I thought the ebook idea was kinda clever, but then I read an ebook on an LCD screen for the first time a few days ago. It's not an experience I'd care to repeat. If the iPad had a color e-ink display that was also good enough to do video, then we'd have a killer device, but those kinds of displays don't quite exist yet.
It's not a netbook, it's not an eReader. I'm increasingly beginning to believe it's a solution in search of a problem.
Depends on where you get your electricity. If your neighborhood power plant has to burn nat gas too, but you can do it at home more efficiently, it will always be cheaper as long as that plant exists.
Methane fuel cells are nothing new and a certainly NOT perpetual motion machines. All that's really happening is that they're yanking off the extra electrons from the chemical reaction to generate electricity directly rather than burning the fuel and using a heat engine to harness the energy. No fuel, no energy.
What's novel about this is he thinks he can make them without the use of precious metals and other high costs that keep previous fuel cell designs from being adopted more widely.
Don't projectors of reasonable "cell phone" size generally max out at 11"x17" on a light-colored wall in a dim room? And despite seldom having any use for my phone's camera, I have in the past thought "Gee, it would be really nice if I had a camera right now" (still do sometimes, as I have yet to have a cell phone with a camera that's usable in low light) I've never found myself thinking "Gee, it would be really awesome if I could project an image the size of a smallish poster from my phone!".
It's not the prettiest option, but I'm too lazy to fish cables through walls, so when I move to a new place I usually just buy a box of Cat5e or Cat6 the same color as my baseboards and run the cable outside of the walls and around door frames as needed. If your house is carpeted, you can run it underneath the carpet edges to hide it completely--just watch out that you don't impale any cables on the tack strips. The liberal use of cable staples holds the cables in place and they're not very noticeable. You can also use the "two cables down one cable" trick by splitting off the unused conductors to another termination point--be it a wall box or cable ends. But note that this restricts that cable to 100 megabits.
I'm not sure if it matters anymore with more recent versions of Windows, but from force of habit all the way back in the Win3.x days, I've always set the minimum and maximum swap size numbers to the same so that the pagefile remains a fixed size on the disk to keep it unfragmented. Does this still actually help anything with Windows XP/Vista and 7?
More importantly, why would I pay for music I don't even know I'll like? I don't listen to terrestrial radio anymore and have long since cancelled my XM subscription, so a large part of my exposure to new music is via free streaming like Pandora. If I hear something I like, I'll buy the track. If WMG really does pull out of Pandora, I'll probably never hear their stuff and have no reason to actually buy anything from them.
Personal privacy is a personal decision. So long as you can opt-out (nobody will force you to use the GoogleNet if you don't want to) then I don't see a problem with it. Having more choices is nothing but good in my opinion.
Perhaps none have died by running out of fuel--but I'm certain *some* have been destroyed by other means, collisions, novae, casualties of sibling star's supernovae, black holes, etc.
What parent said with one caveat--if you're only using two drives, don't go RAID--you still wind up with two drives of the same age powered up simultaneously. It's better to have one powered down and stored so its more likely to last longer. When you do your monthly/semi-monthly/when-you-actually-get-around-to-it/backups, it can't hurt to generate a few tens of gigs of PAR2 files as well.
She can say (just about) whatever she wants as a private citizen--constituent or not, but if she's taking political contributions as a PAC, she needs to play by the already much-too-lose campaign finance laws.
DirectX was Microsoft's solution to the "exit to DOS to run a game" workaround. It also targetted the "You must have one of these sound cards, one of these graphics cards, etc." that hampered DOS games because the OS wasn't doing any hardware abstraction--they had to roll their own drivers for every game engine/runtime. DirectX *was* the runtime that enabled direct hardware access and hardware abstraction so the game designers could focus on making games, rather than which sound card a user had.
It wasn't a perfect solutions--still isn't--but DirectX did kill DOS as a gaming platform.
^Sure, but that's only an advantage if you like the implementation Apple uses. They're not keen on letting others try different approaches than the phone's core apps.
Depends on the phone. I have a T-mobile G1 (HTC Dream-runs Android) that covers most of your scenarios (to varying degrees, granted).
Scenario #1: Create multiple playlists with some of the same songs. How do you keep from duplicating files?
Make as many M3U files as your heart desires. I'm sure there are apps to do this on the phone itself, but I prefer a full (mouse and keyboard) computer interface when setting mine up.
Scenario #2: How do you automatically download podcasts to your phone and have it delete the episodes you've watched/listened to?
Doggcatcher does this. The full version that lets you set up your own podcasts isn't free, but it's cheap (it was $2 or $5, I don't remember exactly). There might be free alternatives by now, but I'm still happy w/ Doggcatcher.
Scenario #3: How do you quickly create a playlist of based on a combination of certain criteria -- rating, year, genre, last played, last skipped, number of times played, etc.?
