While the Wiimote is pretty good, game companies need to understand its limitations - and this includes Nintendo. Wii Sports is a lot of fun, because it uses mostly relativistic movements of the controller. By contrast, Super Monkey Balls includes a lot of games that require precision aiming, like a gun. This does NOT work well. It was frustrating. So it depends what you use it for. It's a great controller, great functionality - but its limits need to be understood. Furthermore, I don't want to put as much energy into my game playing as many of the games such as Wii Sports makes you - usually I want to relax. Wii Sports/etc are GREAT fun, but I don't want those most of the time. So I hope that companies realize that that functionality should be supplemental, in most cases, to the game play, and not the be-all end-all of control.
Describe it? Who cares. LOOK at it. Put a DVD on (480p), then put a good HD TV broadcast on (1080i or 720p, depending on the network). There's a HUGE difference.
Anyway, this is quite strange - that it can't scale. I can't believe that. That being said, please god somebody clean up the summary so it makes sense and is not completely misleading.
Because I don't think that is what Apple's customers (incl. myself) are asking for. With a 17" screen, what are you going to do with graphics that the GMA950 can't handle? There's no reason for Apple to include a dedicated graphics card. On my MacBook, I've never missed having a dedicated graphics card - i have no need for one. So why should Apple go through the expense of providing one?
Be it telephony, cable or power lines, VOIP can't exist without the centralized utilities. Laying lines is a massive expense with little in the way of reward. Only companies that can be gaurunteed some profit on them can handle it. And that's just the end user (lines to the house) part of it. You have to have bandwidth, and it's the centralized companies that have that. Decentralization only works when you have free or standard access to already laid (as in, by those centralized companies) lines/bandwidth.
7x100GB is not 7 times more reliable than one 750 GB drive. It is 7x more reliable at not losing ALL of your data, perhaps, since you could only lose 100GB at a time. But it is not any more reliable for retaining ALL of your data, either. The big advantage in reliability to high capacity drives is the ability to RAID them in a relatively small enclosure - RAIDing 7 or 8 drives would be quite a task, while doing 2-4 drives is relatively easy.
However, JPG isn't an open standard, is it? Isn't it controlled by proprietary licenses as well?
Re:Creative is cheaper? Huh?
on
Apple Sues Creative
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· Score: 2, Informative
I don't know exactly what player you're referencing, but for example, the Creative Zen Vision:M 30GB and the Apple iPod 30GB are both $299 (ignoring Apple edu & corporate discounts, even). And that's not even getting into the software side of the equation.
Ah, I KNEW the RIAA had the best interests of the public at heart! I'm glad they're so forward thinking, realizing what's truly important in the world! It makes me all warm and fuzzy inside!
It's great to know that something launched before I was born (1980), can still be found and active.. but at the same time, where is the spirit NASA used to have? These days it always seems about money & more money, while they whine and complain about the ever present-flaws in the space shuttle.
In addition to what LiquidCooled said... we also no longer have that little booster called the "Cold War." During that time we didn't care how much money we spent as long as we were ahead of the Soviets. Being ahead of the Soviets was the jusifitication for everything. Now they need to find new justifications, and the public doesn't necessarily support science for science's sake. So they have less money. This means less "incredible" missions, and a stretching of older technology beyond what it was meant for (Space Shuttle). It also means that the missions must have more practical application - which means a lot more close Earth orbit stuff (satelites, etc).
Similar things have happened all over the place, in the new economy... not because of the Cold War, but still similar. Note how there's no more pure research facilities left? IBM's Watson facility is perhaps the last left, but even that has turned to more practical application of research than research for research's sake.
Dammit, I just spent 4 mod points on this story, but I find I must respond to this comment.
iTunes has an automatic volume adjuster that will analyze all your music and equalize the volume. It works amazingly well. Is it perfect? No, but it's pretty close to. And at the same time, songs that are SUPPOSED to be louder ARE louder - but songs don't have that track to track variation just from different recording.
