My final year project is a very similar device, I've redesigned the MP3 open source project from http://www.pjrc.com/ then using the Compact Flash drive and a Sony Erricson Bluetooth Starter Kit (uses an old rok chip.) I spent 3 months researching to make sure the idea was original and some other company beats me to the punch line.
Feel free to join us on the creative dicussion forums ( http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board?boar d.id=Vista ), so far their stated reason is 6 months ago creative got the finalised audio layers and so EAX would be broken. 6 months and thats all the information they will divulge.
I think the real question here is why hasn't creative collapsed as a company yet, I'll explain what I mean. Avermedia (TV Card manufacture) would not make a x64 driver for XP, apparently XP x64 didn't have the demand. A month after the first beta MSDN release (about a year ago now) a Windows XP x64 driver for my Avermedia Hybrid DvB (AR16) appeared on their website. It was driver signed, when i installed Vista beta 2 the driver was on the vista disk. Avermedia have had beta x86 and x64 drivers online as well as a beta application designed to work better in the vista enviroment. On the other hand a x64 driver doesn't exist for my Creative Live! Vista IM camera my parents bought me that camera because it had Vista in the name and they as Joe consumer believed it would work for Vista. My Creative Audigy SE 5.1 card doesn't have Vista drivers yet either. Creative have made beta drivers with a time limit on them, a time limit! Then they haven't rereleased the driver with an updated time limit so all these beta drivers cease to function.
I have to ask, we are living in a world were a small company like Avermedia can produce about a hundred good high quality drivers so vista versions aren't needed, but then redesigns their drivers to work even better in vista a whole six months before their needed. When a much larger company can't even produce 40 basic drivers, or even 1 fully working driver after 6 months (yes I'm excluding the other devices but they haven't managed with any of those either yet and sound cards should priority for creative.)
ok what are you talking about? Cheap storage? Nothing matches?
My university shop is the only place I know whihc still sells 64mb flash disks (for £4.99), last time I bought floppies the pack of ten cost me £3. Thats an extra £1.99 for 4 times the capacity, most 512mb flash disks in the shops cost £12.99/£16.99. Alot of companies which come to my uni for demonstration will give out either flash disks or dvd's with their presentation and company information on, You just wipe the flash disk and often you've just gotten yourself a free 128mb flash disk.
Floppies were good but data integrity sucked I would take a floppy into school and a third of the time the floppy would have corrupted itself. They were a good advancement for the time but were hardly brilliant.
While email may replace many funcions file size does get to be an issue, in university we have our modified version of MS exchange built into every machine, with every email received a popup appears and theres a direct link to your email page. yet every student I know carries a flash disk because its easier to drop one into the front USB ports, drag onto the drive and then chuck the flash disk over to your mate. DVD's were the sucsessor to the CD, its flash disks which have killed off floppies, their larger they don't corrupt and their much more robust.
As you can see the O2 XDA Mini S is free on a 12 month £35 a month contract thats a PDA using WM5 and a phone I love, even their brand new XDA Orbit is free on a £35 a month 12 month contract. Sadly with O2 there are big advantages to tying yourself into a 18month contract. Vodaphone and Orange offer similar deals however Oranges recent move to fixed inflexable service plans has meant that they are losing customers in spades. Of course if your a carrier promoting 3G like 3 then your price plans are insanely good I was offered 1000 minutes, 1000 texts and unlimited data for £22.5 a month and the phone for free (sadley it was a older larger and ugly PDA.
I haven't been able to get Beryl working, I've got a machine which should easily run it, after spending several hours trying to get it working I found the issue in the beryl wiki only to have no solution there.
I kinda disagree with all four reviews, Linux is not desktop ready, perhaps if the machine were setup but I have to work substantially harder to get Linux setup. Once setup and for basic office applications its great. But Wine doesn't run many games and while I've heard of Ce'dega (i think its called that) I haven't seen much support.
Vista is alot more than the prettyness of Aero but thats all that appears to be getting attention and my expearence suggests 2gb of ram is really what you need to run Vista well. I'd much rather be hearing about the improved secuirty, the pushing of the x64 version, the search engine, gadgets (which were not stolen from OS X as many reviewers state (been around longer than that), bit locker the new audio/video setups. Vista is also more finiky about hardware than XP.(while I could install XP onto a bad motherboard Vista's setup refuses)
The arguement that mac's are more stable and don't catch viruses as well as being more 'fun' has always confused me. Since SP1 I've never seen a BSOD on a XP machine, only once or twice have third party apps crashed on me. I have no doubt that as Mac share increases Macs will develop viruses and its the dumb user who gets them, more Mac users means more dumb users. The lovely things in Mac OS X have all be copied into Vista so the 'fun' factor goes down (since almost all games are for windows.) One thing that did amuse me was the Mac OS X reviewer talked about the lack of popups and then went on to say "I now feel like I am in charge of my computer rather than it being in charge of me." I find the popups in Linux and Windows tell me what is going on in my PC and help me be in greater control.
I'm Pro Vista but I think all of the reviews do a poor job of reviewing each OS viewing them all through rose tinted glasses and not accuratly comparing them to the competition, perhaps it would have been better to have forced each user to use each of the OS's for a month.
I'm guessing its company dependent, my little sister was given a medion laptop in December with the "vista Compatable" sticker. Its taken a while but for £10 (to cover rocessing and P&P from germany) a OEM version of 32bit (only) Vista Home Premium (OEM) came through the door. While we were trying to get the sticker process to work I had several emails with the Medion support. Basically they plan to release disks based on your computer so my older medion laptop with the less capable graphics card would come with 32bit Home Basic (Bought it to early to get the sticker:@). Medion have been very good with their installation disks, my "Medion Installation Disk" is literally a XP MCE 2005 disk with a different printed cover, my sisters Xp SP2 disk is identical file wise to a copy of XP SP2 I have but again has "Medion" stamped all over it.
I would expect a company like Dell to release the 'upgrade' version, but who buys the upgrade version anyway its always more expensive than the 'full version'(looking at www.overclockers.co.uk, Dixons, Amazon and other places.)
