i completely forgot about the GBC. but yea, i think that would be a better model.
truthfully though, they could have just made the GBC a completely separate platform since it came a whole 8~9 years after the Game Boy was introduced. i think few companies would go to such efforts to maintain forward compatibility of nearly a decade-old hardware.
if Nintendo starts making DSi-only games, then they'd be making the DS Lite obsolete after just a 2-year product life, pissing off a lot of consumers. OTOH, if Nintendo only makes the DSi's additional features an optional component to new games, then they won't be releasing any games that really take full advantage of the DSi's upgrades. so you won't see any games that really incorporate the DSi's camera into its core gameplay. this would preclude the release of innovative camera-centered titles similar to the Eye of Judgment for the PS3.
i have the same issue with the PSP's PopStation. it's such a money grab it's not even funny.
firstly, they advertise the PSP as allowing you to play PSX games on the go--a huge selling point for many people. but then once people purchase the PSP they find out that they can't connect to the PSN or Playstation Store without a PS3, despite the fact that the PSP has wi-fi support and a built-in browser. this isn't a technical obstacle--it's a deliberate sales strategy to get PSP owners to purchase another $600 system if they want to use one of the core features of the their new handheld.
now, many PSP owners were also Playstation owners, and many still have their PSX games from years ago. technically, these discs can be ripped and converted to POPS files to be played on the PSP. but Sony has intentionally crippled the PSP's firmware to prevent the system from loading up unsigned games from the memory stick. so unless you run CFW you have to re-purchase your entire PSX library, most of which probably won't even be available on the PSN--which your PSP doesn't have direct access to anyway.
so it's not surprising that many PSP owners find it simpler to just run CFW and download pre-converted POPS conversions. the funny thing is, Sony could have prevented all of this had they not been so greedily anti-consumer. they could have just released an official PSX disc ripper/converter so PSP owners can easily put their own PSX games on their PSP without needing CFW.
while i don't have much experience with Nintendo products, Sony has taken a similar stance with the PSP. they're constantly releasing new PSP firmwares which you need to upgrade to in order to play new games. the firmware updates usually don't add any new features or convey benefits of any kind to the user. where the custom firmware (CFW) released by homebrew developers actually add value to the PSP.
case in point:
run ISO/CSO images directly off of memory stick (no load times, and no bulky UMDs to carry).
supports plugins that allow users to listen to their own music while playing games.
allow PSP owners to convert their own PSX games into POPS files, instead of having to re-purchase their games from the PSN.
run shell applications and play ISO/CSOs directly off of your hard drive via USB.
stream videos from your computer over wi-fi (PiMPStreamer).
use your PSP as an ebook reader (Bookr).
use your PSP as a universal remote.
run all games at 333 MHz.
use a better audio player than the PSP's integrated audio player.
run all kinds of emulators.
develop your own homebrew apps on your PSP.
make phone calls with the PSP fat (Furikup) no thanks to Sony.
at least Nintendo has tried to match homebrew features so that users wouldn't need to turn to homebrew & flash RAM carts. Sony's tactic is to simply break forward-compatibility and force users to upgrade to new official firmware which don't add any value to the user's system.
Sony's wasted efforts trying to combat piracy through attacks on homebrew could have been better directed towards improving the PSP's software and addressing user complaints. they could have added playlist support and a media browser to the audio player, or added support for more video codecs; heck, the PSP's built-in web browser could have been greatly enhanced with a memory paging system that would take advantage of my 4 GB memory stick for storing swap files.
but instead Sony allows the PSP's amazing hardware to continue to go underutilized. i guess trying to "prevent piracy" is more important than realizing the platform's full potential. it doesn't take an genius economist to see the opportunity cost of Sony's anti-homebrew efforts.
hrmm... i wonder why other hardware manufacturers don't integrate that kind of charge-balancing system into their battery-powered appliances to reduce the stress on the battery. it seems like a smart thing to do.
you could simply use an LED to indicate when the battery is reaching the 40% mark, and let user set whether they want the battery to recharge just to 90% or all the way to 100%. this leaves it up to the user whether they want to recharge less often or keep their battery for longer.
