you do know, the original playstation controller was just a snes controller with an extra l/r button on each side yes?
Dual shock was in response to how popular the analog stick on the n64 was.
Personally I find the gamecube controller the most comfortable of any controller around, but that's personal preference. using the d-pad on the ps2/3 controllers are a pain in comparison.
The new NSpires have a higher res screen, but they're not as easy to use because the interface is much more advanced and relies on a cursor. Additionally, programs are limited to BASIC, unlike the 89s which supported programs written in assembly
I have an n-spire, and find the interface rather nice. You don't use the cursor at all after a short while, while it's there it's not really meant to be used for fast operation. And while true that you only have basic unless you hack the calculator, for actual math uses you really don't need anything more. Considering the extensive api it supports.
For games it's limiting, but if I want to play games I'll pull out my laptop or DS.
You also seem to be suggesting that you'd get the physical media, use it for installation, and then archive it away. How many games let you do that?
Almost all of the games that I own. Decent games that don't treat you like a criminal let you do that kind of thing.
You seem to be implying that burning to DVD or placing on a spare hard drive wouldn't work well. Is that what you're saying?
Burnt dvds last nowhere near as long as pressed ones. Crappy media will be dead in five years, good media will be dead in ten. Pressed cds claim 100 but so far have lasted about 30. Yes I have plenty of cd based games ten years plus old.
The same thing that happens when the manufacturer goes out of business and you lost your CD by scratches or the like.
I have plenty of discs in mint condition where it is impossible to legally get a copy of it now because the company that made it died. These are typically 10-15 years plus.
The difference is that, excluding DRM (or with Steam's DRM), the downloaded version can be backed up.
Of your online downloaded games, how many do not have drm? (not counting torrents) besides from indie games, crap all. Having them on writable media also allows them to be vulnerable to virii and the like.
True -- the PDF is searchable, and my laptop likely weighs far less.
It's surprisingly light, a5 format, very nicely typeset. The pdf is of lesser quality because while text is in vector format, the images are at nowhere near the resolution used in the book in order to save size.
While I agree pdfs are very handy, dead tree formats don't require power and are a lot nicer on the eyes. I happen to own a 1200dpi native vector laser printer, and even really nice pdfs I print because the quality is just that much better on paper.
and it's not so much that you love physical media, but that you don't love your Internet situation.
Physical media can have sentimental value, something that you cannot really get with downloads. Catch is it's subjective
Prime example, baldurs gate 2, the original version came with a leather map and a 400 page manual because of all the d&d rules. Yes it came in pdf form on the disk too. But that's nowhere near the same.
And with the possible exception of steam based games (which is still subject to it however likelihood is less) what happens when the manufacturer goes out of business and you lost your downloaded copy by hard drive failure or the like?
Yes you can burn to dvd or place it on a spare hard drive, but for archival purposes pressed cds in cases in boxes tend to work rather well.
And that's on my crappy college connection -- 10 mbit, half duplex. At home I get 100 mbit full duplex (so figure less than 15 minutes -- can't even make it to the store and back before my game's downloaded),
Well I am currently stuck on 1.5mbit at home and will be for the foreseeable future because of telephone exchange issues. so over six and a half times your download time here, with my typical max download speed an 8 gig game would take approx 15 1/2 hours. and 8 gig is not large for a modern game, other places can have it even worse with slower net connections.
Do I want to make my net connection (of which I'm not the only user) go to snails pace for a whole day while I download a game? not really.
No mucking about with CDs, no hunting through packaging trying to find what the serial number's written on... And no having to find and download the patches, then install them - sometimes in a specific order.
Quake 3 is a very bad example to choose for that, since the engine is in most linux distro's repositories and all you need the cd for is to copy the couple hundred mb pack files. No patches or cd keys necessary.
For games that require patching and all that jazz where it is a pain, I'd agree with you. But thankfully the majority of my games don't do that kind of stuff and mostly don't even need cd keys.
Helps that most in my collection are rather old-school, but it is quite nice having media like that.
Also worth noting, some of the older games have cd-audio tracks, which the rips and/or downloadable versions tend to leave out.
