Which is why I said "most". Not every city is small enough. My point is that there are very few cities that so large you have to drive 20 miles to leave the city.
Note: I'm talking about leaving the actual city, not the metro area. I realize that there are places you can drive a hundred miles and still be well inside a metro.
...and similar service is available in many areas in the US. I'm going to venture a guess that you're in a metro area where there is competition for the broadband market.
I do have to ask, though...does your government subsidize that? Canada has quite the reputation down here for taxing heavily and subsidizing things, and I'm genuinely curious whether you're paying more for that connection than you realize.
From what I've seen of this new ribbon idea, it's not so much "make it prettier" (though they are clearly doing that as well) as it is "make it easier/more intuitive/more informative".
You may like the interface of 2000, but you've got to admit that it's not the most logically-arranged system possible. The ribbon seems to be moving in the direction of an easier-to-understand interface, and I'm all for that.
Precisely. But a lot of people won't get your point, so I'll spell it out:
Broadband in rural areas is expensive. It requires the same investment for a fraction of the returns, and often would be run at a loss for more than a decade. The US has a substantial rural population, and it's nigh impossible to get them broadband right now. Cable and DSL don't reach them, and the cost of running any sort of high speed service to those locations is prohibitive.
Even our cities aren't as densely-packed as those in many of the nations the article is comparing us to. Urban sprawl is rampant here because, again, we have the space for it.
That'd be a shame. I'm rather fond of the ribbon idea, it seems to present more information in an easier-to-manage and more intuitive way. Yes, it's not Office 2003 and it will baffle the "I just want it to work" crowd for a while, but it looks to be a much more useful interface than previous editions.
From TFA:
One other change in the next technical refresh, due for release to beta testers in the near future, actually consumes more screen space by offering large 'text tips' when users mouse over individual ribbon elements.
Oh no! The tooltips are actually long enough to be informative! Seriously, this shouldn't even be mentioned. It's not permanently taking up space, it's a temporary popup that can easily be turned off.
From TFA: "The RTS user interface hasn't improved since Total Annihilation (1997), which had more useful unit automation than many current games. Meanwhile, the number of objects our computers can control and animate has increased, and continues to increase, exponentially. The old UI model isn't at the breaking point - it's broken."
Total Annihilation allowed you to automate most of the less exciting parts of an RTS.
Need repairs? Put a few construction or repair units on a patrol route through your base. They'll stop to repair any damaged buildings. Want a fighter screen around your base to deal with bombers? Set your airfield's rally point as a patrol route and queue up a few dozen fighters. Speaking of queue...construction queues are virtually unlimited. No more going back and selecting each building to queue up 5 or 9 or 12 units every couple of minutes. The same goes for building construction; they can be queued, so that your entire base is planned and you don't have to select your construction units for every new building.
If Supreme Commander lives up to its promise of being an heir to TA, it has already addressed much of the problems mentioned in TFA.
"it always traces back to Microsoft's untenable policy of maintaining gaps in Windows security to avoid competing with 3rd party vendors and certified partners."
And if they did, a lot of the same people who praise Apple for including such features would scream "MONOPOLY!!!" Microsoft can't win on this issue. Either they're not secure, or they're being anticompetitive.
I'd prefer the latter, but then MS learned that such "bundling" lands them in court long before Apple released OSX.
...it sucked.
Let's go through the slideshow, shall we?
#1: Intro that indicates that the cell phone designs of today are on the way out. Why? They're functional and easy to carry. Yay for sensationalism.
#2: Yes, a diamond-encrusted phone is the way of the future. With a "secret" compartment that seems rather obvious to anyone who isn't writing a review of the phone.
#3: The Onyx. While it's an interesting idea and certainly has its uses--answering just by placing the phone at your ear, for example--I just can't see trying to dial a number with "gestures". Number pads are in such heavy use today because they're easy, cheap, and intuitive.
#4: Rotary phone. I guess this makes sense if you don't have a land line but want a dedicated home phone. But...umm...how do you check your voicemail?
#5: A big fat ugly wristwatch, a variation on a clamshell phone that just looks akward to hold, and an alarm clock. Yeah, that's where things are going.
#6: The Samsung Ultra Edition: I guess the "old-fasioned" cell phone isn't dead. Please ignore the opening lines of this slide show.
