Yeah they're amazing. I especially love how I can't right-click if more than one finger is touching the mouse. Of course Steve would tell me that I'm "clicking it wrong", and that I should be holding down the control key when I click instead.
Trust me, I have. and while this might have been an improvement over what preceded it, it doesn't mean that it's good. I'll concede your point that they were the first to make it usable, however.
Another believable theory I've heard is that the "fake 3gs" cases that they used to disguise the prototype units meant that this problem wasn't caught during field testing.
Of course, apple could have easily designed the phone with with a some plastic along the side, but this would go against their aesthetic "vision". Anyone who has used an Apple mouse (*any* Apple mouse) knows that ergonomics takes a back-seat to physical appearance. Always.
When the 65nm-based "falcon" chipset 360's came out I was excited because they supposedly produced less heat and hence the fan would run quieter. However, it turns out the majority of the noise comes from the DVD drive. When you cache a game to the HD it's noticeably quieter (..but still louder than my wii & ps3).
So, I'd be curious if they managed to make the drive itself quieter.
Well, if we're comparing apples to apples (it plays the same games and whatnot) then I think it's fair to bring the physical design into consideration.
That said - I was wrong: i was seeing it from a kooky angle, and more importantly, without the original 360 for reference. It is notably smaller. I'm hoping that the die-shrinks also mean it will produce less heat -- we'll see. The larger hard drive is a welcome addition, though I'm guessing it's still proprietary.
Anyway - the point is I spoke out of turn. Good on Microsoft for making it smaller. I still think it looks kinda ugly, imho.
To be fair, I watched a larger clip on Kotaku, and it looks like less of a demo and more of an interpretive dance. I don't think they were necessarily trying to pass it off as gameplay (but if they were, oh god). Totally cringeworthy.
And if you didn't think that this is the year that PS3 overtakes 360 in total units sold, check out the new hardware! That thing is hideous. Leave it to microsoft to come out five years later with a hardware rev that is larger than the original.
I'm inclined to agree, but I wonder how much of my enjoyment (or lack thereof) comes from the fact that there's no single-player element as well as the fact that I don't know any of the people I'm playing (only one other friend of mine is on the beta).
Other random observations:
The UI seems more streamlined, but much less social. No chat rooms, no ability to interact with players before/after matches.
I don't like playing people I don't know, even when I win.
The games seem to take less time, which I like overall. Most of the games I've played seem to be over in 30 minutes.
Terran seems less fun, Protoss seems more fun. It seems like terran gameplay requires *a lot* more micromanagement. Is that just me?
The gameplay feels very similar to SC1, which I like
At first, the decision to split the story arc into three games (terran, protoss, zerg campaigns) seemed to be an obvious money-grab. But 29 missions seems to be on par with what you got w/ SC1 (anyone remember how many missions were in it?).
That said, if they're pricing each campaign as a full-on game, are the 2nd and 3rd titles going to be as popular if the first gives you access to full multiplayer?
Finally, has anyone from Blizzard answered whether any form of LAN play will be supported? Is it going to be authentication only, or will literally every byte of data between players be sent to/from battle.net, even if the competitors are 5 feet away from each other?
The real news is a state is now making an effort to enforce the law, since the executive branch of the federal government has quite clearly failed to fulfill their constitutional duties on the matter, in regards to enforcing the US borders.
I'm against this law, but you are absolutely right. Arizona and the other border states incur much more of a burden due to illegal immigration than the other states of the union, but the federal government has virtually abrogated its responsibility by poor enforcement of existing immigration laws.
So to a large degree Arizona was pushed into a corner. That said, I think that this law is so ridiculously over-the-top that it will make us a laughingstock, quickly be found unconstitutional, and we will be left in a situation worse off than where we started.
Hmm... let's see if you actually know what this bill says...
Moreover... they can't just ask you for no reason, there has to be reasonable suspicion...
Yes.. suspicion of being an illigal immigrant. Now, please explain to me what activity makes you suspicious under this law? On second though, let's just continue...
