More advanced zoom. You can zoom in extremely close, or extremely far out. - Very critical!
Crisper fonts due to updated font rendering technology. - hmm, ok
Optimized for faster browsing and video game playing. (Seriously!) - Monty Python Tetris here i come! (Bring Out Your Dead!)
Other WiiMote cursors are now visible. They cannot interact with pages, but they can be used as laser pointer replacements. - ok
Scrolling has been improved with the arrows only showing while scrolling and a line showing how fast you're dragging. - very important!
The arrow keys now scroll rather than navigating. - I was wondering if they'd clue in about that.
The so-called "A-button cooldown effect" has been fixed. This was the bug that prevented rapid clicking. - now I can skip thru long boring WH speeches... to get to the big lies!
There are now settings for Proxies and other browser features. -ok
The toolbar has been updated with easy access to the URL entry, search, and page information. - good, took forever to do it on a Wii keyboard
The toolbar can now be hidden. - CRITICAL - since the screen is not that big
Cursors have been updated with nicer loading and clicking effects. -ok
Sounds are now associated with events like clicking and loading. - wish we could edit them to be Ni! Bing! I say!
The browser now fills the entire screen. You can change the scaling if the browser is clipped. - CRITICAL!!
Ah, but now you can compare it to the XBox Elite (est. $480) and the fact that to get a Wii you have to buy it second hand (starting at $379.95 on Amazon last I checked).
No, the Wii sells in retail bundles online at Costco and WalMart that are priced far far below that - and ships within days.
Um, more like the only ones that are selling in any quantity, if you look at shelf space.
Sadly, this won't change until Sony gets some high-quality multi-tier games out which not only fully utilize the new PS3 features, but are fun games to play and that work well on both 480p home TV sets (US) and the 720i/p and higher HDTV resolutions.
You lost credibility by including Mario Sunshine as A+ title.
No, I remember my son and his friends spending hours playing that game - one thing I've found is that if you take an old Gamecube game and pop it in the top Wii slots, especially if you have some nice SD card for memory, the load times are gone and the graphics are much improved with no lags.
Makes it a lot more fun, especially if you still (like 90 percent of America does) have a 480p standard TV set.
Try the less likely stores - Target, Fred Mayer, Sears, JC Penney - they all get shipments. On release day I picked up the Wii but had forgotten to reserve games or controllers (Wii-mote and nunchuk), but got Zelda and the guidebook plus my fave Rayman's Raving Rabbids in the store before others clued in, so the next day I drove around and got a second controller/nunchuk at Sears, and picked up Excite Truck and Trauma Center: Second Opinion there too.
Also try out of the way stores - the EBX/Gamestop sells out at Northgate Mall fast, but the other Gamestop just two blocks away sometimes has supply, and the same downtown with the two EBX stores in Pacific Place and Westlake Mall (one block away from each other).
I find asking people if they have any supply at all the counters sometimes frees up extras they have in the back - one salesperson might not know they still have two in the backroom, but the other one does.
You could easily segment the area into several areas: the SoDo district, North Seattle, South Seattle, have some fun missions around Boeing airfields (jack some planes!), and then head over to the Eastside for some fun w/ the suburbanites (Redmond, Bellevue, etc.). There could be some fun easter eggs planted around the Nintendo and Microsoft buildings as well.
Exactly - the Wii version would have more easter eggs in the Nintendo, Adobe, and Google buildings, whereas the xBox360 version would have them in the Microsoft, Gates Foundation (Seattle Center), and South Lake Union (Allen lands) areas.
But don't forget the extra power-ups from green and organic substances in Fremont, Center of the Universe.
And for bonus points, if you steal the chopper from the KOMO-4 building, you see all the Grey's Anatomy cast as you take off.
Plus, if you get the powerboat that's a car or the Duck, you can drive across the lakes on the water...
And robbing a houseboat you get to take a shortcut from Lake Union to Alki Beach thru a magical portal.
Yes, but nobody (even Nintendo) expected the Wii to take off like it has. So they didn't start things early enough and now see there's money to be made.
Not true.
My son and his friends watched the E3 coverage and he sold his Sony stock within two weeks and bought Nintendo stock - he's made a killing.
88 shares and counting - I've got the other 312 shares, and it has been a sweet ride...
Anyone who couldn't smell the end result was buying the hype and not paying attention to the reality.