#7: It sounds similar to something that's been done before, but looks a lot cooler. One thing I can't figure out: in the picture, I can't see where it actually turns into a phone that would be easy to hold or carry compactly. Maybe that's why they say "If it ever gets out of the design stage..."
#8: Philips' Readius. Now this is cool. Electronic paper, movie-watching, all the things a phone of the future should be. We could have skipped the other 6 phones and still seen just as much.
As a concept, the Wraith are unoriginal. But they've at least proven to be an interesting enemy, especially with some of the recent developments.
Fun way to end both series: the wraith flee the Pegasus galaxy (pick a reason) for ours, where some of them are taken by surviving Goa'Uld. The Goa'Uld make a comeback, fighting with the Wraith and Ori for dominance. The Atlantis crew makes peace with the ancient replicators and brings them into the fight on the good guys' side. The shows ends in a miniseries where the Ori wipe out the Wraith becase of a cleverly-crafted scheme by SG1, and then the Goa'Uld and Ori ships enter into an all-out war for the galaxy. A combined effort by SG1 and the Atlantis crew somehow saves the day and wipes out both enemies just before Earth is destroyed.
Yeah, the Ori suck as bad guys. After the chaos that was seasons 7 and 8--replicators, anubis, the rest of the goa'uld--the Ori almost seem like a joke. They have to try way too hard to make them into the Greatest Threat Ever Known, while the Wraith of SG:A are a lot more interesting.
I'm hoping that mid-season has the Stargate project finally going public, and things get really interesting on Earth. Then bring on the Ori and a great big battle in Earth orbit with the Human/Asgard/Jaffa alliance taking a final stand against the Ori. I'm thinking about a desperate pitched battle something like we saw leading up to the Endgame episode of Babylon 5.
Of course, that's never been SG1's style. Four people save the world every time, the rest are just disposable extras (yeah, it's getting a bit old).
I hate WASD. It ties my off hand to a certin spot on the keyboard if I want to move.
I have move forward on the mouse, and my keyboard arrangement is something similar to the old Doom setup that had for "strafing". This way I can move and type for communication, or issue complex commands mapped well away from my movement keys without coming to a stop.
It can go up in value only because there's some other schmuck willing to spend more money on it than you were. I can't imagine why they would want to spend the money any more than the first person. There is no value in something like that, other than being the only one to have it. The same goes for WoW items and accounts; some people buy them just to say they have them.
I've got an unlocked phone I picked up off eBay some time ago. I can switch services just by changing out SIM cards, and our numbers are portable now, thanks to Congress (though I believe there is a fee attached).
These days, most malls I've seen have booths selling unlocked GSM phones. So it's not as hard as you might think to do exactly what you're talking about...though walking into a Cingular store and asking for a plan without a phone might earn you some confused stares.
I stuck my SIM card in a Verizon phone once. It didn't work.
GSM phones have to be unlocked before they'll work on any service but the provider that originally sold it.
Sounds like a nifty gadget. I want one, really. I'll take a dozen if they'll work with my provider. I break phones on a regular basis:(
Problem is, I just don't see these taking off. The big boys (Cingular/Verizon/Sprint) aren't going to want something like this on their lineup. What they'll see when they look at it is a massive increase in support calls as people flash their phones with something they downloaded of the interweb only to find out it's essentially spyware for a phone. The ability to flash a cell phone is downright frightening when I think about the sheer number of users I support who aren't capable of selecting the correct printer 30% of the time.
If these phones make it to market, expect to see the package offerings somehow disable their flash ability, or at least make it difficult to flash the phone and risk rendering it useless. That would be entirely too much of a headache for the providers.
I can't imagine someone paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for a single item of sports memorabilia, but it has happened. Is it really so far-fetched to suggest that there exist at least a handful of people with too much money who are willing to spend that money on having more than anyone else does on WoW?
For that matter, given the current state of society, should we even act surprised? These are the same rich kids who spend thousands of dollars a year to have the fastest computer on the block, the latest iPod and accessories (even though four perfectly good iPods are sitting in a desk drawer somewhere), and whatever else they perceive as a must-have status symbol.
So keep them seperate. No one is forcing you to use the same ID for all the services, or even the same provider. There are plenty of free blog and e-mail services to use so that your Google searches don't get tied to any account. If you're that concerned about privacy, it's easy enough to avoid that particular feature of Google.
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Which is why I said "most". Not every city is small enough. My point is that there are very few cities that so large you have to drive 20 miles to leave the city.