do consumers really like this sort of incremental upgrade/gradual obsolescence? i much prefer the traditional model of distinct generation gaps between each console. the PSX came out and supported all games/peripherals/features up until it was completely phased out. the only changes were minor or superficial upgrades that didn't leave existing console owners feel left out. the PSOne simply shrank the system's form factor down. same thing happened with the PS2 and slimline update. no new features were added, and the platform retained full backwards compatibility.
however, with the PSP you start seeing incremental updates that put early adopters at a disadvantage. for instance, the PSP slim was given a TV out, internal flash memory, and later Skype support which would not be implemented on the PSP fat. IMO these incremental upgrades screw over loyal customers and are really better suited to modular hardware like computer systems. the point of purchasing a console over a computer is so that it won't become outdated after a few weeks, forcing you to constantly upgrade to keep up with the latest specs.
but at least the PSP didn't introduce hardware upgrades that would break the forward compatibility of older hardware revisions. my PSP fat will still play any new games released for the platform. if Nintendo starts publishing DSi-only games they'll basically be making all DS and DS lites obsolete. i mean, they could start selling camera peripheral attachments for DS/lite owners, but then game developers would still have to design games around the DS's processor & memory specs.
while i wish console makers would embrace homebrew rather than resist it, i think Nintendo's approach makes a lot more sense than Sony's. rather than releasing constant firmware updates to break backwards compatibility with homebrew apps (keeping the system crippled via software), they should just be incorporating the in demand features that draw users to homebrew.
and i can't believe the DS already has direct access to an online content distribution service, and the PSP still needs a PS3 or a Windows PC running Internet Explorer in order to access PSN content. the PSP has had a built-in web browser since day one. it's as if the Sony execs are intentionally sabotaging the platform. heck, i wouldn't be surprised if the DSi's audio player has more robust features than the PSP's media player, which is still as bareboned as it was one launch day.
i wonder how the DSi's browser will perform compared to the PSP fat. i get out of memory errors after surfing for about 10-15 minutes--or even less, depending on how graphic-intensive the pages i visit are. the PSP slim's 64 MB of memory (double that of the PSP fat) might have improved the situation, but i don't know since i've never used one. i would not expect the DS's 4 MB of RAM to be enough for any kind of substantial web browsing.
i don't see how surveillance is mind-control. the Chinese government want to root out dissidents and suppress dissenting opinions, just as has been done in the U.S. throughout history. ever heard of COINTELPRO? this kind of blatant abuse of political power to actively suppress political dissent was most rampant during J. Edgar Hoover's reign of the FBI and slowly declined after his death. but in recent years such practices have been revived once again.
all governments, especially unpopular ones, fear dissent and subversion. and since political activism can be seen as a subversive act, governments have always targeted activist groups, whether openly or behind closed doors. the recent illegal wiretapping scandal is concrete evidence of such abuses. and under the U.S.A.P.A.T.R.I.O.T.A.C.T. the federal government can now freely target activist groups under the guise of combating terrorism.
if SCiB is lithium-titanate, then why didn't they just say so in the article? is SCiB a brand name? because i haven't seen SCiB mentioned in any of the other li-titanate articles i've read. in any case, i feel like a complete ass now.
they do use OCR for digitizing most books, but it costs processing cycles. there's only so much text that any given data center can process at a time.
but yea, i guess they usually pick the lower-quality or more distorted scans for reCAPTCHA. however, they don't just use a single challenge response to determine the correct text. i'm sure they go on the assumption that there will be lots of incorrect responses (either by poor bots or human error) and simply use statistical analysis to determine the correct text.
and if a particular client submits several incorrect responses in a row, the server can determine that it's a bot and ban the client's IP address. this way, the only bots that get through will be the ones with high accuracy rates.
so does this mean that keeping a rechargeable battery _fully_ charged (90~99%) is worse than keeping it at around ~40%?
i had thought it was the constant change/fluctuation in its stored charge that wears it down (ie. going from 100% down to 0%, then back up to 100%, so on and so forth...) since these articles always talk about how many "cycles" each battery can survive. i guess i should try to learn the chemistry behind batteries.
thanks for sharing that link. it's very informative.
requiring a physical ID for internet accounts is a bad idea.