...race, or country of origin is NOT acceptable for reason of suspicion
Wrong! Wow, you didn't even get past your first sentence without saying something that is totally, completely false. In fact, race may be a factor. The law only states that it can't be the only factor. What do you want to bet that these other, non-race related factors get cooked up *after* you get stopped?
The more people I talk to the more I'm amazed that they haven't the faintest clue what is actually in this bill.
In the past this was true, but this law exists specifically to remove that stipulation. Please read the legislation. You may be stopped "upon reasonable suspicion that an entity is not legally allowed to live within the country".
Perhaps you're confusing this with with the evidence criteria provision. The law says that race may be a factor, but it may not only be an only factor. Of course this is laughable -- people will be stopped for race, and cops will find (or create) additional evidence after-the-fact.
It's telling that even the Arizona Association of Chiefs of Police opposes this law, as they believe it will erode trust with immigrants and distract police from more serious threats.
Oh man, I just noticed. Yeah I hate that stuff too so you have my apologies. For what it's worth I know it's little-to-no, but sometimes I type faster than I think (most often I fall in the dreaded there/their/they're trap).
But hey, did you see my use of the word schadenfreude? I'm sure my 50-cent word makes up for such a glaring error:-)
California law is trumped by the Constitution which has NO SUCH PROVISION...
No such provision, you say? Well then, I invite you to RTFC:
Tenth Amendment:The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Show me the federal law that establishes finders-keepers as a right (Gizmodo is desperately trying to do the same right now) and I'll retract everything.
Finally, while I'm no english professor, you might want to better utilize the "preview" feature before clicking "submit". I think your last post is missing one or two (or five) punctuation marks.
Depends on where you find it, eh? California penal code 485 says that it is:
One who finds lost property under circumstances which give him knowledge of or means of inquiry as to the true owner, and who appropriates such property to his own use, or to the use of another person not entitled thereto, without first making reasonable and just efforts to find the owner and to restore the property to him, is guilty of theft.
First off, he *says* he called apple. Second, The law doesn't care who you call. What matters is that you return the item either to owner, the place you found it, or to the police. This guy did not of those things and then sold it for $5,000.
I'm torn. On one hand, it's scary business to be raiding a journalists home (your opinion of Gizmodo and/or tech blogs in geneeral determines whether you put "journalist" in quotes or not). On the other hand, Gizmodo (and perhaps Chen specificaly) allegedly committed a crime here.
That said, the only thing that really bothered me was how they tarred-and-feathered that Apple engineer. It makes me feel little-to-know sympathy for Gizmodo.
Enjoy your interactions with the Criminal Justice System, Mr. Chen.
And it's ironic that Gizmodo pixelated Chen's personal details in the search warrant as well as the listing of what they took. I guess they suddenly start to value personal privacy when it's one of their own.
Apple was being too quiet last week. I knew the other shoe would drop, it was just a matter of time. If Chen is lucky, the police are really more interested in the identity of the thief (if they don't know it already).
However, my guess is that the police are trying to build a strong case that Giz definitely knew it was stolen prior to paying $5000 for the device. Not sure who goes down in a situation like that: whether it's Jason Chen or Nick Denton.
This is a clever trick, but I'm not sure if it would defeat a system that utilized thermal imaging. Presumably your face would look (pretty much) the same to an LWIR camera regardless of your make-up.
We could all cover our faces with mud the same way Dutch did when he was outsmarting the Predator, but I'm only willing to go so far in my attempts to stay off the grid;-)
Seriously. You are making a big problem of this, when it isnt a big problem at all.
It seems the only person making a big deal about this is you. Users can set the DPI if they want to. Deal. If the user wants to "lie" and say that the dpi is 200 when it's really 87 then who cares?
..so this users DPI setting is influenced by a developer that isnt actually playing a rational game..
