I want to be able to listen to any song when I want to hear it.
Look, very few people really have collections of songs that they *actually want to hear* that are big enough to fill a modern ipod. My library is pushing 100GB. The number of songs I've listened to more than once EVER is small faction of that. I ripped my entire 800 disc CD collection a few years ago, before dumping it in boxes in storage -- and I have probably still got a 100 titles that I haven't played a single track from since ripping them. So, yeah, despite my large libary, I can have every song I've ever listened to more than once in the last 5 years on my ipod with lots room to spare.
Be honest with yourself, if you haven't listened to a track more than once in the last half decade, its probably not a big deal if its not on your device the second you want it, because if you haven't had the urge to hear it more than once in 5 years, you probably aren't going to have that urge tomorrow either. How much more are you really prepared to spend to get the part of your collection that you very rarely/never listen to... 'just in case'?
And why can't we have a slightly bigger iPod touch that can carry around your media collection?
Because its probably not worth making an expensive product only the extreme outliers will buy. And as soon as the 260GB ipod touch launches, someone will moan about their DVD collection not fitting, and how it would be so much more convenient if they could watch the movie they want to watch from their 400 DVD library. Without having to decide when they sync what they will be limited to.
Same applies to photos and a number of movies/videos. With a music collection of around 60Gb, 17Gb of podcasts (less essential), and many more of photos and videos, larger capacity becomes a requirement.
Oh I agree. And the capacity will continue to increase I'm sure, but if you really and truly 'need' more than 32GB on a touch =today= you are a statistical outlier, and even then there are other devices... maybe you should get an ipod classic... or a netbook with a 1TB external hard drive.
Why is maximum capacity going down instead of up in these things?
It went from hard drive to more expensive flash when flash got cheap enough. The only time it actually got smaller was when they discontinued the 160GB and launched the slimmer 120GB.
That said, you know what I'd rather have than a 250GB ipod touch? a 16GB itunes to ipod/iphone remote link feature; so I can have the music I want on my device, and in the unlikely event I want to listen to something that isn't there I can just browse my PC to the song and wifi sync it right there and start listening to it a few seconds later.
Then instead of shelling out $1000+ for a 250GB flash sdd ipod I can access my entire 'metric crap ton of music' by remote. Or I can pull up a photo album that I didn't sync. Or a podcast I want to listen to... even if it just came out 5 minutes ago.
Granted I need wifi or an iphone+dataplan for this, but that would be far more useful to me than merely a larger drive. And in all honesty, it would probably be more useful to most of the outliers.
Funny... mine scrolls as fast or as slow as I move my finger. True, there isn't inertia, so it stops as soon as your finger loses contact. But it can scroll a lot faster than one with a trackball. Several of my coworkers have the kind with trackballs and it takes forever to scroll through EULAs when installing software for them.
Perhaps only in the legacy apps it acts like that? The Storm API gives you the touch points directly, not as up/down/etc.
If by legacy apps you mean the mail client, browser, contact list, etc. These are the apps I used for the time I played with it, and found it clunky.
I imagine you are right that it isn't strictly 'single speed' (I've only spent a few hours with the device) but it definitely felt like the touch was being mapped to up/down/click. And I suppose moving the finger faster could be translated into more rapid 'up' commands, but the response just doesn't feel nearly as smooth as the ipod.
And the lack of inertia, bounce, and over-scroll at top/bottom are all visual feedback that all contribute to make the iphone/ipod UI a lot more... responsive.
And I'm no Apple fanboy; I've got an ipod for music and quite like it for music, but I've held off buying the iphone due to Apple's app restrictions and had a lot of hope for the Storm, but it just didn't deliver. (not having wifi was kind of dippy too).
Now I'm watching for the Palm Pre, and the next Android phones (the G1 needs work), but if the next iphone hardware release is more than just a ram upgrade I'll consider biting the bullet.
Why is this so hard to understand? The reason for wanting enough space for your entire music collection is so that you can play anything you want on demand. Who cares if 80% of it never gets listened to?
If 80% of it never gets listened to, who cares if its not there?
That one day when I'm in the mood to listen to a particular album, I don't want to be cursing the fact that it's not on my iPod at the moment.
If you went the last 5 years without listening to the song, and then not being able to play it today, right now, this very second sends you off cursing your ipod. You need a sense of perspective more than a bigger ipod.
Why try to predict which subset of your music you'll feel like listening to?
Its not really case of prediction.
For example in addition to a number of playlists I have my ipod set to sync every single track I've listened to more than once in the last 5 years. Plus every single track I've listened to at least once in the last year. Plus every single track I've added in the last 6 months. Plus every single track I've bothered to mark with any number of stars.
And it all fits with plenty of room to spare.
And while it happens that sometimes I'll be in an eclectic mood and want something I don't have it doesn't happen anywhere near often enough for me to curse the device, or wish I could have spent hundreds more for more capacity.
God forbid someone would ask for a feature that would make their usage more convenient.
There is a limit to how much is really worth moaning about. And when they ship with 1TB the OP will moan that he can't have his entire dvd collection with him.
I'm not saying 32GB is 'enough' and that no one has a use for more, but its hardly something to rant about.
Who mods this shit insightful?
Evidently people who agree the 32GB limit is not a particularly woeful shortcoming of the ipod touch.
Is it that you don't think $10 for a yearly update bringing major new functionality is worth it? Is it that you can afford the hundreds for the device, but not $10 a year for upgrades? Is it that you're not satisfied with the device as it is and feel the upgrade was promised in the first place?
It is none of those things.
I said what it was.
It is in protest for the fact that Apple is lying to me by claiming they are legally obligated to charge for the upgrades. I quite plainly said that I'd be willing to pay for the upgrade if they were honest about it.
You are completely oversimplifying the article to the point where your statement is misleading.
And you are making almost absurd leaps of logic.