Its a useful place to site, for much of my university coursework I use wikipedia as a reference and them move onto other sites or books. My disicpline is engineering if I'm working on a project write up I might need an equation handy if I can get a decent reference. But if I'm looking at transistor theory and find a book with the relevent formula for the project what else do I site? Its part of the standard coursework guide that a person should always qoute 5 references. Most of the time I only need one, since the problems are mathmatical. So once I've referenced a IEEE Journal , The lecturers notes, a library book, a web based source what else do I reference? I've only really needed one of those sources I'm not trying to argue a point but working out the maximum gain of a circuit.
I have been meaning to rework a few of the wikipedia articles not because they contain misinformation but because they lack clarity I've always thought many of the simpler electrical engineering entries could be enhanced with examples of when to use a formula or design.
In the UK we have £2 coins in use and theres been general mumblings for a normal £5 coin for a while (there are many speacial £5 coins which ARE legal tender.) So our £2 coin would be similar to a $3.92 coin and in the case of our occasional £5 coin thats $9.798. A $5 coin would be handy wouldn't it? I know I would prefer a £5 coin to a £5 note.
Norways objection is the lock in of the ITMS and fairplay not being licensed out to any other company. Sure microsoft designed and operate the drm scheme but pretty much anyone can get a license to make thir MP3 playing device operate with it.
You can't do that with Fairplay, Only Apple products will be able to operate Fairplay DRM. This causes a problem if I get a PlaysForSure device I may be directed to WMP, there are 11 different stores offering their own music. If I don't like my current MP3 player say a Creative Zen and own a O2 XDA Mini (both playforsure devices) I can still play the songs i've purchased for my Creative Zen on my new XDA Mini. With apple you can't do that and its diliberatly locking me into the Apple brand.
The number of manufacturers isn't a red herring company x has invented a DRM scheme and will allow any company to license it. While this foists DRM on us it does create half decent interoperability between different companies and their products. If I don't like Creative I can get a iMate, if I don't like my iMate I can get a Sandisk. Thats giving consumers choice the only lock in is that if i purchase an MP3 from store x I have to own a device capable of playing store x files they don't have to be made by company x. Thats a technical lock in and understandable (why my PS2 games won't work on a Xbox style of thing.)
If my Ipod breaks in a few years and my music collection has been built up through the ITMS then I'm stuck with anouther Apple product, i couldn't switch to a Creative product or a sandisk because Apple won't let them license Fairplay. Thats a chosen lock in, the iPod is highly sucessfull and fashionable right now alot of people own them and since they had to install Itunes they've probably investigated and purchased songs from ITMS. If they found the process to be a good one it likely they'll spend a few hundred pounds with te ITMS. So a few years role on and my Apple Ipod breaks I look around the MP3 player market and know the Sandisk XYZ is the best and coolest but I have £200's worth of songs I can only play on Itunes or an Ipod. What would you do? Kiss those songs goodbye, or buy anouther Ipod?
The Zune Music Store would be in the same boat as the ITMS is now because both are limited to one companys brand and work to stop you using them on anouther product. I'm well aware that you can burn your drm'd songs and rerip them but when you start getting large collections how fesible is that? Further more its not obvious I didn't think of it when I had bought songs through ITMS.
Stope being a fanboy and smell the coffee, personnally I'd love a device which would support PlaysForSure and Fairplay but Apples not letting it happen. DRM is bad but in this case Microsoft are (excluding the Zune) less evil than Apple (including the zoom their equal.) If we must have DRM forced upon us then make company's license their DRM out to others so we are never locked into one format.
PlaysforSure devices are created by alot of different manufacturers you have about 10 different companies producing MP3 players to use with the PlaysForSure DRM scheme. Microsoft are willing to license Playsforsure to any manufacturer going. Apples Fairplay is Apple only. I dont own an ipod so I can't play any fairplay MP3's, I own a O2 XDA Mini S that can play my playforsure DRM, I own a Creative Muvo and that can play playforsure.
Apple by refusing to allow any company to license Fairplay are using their dominant position to kill off competitors and lock people into Apple hardware. If Apple had licensed the DRM to other companies I'm sure Norway wouldn't care, fact is te only way to play Fairplay MP3's on non apple devices is by burning them to cd and mp3ing them. Most nontechies aren't going to know that and people like myself wouldn't bother anyway.
The Zune isn't in europe before you reply with that
I thought most of the business lecture's in Harvard were from engineering background. I'm not saying all engineers make business savy people because they don't. But looking at my electrical engineering class for every single business module we've had the business assistants and business lectures all class us as some of the best students they have for that year (based on ability) and we usually spend our time playing multiplayer tron over the university wifi.
Again I'm not saying every student engineer gets business, there are some students in the class who struggle like hell. I know I couldn't do a business degree (probably die of boredom.) I think it has something to do with the type of person who wants to be a electrical engineer, most of us are hardworking, sensible, very practical and grounded in maths and logic.
So I would argue that this person would be ideal for proposing regulation as its his field they want to regulate and as for business practices well I'm not so sure it would depend on where hes been working the last few years.
I disagree with his message by the way net neutrality (or atleast the concept of common carrier) should be law in every country of the world.
What country are you in? I've phoned Microsoft Activation Helpline dozens of times as far as I can make out only three people answer the helpline for the UK number. My standard tactic has been to dial the number, press 1 type in my installation ID and then confim to the operator that my copy of office is on one machine. I'm asking because the Helpline is the only painless phone service I've ever used (I haven't used many) and I'm curious.
You were doing well until halfway through and you entered the realm of nonsense and scare mongering.