Okay, now you are making little to no sense whatsoever. The DPI handling in windows works the way it should work.
because if they use that damn value, then they are letting some other random developer effect the users experience with their program
What the *heck* are you talking about? If my app is dpi-aware how is "some other random developer" going to effect my UI at all?? Are you suggesting that this other developer can alter the dpi? Because they can't. It's strictly a user setting. An app can change the resolution (for a full-screen game, for example) but not the dpi.
Microsoft had bet that high DPI displays (significantly greater than 100) would become common, even going to far as to upscale/resample program windows that dont declare themselves as "DPI aware" within their manifest.
Yup, and this is a good thing. Apps that are not dpi aware *should* be scaled by the OS so as to not winding up being the size of a postage stamp when viewed on a high dpi display (or even a 120 dpi display for that matter).
This value is actually used both in practice, and as a matter of policy, as a global scaling factor. So people with bad eyesight are EXPECTED to have this value set to completely lie its ass off.
Yes, again this is how it should be. There's a couple scenarios here. First, what are you expected to do if your monitor incorrectly reports it's dpi, or fails to report it at all? You need to set it manually. Secondly, if you *are* using it as a "global scaling factor" people with bad eyesight (or people that simply want larger-yet-crisp imagery) can be accommodated while still displaying at the native resolution.
I'm curious why you say windows dpi handling is a farce. In practice it seems to work pretty well. I use it on my 120dpi displays and rarely do I ever see an issue. And personally it drives me nuts when users lower the resolution to make stuff "look bigger".
Did he seriously just say he wanted a 6000x4000 24" LCD with a 0.08mm dot pitch (compared to average CRTs with 0.22-0.28mm) so he could look at smooth text?
Yes he did, and he's absolutely right. In print media (color or black&white) 300dpi is considered a bare minimum, yet on computer displays we get a measly 96dpi? Yuck! We have to employ all sorts of anti-aliasing tricks to mask the problem but if we had 300dpi we wouldn't need anti-aliasing at all. And text would be much easier on the eyes.
Also, does he realize this is all his employers' (Microsoft) fault? XP was set by default to 96 DPI. Sure you could set it to "large size" 120 DPI when running high, but that usually ended up distorting everything.
In my experience this simply isn't true --whenever I specify a custom dpi for windows it handles it pretty well (I have noticed that you some apps look janky until you reboot, but fine afterwards).
Ironically, this is one UI issue that XP/Vista handles way better than OSX, I just got the 15" macbook pro with the optional 1680x1050 display, and the only way to change the dpi is with the developer tools (and when you do the UI is a total mess).
Websites didn't look right, text would be all over the pages, some text would be larger but other things wouldn't be, like text in Flash or on images.
This *is* annoying but hopefully will be getting better. Shitty web developers are finding out that if they specify "pt" instead of "px" their content is still readable on high-dpi devices like iPhone/Droid.
So why would manufactures offer 300dpi when customers would just set them back to the 96 DPI they're use to?
Sadly, you've got a point. I would love a 300dpi display, and I think people would come around if they saw the potential, but until the OS and content can maximize that potential the manufacturers won't be motivated.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah they're amazing. I especially love how I can't right-click if more than one finger is touching the mouse. Of course Steve would tell me that I'm "clicking it wrong", and that I should be holding down the control key when I click instead.
Trust me, I have. and while this might have been an improvement over what preceded it, it doesn't mean that it's good. I'll concede your point that they were the first to make it usable, however.
Another believable theory I've heard is that the "fake 3gs" cases that they used to disguise the prototype units meant that this problem wasn't caught during field testing.
Of course, apple could have easily designed the phone with with a some plastic along the side, but this would go against their aesthetic "vision". Anyone who has used an Apple mouse (*any* Apple mouse) knows that ergonomics takes a back-seat to physical appearance. Always.
When the 65nm-based "falcon" chipset 360's came out I was excited because they supposedly produced less heat and hence the fan would run quieter. However, it turns out the majority of the noise comes from the DVD drive. When you cache a game to the HD it's noticeably quieter (..but still louder than my wii & ps3).