i like the reCAPTCHA approach. if spammers want to abuse a reCAPTCHA system, at least they'll be making a positive contribution to society by helping to digitize printed literature. maybe Project Gutenberg or the Google Books Library Project can launch a reCAPTCHA service to put those botnets to good use. if you can't stop them, at least this helps to recover some utility from the problem.
there's also the issue of CAPTCHA porn and the related phenomena of outsourcing CAPTCHA solutions. as long as there are people willing to solve CAPTCHAs for porn, or money to feed their families, then no reverse turing test will ever be foolproof. so the best thing to do is to exploit this CAPTCHA-solving machinery.
why not make CAPTCHAs educational? instead of random words or random excerpts from books, make them arithmetic word problems, geometry proofs, SAT analogy questions, stoichiometry equations, spelling quizzes, etc. this way, the CAPTCHA solvers gain an education from their labors instead of just some cheap porn or a couple of bucks a day. and after solving CAPTCHAs for a few years, they'll be educated enough to land a real job and/or afford to pay for better porn.
this way you turn the spam problem into a way of educating horny teenagers and underprivileged poor in 3rd world countries.
easy, you just need to encrypt the first key with a second key. surely, there's no way for a spammer to get a hold of all 3 pieces of vital info now needed to send an e-mail.
but if by some off chance that spammers manage to get a hold of all 3 pieces of info (because users have to give out these keys just as they would an e-mail address), we'll just add another key to the system, and another...
hrm... well i guess it's a good thing that i've only let my battery die once or twice since i got it. with replacement batteries costing $40~50 a piece, i'll have to be more attentive about my charge state.
i seem to remember seeing several different stories on/. about "revolutionary" new battery techs, but i still haven't seen any alternatives to traditional li-ion batteries being sold at commercial retailers. IMHO lithium-titanate batteries look promising. manufacturers are claiming that these new lithium batteries can recharge in under 10 minutes--and that's for use in electric vehicles. this New Scientist article reports that mobile devices using lithium-titanate can recharge in 6 minutes, and each battery is capable of going through 20,000 charge cycles.
i'm guessing this technology is probably still too expensive to bring to market. it'll probably only be used in electric vehicles or other such applications which require much more durability and longer life-spans than traditional Li-ion batteries currently provide.
Altairnano has developed a lithium titanate battery used in the Phoenix Motorcar Sport Utility Truck that they claim fully recharges in under 10 minutes. but we'll have to wait till 2010 when the Phoenix electric SUT goes into production to see if these claims are really true.
still, it's pretty impressive that they've made a new type of Li-ion battery that can recharge in such a short amount of time.
oh i dunno, maybe honesty has something to do with it? not everyone is obsessed with advertising/marketing double-speak.
besides, why intentionally take 10% off of your advertised battery capacity? i think most consumers would be able to do the math and see that the competitor's 10 min. 90% charge is exactly the same as your 10 min. 100% charge--except the competitor's battery has 111% the capacity of your battery. that could be an extra 2 hrs. of music or games.
on a somewhat related note, a came across an interesting article while researching Li-ion batteries on wikipedia. apparently some Li-ion batteries are capable of being _fully_ charged in 10 minutes. so maybe this isn't as big of a breakthrough as it initially seemed?
SCiB batteries can endure 5,000 to 6,000 recharge cycles, compared to around 500 cycles for standard lithium-ion batteries, according to a Toshiba executive manning the company's booth at the Ceatec exhibition in Chiba, Japan.
At the show, Toshiba showed a prototype SCiB battery installed in a Dynabook laptop. The laptop was matched
only 500 cycles, really? that seems a little low. do they mean that after 500 charges the battery begins to decrease in capacity, or that the battery will start to fail completely after 500 charges? because that seems really really low to me.
i mean, most rechargeable batteries today are Li-ion batteries, right? i just wanna know how many recharges i have left on my PSP.
does it help if you make sure to plug the battery back into the charger before it's out of charge? what can you do or not do to help preserve the capacity and life-span of a li-ion battery?
i'm not saying it's "better" i'm just noting the differences--just as you have.
and you're absolutely right. though they are similar in design and mirror each other in many applications (media player, web browsing, gaming, homebrew), the Pandora is not going to have the support of large gaming publishers or have its software library sold at Wal-Mart or Best Buy. but that isn't really a big deal for its target users.