Can we tax Chinese gold farmers for exporting WoW gold to the US then?
Meanwhile, if I choose to transfer 2 gold from my level 21 warrior to my level 16 mage, no taxable activity has occurred. And when my son and I - with the same account - transfer stuff from one of us to the other - my mage uses tailor and enchanting to make things, his warlock miner blacksmith crafts weapons and armor to be enchanted - it all came out of the same account paid by us - 50/50.
But if you try to tell me I can't just give a 12 armor cloak, a nice weapon, and a few 6-slot bags to a starting character out of the kindness of my heart - then get thee behind me, IRS!
Taking kids on flights is more likely a necessity[1] than talking on a cell phone is. As much as they annoy me, I'll usually give parents the benefit of the doubt, as long as they're trying to make the kids behave. Someone chatting on a cell phone? No way.
Have to agree. I empathize with the kid, stuck in a boring cramped space. I empathize with the parent, with a kid who just really should be taking a nap at home. But I have zero empathy for the loud person talking on the cell phone next to me, when we all are forced to suffer a CHOSEN imposition that was chosen by the person with the cell phone to be imposed on the rest of us.
Given that the yelling is caused by a lack of sidetone, shouldn't there be an easy technical fix? Just put in a circuit that amplifies the caller's voice, and presumably they'd quiet right down. Why haven't the cell phone makers done this?
Ah, but you forget - we're dealing with Americans - I've noticed in travelling that Americans tend to talk very loudly into cellphones, right next to you, but that in other countries people talk in a quiet tone and move to the back of trains to be away from where other people are, to be courteous.
Because if I get on a plane and someone is talking on their cell phone in a typical loud American style way of conversing - for 2-3 hours - in an enclosed space, I'm either going to (after warning you politely twice):
1. grab the phone and throw it to the rear of the plane (or front, if we're at the rear);
2. grab the phone and break it (the hinges don't go that far);
3. grab the phone and immerse it in my coffee; or
4. use it as an anti-theft device against you (bonk).
The price curve coincides with the switch to HDTV on-air transmission switch in 2009. Which is the same timeline for digital-only broadcasts, which will be be carried in both HDTV and 480p Digital bandwidths at first, but the 480p bandwidths can be phased out after that.
Basically, people with non-HDTV sets will not be able to receive broadcasts over the air, but they will be able to buy converters if they have satellite and/or cable and their sets can accept the outputs for them.
From most people's viewpoints, that is when HDTV goes live and they regard themselves as forced to switch.
Those buses with the window advertising are great. They're much more comfortable than those with plain glass windows. Instead of blinding glare from the sun, you get a nice filtered light, and the insulation they provide gives more comfortable temperatures.
You obviously don't live in Seattle or Vancouver, where it's overcast most of the year and we have a lack of sunshine except for brief periods in the summer.
Well, perhaps we will live in honey-comb shellacked towers, saving energy by sharing walls, with our outer sun-facing windows being partially covered by solar-cell translucent (not transparent) windows that power our hives.
And wonder if living inside our cracker box apartments and looking out through our solar-film-enabled windows will be like being stuck in one of those advertising-film-wrapped bus lines?
I mean, it looks cool, but what will it be like?
Sure, put solar cells on the non-transparent portions of my car, or my roof or walls, but the actual windows?
After all, with all those Cell processors, cranking out Ray goodness is a plus.
Now, if they could just grok that the lack of high quality games on the PS3 is not helping - and ditch the Blu-Ray drive that noone wants and/or needs they could drop the price to something reasonable.
Slashdot Mirror
More advanced zoom. You can zoom in extremely close, or extremely far out. - Very critical!
... to get to the big lies!
Crisper fonts due to updated font rendering technology. - hmm, ok
Optimized for faster browsing and video game playing. (Seriously!) - Monty Python Tetris here i come! (Bring Out Your Dead!)
Other WiiMote cursors are now visible. They cannot interact with pages, but they can be used as laser pointer replacements. - ok
Scrolling has been improved with the arrows only showing while scrolling and a line showing how fast you're dragging. - very important!
The arrow keys now scroll rather than navigating. - I was wondering if they'd clue in about that.
