), I would advise this to anyone that still likes to find their shit manually. Detail view offers levels of detail far beyond what most people will need, thumbnail view is sweet. It has a built in image/video viewer, and audio playing capabilities.
If I'm not mistaken, I used to use a version of it on my Amiga back in the day, and it was central to everything I did back then, and it still is today.
There may be free Explorer replacements out there, but I found this one first in my search, and never bothered to look again.
It also does the neat thing of only highlighting the filename when you go to rename a file, which would solve most of the issues caused by having viewable file extensions.
Even $13 is a rip for an hdmi cable. Try monoprice.com, I've heard nothing but good reviews.
Maybe they encrypted it half way round..
FACIAL tissue?
Oh man, I've been doing this all wrong.
10 million active subscriptions. They do not count unpaid accounts in this number. They *do* keep old accounts, so users can go back for expansions/whatever in the future. But those accounts are not counted with these 10 mil.
I had the same thought. Good book, too.
Your rockbox recommendation encouraged me to type three words and look it up. I'm impressed. I just installed it on my iRiver 320, and now I can do things that iRiver deemed inappropriate, like charging while using it as a hard drive. (Damn you, iRiver). It looks better, it starts quicker. No real complaints at all.
You already can use a mouse/keyboard with a ps3 or 360. The PS3 will allow you to use it for shooters, the 360 currently doesn't.
PS3, noisy? I can barely tell mine is running.
You might be thinking of the 360. Mine has a drive in it that will scare the crows out of your cornfield.
At least I wasn't the only one who could hear that. I could tell if the TV was on in my bedroom from the other side of the house.
As for the rest of the topic..
My mother got an HDTV before I did. Then my brother, then I finally got one myself. Most of my friends still don't though, and if I look around the office, only about 4 people out of 30 have one. This is in the UK though. We don't have much in the way of broadcast HDTV yet. They are mostly being bought by people with a 360 or PS3, as far as I can tell.
At what point does an FPS become non-generic? I'm truly interested, as this seems to be what any fancamp (wii/360/ps3) says about the FPS's on other consoles.
As far as consoles go, Resistance is sweet. Good selection of weapons, nice maps, and 40-player online matches, with nearly all the game modes you would need. Availablility of keyboard/mouse is a plus, too.
Gears was good and looked awesome, the cover system was nice, too. But the tiny maps and 8 player online max really limited it for me.
Halo3, I'm probably not even going to bother with, the vehicle controls were and are a total nightmare, and the weaponry doesn't realy hold any interest for me. The people I've played it with online are also a major downside for the franchise.
UT3 I *might* get. I've always liked the weapon set in UT, particularly things like the shock rifle and goo gun. I'll have to see some more screens/details first. I've also done some mapping for UT/UT2k3/4, and being able to play these maps on the PS3 seems like a nice touch.
Killzone2 looks nice, but I'm not going to get my hopes up.
They had to beat Sony to market. They clearly had to cut some corners to do this.
:(
In the long run though, I think early releasing did help MS this generation.
But why the fuck is it white, it looks so out of place in my AV unit
It never happened to my discman, or minidisc players, and they were treated with nothing short of contempt for most of their operational lives.
The one in my old car probably counts too, because my suspension was rather wooly.
Same here, I thought it was just an age based thing. ie. fanboy = person, fanboi = child. I never used the 'fanboi' variant anyway, because it looks retarded.
It's rare, but slashdot has taught me something today.