Note: I'm talking about leaving the actual city, not the metro area. I realize that there are places you can drive a hundred miles and still be well inside a metro.
At 70 mph, it shouldn't take much longer than 20 minutes to clear most cities. If it takes longer, your city has a traffic problem.
...and similar service is available in many areas in the US. I'm going to venture a guess that you're in a metro area where there is competition for the broadband market.
I do have to ask, though...does your government subsidize that? Canada has quite the reputation down here for taxing heavily and subsidizing things, and I'm genuinely curious whether you're paying more for that connection than you realize.
From what I've seen of this new ribbon idea, it's not so much "make it prettier" (though they are clearly doing that as well) as it is "make it easier/more intuitive/more informative".
You may like the interface of 2000, but you've got to admit that it's not the most logically-arranged system possible. The ribbon seems to be moving in the direction of an easier-to-understand interface, and I'm all for that.
Precisely. But a lot of people won't get your point, so I'll spell it out:
Broadband in rural areas is expensive. It requires the same investment for a fraction of the returns, and often would be run at a loss for more than a decade. The US has a substantial rural population, and it's nigh impossible to get them broadband right now. Cable and DSL don't reach them, and the cost of running any sort of high speed service to those locations is prohibitive.
Even our cities aren't as densely-packed as those in many of the nations the article is comparing us to. Urban sprawl is rampant here because, again, we have the space for it.
From TFA:
Oh no! The tooltips are actually long enough to be informative! Seriously, this shouldn't even be mentioned. It's not permanently taking up space, it's a temporary popup that can easily be turned off.
Another vote for Supreme Commander
From TFA: "The RTS user interface hasn't improved since Total Annihilation (1997), which had more useful unit automation than many current games. Meanwhile, the number of objects our computers can control and animate has increased, and continues to increase, exponentially. The old UI model isn't at the breaking point - it's broken."
Total Annihilation allowed you to automate most of the less exciting parts of an RTS.
Need repairs? Put a few construction or repair units on a patrol route through your base. They'll stop to repair any damaged buildings. Want a fighter screen around your base to deal with bombers? Set your airfield's rally point as a patrol route and queue up a few dozen fighters. Speaking of queue...construction queues are virtually unlimited. No more going back and selecting each building to queue up 5 or 9 or 12 units every couple of minutes. The same goes for building construction; they can be queued, so that your entire base is planned and you don't have to select your construction units for every new building.
If Supreme Commander lives up to its promise of being an heir to TA, it has already addressed much of the problems mentioned in TFA.
"it always traces back to Microsoft's untenable policy of maintaining gaps in Windows security to avoid competing with 3rd party vendors and certified partners."
And if they did, a lot of the same people who praise Apple for including such features would scream "MONOPOLY!!!" Microsoft can't win on this issue. Either they're not secure, or they're being anticompetitive.
I'd prefer the latter, but then MS learned that such "bundling" lands them in court long before Apple released OSX.
...it sucked. Let's go through the slideshow, shall we? #1: Intro that indicates that the cell phone designs of today are on the way out. Why? They're functional and easy to carry. Yay for sensationalism. #2: Yes, a diamond-encrusted phone is the way of the future. With a "secret" compartment that seems rather obvious to anyone who isn't writing a review of the phone. #3: The Onyx. While it's an interesting idea and certainly has its uses--answering just by placing the phone at your ear, for example--I just can't see trying to dial a number with "gestures". Number pads are in such heavy use today because they're easy, cheap, and intuitive. #4: Rotary phone. I guess this makes sense if you don't have a land line but want a dedicated home phone. But...umm...how do you check your voicemail? #5: A big fat ugly wristwatch, a variation on a clamshell phone that just looks akward to hold, and an alarm clock. Yeah, that's where things are going. #6: The Samsung Ultra Edition: I guess the "old-fasioned" cell phone isn't dead. Please ignore the opening lines of this slide show. #7: It sounds similar to something that's been done before, but looks a lot cooler. One thing I can't figure out: in the picture, I can't see where it actually turns into a phone that would be easy to hold or carry compactly. Maybe that's why they say "If it ever gets out of the design stage..." #8: Philips' Readius. Now this is cool. Electronic paper, movie-watching, all the things a phone of the future should be. We could have skipped the other 6 phones and still seen just as much.
As a concept, the Wraith are unoriginal. But they've at least proven to be an interesting enemy, especially with some of the recent developments.