They administered THE SAME TESTS this man has taken before with no results and he was able to FEEL something... which he COULDN'T do before.
Yes.
My guess is, spider venom is a nerve toxin... it just so happened to manipulate the biology of these nerves in the same way a swift kick to the TV used to fix bad reception.
Er. No. As you said, he hadn't been able to walk for 20 years. And he'd been in rehab previously with no success. While the article doesn't say, odds are it was a number of years since he'd last been in rehab.
In reality land, nerve damage heals very slowly.
I had a wisdom tooth extracted a couple years ago, and the procedure paralyzed a small strip on lip and chin. My mouth healed up nicely within a few weeks. The paralysis took almost a year. The doctor had warned paralysis was a possibility, that if it occurred it would take a long time to heal, and that there was a good chance it wouldn't heal at all. After six months it went from dead to 'tingling' when touched (sort of like the shooting sparks you get when your foot falls asleep), a few months later and it was healed.
All the spider bite likely did is cause him to be in the hospital, where he was re-tested. If he'd gone in without the spider bite, he would almost certainly have had the same result. In the interval between the last test and the current one, the nerves had healed to the point they would carry signals again.
After decades of no success, you don't go in to try every six months 'just in case'.
The odds the spider bite had anything whatsoever to do with it is minimal.
My guess is, spider venom is a nerve toxin.
Except that the Recluse spider venom isn't particularly neuro-toxic at all. Its primary toxin simply aggregates platelets and white blood cells to clog capillaries, which causes necrotic flesh wounds. Rarely is the venom carried by the blood stream further. The main risk is that the necrotic flesh becomes a breeding ground for 2ndary infections. Its really more like gangrene than anything else.
Whether you agree with them or not, that's their position (presumably that of their highly-paid lawyers, too).
Well I, for one, don't agree with them. And I see nothing wrong what-so-ever in raising a public stink about it everytime they do it. Its complete bullshit, and they deserve the backlash for being money grubbing assholes.
My motherboards over the years have been routinely released with new firmware that adds new functionality. As have been my routers. As has my Nintendo Wii. Even my HDTV was firmware updated with new features.
Only apple tries to charge me for firmware upgrades while trying to claim that they have to. I've downloaded all the previous firmwares via p2p and this will be no exception.
I'd actually be inclined to pay for it though, if Apple simply charged for it, and said hey its an upgrade, we feel its worth a few bucks. But instead they've tried to raise some bullshit rationalization that they are legally obligated to charge for it.
Its total bullshit. And I'm calling them on it. Again.
So you really want a Blackberry Storm with an Apple logo on it?
How about a blackberry storm with a proper touch interface? That's what I want.
(And no I actually don't mind the click screen at all; i actually quite like it even.)
I just can't stand the fact that there is no velocity/momentum support. Want to scroll the screen? On either device just move finger. Works great. Want to scroll up faster?
On an iphone move finger faster - screen scrolls faster. Flick it and the screen scrolls really fast and gradually slows down.
On a storm. move finger faster, screen scrolls at the same speed. Flick it and the storm scrolls at the same speed and then stops immediately after your finger leaves it.
On an iphone when you reach the bottom it sort of 'overshoots' its a bit and stops to show you there is no more. On a storm... you hit the bottom and it stops. But it doesn't give you that visual cue that you are at the bottom.
It goes on... the storm has a comparatively putzy touch support. I hear its because finger movements are just mapped to the old simple trackball/wheel commands (up, down, left, right, click) instead of providing a proper touch api to handle all the additional information.
That 32GB iPod Touch just isn't cutting it at all and I loathe that classic iPod. Hurry up with the 64GB upgrade already.
Yeah, because you really need more than 10,000 songs on you. God forbid you have to listen to the same song twice in 2 months.
I have a metric crap ton of music too. But realistically. Even the 8GB model is more enough for music, especially if you can re-sync it once a week or so.
And while I wouldn't mind a capacity bump in the next release, its hardly the most important feature. I'd value battery life, better speaker, gps, and dozen other features more than more memory.
Those of us who know what they are doing would take the specs every time over "made for X".
Right, because we buy something based on the specs, try it, and find out that despite claiming various specs, they've done an incompatible implementation and it doesn't actually work rebliably, if it works at all. And then we troubleshoot it until we are sure it doesn't actually work, and then we return it in frustration and get something else, until we find something that works.
That is how those of who know what they are doing operate.
Oh, sure, if we're late to the party we can look at what other people tried and follow their successes. But how is that really any different than following a 'made for X' sticker? In either case we wait for someone else to vet compatibility.
And if we don't have that, its just trial and error. No amount of knowing what you are doing is going to magically give you foresight on which hardware is really compatible vs which just should be compatible based on the specs.
How can you be competitive in an MMO without it being PVP?
In precisely the same way you can have a racing competition without it being 'smash up derby'. Or a rifle competition without shooting the other competitors. Its really not hard.
Going OMG WE MANAGED TO FIGHT IN x PVE INSTANCE AND WIN! is not competing,
No different than sking, mountain climbing, sprinting, rappelling, fishing, sprinting, weight lifting, skeet shooting, or a hundred other sports where the competitive objective is to beat your opponent by outperforming him without necessarily there being any direct conflict between them.
it's just sad.
Its only sad if they obsess over it... but that's true of anything.
There is no legitimate challenge to an AI that has a limited number of attacks and a limited proportion within which to use each attack.
Frankly I think its a more legitimate challenge than what you claim you do.
I am a PK, I kill anyone not in my guild.
Really? Do you frequently jump people 40 levels above you? How often do you gank people 40 levels below you? And you have the gall to accuse -me- of doing something lacking legitimate challenge? I've played on PK servers. I was on Asherons Call Darktide and Everquest's Rallos Zek.
I had a lot truly good fights too that made it worth the bullshit... but there was a LOT of bullshit.
