"Is your Nokia 3650 phone restricted to playing only the games that your network operator sells you, or does it let you install MIDP or Symbian games produced by hobbyists?"
The latter. You could install stuff over the net, etc.
"And would you want to play, say, a game similar to Super Mario with your phone's controls?"
No. Games like Snake worked just fine, but Mario would be too much for it.
"Goto the Mac section of your local CompUSA story if you are in the US and you'll see them."
You'll also see that the Mac section is much MUCH smaller. My cousin is a Mac addict. He's got a great setup, wonderful laptop, and I'm envious of the ease of use. But man, we went game shopping, and it was rather depressing. Apple makes fine products, but please don't kid yourself. If you're a gamer, Macs are disappointing. Just like Windows is disappointing when it comes to up-time.
"Has the use of a personal directory been standardized in the way that direct dialing has been?"
Nearly. Most phones I've had meant you just push up or down to go through the list, then click the green send button to make the call. I have one phone that is an exception, you have to enter the menu then click on 'Contacts' to get to the list. This doesn't help my point much and supports the earlier one, but hey, I gotta be honest.:) Out of six phones I've had, this is the only one. It's a cheap-ass Motorola and I don't think highly of it.
"color" meaning you live in the United States, not Europe or NZ/AU. Carriers in the United States tend to have worse policies than carriers in even Finland."
Not sure I understand that... color phones aren't common elsewhere? Anyway, yes, I am in the United States. As for the 'worse policies' bit, you're probably right. I'm not very familiar with plans in other countries. I couldn't move that phone I liked to another carrier. (Hence the reason I have a phone I don't like much.) Oh... are you referring to how I spelled color? Hehe.
"How did you convince your network operator not to lock out features *cough*Verizon and Bluetooth*cough*?"
I haven't bumped into this. With the exception of not being able to move my earlier phone to the new provider, I haven't dealt with lock-out. (yet... *sigh*)
"How are you allowed to carry a camera phone, even one that remains turned off and in your pocket, into places that ban cameras, such as many workplaces and movie theaters that show MPAA members' works?"
I've only been challenged on this once. I went to a gov't installation once and they didn't allow communications devices at all whatsoever. Not even a simple pager. I'd like to stress that this was the ONLY time, and we're talking about a place that the general public cannot enter. As for the MPAA comment, I actually work at a movie studio. There has been absolutely no concern over phones there even though secrecy is VERY important. Nearly all my coworkers have camera phones.
"Does the phone have a decent directional pad for game playing?"
Yep. I played a few games on it. Great for killing a few minutes before waiting for dinner to arrive.
"It's not easy to use all of them, and it just makes it harder to just simply dial a number and go."
Really? I ask because every phone I've had (some really cheap, some really expensive) required that you type in the number and hit 'send'.
"Rather be carrying a compact digital camera, a real MP3 player, a real PDA if I really want all those features. After all, those do a way better job at it."
Um, yeah, at 4x the pocket space. In a previous part of your post, you asked why you'd want these things. I'll share with you my own experience from it. A few years ago, I dropped $200 on a Nokia 3650. It had a nice big color screen, bluetooth, PDA'esque features, speakerphone, audio recorder, and a camera. Sounds complex, doesn't it? Not really. It has its share of buttons, but the layout was actually pretty well thought out. As mentioned before, making calls was as simple as typing in the number and hitting the green phone button. Want to go through the contact list? No problem, arrow down and press the name. Etc.
Over the two years of having this phone, several interesting things occured. First off, my use of the PocketPC pretty much died. My phone could sync wirelessly with Outlook. At the time, I had a pretty specific need for that so I won't dwell too much on that. It was pretty cool, though, that I could set up an appointment and my phone would automatically grab it. Since I carry my phone with me at all times (unlike my PPC, Camera, etc...) that feature suddenly became very useful. I even used it as my power-failure-proof alarm clock. I took a ton of pictures with it. I don't know if you have or are around kids a lot, but I've got a number of impromptu photos of my gf's 2 year old nephew acting silly. (Maybe I should turn in my geek license, but I never take my camera with me when the fam goes out for dinner.) Sure, they were 640 by 480 and the lens wasn't great, but the photos are still quite memorable. I've even got a low res 10 second video of my dog teasing my cat. Yeah, I won't be sending that to AFV or anything like that, but it's nice to look back at it and reflect.