Office 2007's UI is completly different yet I think it is far better than Office 2003 (and OpenOffice.) Sure the UI is completly different but after a few hours of using it I was quite confident and started discovering things in Word which I never knew existed. The few (me and two/three others) that I know who have tried it have completly the same feelings which are, weird and difficult at first but soon easy to use and adds power to your use of word/excel/powerpoint. Thats with technically literate, for most people training will be required. Now its the time for companies who don't want to stay in the MS rat race or can't afford to upgrade, to move over to Open Office. I'm quite pro Office 2007 but I can see how many of the features of it would be unnecessary for big business (I think the newer versions of excel and word would be an asset to small businesses.) My main reasons for not using OpenOffice (pre Office 2007) were bloat (took much longer to load) and the UI looks like something from ten years ago, its a good product for business's and the free price tag has to be alluring espeacially now businesses would have to pay a pretty penny for training as well.
Your opinion on Vista is FUD, Vista for most pruposes is a glorrified version of XP. Sure the network stack has been rewritten and I found my online games working much better but, at the same time setting it up for my university's wifi network was much more hassle. Sure it will have direct x 10 but how many companies will need that? Sure its forced most vendors to create x64 drivers but that effects the consumer market rather than business. The fact I can't install drivers it doesn't like annoys the hell out of me. As for the DRM, that thing that is only turned on when the media requests it? I'm not worried since I won't touch DRM media.
There are many reasons to choose Linux or OpenOffice.Org just as there are many people like me who like the Microsoft range (If I was a business manager running a office that made phone calls and used basic office apps I'd probably have the machines running Ubunutu instead of Windows.) I like Open source because its fored MS to bring out new improved and worthwhile applications. Argue real points don't spread FUD
I thought MIT was the big tech University, at my Uni (University of Plymouth (UK)) we've had a wireless network that covers the ENTIRE campus, its powerfull enough that you can actually still pick it up in the city centre (I keep meaning to investigate that because I can pick it up a quater of a mile away and that sure as hell breaks the 802.11g spec.)
Plymouth University isn't small (about 30000 students enroled) because of the cost of notes the IT department modifed MS Exchange and started putting all lecture material online. Plymouth University also has 6 smaller campuses all of which can access this network (wirelessly on their campuses) there was a major network failure for the first time recently (A recently bought batch of Hard Drives failed badly in the SAN taking most of it out two days before the christmas break, by the end of the next day most of the network was working bar personal account space and personal email) by the new year (a week and a half after the failure) the full list of services were running as far as I've been able to make out only emails sent the night of the failure were lost (it happened at 7PM.) Since all external connections go through the Uni's VPN its also pretty secure.
Now this is for a university which is primarily a humanties university, why is a technology university only now looking at providing wireless access for laptops and PDA's when some have been doing it for five years? Why has a Tech University only recently got any good at doing things others have been doing well for years? I think thats the real question in my mind
This is yet another case of a company not willing to train their employees. I am going to university because I want to learn the theory for the job. I didn't go to university to become an expert in one program and not think about what I was doing.
Years back companies used to create apprenticeships and train their employees, you would be taught your basic programming and work related theory through there. It was a company's job to train you not the university's because universities and Colleges are for different things. Already (in the UK) the value of a degree has fallen a BSC degree puts you at technician level of jobs, a BEng will make you and Engineer and a MEng is for a charted engineer.
If you want 'tradesmen' then create an apprenticeship in your company for that trade, Universities exist to tech thinking and to further knowledge. I'm sick and tired of companies who won't invest in their employees (or prospective employees) and demanding the state do the job for them.
See I don't really have a problem with the Source program, I've got Doom3 which I can't play because I lost the installation ID so I can either spend anouther £20 for a game I've already spent £40 on or I could just not play it. I've actually misplaced my HL2 disk in a recent house move but can still play all the Half life games without worrying about where I put some of my game dvd's. I'm sure I'm a bit more accident prone than your average person but there are a lot of legacy games (five years old) I've thrown away because I've lost the cd keys (or the cd's degraded.)
While having everything locked in does mean I could lose the ability to play HL2 in 5-10 years firstly I'd be surprised if was still playing the same game after almost ten to fifteen years from its realise and secondly while legacy games are great I can't play most of my Win98 games since XP, so five years life in a game is all I expect. I know for atleast the next few years I'll be able to play HL2 even ifI lose the disks and thats what matters to me.
Lastly Valve are my group of non evil developers, like Cyan Worlds. I can see them making some alteration to the steam app so everyone can play their game if they were to go under.
Do you know I've been playing alot of my steams games recently and hadn't noticed the adverts until you mentioned them but know I think about it.
I thought FPGA's were a common microcontroller that *could* be altered to run as a microprocessor. You can configure FPGA's to run as a micro-controller and you can get microprocessors to act like a microcontroller but they are not the same thing. Most FPGA's run at far lower clock frequencies and far lower transistor density's when compared to your desktop CPU. This isn't because one is better than the other its because they are designed for different purposes, getting more transistors on a chip is great for your smartphone but doesn't mean much for your desktop.
I just don't see how this would would allow for moore's law to be broken. The largest FPGA I have been taught about (and gotten to use) had 22,000 transistors on it, I thought your average CPU was supposed to have billions.
MSN is big in my corner of Britain, everyone has a hotmail account and uses instant messaging that I've come accross, AIM is pretty dead here the only people who use it are AOL subscribers and they are few and far in between.
Personnally I like Facebook, I don't like any of the others because of the nonsense with Facebook you have a design which doesn't make my eyes bleed and is surprisingly functional in what it does.
Your wrong, most manufacturing industries in the Uk made the switch to metric a few years back (maybe a decade), if you actually look around the only things showing imperial units are road signs (all in miles), Milk (is slowly transistioning from pints to litres go check the bottles the litre measurement has been getting bigger every year on mine), hieght (most official documents would record it in Metres but we say 5ft...), Weight (we talk about stones when your medical record will be in kilograms), temperature is also a mixed one I haven't seen a weatherman/woman talk about farehnheight (sp?) on the tv but you do hear it on the radio.
Its also worth checking your speedo in your car or bike I beleive they all have to show the speed in KPH as well as MPH.
Smartphone interface which doesn't suck? I've heard the Symbian OS slated any number of times and recently four people I know gave up their complicated smartphones, for alternatives.
My dad stopped using his Nokia 6600 and has bought a Motorolla V3i, which he hates, completetly. I can't mention phones in anyway without being told how horrible the interface is and how is older phone was better, in the end I gave him my Orange SPV m500, which he loves.