Most of the players were FAR more interested in tilting any fight as far from 'legitimate challenge' as possible, by engaging lower level players, engaging them while they were already fighting challenging pve content, engaging them while they were doing corpse recoveries and had no equipment... engaging them at zone lines or entering dungeons taking advantage of the fact that some players load faster than others, and of the fact that you could start hitting them before they'd gain control of their characters... so you could kill the fastest loading member of the opposing group before the slowest loading member was even in the zone.
And to top it off most MMOs aren't even remotely PvP balanced at the duel level.
Yeah, that's a way more "legitimate challenge". Ridiculous.
I don't care if person X bought his suit of armor or items or if he got it legit, I'll put my personal skill up against his and see who wins.
You go girl!
Face it, at the best of times you were competing on just one set of skills. Circle strafing, Postitioning, gaming the environmental, interface, and terrain quirks, identifying your opponents class and abilities, and anticipating and counteracting their strategies. Sure that's competive.
Of course that's at the best of times. As a self professed 'PK' who kills anyone not in his guild, you probably spend most of your time being a complete asshat to opponents who know they can't win, and have no interest in fighting you.
Hint: beating up unwilling people smaller than you isn't a 'legitimate challenge' nor a case of 'putting your personal skill up against his'. Its just being an ass.
Me I was mostly an anti-PK, which meaning I spent a fair bit of my time beating people like you into a pulp until you logged of. Of course, your type outnumbered mine a 100 to 1, and gave us a thrashing on a regular basis, but I gave as well as I got, and more importantly these were precisely the 'legitimate challenge fights' I actually enjoyed. I didn't care to gank weak unwilling targets, so I hunted the people who actually claimed to want a fight: PKs. There was no shortage of targets.
An interesting factoid for you... when we showed up in a force that matched the PKs they usually fled; turns out they didn't want to fight the people who could fight back. And the self professed PKs whined at being being beaten more than anyone else. I guess its only fun to be an ass when you win.
The difference to track records is that a record only improves if you actually perform better while an MMO character improves as long as you perform good enough.
1) Being able to make RL transfers means that you longer have to even 'perform good enough'.
2) Your character level by itself is pretty irrelevant by itself, its the gear you are equipped with that represent the places you've been and the encounters that you defeated that are the record of your skill and accomplishments, and the level of in game wealth you've been able to accumulate.
Being able to buy and sell that gear and wealth undermines things. And even for gear / items that can appear in the in-game markets, being able to 'farm enough cash' to afford whatever you want doesn't quite boil down to simply 'time spent'. There is an in game economy, and playing 'well' impacts your position greatly; and to get past a certain point you need to play it well, not merely play it a lot. Sure you'll hit maxlevel simply by playing a lot, but that's just one small aspect of your character.
Sort like even a monkey on a bicycle will get across the finish line on the track; but you aren't being measured soley on simple "finish" vs "did not finish". Similarly there is a big difference between 'max level, good gear, raid flags, high tier loot' and 'max level, wearing stuff people gave you because they felt sorry for you.'
Records are an indicator of skill while character levels are usually an indicator of time spent playing.
Even track records aren't so pure. They reflect on your vehicle (and your mechanic), and the condition of the track, too. Being good enough will let you place. And even being the best doesn't mean you'll actually "win". But at least the people on the leader boards aren't complete incompetents who just bought their scores.
No, real sci-fi fans knows that sci-fi and SciFi is short for Science Fiction, while SF is short for Speculative Fiction, which includes other genres.
Real science fiction fans are probably the only people who know what 'speculative fiction' is, and they know that if they use the abbreviation SF, that almost everybody who sees it will understand it as science fiction. They also know the boundary between speculative fiction and science fiction is pretty blurry and don't get their panties in a knot over it.
Your average parasmut novel is SF, but it isn't sci-fi.
They add new features to the game to reduce downtime and improve playability and all the old timers whine about how how hard they had it when they started playing etc.
Because the 'old timers' played the game for YEARS. The reason they did this was because they enjoyed the gmae just the way it was. Making it ever faster and easier pisses them off because they actually liked it just the way it was. That's why they played it for YEARS.
Worse, they dumbing it down for the benefit of the new players who are whining that the game is too slow or too hard. But no matter how fast and easy they make it, there are always some more new players who wish it was even faster and easier. So they are pissing off their long term customers to please their new customers, most of whom will quit within six months anyway.
Now games like EQ1, had real problems at the beginning. The boats for example were terrible. But it wasn't terrible because the boats took time. It was terrible because the boats didn't work properly. Too often the boat would zone and you'd fall off, so you'd have to wait for the next one. Or a shark would kill you through the wall of the boat. Or the boat would 'glitch' and not stop where it was supposed to so you couldn't board...so a boat trip wasn't merely a bit of downtime it was often an exercise in futility, and to top it off there was nothing to do on the boat. If they'd given us a banker, or some vendors... we could have at least organized our inventory a bit, etc, etc.
So, yes, there was no question in anyone's mind, INCLUDING the old timers, that the boats needed a lot of improvement. But SOE always went too far. They didn't fix the boats, didn't make them faster, or add a ship to the rotation to make the wait shorter, or make them more reliable, or add vendors or bankers to make the downtime more productive... no instead they added free teleporters everywhere that you can take at level one.
How exactly does someone buying ingame items with RL cash have ANY affect on you whatsoever?
First: A lot of people measure their progress in these games as a sort of 'score'. If you can simply purchase 'progress' that undermines it as a measure.
Its the same as going to the track to run a timed lap with a club stopwatch. If its accepted policy that if you can't get the times you want, or don't feel like actually even driving, that you can just buy whatever 'best time' you want. Then the any sort competition is a complete farce and there is no point in posting the best times, or having a leaderboard, or anything else.