I have no clue. This isn't something I've ever attempted to do. I don't know if the stock music player keeps track of song play counts. I know it doesn't have ratings built in. There are lots of media players in the market, however, so one very well may do this already. It bears mentioning that some meta information (year, genre) must be manually input into the ID3 tag or equivalent for any music that didn't come via iTunes on your phone as well.
Scenario #4: I have a 1GB shuffle (along with other iPods). I have a 3GB playlist of music I work out with (Workout Music) . I set up a smart playlist to create a 1GB list of songs based on least recently played that are in the "Workout Music" playlist that haven't been skipped in two weeks. I plug in my shuffle, music that I just played automatically gets removed from it and pushed to bottom of the list. Music that I skipped also gets removed and is eligible for resync in two weeks. How do I do that via drag and drop.
Also something that I've never tried to implement on my phone. However, with increased storage, you can store your entire playlist on the phone and the same functionality can be handled solely via the phone's music player application. Whether such an app already exists . . . I have no idea.
Scenerio #5: I'm working at my computer listening to a podcast/audiobook, watching a movie, etc. I'm about 20 minutes into it and I have to go. I sync my iPod (or iPhone) up and it starts playing right where I left off. How is that handled with your phone?
Apple clearly wins this one--they have the advantage of a media player application for full sized computers *and* their own phone platform. Media files can play on both devices, and they can do neat tricks like that. While it's theoretically possible for Android or any other phone OS to do so, it would require a compatible PC/Mac/Linux player that can do a "hand-off" like you describe to the mobile phone's built in media player. I don't know of anything off the bat that can do this, but I believe VLC (on the computer) and GMote (on Android) can do something pretty damn close. It's never occurred to me to try.
[blockquote]Increased government regulation of aired political opinion through the Fairness Doctrine.[/quote]
When has the Obama administration sought, or even claimed to seek, the reinstatement of the fairness doctrine? (honest question--I haven't heard it seriously proposed by anyone with the power to actually get the ball rolling.)
It will work for occasional situations when the user is offline, so long as the necessary support is in the web app itself. Chrome (browser) already supports this via google gears. In the presentation today they flat out said you'd be able to play media on an airplane, for example.
I think ChromeOS is taking some of the ideas behind Ubuntu Netbook Remix to the next level--strip the OS down further for even faster bootup, and make everything live in the cloud. I think Canonical was vaguely aiming in a similar direction w/ UbuntuOne, but Google's "everything is a web app" approach sounds more elegant to me.
And Google is a much stronger brand to push product with than Canonical/Ubuntu. The early netbook oriented Linux distros didn't really offer much that was compelling to make up for their "weirdness" to some users. Advanced users wiped and reinstalled their OS/distro of choice, less advanced users took them back to the store and exchanged them for something else.
Google's going to get other companies to handle the hardware (with their approval) and ship a slew of "Google Books" much like we're starting to see the swarm of "Google Phones" emerging due to Android.
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I thought the ebook idea was kinda clever, but then I read an ebook on an LCD screen for the first time a few days ago. It's not an experience I'd care to repeat. If the iPad had a color e-ink display that was also good enough to do video, then we'd have a killer device, but those kinds of displays don't quite exist yet.
It's not a netbook, it's not an eReader. I'm increasingly beginning to believe it's a solution in search of a problem.
Redundancy. Tanks + Fuel Cells = backup generator.
There's the added benefit of backup power. Keep some nat gas storage tanks on site, and they become backup generators.
Depends on where you get your electricity. If your neighborhood power plant has to burn nat gas too, but you can do it at home more efficiently, it will always be cheaper as long as that plant exists.
Methane fuel cells are nothing new and a certainly NOT perpetual motion machines. All that's really happening is that they're yanking off the extra electrons from the chemical reaction to generate electricity directly rather than burning the fuel and using a heat engine to harness the energy. No fuel, no energy.
What's novel about this is he thinks he can make them without the use of precious metals and other high costs that keep previous fuel cell designs from being adopted more widely.
Don't projectors of reasonable "cell phone" size generally max out at 11"x17" on a light-colored wall in a dim room? And despite seldom having any use for my phone's camera, I have in the past thought "Gee, it would be really nice if I had a camera right now" (still do sometimes, as I have yet to have a cell phone with a camera that's usable in low light) I've never found myself thinking "Gee, it would be really awesome if I could project an image the size of a smallish poster from my phone!".
It's not the prettiest option, but I'm too lazy to fish cables through walls, so when I move to a new place I usually just buy a box of Cat5e or Cat6 the same color as my baseboards and run the cable outside of the walls and around door frames as needed. If your house is carpeted, you can run it underneath the carpet edges to hide it completely--just watch out that you don't impale any cables on the tack strips. The liberal use of cable staples holds the cables in place and they're not very noticeable. You can also use the "two cables down one cable" trick by splitting off the unused conductors to another termination point--be it a wall box or cable ends. But note that this restricts that cable to 100 megabits.
I'm not sure if it matters anymore with more recent versions of Windows, but from force of habit all the way back in the Win3.x days, I've always set the minimum and maximum swap size numbers to the same so that the pagefile remains a fixed size on the disk to keep it unfragmented. Does this still actually help anything with Windows XP/Vista and 7?