Laptops have reached a point where they're fast enough for most anything. Heck, if you look at Apple's current offerings, their desktops and laptops use basically the same hardware! (of course, the PowerMac excepted)
Some people such as myself need Photoshop on the go. Others, also like myself, only have 1 license. Third, I have two systems: a Mac mini (G4) and a Thinkpad T40 (1.3 GHz Centrino, I believe). Should I therefore not use Photoshop, since both are (basically - the Mac mini is an iBook) laptops? Should people with iMac's not use Photoshop either, since those systems use Core Duo's?
Low end systems and laptops both passed the point years ago where they were fast enough for almost anything. Sure, Photoshop is faster on a high end G5 or P4 or whatever system, but it's very useable on any modern laptop or low end system.
That article yesterday about a Professor banning laptops from her classroom (although I don't know why that's major news - most of my undergrad classes wouldn't allow them, though all my law school courses do) seems to fit perfectly under this. Maybe that prof was on to something. Personally I use phones (txt msging), laptops and PDA's all the time, while doing other things - including my laptop in class - and I know for sure that I am not paying full attention to any one thing - even if I'm only using my laptop to take notes.
I mostly agree with the article, but I'd rephrase it. This is not about "ugly sells" but rather about "simple sells." Having flashy pages simply distracts from the message. But having nicely formatted text can be nice. eBay or Google may be "ugly," but more accurately they're simple (although I sort of disagree about eBay). Google doesn't load up its page with tons of junk, as does Yahoo... and that's probably why I use Google.
One thing I really disagree with is the articles talk about trust, how people feel they can trust an ugly website more than a nice one. Here, personally, I think that if somebody can't afford nice webdesign, they can't afford good web security. That being said, this is where my rephrase comes in again - simple and clean design leads me to trust a site more than does flashy sites.
To be fair, the article does talk about simplicity a lot... I just feel that it points to ugliness instead of simplicity as the driving factor, and that's not quite correct. Simple sites may be ugly, but they don't have to be - and if they're not, simple and clean is better than simple and ugly.
I might be missing something here, but I don't see anything about WHY the xbox is better? Forgetting everything already said (complication/hacking, time, etc - and I take issue with the fact that "XBMC is better for everyone here" since I'm utterly sick of hacked half-ass solutions that occassionally work, hence why I've been switching all my systems to Mac's over the past year.), WHY is the XBox better?
Apple Trailers website has 1080p video;) Makes my G4 Mac Mini choke and die. But yeah, there's absolutely no station (that I know of) that broadcasts in 1080p... two of the networks use 1080i, two use 720p. Not sure about the cable channels, which is why I said "that I know of," but I assume they're basically the same.
Those EyeTV requirements, unless I'm badly mistaken don't take dual core CPU's into account.
I never expected this to be national news, when he told me about a week ago (although at that time, they only knew they'd been acquired - it was rumored that it was Cisco, but they didn't know). Such a small company, I never expected it would be such big news.
Of course, this means their R&D is supposedly moving to CA (from Waterbury, CT), which doesn't make me happy.
osCommerce seemed like a nice, easy, powerful solution when I decided to install it. Instead, it has been more of a pain than it's worth.
A store with no ability to do coupon codes? (Without massive modification, which can't easily be done if your store is already running)
I find it loses orders sometimes
I've never gotten shipping to work right - hard to do shipping cost per item (with different items having different costs) per country (or even, just North America v. International, per item).
Admin panel navigation is... strange, to say the least. Once you go into the pending orders, and leave, you can't then go back to just pending orders - you have to go to all orders (unless yous tart back on/admin/ ).
Generally it's just inflexible, even with all the plugins you can put in.
Yes, it'll play ripped DVD's. To play video through Front Row, you need to either have it mountable, or loaded into iTunes. So MPG, MP4, QT, etc, or DVD's.
Not sure about multichannel sound offhand, but I'm pretty sure.