MMOs are the same sort of thing. A lot of people are competitive. And if they've been playing the game like this for a couple years, then its very poor to pull the rug out from them and completely change the rules of advancement so that any twit can just buy what they want.
Second: It can distort the in game economy, attract hordes of gold/item farmers, cause in game price inflation, and even impact your ability to get groups.
Thirdly: Like attracts like. I enjoy playing with other people who have a similiar outlook on what it means to "play a game". People who advocate RL transfers tend to be the sort that just want to get to the end and have no interest in actually playing the actual game. If there is a shortcut they take it. If they could buy their epic quest items so they don't have to do the epic quests, they would. If they could skip raid progression for a few bucks and jump straight to the end they would.
If SOE wants to run a game where that is allowed, or even just a fraction of that, they are welcome to launch a server dedicated to it. I don't have a problem with that. I even welcome it.
Why should I care how he got it unless it's via duping or some major exploit like that?
Some of us do care, and we are perfectly willing to accomodate players who want RL transfers by giving them their own server to transfer to their hearts content. If that makes us happy, and it makes them happy, and you don't care in the first place, what possible objection could you have to it??
The reality is though that facebook is not about your or anybody else's life, it is a fabricated digital facade, a impression you wish to create of yourself to be viewed by others be they strangers or friends.
vs the fabricated facade he and his lawyers are trying to present in court?
Everyone knows everyone in the courtroom is projecting an image they want bought.
If the the facade he offers up when not in court are much more caveleir about his accident, or are even contradicts the claims he's making in court, that should count against him.
Like the cliche about the guy who shows up in court in a wheelchair because 'he can't bear the pain of even walking' yet the insurance investigator catches him on the following weekend moving a fridge and playing ball hockey.
Or better still catching him bragging about the Swiss Alps skiing trip he's going to take with his 'soon to be paid out' settlement.
Do you also know that you can also use that illusory personal profile in court cases to your advantage, as long as it is suitable and carefully prepared over an extended period.
Yes. Of course. The criminal mastermind is truly hard to catch. Most criminals, however, aren't masterminds.
I think this is a really poor move on Sony's part though, what little playerbase they have in VG tends to be the "hardcore" gamers that care about "accomplishments" and all that kind of time investment in the game.
I agree completely. I think the whole 'real money' aspect of any game is just pathetic and I wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole, and I'll avoid players who use it with the same pole.
HOWEVER, that said, I have no real gripe with 'people who want to ruin the game for themselves and those around them' (to put it one way) or to put it more diplomatically... 'people who wish to engage in a play style that differs from mine'.
If people actually want to buy and sell gear and characters and keys and flags and titles and mounts... I'm completely fine with that as long as they do it somewhere else on a different server where it doesn't affect me. So I, and people like me don't have to have our enjoyment of the game impacted by those people.
The velociraptors are 10k rpm vs the more usual 7200rpm for the spinpoints; so they should be noticeably faster. (just as a 7200rpm desktop drive is noticeably faster than a 5400rpm or 4200rpm laptop hard drive.
Still, why not just drop in an SSD.
That aside I can't imagine there really being a point to the 3 sets of RAID drives here or than 'because I can'.
Wait... Didn't Obama say he was all for transparency? How less transparent can you get that you can't even disclose a treaty about copyright without it being a matter of "national security". Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Challenge the denial; have the media bump this question up to the whitehouse press secretary; demand an actual response from Obama.
Seriously did this particular FOIA request even crossed his radar?
I think Obama has found a lot about how much power other people have in Washington in the past couple of months. He seems sincere about his desire to change things but change isn't going to come from one person.
I think Obama knew all along how much power others have in Washington. He knew it wouldn't happen overnight.
(*) including paying the fees not just for the line in but for as many outgoing lines as the number of phones you want to forward to simultaneously,
Voip lines are cheap especially when bought as a package, and realistically I'm not going to want it to forward to more than a couple numbers at once. So I realistically don't need more than half a dozen 'lines' for my whole family, especially if I run the server out of my home; then ringing the home line doesn't even require an additional line.
Hell, having it ring multiple numbers simultaneously isn't even a feature I'm all that interested in.
Call screening, voicemail->email as audio attachment with text transcription, and directing calls to home/office/voicemail based on time of day. Call recording and custom greetings would be a nice bonus too.
In actual fact, my primus voip service ALREADY has most of the important call management features google voice does. I really just want voicemail email and transcription and sync (so after listening/reading my voice mail I don't have to call into voicemail to delete it there too) and I want to do it *without* having to submit to giving google access to my phone history, and conversation content, for any reason.
(Yes, I know I'm aready trusting primus with that very same information, but:
1) Primus doesn't have my web browsing and search history. a whole bunch of companies each with a fragment of my data doesn't bother me. One company with all of it does.)
2) I pay for my primus service. Their business model is based on providing me a service, me paying more than it costs them to provide it, and them keeping the profit. I'm comfortable with that arrangement. What is googles model here? Do they data mine my conversations and voicemail for keywords to build profiles to do targeted advertising to me later? Do they track my call logs to integrate me into social network models so they can build profiles and do targeted marketing? I'm not comfortable with that. I already don't use gmail because I disagree with that business model.
FTFA The space station is orbiting at 17,500mph. The debris is moving at 19,800mph. Assuming they are an precisely the same orbit, the debris is still moving at least 2,300mph relative to the station. (And worst case some 35,000mph...)
You might want to rethink trying to hit it with a golf club.
That's true of every service, from every company, whether its in Beta or not.
True of every SERVICE. Untrue of every PRODUCT. If I could buy or download a copy and host it on my server, then it goes away when I'm done with it, not when someone else is.
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I want to be able to listen to any song when I want to hear it.