Pandora is a handheld aimed at the nerd/geek, programmer, hacker, tinkerer (i believe the term used in the U.K. is "boffin") crowd. it's not trying to compete with the PSP for the mainstream market. however, up until now the PSP was still the best choice for the homebrew crowd since there were sparse offerings in this niche. just because the Pandora and PSP were built by different companies with very different philosophies, doesn't mean you can't make the obvious comparison. there's a clear overlap between the PSP's consumer market and the Pandora's.
i imagine most Pandora users will be programmers, whether they are hobbyists or professionals. and for such users, developing for the system will be just as much of a draw as using the system itself. and besides, a PSX emulator alone would provide Pandora users with access to a huge library of games.
that's your choice. that doesn't mean anonymous mail should be outlawed.
i think that forged e-mail header should be banned, but anonymity is an important pillar of the right to privacy.
it may not be necessary for most people to send anonymous e-mails usually, but we still live in a world in which dissidents are persecuted, sometimes even killed.
even in the U.S., if you're a whistleblower for a powerful corporation, or perhaps a powerful government organization, you may face serious repercussions for your actions. if we prohibit anonymous e-mails then potential whistleblowers might be discouraged from revealing corruption/injustice within their organization.
the fallacious "if you're innocent then you have nothing to hide" argument is naive and shortsighted. communication through anonymous channels is vital to any free society.
IMO the biggest difference between Pandora and PSP is its open source nature, and the receptive attitude OpenPandora has shown towards homebrew development.
this is the same reason GP32/GP2X/WIZ were popular amongst geeks/developers, but the Pandora has finally matched that open and pro-consumer attitude with an exceptional hardware design/specs.
built in Wi-Fi and QWERTY keyboard are a must. having to carry a separate keyboard attachment is a major shortcoming for a handheld console. i like being able to grab my PSP along with my wallet and car keys and head out the door. having to search for peripherals isn't an ideal situation.
right now i use my PSP primarily for PSX emulation, e-books, and audiobooks. i would use the web browser more, but the PSP fat runs out of memory after just 5-10 minutes of browsing--and requires a complete restart (i don't know how much improved the PSP slim/3000 are). the Pandora really interests me because it seems like should be able to do everything i use my PSP for, but potentially better.
i've been thinking about getting into homebrew development, but being a C++ programming novice, trying to develop for a poorly documented closed system is just a little too overwhelming. so OpenPandora's receptive, rather than antagonistic, attitude towards homebrew development on their platform shows promise.
the price is a little steep, but i'm willing to fork out a little more cash to a company with a pro-consumer rather than anti-consumer attitude. at least i know that getting the Pandora to read e-books or play ROMs won't void my warranty. and OpenPandora won't make me buy another $600 console to make use of advertised features.
and, yes, this is news to a lot of people. personally i'm pretty psyched about a new powerful (and open source) handheld being brought to market. this will be another platform that homebrew developers will be able to explore--and one that they are actually welcomed on. if nothing else, Pandora will finally give consumers a viable alternative to the PSP for a robust portable entertainment system.
i was never too impressed with the GP32 and GP2X, but Pandora looks very promising. in terms of hardware, its 600 MHz clock speed trumps the PSP's 333 MHz (underclocked at 222 MHz on old games), and its 128 MB DDR SDRAM also trounces the PSP/slim's 32/64 MB. we may finally have a portable entertainment system that can surf the web without running out of memory after a few graphic-intensive web pages. a 43 button QWERTY keyboard means e-mail, web browsing, instant messaging, word processing, etc. won't be as troublesome as it is on the PSP. the dual analog nubs also enables more robust game controls, which are particularly important for FPS games.
but what's most exciting about this news is the fact that Pandora was developed with consumers in mind. they designed the handheld based on community feedback on the GP2X/GP32 consoles. i've always felt that the PSP was a fine piece of engineering, but Sony's greed-driven constant mishandling of the system meant that most of the system's hardware potential was never realized.