I ended up using the sound recorder a lot. I frequently take long walks. Many times on these walks, interesting inspirations hit me. I recorded a lot of ideas that way. Once I witnessed an accident and used the audio recorder to take down the license number when it looked like the driver was going to bolt. I used the internet connection quite a bit. I often looked up news events when I was on the can. (For the record, even though data is often expensive, I never managed to run up my phone bill with it.) I even used the bluetooth feature of the phone to send a net connection to my laptop. That came in handy while travelling, once. I went to a part of Florida that didn't believe in phone lines that could handle > 9600 baud. The speakerphone was awesome. At the time, I only had a cell phone, no landline. Boy that sure made calling tech support'esque calls a lot easier.
Honestly, that ended up being the most useful $200 I ever spent. It's easy to ask "why do I need this?", shake your head, and walk away. I think it's more useful to take one and say "Okay, how can I make the most effective use of this?" That's what I did, and it paid off.
"It's absolute madness to consult a bunch of random geeks on the internet about this. Your question doesn't relate to open source software or emerging technology; it's not news for nerds or anything for nerds."
OSS and emerging technology? The guy was probably looking for the words of wisdom from somebody who's gone and done something like this. Considering how big Slashdot is and considering the field he's in, the odds are pretty darned good that somebody who has actually done this would be able to respond. Slashdot's the perfect place for him to ask this question despite how 'obvious' it is to everybody else. I've worked with two or three people that have done exactly what this guy is describing. It's a pity I'm no longer in touch with them because I'm sure they'd have something more useful to say than "Derr der err fuh fuh fuh."
"So you could dial much more quickly than with a rotary phone, and be rewarded with sitting and listening to clicking for fifteen seconds while it translated the number into pulses."
Heh. I know it sounds silly, but there's a reason those phones could do that. Not all phone lines could handle touch tone dialing. I lived in one of those places. You could plug a TT phone in, you could dial, but it'd never connect. Honestly, I don't understand what the specific problem was that caused this, but the fact that those phones had that switch meant that we could use a modern (at the time) phone.
" It was the ludicrous price of the media. Sure the cost per megabyte was relatively low but now that you've got 100MB on a single disc, if that disc craps out you've just blown $20. And crap out they did."
Hehe. Anybody else remember Iomega adverts in magazines comparing Zip discs to CD-Rs, claiming theirs was more reliable? All I could think was: "Okay, let's do a live drop-test."
Okay, I'm a dumb-butt bumpkin, so please excuse this if it's an idiotic question. But do these little blurbs hint at the idea that we could one day generate Voyager'esque holograms this way? I.e. using electro-magnetic fields to guide light and form an image?
"I know Nintendo stays away from games like GTA:SA..."
I can sort of see that considering some of the lawsuits that have come from that game and who they've targetted. However, Nintendo's made some moves in the past that shed some light on the subject. When Mortal Kombat was originally produced for the SNES, Nintendo mandated no blood. So what you got was a fighting game where you were knocking 'sweat' off of people. Nintendo wanted to remain 'family friendly'. Lots of people were angered by this, and they let Nintendo know. In a shocking move (or at least, shocking to me...) Nintendo pulled back this decision for MKII.
I suppose it's all academic, though. I'm having trouble imagining Rockstar moving into Nintendo's console.
"Only 2-3x more powerful? That seems a little weak for being an upgrade to a system that is over 5 years old and considering Moore's law."
That depends on how 'power' is measured. Are they measuring the number of cycles, or are they measuring something else like the number of polys that can realistically make it to the screen. Since we haven't seen final Wii hardware yet, right now it's hard to say.
"The excuse for $60 games for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 is the higher resolution they display at. Since the Wii "only" does 480p, like the GameCube and the Xbox, the prices will be the same."