The so-called "A-button cooldown effect" has been fixed. This was the bug that prevented rapid clicking. - now I can skip thru long boring WH speeches
There are now settings for Proxies and other browser features. -ok
The toolbar has been updated with easy access to the URL entry, search, and page information. - good, took forever to do it on a Wii keyboard
The toolbar can now be hidden. - CRITICAL - since the screen is not that big
Cursors have been updated with nicer loading and clicking effects. -ok
Sounds are now associated with events like clicking and loading. - wish we could edit them to be Ni! Bing! I say!
The browser now fills the entire screen. You can change the scaling if the browser is clipped. - CRITICAL!!
Ah, but now you can compare it to the XBox Elite (est. $480) and the fact that to get a Wii you have to buy it second hand (starting at $379.95 on Amazon last I checked).
No, the Wii sells in retail bundles online at Costco and WalMart that are priced far far below that - and ships within days.
Um, more like the only ones that are selling in any quantity, if you look at shelf space.
Sadly, this won't change until Sony gets some high-quality multi-tier games out which not only fully utilize the new PS3 features, but are fun games to play and that work well on both 480p home TV sets (US) and the 720i/p and higher HDTV resolutions.
That may not be until this upcoming Xmas.
And you can't even skydive into the Hole.
Man, I'd rather be playing Spiderman on the Wii.
But, at least people will appreciate GTA: Emerald City (aka Seattle) when it comes out.
Oh, my, yes, the Toe-Truck!
Remember, the one on top of the building is a working model.
Talk about an easter egg!
I once flew to a writer's conference on Canada Council grants, and hearing more Nelly Furtado is allright by me!
Sadly, Sadness is vapourware.
...
Dang. That was one of the near release games that looked cool
You lost credibility by including Mario Sunshine as A+ title.
No, I remember my son and his friends spending hours playing that game - one thing I've found is that if you take an old Gamecube game and pop it in the top Wii slots, especially if you have some nice SD card for memory, the load times are gone and the graphics are much improved with no lags.
Makes it a lot more fun, especially if you still (like 90 percent of America does) have a 480p standard TV set.
Try the less likely stores - Target, Fred Mayer, Sears, JC Penney - they all get shipments. On release day I picked up the Wii but had forgotten to reserve games or controllers (Wii-mote and nunchuk), but got Zelda and the guidebook plus my fave Rayman's Raving Rabbids in the store before others clued in, so the next day I drove around and got a second controller/nunchuk at Sears, and picked up Excite Truck and Trauma Center: Second Opinion there too.
Also try out of the way stores - the EBX/Gamestop sells out at Northgate Mall fast, but the other Gamestop just two blocks away sometimes has supply, and the same downtown with the two EBX stores in Pacific Place and Westlake Mall (one block away from each other).
I find asking people if they have any supply at all the counters sometimes frees up extras they have in the back - one salesperson might not know they still have two in the backroom, but the other one does.
You could easily segment the area into several areas: the SoDo district, North Seattle, South Seattle, have some fun missions around Boeing airfields (jack some planes!), and then head over to the Eastside for some fun w/ the suburbanites (Redmond, Bellevue, etc.). There could be some fun easter eggs planted around the Nintendo and Microsoft buildings as well.
...
Exactly - the Wii version would have more easter eggs in the Nintendo, Adobe, and Google buildings, whereas the xBox360 version would have them in the Microsoft, Gates Foundation (Seattle Center), and South Lake Union (Allen lands) areas.
But don't forget the extra power-ups from green and organic substances in Fremont, Center of the Universe.
And for bonus points, if you steal the chopper from the KOMO-4 building, you see all the Grey's Anatomy cast as you take off.
Plus, if you get the powerboat that's a car or the Duck, you can drive across the lakes on the water
And robbing a houseboat you get to take a shortcut from Lake Union to Alki Beach thru a magical portal.
Yes, but nobody (even Nintendo) expected the Wii to take off like it has. So they didn't start things early enough and now see there's money to be made.
...
Not true.
My son and his friends watched the E3 coverage and he sold his Sony stock within two weeks and bought Nintendo stock - he's made a killing.
88 shares and counting - I've got the other 312 shares, and it has been a sweet ride
Anyone who couldn't smell the end result was buying the hype and not paying attention to the reality.
Where. Are. The. Fscking. Light. Saber. Games???
Blame Lucas Arts for not permitting anyone else to dev the games.
Looks like the Wii rules so much we will be able to drift our jacked cars in Tokyo soon!
...
Still looking forward to GTA: Emerald City (aka Seattle)
that and AdBlock keep me sane.