My Friend chris, he used to have a Nokia 6680 he to complained it was no good and got a Samsung E900. Again I can't hold a conversation with him about phones because he hates he new one he doesn't like the interface and he finds the phone much more limited.
My little sister Tara, she had a Nokia 7610. Again the normal to complicated and too large complaints. She has a Nokia 6111 for this years contract, while she does prefer the newer phone she'll happily admit that she liked using the Symbian OS in retrospect.
Finally my mum originally she had a Nokia 7210, then a 7610 and now shes back to the 7210. Again she preferred the Symbian OS layout over the older 7210's because it was much clearer.
I've been using a Orange SPV m500 for 18 months, recently I upgraded to an O2 XDA Mini S. The phone cast £0 the contract isn't bad (£30 inc vat) and the 2gb memory card for it was £27.95 (including P&P.) There were things in the m500 I wanted fixed and the Mini S has them all (although I still wish the camera was better) its quick to turn on the inbuilt keybaord makes texting easy, WMP 10 interfaces great with WMP 11 on my PC and the way it sync's with Outlook is fine. Its easy to use if it had a 3.5mm stereo socket instead of 2.5mm, 40grams lighter and had a 3 megapixel camera which didn't have a crap lense, it would be the IDEAL phone, you wouldn't be able to do any better, or atleast I can't think of any way to improve it. (Ease of use based on slightly drunken hot girl being able to put her phone number in, it ranks a 10.)
Apple have finally managed to make their version, which will sync with OS X's version of Outlook whats exciting? Its not new, its not innovative and yet because this is made by Apple the people who make Ipod this will be 'cool'. Let me see the interface and then I'll try work up excitement just like I'm currently trying to figure why I would upgrade to an O2 XDA Global which appears to be a backward step.
The Wiimote is a gimmick, I know the PS2 and Xbox controllers do put your casual gamer off, my mum will happily play signstar and buzz (with their speacial controllers) but won't touch any normal PS2 game.So yes I suppose it is at least a step out for others, but to be honest I find the guns i got with Time crisis a lot more natural than a Wiimote, how many bowling/Sword games can you release before people get bored? Why do I focus on Wii Sports? Because everyone (well customers in work) who wants to buy a Wii talks about Wii sports and the Wiimote, I would rather have seen a Wiimote for a gamecube before the Wii and have it prove itself as a good controller rather than seeing the Wiimote and watching nintendo run around telling us why its better, then again I think the PS2 controller is one of the best interfaces I've ever used for games.
I've played Zelda, Wii Sports and Red Steal. It took me two minutes to work out how to win everytime on Wii Sports, Red Steal just seemed a demo for the remote. Zelda was mildly fun but I'm not a Zelda fan. I can see why Wii Sports would be a lot of fun espeacially in a group, but once you have it figured out it loses interest (espeacially when you realise a few flicks of your wrist will do better than any bowling action.)
They are the only three games out in the shops in my area and I have looked at the upcoming titles (my sister wants a Wii and I was curious) nothing in the line up excites me, I hated Rayman on the PS2 because the charracter was highly irratating, you can give me a fancy remote but the charracter will still annoy me, just as giving a really uncomfortable looking controller to play some of the other titles will put me off.
The thing is many of the upcoming PS3 games do interest me, as do a very slowly growing number of Xbox360 games, I'm 20, I have a part time job, goto uni and love all the PS2 games I've played and am a bit of a fan boy. I'm more or less the market for the PS3 but I'm here wondering if it is worth the cash so how will Sony shift 6 million?
See the only Star Trek game I liked was Starfleet academy, it had for the time really good graphics (there stil lnot that bad), the movie sequences added to the game and while much of the game was flying around firing things there was a lot of decision points which did effect the gameplay, you could effect your teams scores, an extra mission opened up if you took anouther route, sometimes you would have to destroy someone if you said the wrong thing in negotiations. There was a sequel known as Klingon Academy but i never saw it in the shops.
As most people here have said Star Trek lends itself much more to that style of gameplay, one where you have a mystery to solve and that mystery might be solved by increasing power to your sensors, or by blowing the ship out of the sky. I think thats why so many trekkie games fail, Star trek is as much (if not more) about morality, investigations and story than just blowing things up.
I don't doubt that 1 million unit have shipped to USA but, I'll be honest here I am a PS3 fan, a big one, but I don't see how they will ship or sell 6 million units by march. Its £549 in the UK (when released), thats double what Americans have to pay. I can justify £300, perhaps a little more, I still think the £200 cost of my PSP was worth it. Yet its the only console which will offer true versitility, I get my Gran Turismo,GTA, Tony Hawk, etc... fix and I can play Guitar Hero,Buzz and Singstar with friends. But is it worth £549? The Xbox360 isn't in the same market, After a year there are almost enough games to make me interested in getting a Xbox360, but the limited hard drive lack of blu ray/HD DVD, crappy expansion slots and most importantly lack of any singstar,buzz,Guitar Hero type of games which puts me off the console.
The you have the Gimmick or Wii as it prefers to be known which has Wii sports, while I'm sure it will suck in many people with Wii Sports (heck we do have a 30 person strong waiting list for Wii's) I can't help but see it as anouther gamecube which will end up with two games I like and the rest of the game library sucking hugely. I'm not saying Wii Sports isn't fun, but it is the type of game which doesn't stay fun after the tenth time you've picked it up (kinda the same way a singstar/buzz game loses enjoyability over time.)
What does a gamer do? On one hand you have a console which sells based on a Gimmick (Wiimote) which looks set to sell hugely, one console which is limited in games for the non hard core gamer (which has sold well(Xbox360)) and the only console which looks like it could cover both is so incredibly expensive that I couldn't justify buying it (as well as the company showing increasing signs of evilness.)
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My final year project is a very similar device, I've redesigned the MP3 open source project from http://www.pjrc.com/ then using the Compact Flash drive and a Sony Erricson Bluetooth Starter Kit (uses an old rok chip.) I spent 3 months researching to make sure the idea was original and some other company beats me to the punch line.
Feel free to join us on the creative dicussion forums ( http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board?boar d.id=Vista ), so far their stated reason is 6 months ago creative got the finalised audio layers and so EAX would be broken. 6 months and thats all the information they will divulge.
I think the real question here is why hasn't creative collapsed as a company yet, I'll explain what I mean. Avermedia (TV Card manufacture) would not make a x64 driver for XP, apparently XP x64 didn't have the demand. A month after the first beta MSDN release (about a year ago now) a Windows XP x64 driver for my Avermedia Hybrid DvB (AR16) appeared on their website. It was driver signed, when i installed Vista beta 2 the driver was on the vista disk. Avermedia have had beta x86 and x64 drivers online as well as a beta application designed to work better in the vista enviroment. On the other hand a x64 driver doesn't exist for my Creative Live! Vista IM camera my parents bought me that camera because it had Vista in the name and they as Joe consumer believed it would work for Vista. My Creative Audigy SE 5.1 card doesn't have Vista drivers yet either. Creative have made beta drivers with a time limit on them, a time limit! Then they haven't rereleased the driver with an updated time limit so all these beta drivers cease to function.
I have to ask, we are living in a world were a small company like Avermedia can produce about a hundred good high quality drivers so vista versions aren't needed, but then redesigns their drivers to work even better in vista a whole six months before their needed. When a much larger company can't even produce 40 basic drivers, or even 1 fully working driver after 6 months (yes I'm excluding the other devices but they haven't managed with any of those either yet and sound cards should priority for creative.)
ok what are you talking about? Cheap storage? Nothing matches?
My university shop is the only place I know whihc still sells 64mb flash disks (for £4.99), last time I bought floppies the pack of ten cost me £3. Thats an extra £1.99 for 4 times the capacity, most 512mb flash disks in the shops cost £12.99/£16.99. Alot of companies which come to my uni for demonstration will give out either flash disks or dvd's with their presentation and company information on, You just wipe the flash disk and often you've just gotten yourself a free 128mb flash disk.
Floppies were good but data integrity sucked I would take a floppy into school and a third of the time the floppy would have corrupted itself. They were a good advancement for the time but were hardly brilliant.
While email may replace many funcions file size does get to be an issue, in university we have our modified version of MS exchange built into every machine, with every email received a popup appears and theres a direct link to your email page. yet every student I know carries a flash disk because its easier to drop one into the front USB ports, drag onto the drive and then chuck the flash disk over to your mate. DVD's were the sucsessor to the CD, its flash disks which have killed off floppies, their larger they don't corrupt and their much more robust.
While you can't get a RAZR in the UK there is the V3i (basically the same thing) Just looking around you can get it for free on a £20 a month contract ( https://shop.o2.co.uk/phone/Motorola/V3xx%20(i-mod e) )
As you can see the O2 XDA Mini S is free on a 12 month £35 a month contract thats a PDA using WM5 and a phone I love, even their brand new XDA Orbit is free on a £35 a month 12 month contract. Sadly with O2 there are big advantages to tying yourself into a 18month contract. Vodaphone and Orange offer similar deals however Oranges recent move to fixed inflexable service plans has meant that they are losing customers in spades. Of course if your a carrier promoting 3G like 3 then your price plans are insanely good I was offered 1000 minutes, 1000 texts and unlimited data for £22.5 a month and the phone for free (sadley it was a older larger and ugly PDA.
I haven't been able to get Beryl working, I've got a machine which should easily run it, after spending several hours trying to get it working I found the issue in the beryl wiki only to have no solution there.
I kinda disagree with all four reviews, Linux is not desktop ready, perhaps if the machine were setup but I have to work substantially harder to get Linux setup. Once setup and for basic office applications its great. But Wine doesn't run many games and while I've heard of Ce'dega (i think its called that) I haven't seen much support.
Vista is alot more than the prettyness of Aero but thats all that appears to be getting attention and my expearence suggests 2gb of ram is really what you need to run Vista well. I'd much rather be hearing about the improved secuirty, the pushing of the x64 version, the search engine, gadgets (which were not stolen from OS X as many reviewers state (been around longer than that), bit locker the new audio/video setups. Vista is also more finiky about hardware than XP.(while I could install XP onto a bad motherboard Vista's setup refuses)
The arguement that mac's are more stable and don't catch viruses as well as being more 'fun' has always confused me. Since SP1 I've never seen a BSOD on a XP machine, only once or twice have third party apps crashed on me. I have no doubt that as Mac share increases Macs will develop viruses and its the dumb user who gets them, more Mac users means more dumb users. The lovely things in Mac OS X have all be copied into Vista so the 'fun' factor goes down (since almost all games are for windows.) One thing that did amuse me was the Mac OS X reviewer talked about the lack of popups and then went on to say "I now feel like I am in charge of my computer rather than it being in charge of me." I find the popups in Linux and Windows tell me what is going on in my PC and help me be in greater control.
I'm Pro Vista but I think all of the reviews do a poor job of reviewing each OS viewing them all through rose tinted glasses and not accuratly comparing them to the competition, perhaps it would have been better to have forced each user to use each of the OS's for a month.
I'm guessing its company dependent, my little sister was given a medion laptop in December with the "vista Compatable" sticker. Its taken a while but for £10 (to cover rocessing and P&P from germany) a OEM version of 32bit (only) Vista Home Premium (OEM) came through the door. While we were trying to get the sticker process to work I had several emails with the Medion support. Basically they plan to release disks based on your computer so my older medion laptop with the less capable graphics card would come with 32bit Home Basic (Bought it to early to get the sticker :@). Medion have been very good with their installation disks, my "Medion Installation Disk" is literally a XP MCE 2005 disk with a different printed cover, my sisters Xp SP2 disk is identical file wise to a copy of XP SP2 I have but again has "Medion" stamped all over it.
I would expect a company like Dell to release the 'upgrade' version, but who buys the upgrade version anyway its always more expensive than the 'full version'(looking at www.overclockers.co.uk, Dixons, Amazon and other places.)