Pandora seems to take a very different approach. instead of opposing homebrew development, they will tap into the dedication and zeal of the homebrew community to improve the console. this means that rather than wasting time releasing firmware updates just to hinder homebrew development, they will actually incorporate homebrew applications into the console itself. this progressive pro-consumer attitude is something that should be applauded. Pandora shows a lot of potential IMO, and i will be paying close attention to its development.
Slashdot Mirror
i completely forgot about the GBC. but yea, i think that would be a better model.
truthfully though, they could have just made the GBC a completely separate platform since it came a whole 8~9 years after the Game Boy was introduced. i think few companies would go to such efforts to maintain forward compatibility of nearly a decade-old hardware.
if Nintendo starts making DSi-only games, then they'd be making the DS Lite obsolete after just a 2-year product life, pissing off a lot of consumers. OTOH, if Nintendo only makes the DSi's additional features an optional component to new games, then they won't be releasing any games that really take full advantage of the DSi's upgrades. so you won't see any games that really incorporate the DSi's camera into its core gameplay. this would preclude the release of innovative camera-centered titles similar to the Eye of Judgment for the PS3.
kids these days... always smoking their PHP and listening to that DXM guy on their MP5 players.
he must have gotten the luxury "i-will-never-crash" edition.
nah, he's sippin Cristal out with Tupac, Biggie, and Aaliyah.
i have the same issue with the PSP's PopStation. it's such a money grab it's not even funny.
firstly, they advertise the PSP as allowing you to play PSX games on the go--a huge selling point for many people. but then once people purchase the PSP they find out that they can't connect to the PSN or Playstation Store without a PS3, despite the fact that the PSP has wi-fi support and a built-in browser. this isn't a technical obstacle--it's a deliberate sales strategy to get PSP owners to purchase another $600 system if they want to use one of the core features of the their new handheld.
now, many PSP owners were also Playstation owners, and many still have their PSX games from years ago. technically, these discs can be ripped and converted to POPS files to be played on the PSP. but Sony has intentionally crippled the PSP's firmware to prevent the system from loading up unsigned games from the memory stick. so unless you run CFW you have to re-purchase your entire PSX library, most of which probably won't even be available on the PSN--which your PSP doesn't have direct access to anyway.
so it's not surprising that many PSP owners find it simpler to just run CFW and download pre-converted POPS conversions. the funny thing is, Sony could have prevented all of this had they not been so greedily anti-consumer. they could have just released an official PSX disc ripper/converter so PSP owners can easily put their own PSX games on their PSP without needing CFW.
while i don't have much experience with Nintendo products, Sony has taken a similar stance with the PSP. they're constantly releasing new PSP firmwares which you need to upgrade to in order to play new games. the firmware updates usually don't add any new features or convey benefits of any kind to the user. where the custom firmware (CFW) released by homebrew developers actually add value to the PSP.
case in point:
at least Nintendo has tried to match homebrew features so that users wouldn't need to turn to homebrew & flash RAM carts. Sony's tactic is to simply break forward-compatibility and force users to upgrade to new official firmware which don't add any value to the user's system.
Sony's wasted efforts trying to combat piracy through attacks on homebrew could have been better directed towards improving the PSP's software and addressing user complaints. they could have added playlist support and a media browser to the audio player, or added support for more video codecs; heck, the PSP's built-in web browser could have been greatly enhanced with a memory paging system that would take advantage of my 4 GB memory stick for storing swap files.
but instead Sony allows the PSP's amazing hardware to continue to go underutilized. i guess trying to "prevent piracy" is more important than realizing the platform's full potential. it doesn't take an genius economist to see the opportunity cost of Sony's anti-homebrew efforts.
hrmm... i wonder why other hardware manufacturers don't integrate that kind of charge-balancing system into their battery-powered appliances to reduce the stress on the battery. it seems like a smart thing to do.
you could simply use an LED to indicate when the battery is reaching the 40% mark, and let user set whether they want the battery to recharge just to 90% or all the way to 100%. this leaves it up to the user whether they want to recharge less often or keep their battery for longer.
do consumers really like this sort of incremental upgrade/gradual obsolescence? i much prefer the traditional model of distinct generation gaps between each console. the PSX came out and supported all games/peripherals/features up until it was completely phased out. the only changes were minor or superficial upgrades that didn't leave existing console owners feel left out. the PSOne simply shrank the system's form factor down. same thing happened with the PS2 and slimline update. no new features were added, and the platform retained full backwards compatibility.
