Hate to break it to you but ALL software is potentially bad. You have to decide how much you trust it based on who wrote it, whether that's verifiable, your own inspection of the source, whatever. In the case of F/OSS you do at least have to option of inspecting the source. You have no such luxury with non-free software, in which case you simply have to decide how much you trust the publisher.
Agreed 100% - use the right tools for the job. But as time goes by, the number of jobs for which digital isn't suitable is diminishing. But having said that there will likely always be a reason to use film - just like I still use vinyl for DJing whilst using CD & FLAC for everything else.
That's 36 shots in that package, and they cost at least $0.50 each when everything's included. When I was recently on Safari I took over 5000 shots in a week - with your materials that would have cost $2500 and filled up a pretty decent sized case. As it was it cost nothing (I already had the cards) and everything fitted on my laptop. Sure it's partly a matter of convenience but if I were using film I simply couldn't have taken the shots I did - film was expensive out there and in short supply, and luggage space severely limited. So in that particular case, shotting digital enabled me to take shots I wouldn't otherwise have got.
Agreed, for straight landscape or posed portrait photography a super fast card is only significant at the end of the day when you have to empty them all onto your PC. But if you're shooting things which won't sit stil (wildlife, sports, candid/street scenes) you'll make more use of burst shooting and at 5fps/8mp that's a lot of data. With a generic CF card I can shoot for maybe 20 shots until the buffer fills and it stops to write - with the Ultra 2 cards I usually use I can fill up an entire card without taking my finger off the trigger.
SLRs work very differently to a P&S. They have a mechanical mirror and shutter which opens and closes for each frame. Doing that at 24fps isn't impossible (movie cameras do it) but it's a big design change (extra weight, cost, size etc) for a feature that few SLR users are likely to want. If I want to shoot movies, I'll take a camcorder.
As does the 30D, the 5D, and the 20D (released in 2004). The reason older cameras often had slower connections was that the CF cards of the time couldn't keep up, so there was no point.
As a Brit living in the US I can attest to the fact that (a) petrol is a lot cheaper here and (b) lots of people drive absurd cars with terrible fuel consumption. However, one thing which might alleviate your concerns a little is to know that the US Gallon is smaller than the UK Gallon (1.2:1). So those numbers probably aren't directly comparable.
Either way, a state that practices official censorship of anything except for media that requires violence or fraud to be created, is a regime that directly or indirectly uses the threat of loss of life, liberty or property to silence others. I agree, but you left the US off your list of countries. I'm not sure if that was intentional or not, but you did all the same. There are plenty of examples of banned media in the US which needed neither violence nor fraud to be created. You can read more here and here.
Why is storyline important? Let me list some games which are pretty widely accepted to be "great":
Pacman Super Mario Bros Tetris Lumines The various Burnout titles Sonic (the original ones) Gran Turismo Crazy Taxi Nintendogs Mario Party Guitar Hero DDR... I could go on...
Now, how important is storyline to any of the above? Sure a good story is vital to certain genres - obviously RPGs, also FPSs to a lesser extent. But there are plenty of great games out there, even many absolute classics, which have no story whatsoever. And they don't suffer for it.
Sure we do. But there are also plenty of inspired (and inspiring) movies and TV shows around. The point is they're not exclusive, whilst we might all groan at another American Idol season I can't wait for the next "outside the box" classic like The Matrix, Napoleon Dynamite, or Sin City.
PSP is region free for games. I have a japanese import and buy all my games in the US.
The DS Lite is about an inch shorter than the PSP, and pretty much the same on other dimensions. The clam shell design certainly makes it more pocket friendly though. On the other hand, I find the PSP more comfortable to actually use.
A number of the PSP games are pretty good, and I like the touchscreen too. MarioKart is cool, Brain Age is surprisingly addictive and my GF loves the new Mario game. However, I can't say I have a great preference for DS games over PSP ones - I like GTA and Burnout as much as anything I've played on DS.
Can't argue with price - it's a bargain.
While I'm sure the DS battery life is a little better, I can't say it's made any difference to me. Both last long enough that I only have to charge them every few days.
Personally, they're both great devices and I'm surprised there's such a big sales difference in Japan. In the US they're level and I'm not sure I really believe there's much of a difference in Europe - the figures in TFA don't seem to match the message they're pushing.
So sure, you could add heuristics until the cows come home so file(1) can guess what the file is. Or you could use a marker (extension, fork, whatever) so it KNOWS what it is. I don't know about you, but I'm always a little worried when computers have to guess things...
Well for Java I want to use Eclipse, but I don't use that for C (probably emacs) or letters (as you point out, probably not plain text but you get the point).
Great. It's "English text". Well, actually no it's not. It's C source code. I notice that you still have ".c" on the end of your filenames - surely that's redundant? Or maybe not.
Until file(1) can tell the difference between C code and Java code and a letter to my grandmother it's not so useful.
If you're seeing things like tints on certain inputs then it's the fault of your TV. There's nothing inherently "red" about VGA and nothing inherently "washed out" about component. I run component and VGA into my HDTV and they both look identical, I only use one over the other for convenience. Whilst I agree that there is scope for a digital signal (DVI/HDMI) to look better than an analogue one, there really shouldn't be any difference between the high bandwidth analogue connections (Component/VGA).
Which is interesting, because all the developers I've spoken to (and yes, I do know some actual game developers actually working on these things) rather like the 360.
FUD. It's been stated again and again by MS that the failure rate of the 360 is comparable to other consumer electronics devices, i.e. in the 3-5% range. Sure the forums are full of people complaining, but you should know better that to look to forums (particularly gaming ones) for reliable information. Just to present the other side of the picture, I know 7 people with 360's and not one of them has had a single problem.