Its a useful place to site, for much of my university coursework I use wikipedia as a reference and them move onto other sites or books. My disicpline is engineering if I'm working on a project write up I might need an equation handy if I can get a decent reference. But if I'm looking at transistor theory and find a book with the relevent formula for the project what else do I site? Its part of the standard coursework guide that a person should always qoute 5 references. Most of the time I only need one, since the problems are mathmatical. So once I've referenced a IEEE Journal , The lecturers notes, a library book, a web based source what else do I reference? I've only really needed one of those sources I'm not trying to argue a point but working out the maximum gain of a circuit.
I have been meaning to rework a few of the wikipedia articles not because they contain misinformation but because they lack clarity I've always thought many of the simpler electrical engineering entries could be enhanced with examples of when to use a formula or design.
Using the current system $1.9596 is worth £1
In the UK we have £2 coins in use and theres been general mumblings for a normal £5 coin for a while (there are many speacial £5 coins which ARE legal tender.) So our £2 coin would be similar to a $3.92 coin and in the case of our occasional £5 coin thats $9.798. A $5 coin would be handy wouldn't it? I know I would prefer a £5 coin to a £5 note.
Norways objection is the lock in of the ITMS and fairplay not being licensed out to any other company. Sure microsoft designed and operate the drm scheme but pretty much anyone can get a license to make thir MP3 playing device operate with it.
You can't do that with Fairplay, Only Apple products will be able to operate Fairplay DRM. This causes a problem if I get a PlaysForSure device I may be directed to WMP, there are 11 different stores offering their own music. If I don't like my current MP3 player say a Creative Zen and own a O2 XDA Mini (both playforsure devices) I can still play the songs i've purchased for my Creative Zen on my new XDA Mini. With apple you can't do that and its diliberatly locking me into the Apple brand.
The number of manufacturers isn't a red herring company x has invented a DRM scheme and will allow any company to license it. While this foists DRM on us it does create half decent interoperability between different companies and their products. If I don't like Creative I can get a iMate, if I don't like my iMate I can get a Sandisk. Thats giving consumers choice the only lock in is that if i purchase an MP3 from store x I have to own a device capable of playing store x files they don't have to be made by company x. Thats a technical lock in and understandable (why my PS2 games won't work on a Xbox style of thing.)
If my Ipod breaks in a few years and my music collection has been built up through the ITMS then I'm stuck with anouther Apple product, i couldn't switch to a Creative product or a sandisk because Apple won't let them license Fairplay. Thats a chosen lock in, the iPod is highly sucessfull and fashionable right now alot of people own them and since they had to install Itunes they've probably investigated and purchased songs from ITMS. If they found the process to be a good one it likely they'll spend a few hundred pounds with te ITMS. So a few years role on and my Apple Ipod breaks I look around the MP3 player market and know the Sandisk XYZ is the best and coolest but I have £200's worth of songs I can only play on Itunes or an Ipod. What would you do? Kiss those songs goodbye, or buy anouther Ipod?
The Zune Music Store would be in the same boat as the ITMS is now because both are limited to one companys brand and work to stop you using them on anouther product. I'm well aware that you can burn your drm'd songs and rerip them but when you start getting large collections how fesible is that? Further more its not obvious I didn't think of it when I had bought songs through ITMS.
Stope being a fanboy and smell the coffee, personnally I'd love a device which would support PlaysForSure and Fairplay but Apples not letting it happen. DRM is bad but in this case Microsoft are (excluding the Zune) less evil than Apple (including the zoom their equal.) If we must have DRM forced upon us then make company's license their DRM out to others so we are never locked into one format.
What part of this is hard?
PlaysforSure devices are created by alot of different manufacturers you have about 10 different companies producing MP3 players to use with the PlaysForSure DRM scheme. Microsoft are willing to license Playsforsure to any manufacturer going. Apples Fairplay is Apple only. I dont own an ipod so I can't play any fairplay MP3's, I own a O2 XDA Mini S that can play my playforsure DRM, I own a Creative Muvo and that can play playforsure.
Apple by refusing to allow any company to license Fairplay are using their dominant position to kill off competitors and lock people into Apple hardware. If Apple had licensed the DRM to other companies I'm sure Norway wouldn't care, fact is te only way to play Fairplay MP3's on non apple devices is by burning them to cd and mp3ing them. Most nontechies aren't going to know that and people like myself wouldn't bother anyway.
The Zune isn't in europe before you reply with that
where can i get these capri pants?
I thought most of the business lecture's in Harvard were from engineering background. I'm not saying all engineers make business savy people because they don't. But looking at my electrical engineering class for every single business module we've had the business assistants and business lectures all class us as some of the best students they have for that year (based on ability) and we usually spend our time playing multiplayer tron over the university wifi.
Again I'm not saying every student engineer gets business, there are some students in the class who struggle like hell. I know I couldn't do a business degree (probably die of boredom.) I think it has something to do with the type of person who wants to be a electrical engineer, most of us are hardworking, sensible, very practical and grounded in maths and logic.
So I would argue that this person would be ideal for proposing regulation as its his field they want to regulate and as for business practices well I'm not so sure it would depend on where hes been working the last few years.
I disagree with his message by the way net neutrality (or atleast the concept of common carrier) should be law in every country of the world.
What country are you in? I've phoned Microsoft Activation Helpline dozens of times as far as I can make out only three people answer the helpline for the UK number. My standard tactic has been to dial the number, press 1 type in my installation ID and then confim to the operator that my copy of office is on one machine. I'm asking because the Helpline is the only painless phone service I've ever used (I haven't used many) and I'm curious.
You were doing well until halfway through and you entered the realm of nonsense and scare mongering.
Office 2007's UI is completly different yet I think it is far better than Office 2003 (and OpenOffice.) Sure the UI is completly different but after a few hours of using it I was quite confident and started discovering things in Word which I never knew existed. The few (me and two/three others) that I know who have tried it have completly the same feelings which are, weird and difficult at first but soon easy to use and adds power to your use of word/excel/powerpoint. Thats with technically literate, for most people training will be required. Now its the time for companies who don't want to stay in the MS rat race or can't afford to upgrade, to move over to Open Office. I'm quite pro Office 2007 but I can see how many of the features of it would be unnecessary for big business (I think the newer versions of excel and word would be an asset to small businesses.) My main reasons for not using OpenOffice (pre Office 2007) were bloat (took much longer to load) and the UI looks like something from ten years ago, its a good product for business's and the free price tag has to be alluring espeacially now businesses would have to pay a pretty penny for training as well.
Your opinion on Vista is FUD, Vista for most pruposes is a glorrified version of XP. Sure the network stack has been rewritten and I found my online games working much better but, at the same time setting it up for my university's wifi network was much more hassle. Sure it will have direct x 10 but how many companies will need that? Sure its forced most vendors to create x64 drivers but that effects the consumer market rather than business. The fact I can't install drivers it doesn't like annoys the hell out of me. As for the DRM, that thing that is only turned on when the media requests it? I'm not worried since I won't touch DRM media.
There are many reasons to choose Linux or OpenOffice.Org just as there are many people like me who like the Microsoft range (If I was a business manager running a office that made phone calls and used basic office apps I'd probably have the machines running Ubunutu instead of Windows.) I like Open source because its fored MS to bring out new improved and worthwhile applications. Argue real points don't spread FUD
I thought MIT was the big tech University, at my Uni (University of Plymouth (UK)) we've had a wireless network that covers the ENTIRE campus, its powerfull enough that you can actually still pick it up in the city centre (I keep meaning to investigate that because I can pick it up a quater of a mile away and that sure as hell breaks the 802.11g spec.)
Plymouth University isn't small (about 30000 students enroled) because of the cost of notes the IT department modifed MS Exchange and started putting all lecture material online. Plymouth University also has 6 smaller campuses all of which can access this network (wirelessly on their campuses) there was a major network failure for the first time recently (A recently bought batch of Hard Drives failed badly in the SAN taking most of it out two days before the christmas break, by the end of the next day most of the network was working bar personal account space and personal email) by the new year (a week and a half after the failure) the full list of services were running as far as I've been able to make out only emails sent the night of the failure were lost (it happened at 7PM.) Since all external connections go through the Uni's VPN its also pretty secure.
Now this is for a university which is primarily a humanties university, why is a technology university only now looking at providing wireless access for laptops and PDA's when some have been doing it for five years? Why has a Tech University only recently got any good at doing things others have been doing well for years? I think thats the real question in my mind
This is yet another case of a company not willing to train their employees. I am going to university because I want to learn the theory for the job. I didn't go to university to become an expert in one program and not think about what I was doing.
Years back companies used to create apprenticeships and train their employees, you would be taught your basic programming and work related theory through there. It was a company's job to train you not the university's because universities and Colleges are for different things. Already (in the UK) the value of a degree has fallen a BSC degree puts you at technician level of jobs, a BEng will make you and Engineer and a MEng is for a charted engineer.
If you want 'tradesmen' then create an apprenticeship in your company for that trade, Universities exist to tech thinking and to further knowledge. I'm sick and tired of companies who won't invest in their employees (or prospective employees) and demanding the state do the job for them.
See I don't really have a problem with the Source program, I've got Doom3 which I can't play because I lost the installation ID so I can either spend anouther £20 for a game I've already spent £40 on or I could just not play it. I've actually misplaced my HL2 disk in a recent house move but can still play all the Half life games without worrying about where I put some of my game dvd's. I'm sure I'm a bit more accident prone than your average person but there are a lot of legacy games (five years old) I've thrown away because I've lost the cd keys (or the cd's degraded.)
While having everything locked in does mean I could lose the ability to play HL2 in 5-10 years firstly I'd be surprised if was still playing the same game after almost ten to fifteen years from its realise and secondly while legacy games are great I can't play most of my Win98 games since XP, so five years life in a game is all I expect. I know for atleast the next few years I'll be able to play HL2 even ifI lose the disks and thats what matters to me.
Lastly Valve are my group of non evil developers, like Cyan Worlds. I can see them making some alteration to the steam app so everyone can play their game if they were to go under.
Do you know I've been playing alot of my steams games recently and hadn't noticed the adverts until you mentioned them but know I think about it.
I thought FPGA's were a common microcontroller that *could* be altered to run as a microprocessor. You can configure FPGA's to run as a micro-controller and you can get microprocessors to act like a microcontroller but they are not the same thing. Most FPGA's run at far lower clock frequencies and far lower transistor density's when compared to your desktop CPU. This isn't because one is better than the other its because they are designed for different purposes, getting more transistors on a chip is great for your smartphone but doesn't mean much for your desktop.
I just don't see how this would would allow for moore's law to be broken. The largest FPGA I have been taught about (and gotten to use) had 22,000 transistors on it, I thought your average CPU was supposed to have billions.
MSN is big in my corner of Britain, everyone has a hotmail account and uses instant messaging that I've come accross, AIM is pretty dead here the only people who use it are AOL subscribers and they are few and far in between.
Personnally I like Facebook, I don't like any of the others because of the nonsense with Facebook you have a design which doesn't make my eyes bleed and is surprisingly functional in what it does.
Your wrong, most manufacturing industries in the Uk made the switch to metric a few years back (maybe a decade), if you actually look around the only things showing imperial units are road signs (all in miles), Milk (is slowly transistioning from pints to litres go check the bottles the litre measurement has been getting bigger every year on mine), hieght (most official documents would record it in Metres but we say 5ft...), Weight (we talk about stones when your medical record will be in kilograms), temperature is also a mixed one I haven't seen a weatherman/woman talk about farehnheight (sp?) on the tv but you do hear it on the radio.
Its also worth checking your speedo in your car or bike I beleive they all have to show the speed in KPH as well as MPH.
Smartphone interface which doesn't suck? I've heard the Symbian OS slated any number of times and recently four people I know gave up their complicated smartphones, for alternatives.