Well.. your heart's in the right place, that's a little misleading. It takes a bigger budget to fill the higher resolution of the games. More textures, higher detailed models, etc. I imagine there'll be even more programming time (i.e. optimizations) to make the games work at that res. That's one of Nintendo's attractive points towards developers. Simple simple simple.
Honestly, I think it's a silly argument. On the one hand, I understand inflation etc, but PC games have been cranking out high res games for years now. PC games also have a lot lower sales than console games. The companies staying in business must be doing something right.
"I like the aspect of internet radio where there's a DJ seelcting good stuff I might not otherwise find. Then if I like something enough I'd want to listen to it elsewhere I really prefer to buy it and keep it around."
Rhapsody has streams like that. Also, when that good song or artist does come along, just plug it in, and you've got access to all the work.
"though at that point I'm not sure Rhapsody (or any service) would have a wide enough range for my tastes."
I'd be surprised about that. There are some gaps in Rhapsody's library, but I rarely bump into them.
"So I guess I'm wondering how do you find artist names that you are interested in persuing further?"
Rhapsody has a "what's related" feature when you click on an album. I'm looking at Prodigy right now. It says "Similar Artists" Chemical Brothers, Crystal Method, Hardknox, and so on. It has a list of streaming radio stations that play Prodigy. It also has links from several categories that Prodigy falls into. 'Hardcore', 'HardCore Rave', 'Beats and Breaks'. If you click on one of those, you get a list of songs representing that genre. From there you can branch out even farther and find new music.
Rhapsody's interface is actually pretty darned slick. I'm a little surprised it's not talked about more.
"So, why not user iinternet radio (which is free) to take the place of Rhapsody? That's what I really don't understand about the rental models, what makes them that much more appealing than free options."
a.) You can listen to the songs on-demand. *Click* *Song playing*
b.) You can have your own playlist *and* any computer you're logged into can access that playlist. (great for work and home...)
c.) You can get at the music you want without sifting through a bunch of stations. (This sort of relates to a, but having tried internet radio recently, I felt this point should be emphasized.)
"I don't see the point in the $99 service unless it is used on an ultra compact computer."
Depends on how you listen to music. Me, I'm near a computer nearly every waking hour of my life. I have a desktop, a laptop, and my computer at work. I listen to music on all 3. I ended up subscribing to Rhapsody (similar service, been around for years...) so I don't have to keep gigs of music synced up on all three machines. It's also great for finding new music. I'm quite happy with it. I don't think it's for everybody, but it fits me just nicely.
"If you're fine with the world being filled with idiots, so be it also. I, on the other hand, do not suffer fools gladly, and I will continue to point out stupidity until the stupid change their ways."
So what do you do when you spew stupidity or act foolish?
"I haven't seen anything creative out of her in a while, she might go for it."
Well I don't know about 'creative', but Jeri Ryan was on the finale of Boston Legal. That must have been fun for Shatner. "Your motivation is that you're lusting after her. Just keep looking at her wantingly. Good. We got all we need.... Cut! CUT!! I said CUT!"
"By releasing this for free I'm sure they would be missing out on some lost sales, maybe the RIAA will sue them."
The sad thing is that the RIAA did lose sales from my downloading of MP3s. I downloaded a few songs from CDs I thought I wanted and decided that the songs (and therefore, the albums) sucked. Frankly, I'm happy with the end of their "open your mouth and close your eyes" business model.
My two year old Toshiba M200 TabletPC has an accellerometer built into it. It can tell which way it is oriented so you just press a single button to go from Tablet to Slate mode. It even came with an app that would either activate an app or play a sound if the tablet was shaken.
Pity I didn't realize if I attached a lightsaber sound to it I could have gotten Slashdotted.
Slashdot Mirror
"Is your Nokia 3650 phone restricted to playing only the games that your network operator sells you, or does it let you install MIDP or Symbian games produced by hobbyists?"
The latter. You could install stuff over the net, etc.
"And would you want to play, say, a game similar to Super Mario with your phone's controls?"
No. Games like Snake worked just fine, but Mario would be too much for it.
"Goto the Mac section of your local CompUSA story if you are in the US and you'll see them."