Look, very few people really have collections of songs that they *actually want to hear* that are big enough to fill a modern ipod. My library is pushing 100GB. The number of songs I've listened to more than once EVER is small faction of that. I ripped my entire 800 disc CD collection a few years ago, before dumping it in boxes in storage -- and I have probably still got a 100 titles that I haven't played a single track from since ripping them. So, yeah, despite my large libary, I can have every song I've ever listened to more than once in the last 5 years on my ipod with lots room to spare.
Be honest with yourself, if you haven't listened to a track more than once in the last half decade, its probably not a big deal if its not on your device the second you want it, because if you haven't had the urge to hear it more than once in 5 years, you probably aren't going to have that urge tomorrow either. How much more are you really prepared to spend to get the part of your collection that you very rarely/never listen to ... 'just in case'?
And why can't we have a slightly bigger iPod touch that can carry around your media collection?
Because its probably not worth making an expensive product only the extreme outliers will buy. And as soon as the 260GB ipod touch launches, someone will moan about their DVD collection not fitting, and how it would be so much more convenient if they could watch the movie they want to watch from their 400 DVD library. Without having to decide when they sync what they will be limited to.
Same applies to photos and a number of movies/videos. With a music collection of around 60Gb, 17Gb of podcasts (less essential), and many more of photos and videos, larger capacity becomes a requirement.
Oh I agree. And the capacity will continue to increase I'm sure, but if you really and truly 'need' more than 32GB on a touch =today= you are a statistical outlier, and even then there are other devices... maybe you should get an ipod classic... or a netbook with a 1TB external hard drive.
Why is maximum capacity going down instead of up in these things?
It went from hard drive to more expensive flash when flash got cheap enough. The only time it actually got smaller was when they discontinued the 160GB and launched the slimmer 120GB.
That said, you know what I'd rather have than a 250GB ipod touch? a 16GB itunes to ipod/iphone remote link feature; so I can have the music I want on my device, and in the unlikely event I want to listen to something that isn't there I can just browse my PC to the song and wifi sync it right there and start listening to it a few seconds later.
Then instead of shelling out $1000+ for a 250GB flash sdd ipod I can access my entire 'metric crap ton of music' by remote. Or I can pull up a photo album that I didn't sync. Or a podcast I want to listen to... even if it just came out 5 minutes ago.
Granted I need wifi or an iphone+dataplan for this, but that would be far more useful to me than merely a larger drive. And in all honesty, it would probably be more useful to most of the outliers.
In the case of a serious failure ...
What happens if the "serious failure" impacts the satellite link / remote control system?
Human ingenuity on board is almost always the most robust option.
Funny... mine scrolls as fast or as slow as I move my finger. True, there isn't inertia, so it stops as soon as your finger loses contact. But it can scroll a lot faster than one with a trackball. Several of my coworkers have the kind with trackballs and it takes forever to scroll through EULAs when installing software for them.
Perhaps only in the legacy apps it acts like that? The Storm API gives you the touch points directly, not as up/down/etc.
If by legacy apps you mean the mail client, browser, contact list, etc. These are the apps I used for the time I played with it, and found it clunky.
I imagine you are right that it isn't strictly 'single speed' (I've only spent a few hours with the device) but it definitely felt like the touch was being mapped to up/down/click. And I suppose moving the finger faster could be translated into more rapid 'up' commands, but the response just doesn't feel nearly as smooth as the ipod.
And the lack of inertia, bounce, and over-scroll at top/bottom are all visual feedback that all contribute to make the iphone/ipod UI a lot more ... responsive.
And I'm no Apple fanboy; I've got an ipod for music and quite like it for music, but I've held off buying the iphone due to Apple's app restrictions and had a lot of hope for the Storm, but it just didn't deliver. (not having wifi was kind of dippy too).
Now I'm watching for the Palm Pre, and the next Android phones (the G1 needs work), but if the next iphone hardware release is more than just a ram upgrade I'll consider biting the bullet.
Why is this so hard to understand? The reason for wanting enough space for your entire music collection is so that you can play anything you want on demand. Who cares if 80% of it never gets listened to?
If 80% of it never gets listened to, who cares if its not there?
That one day when I'm in the mood to listen to a particular album, I don't want to be cursing the fact that it's not on my iPod at the moment.
If you went the last 5 years without listening to the song, and then not being able to play it today, right now, this very second sends you off cursing your ipod. You need a sense of perspective more than a bigger ipod.
Why try to predict which subset of your music you'll feel like listening to?
Its not really case of prediction.
For example in addition to a number of playlists I have my ipod set to sync every single track I've listened to more than once in the last 5 years. Plus every single track I've listened to at least once in the last year. Plus every single track I've added in the last 6 months. Plus every single track I've bothered to mark with any number of stars.
And it all fits with plenty of room to spare.
And while it happens that sometimes I'll be in an eclectic mood and want something I don't have it doesn't happen anywhere near often enough for me to curse the device, or wish I could have spent hundreds more for more capacity.
God forbid someone would ask for a feature that would make their usage more convenient.
There is a limit to how much is really worth moaning about. And when they ship with 1TB the OP will moan that he can't have his entire dvd collection with him.
I'm not saying 32GB is 'enough' and that no one has a use for more, but its hardly something to rant about.
Who mods this shit insightful?
Evidently people who agree the 32GB limit is not a particularly woeful shortcoming of the ipod touch.
Is it that you don't think $10 for a yearly update bringing major new functionality is worth it? Is it that you can afford the hundreds for the device, but not $10 a year for upgrades? Is it that you're not satisfied with the device as it is and feel the upgrade was promised in the first place?
It is none of those things.
I said what it was.
It is in protest for the fact that Apple is lying to me by claiming they are legally obligated to charge for the upgrades. I quite plainly said that I'd be willing to pay for the upgrade if they were honest about it.
You are completely oversimplifying the article to the point where your statement is misleading.
And you are making almost absurd leaps of logic.