however, with the PSP you start seeing incremental updates that put early adopters at a disadvantage. for instance, the PSP slim was given a TV out, internal flash memory, and later Skype support which would not be implemented on the PSP fat. IMO these incremental upgrades screw over loyal customers and are really better suited to modular hardware like computer systems. the point of purchasing a console over a computer is so that it won't become outdated after a few weeks, forcing you to constantly upgrade to keep up with the latest specs.
but at least the PSP didn't introduce hardware upgrades that would break the forward compatibility of older hardware revisions. my PSP fat will still play any new games released for the platform. if Nintendo starts publishing DSi-only games they'll basically be making all DS and DS lites obsolete. i mean, they could start selling camera peripheral attachments for DS/lite owners, but then game developers would still have to design games around the DS's processor & memory specs.
while i wish console makers would embrace homebrew rather than resist it, i think Nintendo's approach makes a lot more sense than Sony's. rather than releasing constant firmware updates to break backwards compatibility with homebrew apps (keeping the system crippled via software), they should just be incorporating the in demand features that draw users to homebrew.
and i can't believe the DS already has direct access to an online content distribution service, and the PSP still needs a PS3 or a Windows PC running Internet Explorer in order to access PSN content. the PSP has had a built-in web browser since day one. it's as if the Sony execs are intentionally sabotaging the platform. heck, i wouldn't be surprised if the DSi's audio player has more robust features than the PSP's media player, which is still as bareboned as it was one launch day.
i wonder how the DSi's browser will perform compared to the PSP fat. i get out of memory errors after surfing for about 10-15 minutes--or even less, depending on how graphic-intensive the pages i visit are. the PSP slim's 64 MB of memory (double that of the PSP fat) might have improved the situation, but i don't know since i've never used one. i would not expect the DS's 4 MB of RAM to be enough for any kind of substantial web browsing.
i don't see how surveillance is mind-control. the Chinese government want to root out dissidents and suppress dissenting opinions, just as has been done in the U.S. throughout history. ever heard of COINTELPRO? this kind of blatant abuse of political power to actively suppress political dissent was most rampant during J. Edgar Hoover's reign of the FBI and slowly declined after his death. but in recent years such practices have been revived once again.
all governments, especially unpopular ones, fear dissent and subversion. and since political activism can be seen as a subversive act, governments have always targeted activist groups, whether openly or behind closed doors. the recent illegal wiretapping scandal is concrete evidence of such abuses. and under the U.S.A.P.A.T.R.I.O.T.A.C.T. the federal government can now freely target activist groups under the guise of combating terrorism.
oops. =P
if SCiB is lithium-titanate, then why didn't they just say so in the article? is SCiB a brand name? because i haven't seen SCiB mentioned in any of the other li-titanate articles i've read. in any case, i feel like a complete ass now.
they do use OCR for digitizing most books, but it costs processing cycles. there's only so much text that any given data center can process at a time.
but yea, i guess they usually pick the lower-quality or more distorted scans for reCAPTCHA. however, they don't just use a single challenge response to determine the correct text. i'm sure they go on the assumption that there will be lots of incorrect responses (either by poor bots or human error) and simply use statistical analysis to determine the correct text.
and if a particular client submits several incorrect responses in a row, the server can determine that it's a bot and ban the client's IP address. this way, the only bots that get through will be the ones with high accuracy rates.
so does this mean that keeping a rechargeable battery _fully_ charged (90~99%) is worse than keeping it at around ~40%?
i had thought it was the constant change/fluctuation in its stored charge that wears it down (ie. going from 100% down to 0%, then back up to 100%, so on and so forth...) since these articles always talk about how many "cycles" each battery can survive. i guess i should try to learn the chemistry behind batteries.
thanks for sharing that link. it's very informative.
requiring a physical ID for internet accounts is a bad idea.
i like the reCAPTCHA approach. if spammers want to abuse a reCAPTCHA system, at least they'll be making a positive contribution to society by helping to digitize printed literature. maybe Project Gutenberg or the Google Books Library Project can launch a reCAPTCHA service to put those botnets to good use. if you can't stop them, at least this helps to recover some utility from the problem.