You'll also see that the Mac section is much MUCH smaller. My cousin is a Mac addict. He's got a great setup, wonderful laptop, and I'm envious of the ease of use. But man, we went game shopping, and it was rather depressing. Apple makes fine products, but please don't kid yourself. If you're a gamer, Macs are disappointing. Just like Windows is disappointing when it comes to up-time.
"Has the use of a personal directory been standardized in the way that direct dialing has been?"
:) Out of six phones I've had, this is the only one. It's a cheap-ass Motorola and I don't think highly of it.
Nearly. Most phones I've had meant you just push up or down to go through the list, then click the green send button to make the call. I have one phone that is an exception, you have to enter the menu then click on 'Contacts' to get to the list. This doesn't help my point much and supports the earlier one, but hey, I gotta be honest.
"color" meaning you live in the United States, not Europe or NZ/AU. Carriers in the United States tend to have worse policies than carriers in even Finland."
Not sure I understand that... color phones aren't common elsewhere? Anyway, yes, I am in the United States. As for the 'worse policies' bit, you're probably right. I'm not very familiar with plans in other countries. I couldn't move that phone I liked to another carrier. (Hence the reason I have a phone I don't like much.) Oh... are you referring to how I spelled color? Hehe.
"How did you convince your network operator not to lock out features *cough*Verizon and Bluetooth*cough*?"
I haven't bumped into this. With the exception of not being able to move my earlier phone to the new provider, I haven't dealt with lock-out. (yet... *sigh*)
"How are you allowed to carry a camera phone, even one that remains turned off and in your pocket, into places that ban cameras, such as many workplaces and movie theaters that show MPAA members' works?"
I've only been challenged on this once. I went to a gov't installation once and they didn't allow communications devices at all whatsoever. Not even a simple pager. I'd like to stress that this was the ONLY time, and we're talking about a place that the general public cannot enter. As for the MPAA comment, I actually work at a movie studio. There has been absolutely no concern over phones there even though secrecy is VERY important. Nearly all my coworkers have camera phones.
"Does the phone have a decent directional pad for game playing?"
Yep. I played a few games on it. Great for killing a few minutes before waiting for dinner to arrive.
"It's not easy to use all of them, and it just makes it harder to just simply dial a number and go."
Really? I ask because every phone I've had (some really cheap, some really expensive) required that you type in the number and hit 'send'.
"Rather be carrying a compact digital camera, a real MP3 player, a real PDA if I really want all those features. After all, those do a way better job at it."
Um, yeah, at 4x the pocket space. In a previous part of your post, you asked why you'd want these things. I'll share with you my own experience from it. A few years ago, I dropped $200 on a Nokia 3650. It had a nice big color screen, bluetooth, PDA'esque features, speakerphone, audio recorder, and a camera. Sounds complex, doesn't it? Not really. It has its share of buttons, but the layout was actually pretty well thought out. As mentioned before, making calls was as simple as typing in the number and hitting the green phone button. Want to go through the contact list? No problem, arrow down and press the name. Etc.
Over the two years of having this phone, several interesting things occured. First off, my use of the PocketPC pretty much died. My phone could sync wirelessly with Outlook. At the time, I had a pretty specific need for that so I won't dwell too much on that. It was pretty cool, though, that I could set up an appointment and my phone would automatically grab it. Since I carry my phone with me at all times (unlike my PPC, Camera, etc...) that feature suddenly became very useful. I even used it as my power-failure-proof alarm clock. I took a ton of pictures with it. I don't know if you have or are around kids a lot, but I've got a number of impromptu photos of my gf's 2 year old nephew acting silly. (Maybe I should turn in my geek license, but I never take my camera with me when the fam goes out for dinner.) Sure, they were 640 by 480 and the lens wasn't great, but the photos are still quite memorable. I've even got a low res 10 second video of my dog teasing my cat. Yeah, I won't be sending that to AFV or anything like that, but it's nice to look back at it and reflect.