They administered THE SAME TESTS this man has taken before with no results and he was able to FEEL something... which he COULDN'T do before.
Yes.
My guess is, spider venom is a nerve toxin... it just so happened to manipulate the biology of these nerves in the same way a swift kick to the TV used to fix bad reception.
Er. No. As you said, he hadn't been able to walk for 20 years. And he'd been in rehab previously with no success. While the article doesn't say, odds are it was a number of years since he'd last been in rehab.
In reality land, nerve damage heals very slowly.
I had a wisdom tooth extracted a couple years ago, and the procedure paralyzed a small strip on lip and chin. My mouth healed up nicely within a few weeks. The paralysis took almost a year. The doctor had warned paralysis was a possibility, that if it occurred it would take a long time to heal, and that there was a good chance it wouldn't heal at all. After six months it went from dead to 'tingling' when touched (sort of like the shooting sparks you get when your foot falls asleep), a few months later and it was healed.
All the spider bite likely did is cause him to be in the hospital, where he was re-tested. If he'd gone in without the spider bite, he would almost certainly have had the same result. In the interval between the last test and the current one, the nerves had healed to the point they would carry signals again.
After decades of no success, you don't go in to try every six months 'just in case'.
The odds the spider bite had anything whatsoever to do with it is minimal.
My guess is, spider venom is a nerve toxin.
Except that the Recluse spider venom isn't particularly neuro-toxic at all. Its primary toxin simply aggregates platelets and white blood cells to clog capillaries, which causes necrotic flesh wounds. Rarely is the venom carried by the blood stream further. The main risk is that the necrotic flesh becomes a breeding ground for 2ndary infections. Its really more like gangrene than anything else.
Whether you agree with them or not, that's their position (presumably that of their highly-paid lawyers, too).
Well I, for one, don't agree with them. And I see nothing wrong what-so-ever in raising a public stink about it everytime they do it. Its complete bullshit, and they deserve the backlash for being money grubbing assholes.
My motherboards over the years have been routinely released with new firmware that adds new functionality. As have been my routers. As has my Nintendo Wii. Even my HDTV was firmware updated with new features.
Only apple tries to charge me for firmware upgrades while trying to claim that they have to. I've downloaded all the previous firmwares via p2p and this will be no exception.
I'd actually be inclined to pay for it though, if Apple simply charged for it, and said hey its an upgrade, we feel its worth a few bucks. But instead they've tried to raise some bullshit rationalization that they are legally obligated to charge for it.
Its total bullshit. And I'm calling them on it. Again.
So you really want a Blackberry Storm with an Apple logo on it?
How about a blackberry storm with a proper touch interface? That's what I want.
(And no I actually don't mind the click screen at all; i actually quite like it even.)
I just can't stand the fact that there is no velocity/momentum support. Want to scroll the screen? On either device just move finger. Works great. Want to scroll up faster?
On an iphone move finger faster - screen scrolls faster. Flick it and the screen scrolls really fast and gradually slows down.
On a storm. move finger faster, screen scrolls at the same speed. Flick it and the storm scrolls at the same speed and then stops immediately after your finger leaves it.
On an iphone when you reach the bottom it sort of 'overshoots' its a bit and stops to show you there is no more. On a storm... you hit the bottom and it stops. But it doesn't give you that visual cue that you are at the bottom.
It goes on... the storm has a comparatively putzy touch support. I hear its because finger movements are just mapped to the old simple trackball/wheel commands (up, down, left, right, click) instead of providing a proper touch api to handle all the additional information.
That 32GB iPod Touch just isn't cutting it at all and I loathe that classic iPod. Hurry up with the 64GB upgrade already.
Yeah, because you really need more than 10,000 songs on you. God forbid you have to listen to the same song twice in 2 months.
I have a metric crap ton of music too. But realistically. Even the 8GB model is more enough for music, especially if you can re-sync it once a week or so.
And while I wouldn't mind a capacity bump in the next release, its hardly the most important feature. I'd value battery life, better speaker, gps, and dozen other features more than more memory.
Compaq didn't used to be owned by HP. It -got sold- to them, which makes them a candidate.
Those of us who know what they are doing would take the specs every time over "made for X".
Right, because we buy something based on the specs, try it, and find out that despite claiming various specs, they've done an incompatible implementation and it doesn't actually work rebliably, if it works at all. And then we troubleshoot it until we are sure it doesn't actually work, and then we return it in frustration and get something else, until we find something that works.
That is how those of who know what they are doing operate.
Oh, sure, if we're late to the party we can look at what other people tried and follow their successes. But how is that really any different than following a 'made for X' sticker? In either case we wait for someone else to vet compatibility.
And if we don't have that, its just trial and error. No amount of knowing what you are doing is going to magically give you foresight on which hardware is really compatible vs which just should be compatible based on the specs.
How can you be competitive in an MMO without it being PVP?
In precisely the same way you can have a racing competition without it being 'smash up derby'. Or a rifle competition without shooting the other competitors. Its really not hard.
Going OMG WE MANAGED TO FIGHT IN x PVE INSTANCE AND WIN! is not competing,
No different than sking, mountain climbing, sprinting, rappelling, fishing, sprinting, weight lifting, skeet shooting, or a hundred other sports where the competitive objective is to beat your opponent by outperforming him without necessarily there being any direct conflict between them.
it's just sad.
Its only sad if they obsess over it... but that's true of anything.
There is no legitimate challenge to an AI that has a limited number of attacks and a limited proportion within which to use each attack.
Frankly I think its a more legitimate challenge than what you claim you do.
I am a PK, I kill anyone not in my guild.
Really? Do you frequently jump people 40 levels above you? How often do you gank people 40 levels below you? And you have the gall to accuse -me- of doing something lacking legitimate challenge? I've played on PK servers. I was on Asherons Call Darktide and Everquest's Rallos Zek.