So, I'd be curious if they managed to make the drive itself quieter.
Well, if we're comparing apples to apples (it plays the same games and whatnot) then I think it's fair to bring the physical design into consideration.
That said - I was wrong: i was seeing it from a kooky angle, and more importantly, without the original 360 for reference. It is notably smaller. I'm hoping that the die-shrinks also mean it will produce less heat -- we'll see. The larger hard drive is a welcome addition, though I'm guessing it's still proprietary.
Anyway - the point is I spoke out of turn. Good on Microsoft for making it smaller. I still think it looks kinda ugly, imho.
To be fair, I watched a larger clip on Kotaku, and it looks like less of a demo and more of an interpretive dance. I don't think they were necessarily trying to pass it off as gameplay (but if they were, oh god). Totally cringeworthy.
And if you didn't think that this is the year that PS3 overtakes 360 in total units sold, check out the new hardware! That thing is hideous. Leave it to microsoft to come out five years later with a hardware rev that is larger than the original.
I'm inclined to agree, but I wonder how much of my enjoyment (or lack thereof) comes from the fact that there's no single-player element as well as the fact that I don't know any of the people I'm playing (only one other friend of mine is on the beta).
Other random observations:
At first, the decision to split the story arc into three games (terran, protoss, zerg campaigns) seemed to be an obvious money-grab. But 29 missions seems to be on par with what you got w/ SC1 (anyone remember how many missions were in it?).
That said, if they're pricing each campaign as a full-on game, are the 2nd and 3rd titles going to be as popular if the first gives you access to full multiplayer?
Finally, has anyone from Blizzard answered whether any form of LAN play will be supported? Is it going to be authentication only, or will literally every byte of data between players be sent to/from battle.net, even if the competitors are 5 feet away from each other?
The only winning move is not to play.
I'm against this law, but you are absolutely right. Arizona and the other border states incur much more of a burden due to illegal immigration than the other states of the union, but the federal government has virtually abrogated its responsibility by poor enforcement of existing immigration laws.
So to a large degree Arizona was pushed into a corner. That said, I think that this law is so ridiculously over-the-top that it will make us a laughingstock, quickly be found unconstitutional, and we will be left in a situation worse off than where we started.
Hmm... let's see if you actually know what this bill says...
Yes .. suspicion of being an illigal immigrant. Now, please explain to me what activity makes you suspicious under this law? On second though, let's just continue...
Wrong! Wow, you didn't even get past your first sentence without saying something that is totally, completely false. In fact, race may be a factor. The law only states that it can't be the only factor. What do you want to bet that these other, non-race related factors get cooked up *after* you get stopped?
The more people I talk to the more I'm amazed that they haven't the faintest clue what is actually in this bill.
In the past this was true, but this law exists specifically to remove that stipulation. Please read the legislation. You may be stopped "upon reasonable suspicion that an entity is not legally allowed to live within the country".
Perhaps you're confusing this with with the evidence criteria provision. The law says that race may be a factor, but it may not only be an only factor. Of course this is laughable -- people will be stopped for race, and cops will find (or create) additional evidence after-the-fact.
It's telling that even the Arizona Association of Chiefs of Police opposes this law, as they believe it will erode trust with immigrants and distract police from more serious threats.
Oh man, I just noticed. Yeah I hate that stuff too so you have my apologies. For what it's worth I know it's little-to-no, but sometimes I type faster than I think (most often I fall in the dreaded there/their/they're trap).
But hey, did you see my use of the word schadenfreude? I'm sure my 50-cent word makes up for such a glaring error :-)
No such provision, you say? Well then, I invite you to RTFC:
Show me the federal law that establishes finders-keepers as a right (Gizmodo is desperately trying to do the same right now) and I'll retract everything.
Finally, while I'm no english professor, you might want to better utilize the "preview" feature before clicking "submit". I think your last post is missing one or two (or five) punctuation marks.