I ended up using the sound recorder a lot. I frequently take long walks. Many times on these walks, interesting inspirations hit me. I recorded a lot of ideas that way. Once I witnessed an accident and used the audio recorder to take down the license number when it looked like the driver was going to bolt. I used the internet connection quite a bit. I often looked up news events when I was on the can. (For the record, even though data is often expensive, I never managed to run up my phone bill with it.) I even used the bluetooth feature of the phone to send a net connection to my laptop. That came in handy while travelling, once. I went to a part of Florida that didn't believe in phone lines that could handle > 9600 baud. The speakerphone was awesome. At the time, I only had a cell phone, no landline. Boy that sure made calling tech support'esque calls a lot easier.
Honestly, that ended up being the most useful $200 I ever spent. It's easy to ask "why do I need this?", shake your head, and walk away. I think it's more useful to take one and say "Okay, how can I make the most effective use of this?" That's what I did, and it paid off.
"It's absolute madness to consult a bunch of random geeks on the internet about this. Your question doesn't relate to open source software or emerging technology; it's not news for nerds or anything for nerds."
OSS and emerging technology? The guy was probably looking for the words of wisdom from somebody who's gone and done something like this. Considering how big Slashdot is and considering the field he's in, the odds are pretty darned good that somebody who has actually done this would be able to respond. Slashdot's the perfect place for him to ask this question despite how 'obvious' it is to everybody else. I've worked with two or three people that have done exactly what this guy is describing. It's a pity I'm no longer in touch with them because I'm sure they'd have something more useful to say than "Derr der err fuh fuh fuh."
"(a woman shoots fireworks at a police helicopter because it was annoying her by being there -- now she's charged with a felony)"
... felony?
From the Article: "Thompson is facing a felony charge of shooting or throwing a deadly missile into an aircraft."
You know what's sad? A bottle rocket isn't deadly to a human, let alone a helicopter. What she did was stupid, but
"So you could dial much more quickly than with a rotary phone, and be rewarded with sitting and listening to clicking for fifteen seconds while it translated the number into pulses."
Heh. I know it sounds silly, but there's a reason those phones could do that. Not all phone lines could handle touch tone dialing. I lived in one of those places. You could plug a TT phone in, you could dial, but it'd never connect. Honestly, I don't understand what the specific problem was that caused this, but the fact that those phones had that switch meant that we could use a modern (at the time) phone.
" It was the ludicrous price of the media. Sure the cost per megabyte was relatively low but now that you've got 100MB on a single disc, if that disc craps out you've just blown $20. And crap out they did."
Hehe. Anybody else remember Iomega adverts in magazines comparing Zip discs to CD-Rs, claiming theirs was more reliable? All I could think was: "Okay, let's do a live drop-test."
Okay, I'm a dumb-butt bumpkin, so please excuse this if it's an idiotic question. But do these little blurbs hint at the idea that we could one day generate Voyager'esque holograms this way? I.e. using electro-magnetic fields to guide light and form an image?
"I know Nintendo stays away from games like GTA:SA..."
I can sort of see that considering some of the lawsuits that have come from that game and who they've targetted. However, Nintendo's made some moves in the past that shed some light on the subject. When Mortal Kombat was originally produced for the SNES, Nintendo mandated no blood. So what you got was a fighting game where you were knocking 'sweat' off of people. Nintendo wanted to remain 'family friendly'. Lots of people were angered by this, and they let Nintendo know. In a shocking move (or at least, shocking to me...) Nintendo pulled back this decision for MKII.
I suppose it's all academic, though. I'm having trouble imagining Rockstar moving into Nintendo's console.
"Only 2-3x more powerful? That seems a little weak for being an upgrade to a system that is over 5 years old and considering Moore's law."
That depends on how 'power' is measured. Are they measuring the number of cycles, or are they measuring something else like the number of polys that can realistically make it to the screen. Since we haven't seen final Wii hardware yet, right now it's hard to say.
"Speaking as a Goomba, I find this whole line of games extremely offensive."
Oh, relax. We all think of you as a fun-guy.
"work for us without working for us"
If one were to have irrational biases, one could colorfully describe Open Source that way.
Oversimplifying everything always sucks.
"Classic tactics. Get people hooked on a product they like, then the price goes up in 2010."
Isn't that a colorful way of describing supply and demand?
"The excuse for $60 games for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 is the higher resolution they display at. Since the Wii "only" does 480p, like the GameCube and the Xbox, the prices will be the same."
Well.. your heart's in the right place, that's a little misleading. It takes a bigger budget to fill the higher resolution of the games. More textures, higher detailed models, etc. I imagine there'll be even more programming time (i.e. optimizations) to make the games work at that res. That's one of Nintendo's attractive points towards developers. Simple simple simple.
Honestly, I think it's a silly argument. On the one hand, I understand inflation etc, but PC games have been cranking out high res games for years now. PC games also have a lot lower sales than console games. The companies staying in business must be doing something right.
"I like the aspect of internet radio where there's a DJ seelcting good stuff I might not otherwise find. Then if I like something enough I'd want to listen to it elsewhere I really prefer to buy it and keep it around."
Rhapsody has streams like that. Also, when that good song or artist does come along, just plug it in, and you've got access to all the work.
"though at that point I'm not sure Rhapsody (or any service) would have a wide enough range for my tastes."
I'd be surprised about that. There are some gaps in Rhapsody's library, but I rarely bump into them.
"So I guess I'm wondering how do you find artist names that you are interested in persuing further?"
Rhapsody has a "what's related" feature when you click on an album. I'm looking at Prodigy right now. It says "Similar Artists" Chemical Brothers, Crystal Method, Hardknox, and so on. It has a list of streaming radio stations that play Prodigy. It also has links from several categories that Prodigy falls into. 'Hardcore', 'HardCore Rave', 'Beats and Breaks'. If you click on one of those, you get a list of songs representing that genre. From there you can branch out even farther and find new music.
Rhapsody's interface is actually pretty darned slick. I'm a little surprised it's not talked about more.
"So, why not user iinternet radio (which is free) to take the place of Rhapsody? That's what I really don't understand about the rental models, what makes them that much more appealing than free options."
a.) You can listen to the songs on-demand. *Click* *Song playing*
b.) You can have your own playlist *and* any computer you're logged into can access that playlist. (great for work and home...)
c.) You can get at the music you want without sifting through a bunch of stations. (This sort of relates to a, but having tried internet radio recently, I felt this point should be emphasized.)
"I don't see the point in the $99 service unless it is used on an ultra compact computer."
Depends on how you listen to music. Me, I'm near a computer nearly every waking hour of my life. I have a desktop, a laptop, and my computer at work. I listen to music on all 3. I ended up subscribing to Rhapsody (similar service, been around for years...) so I don't have to keep gigs of music synced up on all three machines. It's also great for finding new music. I'm quite happy with it. I don't think it's for everybody, but it fits me just nicely.
"If you're fine with the world being filled with idiots, so be it also. I, on the other hand, do not suffer fools gladly, and I will continue to point out stupidity until the stupid change their ways."
So what do you do when you spew stupidity or act foolish?
"I haven't seen anything creative out of her in a while, she might go for it."
... Cut! CUT!! I said CUT!"
Well I don't know about 'creative', but Jeri Ryan was on the finale of Boston Legal. That must have been fun for Shatner. "Your motivation is that you're lusting after her. Just keep looking at her wantingly. Good. We got all we need.
"The Macbook (and before it, Powerbook) line has had the motion sensor for a while now. The sensor isn't the news."
So waving it around and making it go 'vrrooommmMMm' is? Please.
"By releasing this for free I'm sure they would be missing out on some lost sales, maybe the RIAA will sue them."
The sad thing is that the RIAA did lose sales from my downloading of MP3s. I downloaded a few songs from CDs I thought I wanted and decided that the songs (and therefore, the albums) sucked. Frankly, I'm happy with the end of their "open your mouth and close your eyes" business model.
"How fast is one nanometer per nanosecond, in meters per second?"
Approximately 1.5 parsecs.
"sweet, another way that I'm not the average slashdotter."
Yeah, we believe you.
My two year old Toshiba M200 TabletPC has an accellerometer built into it. It can tell which way it is oriented so you just press a single button to go from Tablet to Slate mode. It even came with an app that would either activate an app or play a sound if the tablet was shaken.
Pity I didn't realize if I attached a lightsaber sound to it I could have gotten Slashdotted.