I'd say the defining feature was originally the SSD (They were among the first) and the small form. People realized that conventional laptops were totally clumsy designs when all they used them for was 90% web browsing. I don't think web applications were ever an important aspect. Every device shipped since Asus's eeepc has had more than enough power to run sophisticated office suites, photo processing and almost any other 2D application. I think it's precisely because they run all these other "necessities" that that they're so popular. Then on the other hand you have some manufacturers that try to convince everyone that *real* laptops come with Blu-ray burners, 500 gigs of hard drive space and have a 20 inch screen with an insane resolution.
You're generalizing from the Download-Only market. The thing is that WiiWare is a minority platform where only a tiny amount of money is made. Nintendo are certainly keen to get into this growing market, but don't think it's going to edge in on their traditional market anytime soon.
If you exclude the 9/11 attacks which of course happened before the new security, the safest decade is by far the 2000s. By that measure the new standards have done wonders.
Bottom line is stop pulling statistics and drawing hasty conclusions.
I agree to an extent. Terrorism really isn't the huge issue that the government and media make it out to be. It's an outright scandal that we have allowed it to become the dominant issue in international diplomacy. But for all the wars that have been justified because of terrorist attacks, I would happily accept stricter security if it meant preventing attacks and convincing the public that the threat is low. If one attack were to succeed it would give the ruling governments another blank check on foreign policy. As long as we're invading and occupying countries in a "war on terror" and we have warmongers amongst us throwing out threats like it's 1914, I expect everyone who wants to fly to do the utmost to prove that they're not a threat.
What an excessive exaggeration. No matter what your girlfriend says or does, the choices are yours alone. Thank your lucky stars that you can travel so freely and comfortably. Jeez, people get so complacent.
What gets me annoyed is that it won't accept my authentic license keys, presumably because they're for the wrong version of language. That means I can't activate it without having to wipe the system and download and burn the installation media.
I'd also say it's down to the fact that the types of hardware have been mutually exclusive up until fairly recently. Games need hardware specifically designed and tailored for gaming. Any console maker needs to devote tons of work into games development, needs industry experience with 3rd party developers and has to launch with a bang. The PSP and DS successes didn't happen overnight but had been meticulously planned for years.
A Gaming device has to be mass-marketable. So that means no $2000 contract obligation. Contrary to what many "hardcore" gamers like to believe, the majority of every gaming market is still a 6-20 age group, who haven't got fortunes to give to Apple. So it has to fit into the giftable price range. Apple has adressed this to a certain extent with the iPod touch, but obviously without the phone functionality which made the device so interesting.
Ultimately I think that the first true gaming phone is going to be a primarily a gaming device, which you can also use as a phone. Just how the first proper smartphones resemble PDA's more than any phone that people used to use. And it will probably be made by a gaming company, so either Nintendo or Sony. In fact, the next handheld generation will likely have phone functionality. Nintendo's President even said they were looking to create a distribution model similar to the Kindle's, where you pay no fee except to purchase downloadable games.
Yes, it is possible for sensors to give false readings, but that doesn't excuse shoddy engineering and lack of safety and redundancy mechanisms. If you rely on a single device, you should ensure that it never fails (for automotive engineers "never" is usually taken to be one in 10 million by the way). And cars should have an instant way to turn the engine off, without having to battle with a computer interface.
The "emergency brake" isn't really for braking at any speed, it's actually much more dangerous to use. Try using the handbrake at a moderate speed and keeping a straight line. It could be called "redundancy brake", but modern disc brakes have redundancy designed into them too. You shouldn't really ever need to use it to brake.
$50000 is not an excessive price for a luxury car. It puts it on par with comparable sedans, and there are certainly enough Americans prepared to pay $50000 for a car. They wouldn't even have the capacity yet to produce a huge number of cars, so it's important they find a market where they can establish their brand. Even if they were only to gain average market share relative to the price category it would be a spectacular achievement and would be a huge disruption in the industry.
The reason why they deserve huge loans is because they are now the major driving force behind fully battery-electric vehicles and thus not only have huge potential for future industrial development and job creation but are also working towards our long-term energy policies. Even if the Tesla brand remains a niche or the company becomes bankrupt in ten years time, I will bet you that thirty years from now, when people are driving along in their cheap bottom-line electric vehicles they will be using technology developed by Tesla Motors and it's partners. Compare it to the technological achievements made by another niche brand (which BTW have invested heavily in Tesla Motors) to get an idea of what we're talking about here.
Don't forget it was bush who decided to scrap the ISS early, to make a "budget" for the moon. NASA's international partners want to extend the mission.
Realistically, Project Constellation's ultimate goal was returning to the moon. Yeah, we all remember those 3D concept animations of astronauts at moon bases and on mars and asteroids, but that was all fantasy. The truth is that none of this was conceivable with the budget and the vehicles that were planned.
Six years down the line, we haven't even got the light launch vehicle, which is supposed to be much simpler and safer than the heavy vehicle. It wasn't even on track to be able to visit the ISS, which was it's initial goal. Mars was so beyond reach that nobody even started on it. It sure as hell wouldn't have been possible with the Ares V. So to suggest that there was much more to Constellation than an Apollo remake is inaccurate. It's no more on the table than it was in the late sixties.
Ecological systems can be studied much more effectively and for a fraction of the price here on earth. It might be harder to get significant funding without the space aspect, but in essence it would be a waste of resources to do experiments on the moon that can be done perfectly well on earth, only that you have to spend tens of thousands of dollars for every kilogram of material. The scientific merit of sending men to the moon is limited. For the same budget we could do significantly more and better space science by launching robotic probes and observatories. And these fields are chronically underfunded compared to the value of the science we get from them.
This is routine practice for many types of services. My VOIP provider only accepts advance payments and it's most popular for mobile phone contracts. It saves transaction costs and makes the system a lot simpler. It isn't any different from stores offering gift vouchers.
The BBC still has a duty to serve the public, and definitely should not be dictating the tech market. Being the richest public funded network in the world they are always the stronger negotiator and in many other countries the public broadcaster fulfill similar obligations to broadcast free. And while they do show a few purchased U.S. shows, the majority of productions are in-house. It's competitors show the majority of foreign shows on UK TVs.
The signal is still unencrypted, meaning anyone who has the patience to push in the numbers can use a receiver like mine, copy it to their computer, and throw it about all over the internet.
That makes me quite glad I bought an unencumbered DVB-S PVR. It was much cheaper than what you would pay for a freesat box and records to any USB media. Plus every freesat receiver is crippled in a variety of other ways (they make it illegal to receive any other stations than the ones approved by the BBC for example)
But what they intend to do with terrestrial TV is what they've been doing on Satellite for a long time. No standard receiver can understand the EPG data so I have to input everything manually and can't get any info about what's on.
There is no proper encryption as the programmes will still be available for free and unencrypted. With a smart receiver connected to the internet to access a program guide it won't be a problem. What it will do is screw up the functionality of simple receivers that want to record and display program information. It will prevent competition in the receiver market and make using unlicensed boxes awkward and unreliable.
The takedown notice is for media-hosting sites who are unable to check all the content its users upload. The counter-claim is so that the site can offload liability and so that the uploader puts his money where his mouth is at the risk of being sued.
From then on the copyright holders can properly sue the user who has uploaded and published the content, and that's when the case starts to resemble a classic infringement case. Up until this point there is basically no need for lawyers to be involved.
But in the U.S. system lawyers always exaggerate to seek maximum damages in the hope of acting as a deterrent. In this way the EFF is not acting any different from the ridiculous claims media companies usually make. In a sane system this should have resulted in a small price for an attorney's letter.
You have a patent no matte what until it expires, what's the difference? If someone infringes on your copyright, you have the right to sue them. The same goes for patents.
People are resistant to change. Most people would happily keep using the same things over and over without having to change their trained habits. But sometimes you have to make bold moves to push forward. That's where you have to give Microsoft credit for abandoning their old office UI and trying something different which did originally alienate a lot of users.
Corporations are inherently undemocratic. They cannot claim to represent the views of the employees who worked to help the company gain such wealth. They are controlled by a small group of people who were chosen for a completely different purpose. While we accept the huge inequality of power and wealth on an economic level, it would undermine democratic politics.
Plus it's an inappropriate use of corporate money. Just as executives can't help themselves to corporate funds to build personal houses and hire hookers, they shouldn't be paying corporate money to push their personal political views.
A packet of 100 bytes is not similar to a single car. It consists of 800 cars (bits). So if you increase the number of lanes more cars can travel. Each car travels still the same speed (of light) but by allowing more cars at the same time, the delivery (packet) distributed over 800 cars gets delivered faster.
Your reasoning doesn't make sense. First off, if latency were mainly dependent on the signal speed in the cables, they would be only a few milliseconds and would certainly be negligible for the last mile. Second, internet communication is serial, not parallel so the car analogy makes no sense.
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I'd say the defining feature was originally the SSD (They were among the first) and the small form. People realized that conventional laptops were totally clumsy designs when all they used them for was 90% web browsing.
I don't think web applications were ever an important aspect. Every device shipped since Asus's eeepc has had more than enough power to run sophisticated office suites, photo processing and almost any other 2D application. I think it's precisely because they run all these other "necessities" that that they're so popular.
Then on the other hand you have some manufacturers that try to convince everyone that *real* laptops come with Blu-ray burners, 500 gigs of hard drive space and have a 20 inch screen with an insane resolution.
You're generalizing from the Download-Only market. The thing is that WiiWare is a minority platform where only a tiny amount of money is made. Nintendo are certainly keen to get into this growing market, but don't think it's going to edge in on their traditional market anytime soon.
If you exclude the 9/11 attacks which of course happened before the new security, the safest decade is by far the 2000s. By that measure the new standards have done wonders.
Bottom line is stop pulling statistics and drawing hasty conclusions.
I agree to an extent. Terrorism really isn't the huge issue that the government and media make it out to be. It's an outright scandal that we have allowed it to become the dominant issue in international diplomacy.
But for all the wars that have been justified because of terrorist attacks, I would happily accept stricter security if it meant preventing attacks and convincing the public that the threat is low.
If one attack were to succeed it would give the ruling governments another blank check on foreign policy.
As long as we're invading and occupying countries in a "war on terror" and we have warmongers amongst us throwing out threats like it's 1914, I expect everyone who wants to fly to do the utmost to prove that they're not a threat.
What an excessive exaggeration. No matter what your girlfriend says or does, the choices are yours alone.
Thank your lucky stars that you can travel so freely and comfortably. Jeez, people get so complacent.
Um, you don't suppose that might have something to do with the vastly improved security measures do you?
Backward logic is fun.
What gets me annoyed is that it won't accept my authentic license keys, presumably because they're for the wrong version of language. That means I can't activate it without having to wipe the system and download and burn the installation media.
I'd also say it's down to the fact that the types of hardware have been mutually exclusive up until fairly recently. Games need hardware specifically designed and tailored for gaming. Any console maker needs to devote tons of work into games development, needs industry experience with 3rd party developers and has to launch with a bang. The PSP and DS successes didn't happen overnight but had been meticulously planned for years.
A Gaming device has to be mass-marketable. So that means no $2000 contract obligation. Contrary to what many "hardcore" gamers like to believe, the majority of every gaming market is still a 6-20 age group, who haven't got fortunes to give to Apple. So it has to fit into the giftable price range. Apple has adressed this to a certain extent with the iPod touch, but obviously without the phone functionality which made the device so interesting.
Ultimately I think that the first true gaming phone is going to be a primarily a gaming device, which you can also use as a phone. Just how the first proper smartphones resemble PDA's more than any phone that people used to use. And it will probably be made by a gaming company, so either Nintendo or Sony.
In fact, the next handheld generation will likely have phone functionality. Nintendo's President even said they were looking to create a distribution model similar to the Kindle's, where you pay no fee except to purchase downloadable games.
Yes, it is possible for sensors to give false readings, but that doesn't excuse shoddy engineering and lack of safety and redundancy mechanisms. If you rely on a single device, you should ensure that it never fails (for automotive engineers "never" is usually taken to be one in 10 million by the way). And cars should have an instant way to turn the engine off, without having to battle with a computer interface.
The "emergency brake" isn't really for braking at any speed, it's actually much more dangerous to use. Try using the handbrake at a moderate speed and keeping a straight line.
It could be called "redundancy brake", but modern disc brakes have redundancy designed into them too. You shouldn't really ever need to use it to brake.
$50000 is not an excessive price for a luxury car. It puts it on par with comparable sedans, and there are certainly enough Americans prepared to pay $50000 for a car. They wouldn't even have the capacity yet to produce a huge number of cars, so it's important they find a market where they can establish their brand. Even if they were only to gain average market share relative to the price category it would be a spectacular achievement and would be a huge disruption in the industry.
The reason why they deserve huge loans is because they are now the major driving force behind fully battery-electric vehicles and thus not only have huge potential for future industrial development and job creation but are also working towards our long-term energy policies.
Even if the Tesla brand remains a niche or the company becomes bankrupt in ten years time, I will bet you that thirty years from now, when people are driving along in their cheap bottom-line electric vehicles they will be using technology developed by Tesla Motors and it's partners.
Compare it to the technological achievements made by another niche brand (which BTW have invested heavily in Tesla Motors) to get an idea of what we're talking about here.
All but one of the games you mentioned are in the 30 Dollar range. Much cheaper than most videogames and a heck of a lot cheaper than an iPad.
Don't forget it was bush who decided to scrap the ISS early, to make a "budget" for the moon. NASA's international partners want to extend the mission.
Realistically, Project Constellation's ultimate goal was returning to the moon. Yeah, we all remember those 3D concept animations of astronauts at moon bases and on mars and asteroids, but that was all fantasy. The truth is that none of this was conceivable with the budget and the vehicles that were planned.
Six years down the line, we haven't even got the light launch vehicle, which is supposed to be much simpler and safer than the heavy vehicle. It wasn't even on track to be able to visit the ISS, which was it's initial goal.
Mars was so beyond reach that nobody even started on it. It sure as hell wouldn't have been possible with the Ares V.
So to suggest that there was much more to Constellation than an Apollo remake is inaccurate. It's no more on the table than it was in the late sixties.
Ecological systems can be studied much more effectively and for a fraction of the price here on earth. It might be harder to get significant funding without the space aspect, but in essence it would be a waste of resources to do experiments on the moon that can be done perfectly well on earth, only that you have to spend tens of thousands of dollars for every kilogram of material.
The scientific merit of sending men to the moon is limited. For the same budget we could do significantly more and better space science by launching robotic probes and observatories. And these fields are chronically underfunded compared to the value of the science we get from them.
This is routine practice for many types of services. My VOIP provider only accepts advance payments and it's most popular for mobile phone contracts. It saves transaction costs and makes the system a lot simpler. It isn't any different from stores offering gift vouchers.
The BBC still has a duty to serve the public, and definitely should not be dictating the tech market. Being the richest public funded network in the world they are always the stronger negotiator and in many other countries the public broadcaster fulfill similar obligations to broadcast free. And while they do show a few purchased U.S. shows, the majority of productions are in-house. It's competitors show the majority of foreign shows on UK TVs.
The signal is still unencrypted, meaning anyone who has the patience to push in the numbers can use a receiver like mine, copy it to their computer, and throw it about all over the internet.
That makes me quite glad I bought an unencumbered DVB-S PVR. It was much cheaper than what you would pay for a freesat box and records to any USB media. Plus every freesat receiver is crippled in a variety of other ways (they make it illegal to receive any other stations than the ones approved by the BBC for example)
But what they intend to do with terrestrial TV is what they've been doing on Satellite for a long time. No standard receiver can understand the EPG data so I have to input everything manually and can't get any info about what's on.
There is no proper encryption as the programmes will still be available for free and unencrypted. With a smart receiver connected to the internet to access a program guide it won't be a problem. What it will do is screw up the functionality of simple receivers that want to record and display program information. It will prevent competition in the receiver market and make using unlicensed boxes awkward and unreliable.
The takedown notice is for media-hosting sites who are unable to check all the content its users upload. The counter-claim is so that the site can offload liability and so that the uploader puts his money where his mouth is at the risk of being sued.
From then on the copyright holders can properly sue the user who has uploaded and published the content, and that's when the case starts to resemble a classic infringement case. Up until this point there is basically no need for lawyers to be involved.
But in the U.S. system lawyers always exaggerate to seek maximum damages in the hope of acting as a deterrent. In this way the EFF is not acting any different from the ridiculous claims media companies usually make.
In a sane system this should have resulted in a small price for an attorney's letter.
You have a patent no matte what until it expires, what's the difference?
If someone infringes on your copyright, you have the right to sue them. The same goes for patents.
People are resistant to change. Most people would happily keep using the same things over and over without having to change their trained habits. But sometimes you have to make bold moves to push forward. That's where you have to give Microsoft credit for abandoning their old office UI and trying something different which did originally alienate a lot of users.
Corporations are inherently undemocratic. They cannot claim to represent the views of the employees who worked to help the company gain such wealth. They are controlled by a small group of people who were chosen for a completely different purpose.
While we accept the huge inequality of power and wealth on an economic level, it would undermine democratic politics.
Plus it's an inappropriate use of corporate money. Just as executives can't help themselves to corporate funds to build personal houses and hire hookers, they shouldn't be paying corporate money to push their personal political views.
A packet of 100 bytes is not similar to a single car. It consists of 800 cars (bits). So if you increase the number of lanes more cars can travel. Each car travels still the same speed (of light) but by allowing more cars at the same time, the delivery (packet) distributed over 800 cars gets delivered faster.
Your reasoning doesn't make sense. First off, if latency were mainly dependent on the signal speed in the cables, they would be only a few milliseconds and would certainly be negligible for the last mile.
Second, internet communication is serial, not parallel so the car analogy makes no sense.