Depends on where you find it, eh? California penal code 485 says that it is:
Jason Chen is to journalism what Mariah Carey is... to journalism.
First off, he *says* he called apple. Second, The law doesn't care who you call. What matters is that you return the item either to owner, the place you found it, or to the police. This guy did not of those things and then sold it for $5,000.
Theft.
I'm torn. On one hand, it's scary business to be raiding a journalists home (your opinion of Gizmodo and/or tech blogs in geneeral determines whether you put "journalist" in quotes or not). On the other hand, Gizmodo (and perhaps Chen specificaly) allegedly committed a crime here.
That said, the only thing that really bothered me was how they tarred-and-feathered that Apple engineer. It makes me feel little-to-know sympathy for Gizmodo.
And it's ironic that Gizmodo pixelated Chen's personal details in the search warrant as well as the listing of what they took. I guess they suddenly start to value personal privacy when it's one of their own.
Apple was being too quiet last week. I knew the other shoe would drop, it was just a matter of time. If Chen is lucky, the police are really more interested in the identity of the thief (if they don't know it already).
However, my guess is that the police are trying to build a strong case that Giz definitely knew it was stolen prior to paying $5000 for the device. Not sure who goes down in a situation like that: whether it's Jason Chen or Nick Denton.
Ah, so *you* think it's theft then? Glad to see you finally came around ;-)
This is a clever trick, but I'm not sure if it would defeat a system that utilized thermal imaging. Presumably your face would look (pretty much) the same to an LWIR camera regardless of your make-up.
We could all cover our faces with mud the same way Dutch did when he was outsmarting the Predator, but I'm only willing to go so far in my attempts to stay off the grid ;-)
It seems the only person making a big deal about this is you. Users can set the DPI if they want to. Deal. If the user wants to "lie" and say that the dpi is 200 when it's really 87 then who cares?
Okay, now you are making little to no sense whatsoever. The DPI handling in windows works the way it should work.
What the *heck* are you talking about? If my app is dpi-aware how is "some other random developer" going to effect my UI at all?? Are you suggesting that this other developer can alter the dpi? Because they can't. It's strictly a user setting. An app can change the resolution (for a full-screen game, for example) but not the dpi.
Yup, and this is a good thing. Apps that are not dpi aware *should* be scaled by the OS so as to not winding up being the size of a postage stamp when viewed on a high dpi display (or even a 120 dpi display for that matter).
Yes, again this is how it should be. There's a couple scenarios here. First, what are you expected to do if your monitor incorrectly reports it's dpi, or fails to report it at all? You need to set it manually. Secondly, if you *are* using it as a "global scaling factor" people with bad eyesight (or people that simply want larger-yet-crisp imagery) can be accommodated while still displaying at the native resolution.
I'm curious why you say windows dpi handling is a farce. In practice it seems to work pretty well. I use it on my 120dpi displays and rarely do I ever see an issue. And personally it drives me nuts when users lower the resolution to make stuff "look bigger".
Yes he did, and he's absolutely right. In print media (color or black&white) 300dpi is considered a bare minimum, yet on computer displays we get a measly 96dpi? Yuck! We have to employ all sorts of anti-aliasing tricks to mask the problem but if we had 300dpi we wouldn't need anti-aliasing at all. And text would be much easier on the eyes.
In my experience this simply isn't true --whenever I specify a custom dpi for windows it handles it pretty well (I have noticed that you some apps look janky until you reboot, but fine afterwards).
Ironically, this is one UI issue that XP/Vista handles way better than OSX, I just got the 15" macbook pro with the optional 1680x1050 display, and the only way to change the dpi is with the developer tools (and when you do the UI is a total mess).
This *is* annoying but hopefully will be getting better. Shitty web developers are finding out that if they specify "pt" instead of "px" their content is still readable on high-dpi devices like iPhone/Droid.
Sadly, you've got a point. I would love a 300dpi display, and I think people would come around if they saw the potential, but until the OS and content can maximize that potential the manufacturers won't be motivated.