there's also the issue of CAPTCHA porn and the related phenomena of outsourcing CAPTCHA solutions. as long as there are people willing to solve CAPTCHAs for porn, or money to feed their families, then no reverse turing test will ever be foolproof. so the best thing to do is to exploit this CAPTCHA-solving machinery.
why not make CAPTCHAs educational? instead of random words or random excerpts from books, make them arithmetic word problems, geometry proofs, SAT analogy questions, stoichiometry equations, spelling quizzes, etc. this way, the CAPTCHA solvers gain an education from their labors instead of just some cheap porn or a couple of bucks a day. and after solving CAPTCHAs for a few years, they'll be educated enough to land a real job and/or afford to pay for better porn.
this way you turn the spam problem into a way of educating horny teenagers and underprivileged poor in 3rd world countries.
easy, you just need to encrypt the first key with a second key. surely, there's no way for a spammer to get a hold of all 3 pieces of vital info now needed to send an e-mail.
but if by some off chance that spammers manage to get a hold of all 3 pieces of info (because users have to give out these keys just as they would an e-mail address), we'll just add another key to the system, and another...
we'll all need to get bigger business cards.
hrm... well i guess it's a good thing that i've only let my battery die once or twice since i got it. with replacement batteries costing $40~50 a piece, i'll have to be more attentive about my charge state.
i seem to remember seeing several different stories on /. about "revolutionary" new battery techs, but i still haven't seen any alternatives to traditional li-ion batteries being sold at commercial retailers. IMHO lithium-titanate batteries look promising. manufacturers are claiming that these new lithium batteries can recharge in under 10 minutes--and that's for use in electric vehicles. this New Scientist article reports that mobile devices using lithium-titanate can recharge in 6 minutes, and each battery is capable of going through 20,000 charge cycles.
i'm guessing this technology is probably still too expensive to bring to market. it'll probably only be used in electric vehicles or other such applications which require much more durability and longer life-spans than traditional Li-ion batteries currently provide.
Altairnano has developed a lithium titanate battery used in the Phoenix Motorcar Sport Utility Truck that they claim fully recharges in under 10 minutes. but we'll have to wait till 2010 when the Phoenix electric SUT goes into production to see if these claims are really true.
still, it's pretty impressive that they've made a new type of Li-ion battery that can recharge in such a short amount of time.
oh i dunno, maybe honesty has something to do with it? not everyone is obsessed with advertising/marketing double-speak.
besides, why intentionally take 10% off of your advertised battery capacity? i think most consumers would be able to do the math and see that the competitor's 10 min. 90% charge is exactly the same as your 10 min. 100% charge--except the competitor's battery has 111% the capacity of your battery. that could be an extra 2 hrs. of music or games.
on a somewhat related note, a came across an interesting article while researching Li-ion batteries on wikipedia. apparently some Li-ion batteries are capable of being _fully_ charged in 10 minutes. so maybe this isn't as big of a breakthrough as it initially seemed?
only 500 cycles, really? that seems a little low. do they mean that after 500 charges the battery begins to decrease in capacity, or that the battery will start to fail completely after 500 charges? because that seems really really low to me.
i mean, most rechargeable batteries today are Li-ion batteries, right? i just wanna know how many recharges i have left on my PSP.
does it help if you make sure to plug the battery back into the charger before it's out of charge? what can you do or not do to help preserve the capacity and life-span of a li-ion battery?
so there's no coherent universe, history, storyline? sounds like a really shallow book if that is true.
you're lucky. my abacus has floating-point computation errors.
i'm not saying it's "better" i'm just noting the differences--just as you have.
and you're absolutely right. though they are similar in design and mirror each other in many applications (media player, web browsing, gaming, homebrew), the Pandora is not going to have the support of large gaming publishers or have its software library sold at Wal-Mart or Best Buy. but that isn't really a big deal for its target users.