My dad stopped using his Nokia 6600 and has bought a Motorolla V3i, which he hates, completetly. I can't mention phones in anyway without being told how horrible the interface is and how is older phone was better, in the end I gave him my Orange SPV m500, which he loves.
My Friend chris, he used to have a Nokia 6680 he to complained it was no good and got a Samsung E900. Again I can't hold a conversation with him about phones because he hates he new one he doesn't like the interface and he finds the phone much more limited.
My little sister Tara, she had a Nokia 7610. Again the normal to complicated and too large complaints. She has a Nokia 6111 for this years contract, while she does prefer the newer phone she'll happily admit that she liked using the Symbian OS in retrospect.
Finally my mum originally she had a Nokia 7210, then a 7610 and now shes back to the 7210. Again she preferred the Symbian OS layout over the older 7210's because it was much clearer.
I've been using a Orange SPV m500 for 18 months, recently I upgraded to an O2 XDA Mini S. The phone cast £0 the contract isn't bad (£30 inc vat) and the 2gb memory card for it was £27.95 (including P&P.) There were things in the m500 I wanted fixed and the Mini S has them all (although I still wish the camera was better) its quick to turn on the inbuilt keybaord makes texting easy, WMP 10 interfaces great with WMP 11 on my PC and the way it sync's with Outlook is fine. Its easy to use if it had a 3.5mm stereo socket instead of 2.5mm, 40grams lighter and had a 3 megapixel camera which didn't have a crap lense, it would be the IDEAL phone, you wouldn't be able to do any better, or atleast I can't think of any way to improve it. (Ease of use based on slightly drunken hot girl being able to put her phone number in, it ranks a 10.)
Apple have finally managed to make their version, which will sync with OS X's version of Outlook whats exciting? Its not new, its not innovative and yet because this is made by Apple the people who make Ipod this will be 'cool'. Let me see the interface and then I'll try work up excitement just like I'm currently trying to figure why I would upgrade to an O2 XDA Global which appears to be a backward step.
The Wiimote is a gimmick, I know the PS2 and Xbox controllers do put your casual gamer off, my mum will happily play signstar and buzz (with their speacial controllers) but won't touch any normal PS2 game.So yes I suppose it is at least a step out for others, but to be honest I find the guns i got with Time crisis a lot more natural than a Wiimote, how many bowling/Sword games can you release before people get bored? Why do I focus on Wii Sports? Because everyone (well customers in work) who wants to buy a Wii talks about Wii sports and the Wiimote, I would rather have seen a Wiimote for a gamecube before the Wii and have it prove itself as a good controller rather than seeing the Wiimote and watching nintendo run around telling us why its better, then again I think the PS2 controller is one of the best interfaces I've ever used for games.
I've played Zelda, Wii Sports and Red Steal. It took me two minutes to work out how to win everytime on Wii Sports, Red Steal just seemed a demo for the remote. Zelda was mildly fun but I'm not a Zelda fan. I can see why Wii Sports would be a lot of fun espeacially in a group, but once you have it figured out it loses interest (espeacially when you realise a few flicks of your wrist will do better than any bowling action.)
They are the only three games out in the shops in my area and I have looked at the upcoming titles (my sister wants a Wii and I was curious) nothing in the line up excites me, I hated Rayman on the PS2 because the charracter was highly irratating, you can give me a fancy remote but the charracter will still annoy me, just as giving a really uncomfortable looking controller to play some of the other titles will put me off.
The thing is many of the upcoming PS3 games do interest me, as do a very slowly growing number of Xbox360 games, I'm 20, I have a part time job, goto uni and love all the PS2 games I've played and am a bit of a fan boy. I'm more or less the market for the PS3 but I'm here wondering if it is worth the cash so how will Sony shift 6 million?
See the only Star Trek game I liked was Starfleet academy, it had for the time really good graphics (there stil lnot that bad), the movie sequences added to the game and while much of the game was flying around firing things there was a lot of decision points which did effect the gameplay, you could effect your teams scores, an extra mission opened up if you took anouther route, sometimes you would have to destroy someone if you said the wrong thing in negotiations. There was a sequel known as Klingon Academy but i never saw it in the shops.
As most people here have said Star Trek lends itself much more to that style of gameplay, one where you have a mystery to solve and that mystery might be solved by increasing power to your sensors, or by blowing the ship out of the sky. I think thats why so many trekkie games fail, Star trek is as much (if not more) about morality, investigations and story than just blowing things up.
I don't doubt that 1 million unit have shipped to USA but, I'll be honest here I am a PS3 fan, a big one, but I don't see how they will ship or sell 6 million units by march. Its £549 in the UK (when released), thats double what Americans have to pay. I can justify £300, perhaps a little more, I still think the £200 cost of my PSP was worth it. Yet its the only console which will offer true versitility, I get my Gran Turismo,GTA, Tony Hawk, etc... fix and I can play Guitar Hero,Buzz and Singstar with friends. But is it worth £549?
The Xbox360 isn't in the same market, After a year there are almost enough games to make me interested in getting a Xbox360, but the limited hard drive lack of blu ray/HD DVD, crappy expansion slots and most importantly lack of any singstar,buzz,Guitar Hero type of games which puts me off the console.
The you have the Gimmick or Wii as it prefers to be known which has Wii sports, while I'm sure it will suck in many people with Wii Sports (heck we do have a 30 person strong waiting list for Wii's) I can't help but see it as anouther gamecube which will end up with two games I like and the rest of the game library sucking hugely. I'm not saying Wii Sports isn't fun, but it is the type of game which doesn't stay fun after the tenth time you've picked it up (kinda the same way a singstar/buzz game loses enjoyability over time.)
What does a gamer do? On one hand you have a console which sells based on a Gimmick (Wiimote) which looks set to sell hugely, one console which is limited in games for the non hard core gamer (which has sold well(Xbox360)) and the only console which looks like it could cover both is so incredibly expensive that I couldn't justify buying it (as well as the company showing increasing signs of evilness.)
So I'm not the only one who thinks he talking out of his ass then?