If I wanted my web pages to have video auto-run and constant bouncing moving images, I'd turn on their scripts.
But I don't.
Either serve up static or slow ad pages - with NO SOUND - or you die by my NoScript and AdBlock enabled mouse!
Can we tax Chinese gold farmers for exporting WoW gold to the US then?
Meanwhile, if I choose to transfer 2 gold from my level 21 warrior to my level 16 mage, no taxable activity has occurred. And when my son and I - with the same account - transfer stuff from one of us to the other - my mage uses tailor and enchanting to make things, his warlock miner blacksmith crafts weapons and armor to be enchanted - it all came out of the same account paid by us - 50/50.
But if you try to tell me I can't just give a 12 armor cloak, a nice weapon, and a few 6-slot bags to a starting character out of the kindness of my heart - then get thee behind me, IRS!
Taking kids on flights is more likely a necessity[1] than talking on a cell phone is. As much as they annoy me, I'll usually give parents the benefit of the doubt, as long as they're trying to make the kids behave. Someone chatting on a cell phone? No way.
Have to agree. I empathize with the kid, stuck in a boring cramped space. I empathize with the parent, with a kid who just really should be taking a nap at home. But I have zero empathy for the loud person talking on the cell phone next to me, when we all are forced to suffer a CHOSEN imposition that was chosen by the person with the cell phone to be imposed on the rest of us.
Your rights end where mine start.
Given that the yelling is caused by a lack of sidetone, shouldn't there be an easy technical fix? Just put in a circuit that amplifies the caller's voice, and presumably they'd quiet right down. Why haven't the cell phone makers done this?
Ah, but you forget - we're dealing with Americans - I've noticed in travelling that Americans tend to talk very loudly into cellphones, right next to you, but that in other countries people talk in a quiet tone and move to the back of trains to be away from where other people are, to be courteous.
That's my observation, as an American.
Because if I get on a plane and someone is talking on their cell phone in a typical loud American style way of conversing - for 2-3 hours - in an enclosed space, I'm either going to (after warning you politely twice):
1. grab the phone and throw it to the rear of the plane (or front, if we're at the rear);
2. grab the phone and break it (the hinges don't go that far);
3. grab the phone and immerse it in my coffee; or
4. use it as an anti-theft device against you (bonk).
Sorry, but there are limits.
The price curve coincides with the switch to HDTV on-air transmission switch in 2009. Which is the same timeline for digital-only broadcasts, which will be be carried in both HDTV and 480p Digital bandwidths at first, but the 480p bandwidths can be phased out after that.
Basically, people with non-HDTV sets will not be able to receive broadcasts over the air, but they will be able to buy converters if they have satellite and/or cable and their sets can accept the outputs for them.
From most people's viewpoints, that is when HDTV goes live and they regard themselves as forced to switch.
Not everyone lives in the big city, grandpa.
All are illusionary.
Amount of market share of WinVista 2 years ago - 0.00 percent
So it grew?
So people were (as we were) forced to accept PCs with a WinVista OEM OS pre-installed that we promptly insisted on getting WinXP disks to replace.
In the end, statistics are only as useful as the study design makes them.
Those buses with the window advertising are great. They're much more comfortable than those with plain glass windows. Instead of blinding glare from the sun, you get a nice filtered light, and the insulation they provide gives more comfortable temperatures.
You obviously don't live in Seattle or Vancouver, where it's overcast most of the year and we have a lack of sunshine except for brief periods in the summer.
Well, perhaps we will live in honey-comb shellacked towers, saving energy by sharing walls, with our outer sun-facing windows being partially covered by solar-cell translucent (not transparent) windows that power our hives.
Who said I had one? I'll wait until the PS3 sells for $150 retail to buy one.
Which, since we don't have to go to HDTV until 2009, should be perfect timing.
Meantime, I'll be enjoying my 480p-optimized Wii and all the fun games for it.
And wonder if living inside our cracker box apartments and looking out through our solar-film-enabled windows will be like being stuck in one of those advertising-film-wrapped bus lines?
I mean, it looks cool, but what will it be like?
Sure, put solar cells on the non-transparent portions of my car, or my roof or walls, but the actual windows?
After all, with all those Cell processors, cranking out Ray goodness is a plus.
Now, if they could just grok that the lack of high quality games on the PS3 is not helping - and ditch the Blu-Ray drive that noone wants and/or needs they could drop the price to something reasonable.