I and many people like me love physical media, however it should only be used to install, then you can put it back in the case. As a bonus, for a fair majority of the people in the world, their dvd drive or blu-ray drive is significantly faster than their net connection.
however, developing it all in mono then using it with.net goes just fine and dandy, which gives me even less reason to use microsoft stuff for personal development when required to do so by employer. (In non-team things at least)
If you go to university they will tell you what you have to get, and it often requires spending hundreds of dollars on particular books, using certain software packages and OSes and so on. That is life.
of the software packages you've mentioned, octave is 100% compatible with matlab, it was designed as a drop in replacement, have used it in maths classes extensively.
In regards to office, most reports are still handed in in dead tree format, and those that aren't they welcome pdfs just fine (LaTeX ftw)
Even in programming, I have a course that demands visual studio and c sharp coding, I use mono for the c# coding, and all is well.
As a person who only runs linux and oss software, I can guarantee you most professors worth their salt will let you use linux for development so long as at the end you use a uni computer to import your source files etc.
This is why I quite like having mono, since lots of the courses these days teach c#
but I think it's fair to say that everyone who has a computer capable of the kinds of things needed for college these days, probably has a computer capable of playing Portal.
Good luck playing portal on a netbook with an atom processor and intel graphics. (which is just fine for college stuff btw)
I for one would like the oracle/google fight to become a complete bloodbath.
It stands a chance of highlighting the ridiculousness of the system as is, and failing that oracle needs to get slapped down by someone for their business practices. If they successfully take out google, IBM, samsung, etc etc will all be next. It makes sense for them to support google and attack oracle.
For once Mutually assured destruction would be lovely to see enact, especially if it's all against oracle.
The fact that you don't personally like the Mac UI doesn't make it some hopeless, inferior method of computer interface - just different. There are enough errors and I-don't-want-to-like-it bias in your post (ie, from someone who uses a Linux system day to day, you are either being wilfully ignorant about some really basic things or you have never actually used a Mac and are just repeating things you have read second hand - if you are proficient with a Linux system, the Mac UI and HD layout is not rocket science).
Not rocket science, but quite unintuitive even to a ten year long linux user who's used to doing things at times in odd ways.
Perfect example being installing the firefox dmg on mac os, I tested this with multiple people, so it wasn't just me being a retard. Clicking the dmg to open the window is natural, most people then wait for some kind of installer option if they are used to windows or some kind of direction if used to linux.
Clicking and dragging the little icon to install something is completely non-intiutive to non-mac people. Most just gave up.
Just one example of many, and as a linux user I'd actually use windows over mac os x, because when I drop into an os x shell it's almost useless by default and can take quite some time to install all the typical cli applications required.
Windows is no different in that regard however at least in windows you know where you stand from the start.
The hell is being thrown into having to hand-upgrade each RPM (and dependencies) and probably breaking something because neither yum nor RPM will support such an "off/obsolete" OS configuration with auto-download/dependency resolution, when it has nothing to do with the OS/kernel.
If you are using rpm itself to install a program that is not meant for your system, you deserve all the rpm hell you get.
Supporting ancient or untested combinations of software is a nightmare. I mean lets start with binutils/gcc/libc, they all have to be of a similar timeframe to work, try to mix and match versions, even compiling them yourself and there is a high likelihood a shitfight would occur because they weren't designed to work together and they all evolve together.
Basically, for the last ten years at least, if you have rpm hell, chances are you are doing it wrong.
Or rather, the myth of it will continue to linger. I have not had 'rpm hell' as you describe it ever on my fedora systems, which have been in use since before the fedora brand even existed.
.deb is not superior to.rpm, it all comes down to the maintainers of the packages.
I still see many people who like to bash Pulseaudio, but most of them seem to talk about the Pulseaudio of one or two years ago. In the latest releases of Ubuntu and Fedora I did google for any review that would talk about pulseaudio or any kind of sound problems. It turns out I found several reviews talking about how the new release had fixed the audio problems they had in previous releases, and only one talking about new audio problems. So it seems to me that Linux audio has got fixed and greatly improved with PA, but I don't think the PA haters will admit it.
Pulseaudio plain and simply should not have been made. Instead of standardising on a single audio api they chose to buggily try to support every api known to man that was currently in use.
Now we have a divide between those who take audio seriously (those who use jack) and those who don't give a damn but want audio (pulse users, everyone else). When there was no reason for pulse in the first place.
Upon investigating what pulseaudio developers had to say on the matter, they essentially said they didn't like the cpu overhead of jack, yay a whopping maybe half percent overhead for extremely low latency professional audio.
The reason there are still PA haters out there is because there was and is a better solution that is far more tested and far more capable, but all the distros flock to pulse
and for professional audio use PA could not ever hope to replace jack unless there were serious changes.
Frankly, not supporting PA well has been the most ridiculous shortcoming in KDE (after networkmanager).
I am puzzled at what this networkmanager problem you state is/was? been using kde since 2002 and networkmanager has been around at least five years plus on my fedora system.
In regards to kde and PA, ever since PA graced it's ugly head some years ago (fedora users are always first for every new system, yay for bugs) it's been no more buggy than under other window managers.
Professionals use jack for their whole sound system anyway.
I have a feeling your and our definition of 'significant' is somewhat different, especially in instances where said pictures had little to do with the learning material anyway and were merely there to spruce things up a bit.
the main weakness, IIRC, is no CAS. Then again, that's not a weakness on standardized tests...
Of the few university maths subjects I am doing, all seem to allow any calculator at all, with the only real restriction is the moment it has a qwerty keyboard it become classed as a pc. CAS is allowed.
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you do know, the original playstation controller was just a snes controller with an extra l/r button on each side yes?
Dual shock was in response to how popular the analog stick on the n64 was.
Personally I find the gamecube controller the most comfortable of any controller around, but that's personal preference. using the d-pad on the ps2/3 controllers are a pain in comparison.
what is the point in ponying up money for one of these
Battery life, form factor and button placement.
That being said I do haul around a netbook with octave on it anyway, but sometimes it's easier to just pull out the calc.
Why is the parent modded troll? there are valid reasons for wanting leaded solder.
The new NSpires have a higher res screen, but they're not as easy to use because the interface is much more advanced and relies on a cursor. Additionally, programs are limited to BASIC, unlike the 89s which supported programs written in assembly
I have an n-spire, and find the interface rather nice. You don't use the cursor at all after a short while, while it's there it's not really meant to be used for fast operation. And while true that you only have basic unless you hack the calculator, for actual math uses you really don't need anything more. Considering the extensive api it supports.
For games it's limiting, but if I want to play games I'll pull out my laptop or DS.
You also seem to be suggesting that you'd get the physical media, use it for installation, and then archive it away. How many games let you do that?
Almost all of the games that I own. Decent games that don't treat you like a criminal let you do that kind of thing.
You seem to be implying that burning to DVD or placing on a spare hard drive wouldn't work well. Is that what you're saying?
Burnt dvds last nowhere near as long as pressed ones. Crappy media will be dead in five years, good media will be dead in ten. Pressed cds claim 100 but so far have lasted about 30. Yes I have plenty of cd based games ten years plus old.
The same thing that happens when the manufacturer goes out of business and you lost your CD by scratches or the like.
I have plenty of discs in mint condition where it is impossible to legally get a copy of it now because the company that made it died. These are typically 10-15 years plus.
The difference is that, excluding DRM (or with Steam's DRM), the downloaded version can be backed up.
Of your online downloaded games, how many do not have drm? (not counting torrents) besides from indie games, crap all. Having them on writable media also allows them to be vulnerable to virii and the like.
True -- the PDF is searchable, and my laptop likely weighs far less.
It's surprisingly light, a5 format, very nicely typeset. The pdf is of lesser quality because while text is in vector format, the images are at nowhere near the resolution used in the book in order to save size.
While I agree pdfs are very handy, dead tree formats don't require power and are a lot nicer on the eyes. I happen to own a 1200dpi native vector laser printer, and even really nice pdfs I print because the quality is just that much better on paper.
and it's not so much that you love physical media, but that you don't love your Internet situation.
Physical media can have sentimental value, something that you cannot really get with downloads. Catch is it's subjective
Prime example, baldurs gate 2, the original version came with a leather map and a 400 page manual because of all the d&d rules. Yes it came in pdf form on the disk too. But that's nowhere near the same.
And with the possible exception of steam based games (which is still subject to it however likelihood is less) what happens when the manufacturer goes out of business and you lost your downloaded copy by hard drive failure or the like?
Yes you can burn to dvd or place it on a spare hard drive, but for archival purposes pressed cds in cases in boxes tend to work rather well.
And that's on my crappy college connection -- 10 mbit, half duplex. At home I get 100 mbit full duplex (so figure less than 15 minutes -- can't even make it to the store and back before my game's downloaded),
Well I am currently stuck on 1.5mbit at home and will be for the foreseeable future because of telephone exchange issues. so over six and a half times your download time here, with my typical max download speed an 8 gig game would take approx 15 1/2 hours. and 8 gig is not large for a modern game, other places can have it even worse with slower net connections.
Do I want to make my net connection (of which I'm not the only user) go to snails pace for a whole day while I download a game? not really.
No mucking about with CDs, no hunting through packaging trying to find what the serial number's written on... And no having to find and download the patches, then install them - sometimes in a specific order.
Quake 3 is a very bad example to choose for that, since the engine is in most linux distro's repositories and all you need the cd for is to copy the couple hundred mb pack files. No patches or cd keys necessary.
For games that require patching and all that jazz where it is a pain, I'd agree with you. But thankfully the majority of my games don't do that kind of stuff and mostly don't even need cd keys.
Helps that most in my collection are rather old-school, but it is quite nice having media like that.
Also worth noting, some of the older games have cd-audio tracks, which the rips and/or downloadable versions tend to leave out.
I and many people like me love physical media, however it should only be used to install, then you can put it back in the case. As a bonus, for a fair majority of the people in the world, their dvd drive or blu-ray drive is significantly faster than their net connection.
however, developing it all in mono then using it with .net goes just fine and dandy, which gives me even less reason to use microsoft stuff for personal development when required to do so by employer. (In non-team things at least)
If you go to university they will tell you what you have to get, and it often requires spending hundreds of dollars on particular books, using certain software packages and OSes and so on. That is life.
of the software packages you've mentioned, octave is 100% compatible with matlab, it was designed as a drop in replacement, have used it in maths classes extensively.
In regards to office, most reports are still handed in in dead tree format, and those that aren't they welcome pdfs just fine (LaTeX ftw)
Even in programming, I have a course that demands visual studio and c sharp coding, I use mono for the c# coding, and all is well.
You sir, just simply gave in.
As a person who only runs linux and oss software, I can guarantee you most professors worth their salt will let you use linux for development so long as at the end you use a uni computer to import your source files etc.
This is why I quite like having mono, since lots of the courses these days teach c#
but I think it's fair to say that everyone who has a computer capable of the kinds of things needed for college these days, probably has a computer capable of playing Portal.
Good luck playing portal on a netbook with an atom processor and intel graphics. (which is just fine for college stuff btw)
I for one would like the oracle/google fight to become a complete bloodbath.
It stands a chance of highlighting the ridiculousness of the system as is, and failing that oracle needs to get slapped down by someone for their business practices. If they successfully take out google, IBM, samsung, etc etc will all be next. It makes sense for them to support google and attack oracle.
For once Mutually assured destruction would be lovely to see enact, especially if it's all against oracle.
The fact that you don't personally like the Mac UI doesn't make it some hopeless, inferior method of computer interface - just different. There are enough errors and I-don't-want-to-like-it bias in your post (ie, from someone who uses a Linux system day to day, you are either being wilfully ignorant about some really basic things or you have never actually used a Mac and are just repeating things you have read second hand - if you are proficient with a Linux system, the Mac UI and HD layout is not rocket science).
Not rocket science, but quite unintuitive even to a ten year long linux user who's used to doing things at times in odd ways.
Perfect example being installing the firefox dmg on mac os, I tested this with multiple people, so it wasn't just me being a retard. Clicking the dmg to open the window is natural, most people then wait for some kind of installer option if they are used to windows or some kind of direction if used to linux.
Clicking and dragging the little icon to install something is completely non-intiutive to non-mac people. Most just gave up.
Just one example of many, and as a linux user I'd actually use windows over mac os x, because when I drop into an os x shell it's almost useless by default and can take quite some time to install all the typical cli applications required.
Windows is no different in that regard however at least in windows you know where you stand from the start.
The hell is being thrown into having to hand-upgrade each RPM (and dependencies) and probably breaking something because neither yum nor RPM will support such an "off/obsolete" OS configuration with auto-download/dependency resolution, when it has nothing to do with the OS/kernel.
If you are using rpm itself to install a program that is not meant for your system, you deserve all the rpm hell you get.
Supporting ancient or untested combinations of software is a nightmare. I mean lets start with binutils/gcc/libc, they all have to be of a similar timeframe to work, try to mix and match versions, even compiling them yourself and there is a high likelihood a shitfight would occur because they weren't designed to work together and they all evolve together.
Basically, for the last ten years at least, if you have rpm hell, chances are you are doing it wrong.
Or rather, the myth of it will continue to linger. I have not had 'rpm hell' as you describe it ever on my fedora systems, which have been in use since before the fedora brand even existed.
.deb is not superior to .rpm, it all comes down to the maintainers of the packages.
I still see many people who like to bash Pulseaudio, but most of them seem to talk about the Pulseaudio of one or two years ago. In the latest releases of Ubuntu and Fedora I did google for any review that would talk about pulseaudio or any kind of sound problems. It turns out I found several reviews talking about how the new release had fixed the audio problems they had in previous releases, and only one talking about new audio problems. So it seems to me that Linux audio has got fixed and greatly improved with PA, but I don't think the PA haters will admit it.
Pulseaudio plain and simply should not have been made. Instead of standardising on a single audio api they chose to buggily try to support every api known to man that was currently in use.
Now we have a divide between those who take audio seriously (those who use jack) and those who don't give a damn but want audio (pulse users, everyone else). When there was no reason for pulse in the first place.
Upon investigating what pulseaudio developers had to say on the matter, they essentially said they didn't like the cpu overhead of jack, yay a whopping maybe half percent overhead for extremely low latency professional audio.
The reason there are still PA haters out there is because there was and is a better solution that is far more tested and far more capable, but all the distros flock to pulse
and for professional audio use PA could not ever hope to replace jack unless there were serious changes.
You have an m-audio 2496, therefore I assume you care about sound.
What the devil are you doing using pulseaudio instead of jack?
Frankly, not supporting PA well has been the most ridiculous shortcoming in KDE (after networkmanager).
I am puzzled at what this networkmanager problem you state is/was? been using kde since 2002 and networkmanager has been around at least five years plus on my fedora system.
In regards to kde and PA, ever since PA graced it's ugly head some years ago (fedora users are always first for every new system, yay for bugs) it's been no more buggy than under other window managers.
Professionals use jack for their whole sound system anyway.
I have a feeling your and our definition of 'significant' is somewhat different, especially in instances where said pictures had little to do with the learning material anyway and were merely there to spruce things up a bit.
Actually, no. The BASIC dialect on the Nspire series of calculators is extremely limited, to the point of being useless.
For games programming and the like, I completely agree, for programming actual mathematics, what's the problem?
My solution to draconian password schemes is simple, use a hash of one of my more normal passwords AS the password for said system.
Good luck to the person who tries to brute force the 40+ character hex string :)
Octave is designed as pretty much a drop in replacement for matlab, so there should be little to no issues in that regard.
the main weakness, IIRC, is no CAS. Then again, that's not a weakness on standardized tests...
Of the few university maths subjects I am doing, all seem to allow any calculator at all, with the only real restriction is the moment it has a qwerty keyboard it become classed as a pc. CAS is allowed.