Look, we all know that not everyone fills in the forms. But that means better savings for those of us that do! If Philips are doing a $50 mail in rebate on a TV they can count on having to pay out maybe 50% of those $50 refunds. But if it's an instant rebate, or just a regular discount, they'll have to provide 100%. So they'll drop the rebate/discount to $25.
I fill in rebate forms all the time, and I can only think of one time I didn't get my money. I've saved hundreds and hundreds of dollars just by doing a little paperwork and reading the small print. So as far as I'm concerned, keep them mail in and keep them big.
I think they'll probably just license an engine/middleware that works on both platforms and code to that. Leave the hardware specific stuff to the middleware vendors.
Indeed I do, and I agree with it. Although I'm not an Apple fan by any stretch of the imagination I do have strong attachments to products from a few other niche manufacturers. Pandering to the masses to get wide market appeal can sell a lot of boxes but it doesn't always (ever?) get the best overall product, especially from a technical point of view. And that's one of the reasons I'm not so keen on Apple - they have a lot more than 2% marketshare in the mp3 player market:)
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Hate to break it to you but ALL software is potentially bad. You have to decide how much you trust it based on who wrote it, whether that's verifiable, your own inspection of the source, whatever. In the case of F/OSS you do at least have to option of inspecting the source. You have no such luxury with non-free software, in which case you simply have to decide how much you trust the publisher.
Agreed 100% - use the right tools for the job. But as time goes by, the number of jobs for which digital isn't suitable is diminishing. But having said that there will likely always be a reason to use film - just like I still use vinyl for DJing whilst using CD & FLAC for everything else.
That's 36 shots in that package, and they cost at least $0.50 each when everything's included. When I was recently on Safari I took over 5000 shots in a week - with your materials that would have cost $2500 and filled up a pretty decent sized case. As it was it cost nothing (I already had the cards) and everything fitted on my laptop. Sure it's partly a matter of convenience but if I were using film I simply couldn't have taken the shots I did - film was expensive out there and in short supply, and luggage space severely limited. So in that particular case, shotting digital enabled me to take shots I wouldn't otherwise have got.
Agreed, for straight landscape or posed portrait photography a super fast card is only significant at the end of the day when you have to empty them all onto your PC. But if you're shooting things which won't sit stil (wildlife, sports, candid/street scenes) you'll make more use of burst shooting and at 5fps/8mp that's a lot of data. With a generic CF card I can shoot for maybe 20 shots until the buffer fills and it stops to write - with the Ultra 2 cards I usually use I can fill up an entire card without taking my finger off the trigger.
SLRs work very differently to a P&S. They have a mechanical mirror and shutter which opens and closes for each frame. Doing that at 24fps isn't impossible (movie cameras do it) but it's a big design change (extra weight, cost, size etc) for a feature that few SLR users are likely to want. If I want to shoot movies, I'll take a camcorder.
As does the 30D, the 5D, and the 20D (released in 2004). The reason older cameras often had slower connections was that the CF cards of the time couldn't keep up, so there was no point.
As a Brit living in the US I can attest to the fact that (a) petrol is a lot cheaper here and (b) lots of people drive absurd cars with terrible fuel consumption. However, one thing which might alleviate your concerns a little is to know that the US Gallon is smaller than the UK Gallon (1.2:1). So those numbers probably aren't directly comparable.
Either way, a state that practices official censorship of anything except for media that requires violence or fraud to be created, is a regime that directly or indirectly uses the threat of loss of life, liberty or property to silence others.
I agree, but you left the US off your list of countries. I'm not sure if that was intentional or not, but you did all the same. There are plenty of examples of banned media in the US which needed neither violence nor fraud to be created. You can read more here and here.
I think you're confusing "all over the world" with "in the US". The latter is true, the former most certainly isn't.
Why is storyline important? Let me list some games which are pretty widely accepted to be "great":
... I could go on ...
Pacman
Super Mario Bros
Tetris
Lumines
The various Burnout titles
Sonic (the original ones)
Gran Turismo
Crazy Taxi
Nintendogs
Mario Party
Guitar Hero
DDR
Now, how important is storyline to any of the above? Sure a good story is vital to certain genres - obviously RPGs, also FPSs to a lesser extent. But there are plenty of great games out there, even many absolute classics, which have no story whatsoever. And they don't suffer for it.
Sure we do. But there are also plenty of inspired (and inspiring) movies and TV shows around. The point is they're not exclusive, whilst we might all groan at another American Idol season I can't wait for the next "outside the box" classic like The Matrix, Napoleon Dynamite, or Sin City.
I think the point is, if they're going to switch to anything it will be to Vista.
OK, so I know it's bad form to reply to yourself, but WTF mods? I was expecting maybe a +1 Funny. or -1 Dumb Joke, but Troll? That makes no sense.
PSP is region free for games. I have a japanese import and buy all my games in the US.
The DS Lite is about an inch shorter than the PSP, and pretty much the same on other dimensions. The clam shell design certainly makes it more pocket friendly though. On the other hand, I find the PSP more comfortable to actually use.
A number of the PSP games are pretty good, and I like the touchscreen too. MarioKart is cool, Brain Age is surprisingly addictive and my GF loves the new Mario game. However, I can't say I have a great preference for DS games over PSP ones - I like GTA and Burnout as much as anything I've played on DS.
Can't argue with price - it's a bargain.
While I'm sure the DS battery life is a little better, I can't say it's made any difference to me. