On the other hand (and I say this as an AMD user), if were to stop supporting my cards right now (R7950s), I sure as hell wouldn't buy from them again. AMD has a vested interest in fixing bugs and improving performance in cards already in customers' hands. Goodwill is important to a company, and I'm not aware of any consumer group that's as fickle or easily offended as gamers.
I have 2x R7950s in my machine, and have been reasonably satisfied with them. The microstutter, as people call it, is pretty annoying at times, and had I known it was a particular issue with AMD cards, I would have gone with nVidia. The second issue is damned capacitor squeal, another thing I didn't know would be an issue. I've always run EVGA cards before this rig, and never encountered it (it's a buzz that happens in some game menus and, oddly enough, when there's a lot of white on the screen--meaning lots of the time in Skyrim).
If AMD can reduce the stutter (which still happens on nVidia cards--just not as often), that will be great. I'm running the current betas and still notice it happening from time to time. Not sure if it's supposed to be fixed in them (there's no mention in the changelog), so I can only hope that will be a future update. It's been a surprisingly long time since the last update came out--over two months now. In the past, they've pretty much been monthly, or so it seemed.
1. Read a page on one tab. 2. Click another tab. 3. Wait while it switches. I'd say it's about a 1/4-second delay--not enough to be awful, but also enough to be noticeable. As another said, the processor should definitely be fast enough to handle it--an iPad can do it easily enough. Heck, my Raspberry Pi running over VNC is reasonably quick about it (though the delay is obviously bigger). I'd guess it's a software issue.
My mom's laptop failed, so I convinced her to get the Samsung Chromebook. So far, she says she really likes it. It's dead simple to use, as it pretty much only does what she needs--web browsing and email. There's no settings for her to mess up, updates are silent and automatic, and it's next to impossible to "break" the OS. I offered to set it up for her, but all I actually had to do was enter her Gmail password and the WiFi password. The only setting I changed was to enable Google Instant.
From my own observations of playing around for 10 minutes, the hardware itself leaves a (very) little bit to be desired. The trackpad feels a little rough (though I'm comparing it to a MacBook Air, so it's hardly a fair comparison), and there is a noticeable delay when switching tabs. Again, though, I'm comparing a $250 machine to a $1400 machine, so it's hard to complain. Software-wise, accessing the settings page is slightly unintuitive (from the "desktop", click your username; it's not in the app list). Also, there's no caps lock, which may or may not be annoying. It's been replaced by a search button which doubles as the Windows key on a PC keyboard.
My worry about TESO is that it won't be possible to mod. For me, a huge amount of the fun of the TES games is the modding community. There's also a lot of fun in abusing the console once you beat the game legitimately.
But most of all--bleh. I'm tired of MMOs at this point. I wasted enough months on WoW, and then another few on SWTOR. I had a lot of fun in both, but any new MMO would have to be radically different from the formula for me to be interested at all, especially if I'm expected to put up with recurring payments (either via subscription or microtransactions).
My (likely--hopefully--erroneous) understanding of Islam is that everything is the will of Allah. If that's the case, then Allah wills blasphemy. Thus, it stands to reason that blasphemy doesn't exist, because (presumably) anything Allah does is holy.
I hope my understanding is wrong, because that's more insanity than I'm comfortable with.
I would argue that the 360 has more mind-share in the US--but at the same time, it's the least relevant console. Most games these days are multiplatform, and now that developers have had more time with the PS3, the PS3 ports are almost always superior. The 360 does have a few good exclusives, but those often wind up on the PC as well, which ends up getting the superior ports (Halo is a notable exception). Sony, meanwhile, has been amazingly open to a diverse range of niche titles that don't wind up anywhere else. I don't like Sony very much, but I have to give them credit for that--during the PS2 days, they were hardcore about not letting anything that seemed "old-tech" onto the platform. The PS3 also has free online. $60/year for the 360 may not be much, but that's the price of a new game, and it means that the platform is more accessible for casual multiplayers.
(Where the 360 clearly has the PS3 beat is in the system OS, even if the constant ads are annoying. This isn't too surprising, given Microsoft's origins.)
The tasks a typical undergrad are asked to complete with a word processor are not very advanced, so OpenOffice instead of Word should not be much of a hurdle.
This author may not know any photographers who are enthusiastic about 3D, but I don't know any people who care about it. I teach kids, and even they seem not to care, and many are hostile toward it (due to headaches). Beyond their apathy, it's apparently not even good for young kids to watch. Who's it marketed to, then?
I maintain an Amazon wishlist for things I would like as gifts...and I don't put any digital items on it. I enjoy getting a physical item; there's just something more meaningful about receiving an actual book than an incomprehensible string of 25 alphanumeric characters.
This is actually fascinating to me. I'm always forgetting that Lego has been around longer than I give it credit. My prime Lego days were in the mid-90s and included sets from the '80s that I inherited from my brother. They were all themed sets, and they all had pretty detailed instructions. Did the older sets still have instructions, at least?
I think this story is a non-issue. I recently built the Millennium Falcon for work (yes, you read that right). It's an expensive set, but I was surprised that it only had two non-standard pieces (those comprising the cockpit). You could easily make something else with the pieces, if you so desired, or you could follow the instructions (which seemed barely more detailed than when I played with the Space Police sets) and make a cool, recognizable ship.
The only way I would think that Lego has sold out would be if a significant number of the pieces in any given set were non-standard and hard to incorporate into a custom design. Maybe that is a case and the set I built was an outlier, but it seems the option is still there to built whatever you want. In other words, Lego seems to be pretty much like it was when I was a kid, only with more brand recognition.
BB10 has some good ideas. Unfortunately, I'm not optimistic for its future. I will say I'm surprised that RIM still managed to turn a profit, even if it was hugely diminished from last year's. Who exactly is buying Blackberry phones?
I would never buy a gun with a computer ID system. Beyond the chance of failure ("oh no, you forgot the battery!" "sorry, your hands are so sweaty they're interfering with the electronics!" "nope, you're not holding it exactly like you did when you imprinted it!"), I'm not the only one living in the house. What if something happens when I'm not home? The gun should be a viable personal defense weapon for any responsible person in the household, not just for me.
Personally, while I'm pro-2nd amendment, I do think they could do something to help make sure people are more responsible with the guns they buy. Requiring you to attend and pass a (low-cost) safety course before you can purchase your first gun is probably a good idea. It would do nothing to stop a sociopath from going on a rampage, but maybe it will help prevent some accidental deaths.
For the sociopaths, I'm afraid no legislation will fix them. Outlawing guns altogether won't fix the problem, either. Nobody seems to be reporting on the fact that, the day of the tragedy in Connecticut, a man in China stabbed 22 elementary school children:
Thankfully, there were no deaths in that incident, but it proves the point that a psychopath will act like a psychopath, and if he wants to go on a murderous rampage, there are plenty of options available to him.
The arguments against magazine disconnects are admittedly all edge cases. One argument I've read is a bit more compelling than people claiming they want to be able to hot reload (as if they have the skill necessary to do that properly), but admittedly still an edge case:
If you are familiar with a gun with a magazine disconnect, say a Browning Hi-Power, then you may develop bad habits that put you at risk if you use a gun that doesn't have the feature. Yes, you should always treat the gun as loaded and dangerous, but the magazine disconnect effectively trains you to think of a gun as harmless when you don't have a magazine inserted. This is a dangerous mentality. It can be overcome, yes, but how many people are so diligent in their thinking?
I own a number of guns (contrary to what is a disturbing level of popular belief, that makes me no more of a nut-job than someone who collects stamps or coins). I have only one that has a magazine disconnect, and because of it it is not my "go-to" gun, should the need to use it in earnest ever arise. My current go-to gun is a CZ 75, but I'm considering changing to a S&W M&P 9 that has no manual safety mechanisms.
How do I keep my guns safe? Well, I have safes. A large one for storage and a small one for my personal defense weapon. Unless I'm taking a gun to the range or cleaning it, no gun is ever out of the safe. I don't live with kids, but should my nieces or nephews ever come over, they don't know where the safe is, and they don't know what the combination is. Beyond that, their parents have trained them what to do should they ever come across a gun (and tested them on this training in a controlled scenario).
Mod parent up. If these fragments were truly the word of god, then surely they would contain useful information that would increase our knowledge of the world/universe and would remain true even today.
I disagree. Look at what the world was like during the time the Bible was written. Look at the level of technology, the politics, the treatment of human of human life in general. What's more important for those people: Learning how to harness the atom, or how to live a healthy and fulfilling life? What would the Romans have done with nukes? Were they at the right stage of social advancement that they would rightly fear their use? I would imagine universal themes--brotherhood, love, all that jazz--are more important than mathematics or physics. I also don't think God--if such a being even exists--would care too much about our technological progression.
Besides, there definitely are things in the Bible that still hold true to this day. Don't steal, don't murder, love thy neighbor, etc.
(Disclosure: I'm not religious, and probably never will be. I do know a lot of religious people, though, and have some devout Christians in my immediate family. No, they don't think the Bible was written by God.)
It's another case where I understand the "reasoning" behind it, since someone on a computer will use more data than someone on a phone. However, as this article points out, providing that extra data is basically free for the carriers, so the added charge is asinine.
Even worse, they don't even give you special software. The functionality is built-in to the phone; all you're paying for is a license file that says you're allowed to use it.
I doubt anyone here is really surprised by this. On the one hand, the arguments made by the ISPs make some sense: as more and more people go online and download more and more multimedia and apps alongside simple web browsing (which also uses more data than it used to), then of course bandwidth usage is also going to go up. However, that argument ignores the other side of the coin--namely that the technology the ISPs use continues to improve, becoming more and more capable of meeting (or exceeding) that demand. The caps also ignore usage patterns, peak hours, etc.
If the ISPs cut you off entirely when you exceed your cap, then their argument might have some weight. But they don't do that. They let you keep going, at the same speed you were before. Only they charge you extra money.
What borders on criminal is that they're so bad about informing you of when you approach the cap. Though she claims never to use the Internet on her phone, my mother always goes over cap. She has only twice received a notification from AT&T that she was approaching the cap--both of which came two days(!) after she had already gone over her allotted amount.
I'm still on a grandfathered unlimited AT&T account. I come nowhere near 3GB of usage each month (I'm almost always on WiFi), but I have no intention of dropping down to a cheaper account. It's maddening that I can't get tethering (officially...) without going to one of their crap capped plans.
Unfortunately, most of those screenshots look nothing like the default install. I just installed it on my Pi to see what it looked like, as it's been years since I ran it. It looks nice, but it's hard to get a good feel for what it's really like on such a weak system.
Slashdot Mirror
On the other hand (and I say this as an AMD user), if were to stop supporting my cards right now (R7950s), I sure as hell wouldn't buy from them again. AMD has a vested interest in fixing bugs and improving performance in cards already in customers' hands. Goodwill is important to a company, and I'm not aware of any consumer group that's as fickle or easily offended as gamers.
I'm using the current betas and haven't noticed any change in microstutter, so far as I can tell (2x R7950s).
I have 2x R7950s in my machine, and have been reasonably satisfied with them. The microstutter, as people call it, is pretty annoying at times, and had I known it was a particular issue with AMD cards, I would have gone with nVidia. The second issue is damned capacitor squeal, another thing I didn't know would be an issue. I've always run EVGA cards before this rig, and never encountered it (it's a buzz that happens in some game menus and, oddly enough, when there's a lot of white on the screen--meaning lots of the time in Skyrim).
If AMD can reduce the stutter (which still happens on nVidia cards--just not as often), that will be great. I'm running the current betas and still notice it happening from time to time. Not sure if it's supposed to be fixed in them (there's no mention in the changelog), so I can only hope that will be a future update. It's been a surprisingly long time since the last update came out--over two months now. In the past, they've pretty much been monthly, or so it seemed.
Ah, Slashdot: Where having something positive to say about a product means you're a shill. I had a longer response written, but what's the point?
Well, here's what happens:
1. Read a page on one tab.
2. Click another tab.
3. Wait while it switches. I'd say it's about a 1/4-second delay--not enough to be awful, but also enough to be noticeable. As another said, the processor should definitely be fast enough to handle it--an iPad can do it easily enough. Heck, my Raspberry Pi running over VNC is reasonably quick about it (though the delay is obviously bigger). I'd guess it's a software issue.
WebRTC?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebRTC
My mom's laptop failed, so I convinced her to get the Samsung Chromebook. So far, she says she really likes it. It's dead simple to use, as it pretty much only does what she needs--web browsing and email. There's no settings for her to mess up, updates are silent and automatic, and it's next to impossible to "break" the OS. I offered to set it up for her, but all I actually had to do was enter her Gmail password and the WiFi password. The only setting I changed was to enable Google Instant.
From my own observations of playing around for 10 minutes, the hardware itself leaves a (very) little bit to be desired. The trackpad feels a little rough (though I'm comparing it to a MacBook Air, so it's hardly a fair comparison), and there is a noticeable delay when switching tabs. Again, though, I'm comparing a $250 machine to a $1400 machine, so it's hard to complain. Software-wise, accessing the settings page is slightly unintuitive (from the "desktop", click your username; it's not in the app list). Also, there's no caps lock, which may or may not be annoying. It's been replaced by a search button which doubles as the Windows key on a PC keyboard.
My worry about TESO is that it won't be possible to mod. For me, a huge amount of the fun of the TES games is the modding community. There's also a lot of fun in abusing the console once you beat the game legitimately.
But most of all--bleh. I'm tired of MMOs at this point. I wasted enough months on WoW, and then another few on SWTOR. I had a lot of fun in both, but any new MMO would have to be radically different from the formula for me to be interested at all, especially if I'm expected to put up with recurring payments (either via subscription or microtransactions).
I also am outraged that my 4-slice toaster seems to be restricted, it will NOT run Linux. This is clearly M$0ft's doing.
That's your problem. *nix isn't compatible with 4-slice toasters yet, though you can get NetBSD running on a standard 2-slice.
My (likely--hopefully--erroneous) understanding of Islam is that everything is the will of Allah. If that's the case, then Allah wills blasphemy. Thus, it stands to reason that blasphemy doesn't exist, because (presumably) anything Allah does is holy.
I hope my understanding is wrong, because that's more insanity than I'm comfortable with.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!
I would argue that the 360 has more mind-share in the US--but at the same time, it's the least relevant console. Most games these days are multiplatform, and now that developers have had more time with the PS3, the PS3 ports are almost always superior. The 360 does have a few good exclusives, but those often wind up on the PC as well, which ends up getting the superior ports (Halo is a notable exception). Sony, meanwhile, has been amazingly open to a diverse range of niche titles that don't wind up anywhere else. I don't like Sony very much, but I have to give them credit for that--during the PS2 days, they were hardcore about not letting anything that seemed "old-tech" onto the platform. The PS3 also has free online. $60/year for the 360 may not be much, but that's the price of a new game, and it means that the platform is more accessible for casual multiplayers.
(Where the 360 clearly has the PS3 beat is in the system OS, even if the constant ads are annoying. This isn't too surprising, given Microsoft's origins.)
The tasks a typical undergrad are asked to complete with a word processor are not very advanced, so OpenOffice instead of Word should not be much of a hurdle.
This author may not know any photographers who are enthusiastic about 3D, but I don't know any people who care about it. I teach kids, and even they seem not to care, and many are hostile toward it (due to headaches). Beyond their apathy, it's apparently not even good for young kids to watch. Who's it marketed to, then?
I maintain an Amazon wishlist for things I would like as gifts...and I don't put any digital items on it. I enjoy getting a physical item; there's just something more meaningful about receiving an actual book than an incomprehensible string of 25 alphanumeric characters.
This is actually fascinating to me. I'm always forgetting that Lego has been around longer than I give it credit. My prime Lego days were in the mid-90s and included sets from the '80s that I inherited from my brother. They were all themed sets, and they all had pretty detailed instructions. Did the older sets still have instructions, at least?
I think this story is a non-issue. I recently built the Millennium Falcon for work (yes, you read that right). It's an expensive set, but I was surprised that it only had two non-standard pieces (those comprising the cockpit). You could easily make something else with the pieces, if you so desired, or you could follow the instructions (which seemed barely more detailed than when I played with the Space Police sets) and make a cool, recognizable ship.
The only way I would think that Lego has sold out would be if a significant number of the pieces in any given set were non-standard and hard to incorporate into a custom design. Maybe that is a case and the set I built was an outlier, but it seems the option is still there to built whatever you want. In other words, Lego seems to be pretty much like it was when I was a kid, only with more brand recognition.
Agreed. Opera works just fine with 32-bit plugins, though at this point there's little point to run them anymore. My setup is similar to yours.
BB10 has some good ideas. Unfortunately, I'm not optimistic for its future. I will say I'm surprised that RIM still managed to turn a profit, even if it was hugely diminished from last year's. Who exactly is buying Blackberry phones?
I would never buy a gun with a computer ID system. Beyond the chance of failure ("oh no, you forgot the battery!" "sorry, your hands are so sweaty they're interfering with the electronics!" "nope, you're not holding it exactly like you did when you imprinted it!"), I'm not the only one living in the house. What if something happens when I'm not home? The gun should be a viable personal defense weapon for any responsible person in the household, not just for me.
Personally, while I'm pro-2nd amendment, I do think they could do something to help make sure people are more responsible with the guns they buy. Requiring you to attend and pass a (low-cost) safety course before you can purchase your first gun is probably a good idea. It would do nothing to stop a sociopath from going on a rampage, but maybe it will help prevent some accidental deaths.
For the sociopaths, I'm afraid no legislation will fix them. Outlawing guns altogether won't fix the problem, either. Nobody seems to be reporting on the fact that, the day of the tragedy in Connecticut, a man in China stabbed 22 elementary school children:
http://www.ryot.org/22-children-stabbed-at-chinese-elementary-school/35114
Thankfully, there were no deaths in that incident, but it proves the point that a psychopath will act like a psychopath, and if he wants to go on a murderous rampage, there are plenty of options available to him.
The arguments against magazine disconnects are admittedly all edge cases. One argument I've read is a bit more compelling than people claiming they want to be able to hot reload (as if they have the skill necessary to do that properly), but admittedly still an edge case:
If you are familiar with a gun with a magazine disconnect, say a Browning Hi-Power, then you may develop bad habits that put you at risk if you use a gun that doesn't have the feature. Yes, you should always treat the gun as loaded and dangerous, but the magazine disconnect effectively trains you to think of a gun as harmless when you don't have a magazine inserted. This is a dangerous mentality. It can be overcome, yes, but how many people are so diligent in their thinking?
I own a number of guns (contrary to what is a disturbing level of popular belief, that makes me no more of a nut-job than someone who collects stamps or coins). I have only one that has a magazine disconnect, and because of it it is not my "go-to" gun, should the need to use it in earnest ever arise. My current go-to gun is a CZ 75, but I'm considering changing to a S&W M&P 9 that has no manual safety mechanisms.
How do I keep my guns safe? Well, I have safes. A large one for storage and a small one for my personal defense weapon. Unless I'm taking a gun to the range or cleaning it, no gun is ever out of the safe. I don't live with kids, but should my nieces or nephews ever come over, they don't know where the safe is, and they don't know what the combination is. Beyond that, their parents have trained them what to do should they ever come across a gun (and tested them on this training in a controlled scenario).
Mod parent up. If these fragments were truly the word of god, then surely they would contain useful information that would increase our knowledge of the world/universe and would remain true even today.
I disagree. Look at what the world was like during the time the Bible was written. Look at the level of technology, the politics, the treatment of human of human life in general. What's more important for those people: Learning how to harness the atom, or how to live a healthy and fulfilling life? What would the Romans have done with nukes? Were they at the right stage of social advancement that they would rightly fear their use? I would imagine universal themes--brotherhood, love, all that jazz--are more important than mathematics or physics. I also don't think God--if such a being even exists--would care too much about our technological progression.
Besides, there definitely are things in the Bible that still hold true to this day. Don't steal, don't murder, love thy neighbor, etc.
(Disclosure: I'm not religious, and probably never will be. I do know a lot of religious people, though, and have some devout Christians in my immediate family. No, they don't think the Bible was written by God.)
It's another case where I understand the "reasoning" behind it, since someone on a computer will use more data than someone on a phone. However, as this article points out, providing that extra data is basically free for the carriers, so the added charge is asinine.
Even worse, they don't even give you special software. The functionality is built-in to the phone; all you're paying for is a license file that says you're allowed to use it.
I doubt anyone here is really surprised by this. On the one hand, the arguments made by the ISPs make some sense: as more and more people go online and download more and more multimedia and apps alongside simple web browsing (which also uses more data than it used to), then of course bandwidth usage is also going to go up. However, that argument ignores the other side of the coin--namely that the technology the ISPs use continues to improve, becoming more and more capable of meeting (or exceeding) that demand. The caps also ignore usage patterns, peak hours, etc.
If the ISPs cut you off entirely when you exceed your cap, then their argument might have some weight. But they don't do that. They let you keep going, at the same speed you were before. Only they charge you extra money.
What borders on criminal is that they're so bad about informing you of when you approach the cap. Though she claims never to use the Internet on her phone, my mother always goes over cap. She has only twice received a notification from AT&T that she was approaching the cap--both of which came two days(!) after she had already gone over her allotted amount.
I'm still on a grandfathered unlimited AT&T account. I come nowhere near 3GB of usage each month (I'm almost always on WiFi), but I have no intention of dropping down to a cheaper account. It's maddening that I can't get tethering (officially...) without going to one of their crap capped plans.
Unfortunately, most of those screenshots look nothing like the default install. I just installed it on my Pi to see what it looked like, as it's been years since I ran it. It looks nice, but it's hard to get a good feel for what it's really like on such a weak system.