More importantly, why would I pay for music I don't even know I'll like? I don't listen to terrestrial radio anymore and have long since cancelled my XM subscription, so a large part of my exposure to new music is via free streaming like Pandora. If I hear something I like, I'll buy the track. If WMG really does pull out of Pandora, I'll probably never hear their stuff and have no reason to actually buy anything from them.
Personal privacy is a personal decision. So long as you can opt-out (nobody will force you to use the GoogleNet if you don't want to) then I don't see a problem with it. Having more choices is nothing but good in my opinion.
Perhaps none have died by running out of fuel--but I'm certain *some* have been destroyed by other means, collisions, novae, casualties of sibling star's supernovae, black holes, etc.
I'm not sure I understand what you're referring to . . .enhance.
My understanding is that this impractical due to all the patent licensing required to make such a device.
I can do this w/ my rooted G1. I have yet to hear if the "full price" Nexus Ones allow custom firmwares like the DevPhones.
What parent said with one caveat--if you're only using two drives, don't go RAID--you still wind up with two drives of the same age powered up simultaneously. It's better to have one powered down and stored so its more likely to last longer. When you do your monthly/semi-monthly/when-you-actually-get-around-to-it/backups, it can't hurt to generate a few tens of gigs of PAR2 files as well.
She can say (just about) whatever she wants as a private citizen--constituent or not, but if she's taking political contributions as a PAC, she needs to play by the already much-too-lose campaign finance laws.
DirectX was Microsoft's solution to the "exit to DOS to run a game" workaround. It also targetted the "You must have one of these sound cards, one of these graphics cards, etc." that hampered DOS games because the OS wasn't doing any hardware abstraction--they had to roll their own drivers for every game engine/runtime. DirectX *was* the runtime that enabled direct hardware access and hardware abstraction so the game designers could focus on making games, rather than which sound card a user had.
It wasn't a perfect solutions--still isn't--but DirectX did kill DOS as a gaming platform.
^Sure, but that's only an advantage if you like the implementation Apple uses. They're not keen on letting others try different approaches than the phone's core apps.
Then don't post your current city on a social networking site. Or lie.
Make as many M3U files as your heart desires. I'm sure there are apps to do this on the phone itself, but I prefer a full (mouse and keyboard) computer interface when setting mine up.
Doggcatcher does this. The full version that lets you set up your own podcasts isn't free, but it's cheap (it was $2 or $5, I don't remember exactly). There might be free alternatives by now, but I'm still happy w/ Doggcatcher.
I have no clue. This isn't something I've ever attempted to do. I don't know if the stock music player keeps track of song play counts. I know it doesn't have ratings built in. There are lots of media players in the market, however, so one very well may do this already. It bears mentioning that some meta information (year, genre) must be manually input into the ID3 tag or equivalent for any music that didn't come via iTunes on your phone as well.
Also something that I've never tried to implement on my phone. However, with increased storage, you can store your entire playlist on the phone and the same functionality can be handled solely via the phone's music player application. Whether such an app already exists . . . I have no idea.
Apple clearly wins this one--they have the advantage of a media player application for full sized computers *and* their own phone platform. Media files can play on both devices, and they can do neat tricks like that. While it's theoretically possible for Android or any other phone OS to do so, it would require a compatible PC/Mac/Linux player that can do a "hand-off" like you describe to the mobile phone's built in media player. I don't know of anything off the bat that can do this, but I believe VLC (on the computer) and GMote (on Android) can do something pretty damn close. It's never occurred to me to try.
Droid, Cliq & many more on the horizon are Moto hardware w/ Google's OS.
[blockquote]Increased government regulation of aired political opinion through the Fairness Doctrine.[/quote]
When has the Obama administration sought, or even claimed to seek, the reinstatement of the fairness doctrine? (honest question--I haven't heard it seriously proposed by anyone with the power to actually get the ball rolling.)
It will work for occasional situations when the user is offline, so long as the necessary support is in the web app itself. Chrome (browser) already supports this via google gears. In the presentation today they flat out said you'd be able to play media on an airplane, for example.
I think ChromeOS is taking some of the ideas behind Ubuntu Netbook Remix to the next level--strip the OS down further for even faster bootup, and make everything live in the cloud. I think Canonical was vaguely aiming in a similar direction w/ UbuntuOne, but Google's "everything is a web app" approach sounds more elegant to me.
And Google is a much stronger brand to push product with than Canonical/Ubuntu. The early netbook oriented Linux distros didn't really offer much that was compelling to make up for their "weirdness" to some users. Advanced users wiped and reinstalled their OS/distro of choice, less advanced users took them back to the store and exchanged them for something else.
Google's going to get other companies to handle the hardware (with their approval) and ship a slew of "Google Books" much like we're starting to see the swarm of "Google Phones" emerging due to Android.
^photons. These are lasers, not particle guns.