I had a lot truly good fights too that made it worth the bullshit... but there was a LOT of bullshit.
Most of the players were FAR more interested in tilting any fight as far from 'legitimate challenge' as possible, by engaging lower level players, engaging them while they were already fighting challenging pve content, engaging them while they were doing corpse recoveries and had no equipment... engaging them at zone lines or entering dungeons taking advantage of the fact that some players load faster than others, and of the fact that you could start hitting them before they'd gain control of their characters... so you could kill the fastest loading member of the opposing group before the slowest loading member was even in the zone.
And to top it off most MMOs aren't even remotely PvP balanced at the duel level.
Yeah, that's a way more "legitimate challenge". Ridiculous.
I don't care if person X bought his suit of armor or items or if he got it legit, I'll put my personal skill up against his and see who wins.
You go girl!
Face it, at the best of times you were competing on just one set of skills. Circle strafing, Postitioning, gaming the environmental, interface, and terrain quirks, identifying your opponents class and abilities, and anticipating and counteracting their strategies. Sure that's competive.
Of course that's at the best of times. As a self professed 'PK' who kills anyone not in his guild, you probably spend most of your time being a complete asshat to opponents who know they can't win, and have no interest in fighting you.
Hint: beating up unwilling people smaller than you isn't a 'legitimate challenge' nor a case of 'putting your personal skill up against his'. Its just being an ass.
Me I was mostly an anti-PK, which meaning I spent a fair bit of my time beating people like you into a pulp until you logged of. Of course, your type outnumbered mine a 100 to 1, and gave us a thrashing on a regular basis, but I gave as well as I got, and more importantly these were precisely the 'legitimate challenge fights' I actually enjoyed. I didn't care to gank weak unwilling targets, so I hunted the people who actually claimed to want a fight: PKs. There was no shortage of targets.
An interesting factoid for you... when we showed up in a force that matched the PKs they usually fled; turns out they didn't want to fight the people who could fight back. And the self professed PKs whined at being being beaten more than anyone else. I guess its only fun to be an ass when you win.
The difference to track records is that a record only improves if you actually perform better while an MMO character improves as long as you perform good enough.
1) Being able to make RL transfers means that you longer have to even 'perform good enough'.
2) Your character level by itself is pretty irrelevant by itself, its the gear you are equipped with that represent the places you've been and the encounters that you defeated that are the record of your skill and accomplishments, and the level of in game wealth you've been able to accumulate.
Being able to buy and sell that gear and wealth undermines things. And even for gear / items that can appear in the in-game markets, being able to 'farm enough cash' to afford whatever you want doesn't quite boil down to simply 'time spent'. There is an in game economy, and playing 'well' impacts your position greatly; and to get past a certain point you need to play it well, not merely play it a lot. Sure you'll hit maxlevel simply by playing a lot, but that's just one small aspect of your character.
Sort like even a monkey on a bicycle will get across the finish line on the track; but you aren't being measured soley on simple "finish" vs "did not finish". Similarly there is a big difference between 'max level, good gear, raid flags, high tier loot' and 'max level, wearing stuff people gave you because they felt sorry for you.'
Records are an indicator of skill while character levels are usually an indicator of time spent playing.
Even track records aren't so pure. They reflect on your vehicle (and your mechanic), and the condition of the track, too. Being good enough will let you place. And even being the best doesn't mean you'll actually "win". But at least the people on the leader boards aren't complete incompetents who just bought their scores.
No, real sci-fi fans knows that sci-fi and SciFi is short for Science Fiction, while SF is short for Speculative Fiction, which includes other genres.
Real science fiction fans are probably the only people who know what 'speculative fiction' is, and they know that if they use the abbreviation SF, that almost everybody who sees it will understand it as science fiction. They also know the boundary between speculative fiction and science fiction is pretty blurry and don't get their panties in a knot over it.
Your average parasmut novel is SF, but it isn't sci-fi.
Now I'm curious what a parasmut novel is.
They add new features to the game to reduce downtime and improve playability and all the old timers whine about how how hard they had it when they started playing etc.
Because the 'old timers' played the game for YEARS. The reason they did this was because they enjoyed the gmae just the way it was. Making it ever faster and easier pisses them off because they actually liked it just the way it was. That's why they played it for YEARS.
Worse, they dumbing it down for the benefit of the new players who are whining that the game is too slow or too hard. But no matter how fast and easy they make it, there are always some more new players who wish it was even faster and easier. So they are pissing off their long term customers to please their new customers, most of whom will quit within six months anyway.
Now games like EQ1, had real problems at the beginning. The boats for example were terrible. But it wasn't terrible because the boats took time. It was terrible because the boats didn't work properly. Too often the boat would zone and you'd fall off, so you'd have to wait for the next one. Or a shark would kill you through the wall of the boat. Or the boat would 'glitch' and not stop where it was supposed to so you couldn't board...so a boat trip wasn't merely a bit of downtime it was often an exercise in futility, and to top it off there was nothing to do on the boat. If they'd given us a banker, or some vendors... we could have at least organized our inventory a bit, etc, etc.
So, yes, there was no question in anyone's mind, INCLUDING the old timers, that the boats needed a lot of improvement. But SOE always went too far. They didn't fix the boats, didn't make them faster, or add a ship to the rotation to make the wait shorter, or make them more reliable, or add vendors or bankers to make the downtime more productive... no instead they added free teleporters everywhere that you can take at level one.
How exactly does someone buying ingame items with RL cash have ANY affect on you whatsoever?
First: A lot of people measure their progress in these games as a sort of 'score'. If you can simply purchase 'progress' that undermines it as a measure.
Its the same as going to the track to run a timed lap with a club stopwatch. If its accepted policy that if you can't get the times you want, or don't feel like actually even driving, that you can just buy whatever 'best time' you want. Then the any sort competition is a complete farce and there is no point in posting the best times, or having a leaderboard, or anything else.