Pandora is a handheld aimed at the nerd/geek, programmer, hacker, tinkerer (i believe the term used in the U.K. is "boffin") crowd. it's not trying to compete with the PSP for the mainstream market. however, up until now the PSP was still the best choice for the homebrew crowd since there were sparse offerings in this niche. just because the Pandora and PSP were built by different companies with very different philosophies, doesn't mean you can't make the obvious comparison. there's a clear overlap between the PSP's consumer market and the Pandora's.
i imagine most Pandora users will be programmers, whether they are hobbyists or professionals. and for such users, developing for the system will be just as much of a draw as using the system itself. and besides, a PSX emulator alone would provide Pandora users with access to a huge library of games.
that's your choice. that doesn't mean anonymous mail should be outlawed.
i think that forged e-mail header should be banned, but anonymity is an important pillar of the right to privacy.
it may not be necessary for most people to send anonymous e-mails usually, but we still live in a world in which dissidents are persecuted, sometimes even killed.
even in the U.S., if you're a whistleblower for a powerful corporation, or perhaps a powerful government organization, you may face serious repercussions for your actions. if we prohibit anonymous e-mails then potential whistleblowers might be discouraged from revealing corruption/injustice within their organization.
the fallacious "if you're innocent then you have nothing to hide" argument is naive and shortsighted. communication through anonymous channels is vital to any free society.
IMO the biggest difference between Pandora and PSP is its open source nature, and the receptive attitude OpenPandora has shown towards homebrew development.
this is the same reason GP32/GP2X/WIZ were popular amongst geeks/developers, but the Pandora has finally matched that open and pro-consumer attitude with an exceptional hardware design/specs.
built in Wi-Fi and QWERTY keyboard are a must. having to carry a separate keyboard attachment is a major shortcoming for a handheld console. i like being able to grab my PSP along with my wallet and car keys and head out the door. having to search for peripherals isn't an ideal situation.
right now i use my PSP primarily for PSX emulation, e-books, and audiobooks. i would use the web browser more, but the PSP fat runs out of memory after just 5-10 minutes of browsing--and requires a complete restart (i don't know how much improved the PSP slim/3000 are). the Pandora really interests me because it seems like should be able to do everything i use my PSP for, but potentially better.
i've been thinking about getting into homebrew development, but being a C++ programming novice, trying to develop for a poorly documented closed system is just a little too overwhelming. so OpenPandora's receptive, rather than antagonistic, attitude towards homebrew development on their platform shows promise.
the price is a little steep, but i'm willing to fork out a little more cash to a company with a pro-consumer rather than anti-consumer attitude. at least i know that getting the Pandora to read e-books or play ROMs won't void my warranty. and OpenPandora won't make me buy another $600 console to make use of advertised features.
i couldn't load the linked article, but for some reason, this image of the Pandora handheld does seem to be accessible.
and, yes, this is news to a lot of people. personally i'm pretty psyched about a new powerful (and open source) handheld being brought to market. this will be another platform that homebrew developers will be able to explore--and one that they are actually welcomed on. if nothing else, Pandora will finally give consumers a viable alternative to the PSP for a robust portable entertainment system.
i was never too impressed with the GP32 and GP2X, but Pandora looks very promising. in terms of hardware, its 600 MHz clock speed trumps the PSP's 333 MHz (underclocked at 222 MHz on old games), and its 128 MB DDR SDRAM also trounces the PSP/slim's 32/64 MB. we may finally have a portable entertainment system that can surf the web without running out of memory after a few graphic-intensive web pages. a 43 button QWERTY keyboard means e-mail, web browsing, instant messaging, word processing, etc. won't be as troublesome as it is on the PSP. the dual analog nubs also enables more robust game controls, which are particularly important for FPS games.
but what's most exciting about this news is the fact that Pandora was developed with consumers in mind. they designed the handheld based on community feedback on the GP2X/GP32 consoles. i've always felt that the PSP was a fine piece of engineering, but Sony's greed-driven constant mishandling of the system meant that most of the system's hardware potential was never realized.
Pandora seems to take a very different approach. instead of opposing homebrew development, they will tap into the dedication and zeal of the homebrew community to improve the console. this means that rather than wasting time releasing firmware updates just to hinder homebrew development, they will actually incorporate homebrew applications into the console itself. this progressive pro-consumer attitude is something that should be applauded. Pandora shows a lot of potential IMO, and i will be paying close attention to its development.