Fun way to end both series: the wraith flee the Pegasus galaxy (pick a reason) for ours, where some of them are taken by surviving Goa'Uld. The Goa'Uld make a comeback, fighting with the Wraith and Ori for dominance. The Atlantis crew makes peace with the ancient replicators and brings them into the fight on the good guys' side. The shows ends in a miniseries where the Ori wipe out the Wraith becase of a cleverly-crafted scheme by SG1, and then the Goa'Uld and Ori ships enter into an all-out war for the galaxy. A combined effort by SG1 and the Atlantis crew somehow saves the day and wipes out both enemies just before Earth is destroyed.
Then they can end it with a wedding.
Yeah, the Ori suck as bad guys. After the chaos that was seasons 7 and 8--replicators, anubis, the rest of the goa'uld--the Ori almost seem like a joke. They have to try way too hard to make them into the Greatest Threat Ever Known, while the Wraith of SG:A are a lot more interesting.
I'm hoping that mid-season has the Stargate project finally going public, and things get really interesting on Earth. Then bring on the Ori and a great big battle in Earth orbit with the Human/Asgard/Jaffa alliance taking a final stand against the Ori. I'm thinking about a desperate pitched battle something like we saw leading up to the Endgame episode of Babylon 5.
Of course, that's never been SG1's style. Four people save the world every time, the rest are just disposable extras (yeah, it's getting a bit old).
Not really. I doubt anyone alive today remembers 1788 all that well.
I hate WASD. It ties my off hand to a certin spot on the keyboard if I want to move.
I have move forward on the mouse, and my keyboard arrangement is something similar to the old Doom setup that had for "strafing". This way I can move and type for communication, or issue complex commands mapped well away from my movement keys without coming to a stop.
Don't worry, AOL will do it for you.
how about...
WARNING: Use of the Crazy Frog ringtone may result in slow and painful death. Are you sure you want to proceed?
It can go up in value only because there's some other schmuck willing to spend more money on it than you were. I can't imagine why they would want to spend the money any more than the first person. There is no value in something like that, other than being the only one to have it. The same goes for WoW items and accounts; some people buy them just to say they have them.
It's not hard, as I expressed in another post in this thread. My point was that it's not as easy as the gp made it sound.
I've got an unlocked phone I picked up off eBay some time ago. I can switch services just by changing out SIM cards, and our numbers are portable now, thanks to Congress (though I believe there is a fee attached).
These days, most malls I've seen have booths selling unlocked GSM phones. So it's not as hard as you might think to do exactly what you're talking about...though walking into a Cingular store and asking for a plan without a phone might earn you some confused stares.
I stuck my SIM card in a Verizon phone once. It didn't work. GSM phones have to be unlocked before they'll work on any service but the provider that originally sold it.
Sounds like a nifty gadget. I want one, really. I'll take a dozen if they'll work with my provider. I break phones on a regular basis :(
Problem is, I just don't see these taking off. The big boys (Cingular/Verizon/Sprint) aren't going to want something like this on their lineup. What they'll see when they look at it is a massive increase in support calls as people flash their phones with something they downloaded of the interweb only to find out it's essentially spyware for a phone. The ability to flash a cell phone is downright frightening when I think about the sheer number of users I support who aren't capable of selecting the correct printer 30% of the time.
If these phones make it to market, expect to see the package offerings somehow disable their flash ability, or at least make it difficult to flash the phone and risk rendering it useless. That would be entirely too much of a headache for the providers.
We sent a man to the moon on 32 kB of RAM...maybe it's that we have too much now?
I was refering to www.webex.com, in case you got the wrong impression.
I can't imagine someone paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for a single item of sports memorabilia, but it has happened. Is it really so far-fetched to suggest that there exist at least a handful of people with too much money who are willing to spend that money on having more than anyone else does on WoW?
For that matter, given the current state of society, should we even act surprised? These are the same rich kids who spend thousands of dollars a year to have the fastest computer on the block, the latest iPod and accessories (even though four perfectly good iPods are sitting in a desk drawer somewhere), and whatever else they perceive as a must-have status symbol.
So keep them seperate. No one is forcing you to use the same ID for all the services, or even the same provider. There are plenty of free blog and e-mail services to use so that your Google searches don't get tied to any account. If you're that concerned about privacy, it's easy enough to avoid that particular feature of Google.
When we get to web 10.0, will we call it Web X? Would that precipitate a lawsuit?