MMOs are the same sort of thing. A lot of people are competitive. And if they've been playing the game like this for a couple years, then its very poor to pull the rug out from them and completely change the rules of advancement so that any twit can just buy what they want.
Second: It can distort the in game economy, attract hordes of gold/item farmers, cause in game price inflation, and even impact your ability to get groups.
Thirdly: Like attracts like. I enjoy playing with other people who have a similiar outlook on what it means to "play a game". People who advocate RL transfers tend to be the sort that just want to get to the end and have no interest in actually playing the actual game. If there is a shortcut they take it. If they could buy their epic quest items so they don't have to do the epic quests, they would. If they could skip raid progression for a few bucks and jump straight to the end they would.
If SOE wants to run a game where that is allowed, or even just a fraction of that, they are welcome to launch a server dedicated to it. I don't have a problem with that. I even welcome it.
Why should I care how he got it unless it's via duping or some major exploit like that?
Some of us do care, and we are perfectly willing to accomodate players who want RL transfers by giving them their own server to transfer to their hearts content. If that makes us happy, and it makes them happy, and you don't care in the first place, what possible objection could you have to it??
that's what you get for abusing a free service. Happy now?
No. That's what you get for offering a service without a proper business model behind it.
The reality is though that facebook is not about your or anybody else's life, it is a fabricated digital facade, a impression you wish to create of yourself to be viewed by others be they strangers or friends.
vs the fabricated facade he and his lawyers are trying to present in court?
Everyone knows everyone in the courtroom is projecting an image they want bought.
If the the facade he offers up when not in court are much more caveleir about his accident, or are even contradicts the claims he's making in court, that should count against him.
Like the cliche about the guy who shows up in court in a wheelchair because 'he can't bear the pain of even walking' yet the insurance investigator catches him on the following weekend moving a fridge and playing ball hockey.
Or better still catching him bragging about the Swiss Alps skiing trip he's going to take with his 'soon to be paid out' settlement.
Do you also know that you can also use that illusory personal profile in court cases to your advantage, as long as it is suitable and carefully prepared over an extended period.
Yes. Of course. The criminal mastermind is truly hard to catch. Most criminals, however, aren't masterminds.
I think this is a really poor move on Sony's part though, what little playerbase they have in VG tends to be the "hardcore" gamers that care about "accomplishments" and all that kind of time investment in the game.
I agree completely. I think the whole 'real money' aspect of any game is just pathetic and I wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole, and I'll avoid players who use it with the same pole.
HOWEVER, that said, I have no real gripe with 'people who want to ruin the game for themselves and those around them' (to put it one way) or to put it more diplomatically... 'people who wish to engage in a play style that differs from mine'.
If people actually want to buy and sell gear and characters and keys and flags and titles and mounts ... I'm completely fine with that as long as they do it somewhere else on a different server where it doesn't affect me. So I, and people like me don't have to have our enjoyment of the game impacted by those people.
The velociraptors are 10k rpm vs the more usual 7200rpm for the spinpoints; so they should be noticeably faster. (just as a 7200rpm desktop drive is noticeably faster than a 5400rpm or 4200rpm laptop hard drive.
Still, why not just drop in an SSD.
That aside I can't imagine there really being a point to the 3 sets of RAID drives here or than 'because I can'.
Wait... Didn't Obama say he was all for transparency? How less transparent can you get that you can't even disclose a treaty about copyright without it being a matter of "national security". Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Challenge the denial; have the media bump this question up to the whitehouse press secretary; demand an actual response from Obama.
Seriously did this particular FOIA request even crossed his radar?
I think Obama has found a lot about how much power other people have in Washington in the past couple of months. He seems sincere about his desire to change things but change isn't going to come from one person.
I think Obama knew all along how much power others have in Washington. He knew it wouldn't happen overnight.
(*) including paying the fees not just for the line in but for as many outgoing lines as the number of phones you want to forward to simultaneously,
Voip lines are cheap especially when bought as a package, and realistically I'm not going to want it to forward to more than a couple numbers at once. So I realistically don't need more than half a dozen 'lines' for my whole family, especially if I run the server out of my home; then ringing the home line doesn't even require an additional line.
Hell, having it ring multiple numbers simultaneously isn't even a feature I'm all that interested in.
Call screening, voicemail->email as audio attachment with text transcription, and directing calls to home/office/voicemail based on time of day. Call recording and custom greetings would be a nice bonus too.
In actual fact, my primus voip service ALREADY has most of the important call management features google voice does. I really just want voicemail email and transcription and sync (so after listening/reading my voice mail I don't have to call into voicemail to delete it there too) and I want to do it *without* having to submit to giving google access to my phone history, and conversation content, for any reason.
(Yes, I know I'm aready trusting primus with that very same information, but:
1) Primus doesn't have my web browsing and search history. a whole bunch of companies each with a fragment of my data doesn't bother me. One company with all of it does.)
2) I pay for my primus service. Their business model is based on providing me a service, me paying more than it costs them to provide it, and them keeping the profit. I'm comfortable with that arrangement. What is googles model here? Do they data mine my conversations and voicemail for keywords to build profiles to do targeted advertising to me later? Do they track my call logs to integrate me into social network models so they can build profiles and do targeted marketing? I'm not comfortable with that. I already don't use gmail because I disagree with that business model.
FTFA The space station is orbiting at 17,500mph. The debris is moving at 19,800mph. Assuming they are an precisely the same orbit, the debris is still moving at least 2,300mph relative to the station. (And worst case some 35,000mph...)
You might want to rethink trying to hit it with a golf club.
That's true of every service, from every company, whether its in Beta or not.
True of every SERVICE. Untrue of every PRODUCT. If I could buy or download a copy and host it on my server, then it goes away when I'm done with it, not when someone else is.