It'll also play trailers from the Apple Trailers site;)
Someone should have modded that comment up. I would if I had points at the moment.
Anyway, you're right, Mazda is Ford. To be specific, Ford owns a controlling interest in them of approx 1/3. They use the same engines (Duratec/MZR 23 (I4), Duratec/MZR 30 (V6), though sometimes tuned differently),
same platforms: (CD3/etc (they use different names) is the Mazda6, Ford Fusion, Mercury Milan, Lincoln Zephyr)
the Euro Focus (not yet the American), Volvo S40, and Mazda3
That being said, the RX-8 does not share its platform with anything else, though I'm sure many of the components inside are the same.
The Mazda6 is even made in Flat Rock, MI alongside, if I remember correctly, the Mustang (and in the factory that previously made the Mazda MX-6 and Ford Probe).
Mazda is definitely Ford, and it has never been doing better.
Apple has NEVER released a standalone OSX
on
OSx86 Cracked Again
·
· Score: 1
This may have already been said, and my bad if so, but Apple has NEVER, to the best of my knowledge, released a standalone copy of OSX - PPC, x86 or otherwise. They've only released upgrade versions in boxes. You have to buy a machine to get a standalone copy.
Google may indeed have a hard time ahead of it, especially legally. It's legal bills are certainly going to be a large amount of their budget. Personally, Google scares me - they're a giant, and they succeed at almost everything they do, and what's almost worse - they usually have good products. This sounds good, but it just means they're entering more and more arena's, as the article says, and what happens when one day they control everything?
At the end of the day, even if Google stops expanding right now - cuts out Google Earth, Google News, etc it would still have a massively profitable advertising business. So even if its growth slows, even if its stock plumets (face it, it is unreasonably high), it isn't going anywhere. As Google itself said - there's no reason to worry about the stock dip.
Slashdot Mirror
While the Wiimote is pretty good, game companies need to understand its limitations - and this includes Nintendo. Wii Sports is a lot of fun, because it uses mostly relativistic movements of the controller. By contrast, Super Monkey Balls includes a lot of games that require precision aiming, like a gun. This does NOT work well. It was frustrating. So it depends what you use it for. It's a great controller, great functionality - but its limits need to be understood. Furthermore, I don't want to put as much energy into my game playing as many of the games such as Wii Sports makes you - usually I want to relax. Wii Sports/etc are GREAT fun, but I don't want those most of the time. So I hope that companies realize that that functionality should be supplemental, in most cases, to the game play, and not the be-all end-all of control.
Describe it? Who cares. LOOK at it. Put a DVD on (480p), then put a good HD TV broadcast on (1080i or 720p, depending on the network). There's a HUGE difference. Anyway, this is quite strange - that it can't scale. I can't believe that. That being said, please god somebody clean up the summary so it makes sense and is not completely misleading.
Because I don't think that is what Apple's customers (incl. myself) are asking for. With a 17" screen, what are you going to do with graphics that the GMA950 can't handle? There's no reason for Apple to include a dedicated graphics card. On my MacBook, I've never missed having a dedicated graphics card - i have no need for one. So why should Apple go through the expense of providing one?
But you've never seen SNAKES ON A PLANE "THere's motherfucking snakes on the motherfucking plane!"
Be it telephony, cable or power lines, VOIP can't exist without the centralized utilities. Laying lines is a massive expense with little in the way of reward. Only companies that can be gaurunteed some profit on them can handle it. And that's just the end user (lines to the house) part of it. You have to have bandwidth, and it's the centralized companies that have that. Decentralization only works when you have free or standard access to already laid (as in, by those centralized companies) lines/bandwidth.
OK Willy Wonka... let them go. Let them go now. You cannot keep them. ...
But the elevator looks so darn sexy even with the people trapped in it!
7x100GB is not 7 times more reliable than one 750 GB drive. It is 7x more reliable at not losing ALL of your data, perhaps, since you could only lose 100GB at a time. But it is not any more reliable for retaining ALL of your data, either. The big advantage in reliability to high capacity drives is the ability to RAID them in a relatively small enclosure - RAIDing 7 or 8 drives would be quite a task, while doing 2-4 drives is relatively easy.
Like all of you, I see no need for this format.
However, JPG isn't an open standard, is it? Isn't it controlled by proprietary licenses as well?
I don't know exactly what player you're referencing, but for example, the Creative Zen Vision:M 30GB and the Apple iPod 30GB are both $299 (ignoring Apple edu & corporate discounts, even). And that's not even getting into the software side of the equation.
Ah, I KNEW the RIAA had the best interests of the public at heart! I'm glad they're so forward thinking, realizing what's truly important in the world! It makes me all warm and fuzzy inside!
It's great to know that something launched before I was born (1980), can still be found and active.. but at the same time, where is the spirit NASA used to have? These days it always seems about money & more money, while they whine and complain about the ever present-flaws in the space shuttle.
In addition to what LiquidCooled said... we also no longer have that little booster called the "Cold War." During that time we didn't care how much money we spent as long as we were ahead of the Soviets. Being ahead of the Soviets was the jusifitication for everything. Now they need to find new justifications, and the public doesn't necessarily support science for science's sake. So they have less money. This means less "incredible" missions, and a stretching of older technology beyond what it was meant for (Space Shuttle). It also means that the missions must have more practical application - which means a lot more close Earth orbit stuff (satelites, etc).
Similar things have happened all over the place, in the new economy... not because of the Cold War, but still similar. Note how there's no more pure research facilities left? IBM's Watson facility is perhaps the last left, but even that has turned to more practical application of research than research for research's sake.
Dammit, I just spent 4 mod points on this story, but I find I must respond to this comment.
iTunes has an automatic volume adjuster that will analyze all your music and equalize the volume. It works amazingly well. Is it perfect? No, but it's pretty close to. And at the same time, songs that are SUPPOSED to be louder ARE louder - but songs don't have that track to track variation just from different recording.
Laptops have reached a point where they're fast enough for most anything. Heck, if you look at Apple's current offerings, their desktops and laptops use basically the same hardware! (of course, the PowerMac excepted)
Some people such as myself need Photoshop on the go. Others, also like myself, only have 1 license. Third, I have two systems: a Mac mini (G4) and a Thinkpad T40 (1.3 GHz Centrino, I believe). Should I therefore not use Photoshop, since both are (basically - the Mac mini is an iBook) laptops? Should people with iMac's not use Photoshop either, since those systems use Core Duo's?
Low end systems and laptops both passed the point years ago where they were fast enough for almost anything. Sure, Photoshop is faster on a high end G5 or P4 or whatever system, but it's very useable on any modern laptop or low end system.
That article yesterday about a Professor banning laptops from her classroom (although I don't know why that's major news - most of my undergrad classes wouldn't allow them, though all my law school courses do) seems to fit perfectly under this. Maybe that prof was on to something. Personally I use phones (txt msging), laptops and PDA's all the time, while doing other things - including my laptop in class - and I know for sure that I am not paying full attention to any one thing - even if I'm only using my laptop to take notes.
I mostly agree with the article, but I'd rephrase it. This is not about "ugly sells" but rather about "simple sells." Having flashy pages simply distracts from the message. But having nicely formatted text can be nice. eBay or Google may be "ugly," but more accurately they're simple (although I sort of disagree about eBay). Google doesn't load up its page with tons of junk, as does Yahoo... and that's probably why I use Google.
One thing I really disagree with is the articles talk about trust, how people feel they can trust an ugly website more than a nice one. Here, personally, I think that if somebody can't afford nice webdesign, they can't afford good web security. That being said, this is where my rephrase comes in again - simple and clean design leads me to trust a site more than does flashy sites.
To be fair, the article does talk about simplicity a lot... I just feel that it points to ugliness instead of simplicity as the driving factor, and that's not quite correct. Simple sites may be ugly, but they don't have to be - and if they're not, simple and clean is better than simple and ugly.
I might be missing something here, but I don't see anything about WHY the xbox is better? Forgetting everything already said (complication/hacking, time, etc - and I take issue with the fact that "XBMC is better for everyone here" since I'm utterly sick of hacked half-ass solutions that occassionally work, hence why I've been switching all my systems to Mac's over the past year.), WHY is the XBox better?
Apple Trailers website has 1080p video ;) Makes my G4 Mac Mini choke and die. But yeah, there's absolutely no station (that I know of) that broadcasts in 1080p... two of the networks use 1080i, two use 720p. Not sure about the cable channels, which is why I said "that I know of," but I assume they're basically the same.
Those EyeTV requirements, unless I'm badly mistaken don't take dual core CPU's into account.
I never expected this to be national news, when he told me about a week ago (although at that time, they only knew they'd been acquired - it was rumored that it was Cisco, but they didn't know). Such a small company, I never expected it would be such big news.
Of course, this means their R&D is supposedly moving to CA (from Waterbury, CT), which doesn't make me happy.
A livestock farmer AND an enviornmental lawyer? There's a potent combination! JD from Cow College?
Seriously though, I agree with him, from my limited knowledge
osCommerce seemed like a nice, easy, powerful solution when I decided to install it. Instead, it has been more of a pain than it's worth.
/admin/ ).
A store with no ability to do coupon codes? (Without massive modification, which can't easily be done if your store is already running)
I find it loses orders sometimes
I've never gotten shipping to work right - hard to do shipping cost per item (with different items having different costs) per country (or even, just North America v. International, per item).
Admin panel navigation is... strange, to say the least. Once you go into the pending orders, and leave, you can't then go back to just pending orders - you have to go to all orders (unless yous tart back on
Generally it's just inflexible, even with all the plugins you can put in.
Yes, it'll play ripped DVD's. To play video through Front Row, you need to either have it mountable, or loaded into iTunes. So MPG, MP4, QT, etc, or DVD's.
;)
Not sure about multichannel sound offhand, but I'm pretty sure.
It'll also play trailers from the Apple Trailers site
Someone should have modded that comment up. I would if I had points at the moment.
Anyway, you're right, Mazda is Ford. To be specific, Ford owns a controlling interest in them of approx 1/3. They use the same engines (Duratec/MZR 23 (I4), Duratec/MZR 30 (V6), though sometimes tuned differently),
same platforms: (CD3/etc (they use different names) is the Mazda6, Ford Fusion, Mercury Milan, Lincoln Zephyr)
the Euro Focus (not yet the American), Volvo S40, and Mazda3
That being said, the RX-8 does not share its platform with anything else, though I'm sure many of the components inside are the same.
The Mazda6 is even made in Flat Rock, MI alongside, if I remember correctly, the Mustang (and in the factory that previously made the Mazda MX-6 and Ford Probe).
Mazda is definitely Ford, and it has never been doing better.
This may have already been said, and my bad if so, but Apple has NEVER, to the best of my knowledge, released a standalone copy of OSX - PPC, x86 or otherwise. They've only released upgrade versions in boxes. You have to buy a machine to get a standalone copy.
Didn't they merge again?
Google may indeed have a hard time ahead of it, especially legally. It's legal bills are certainly going to be a large amount of their budget. Personally, Google scares me - they're a giant, and they succeed at almost everything they do, and what's almost worse - they usually have good products. This sounds good, but it just means they're entering more and more arena's, as the article says, and what happens when one day they control everything?
At the end of the day, even if Google stops expanding right now - cuts out Google Earth, Google News, etc it would still have a massively profitable advertising business. So even if its growth slows, even if its stock plumets (face it, it is unreasonably high), it isn't going anywhere. As Google itself said - there's no reason to worry about the stock dip.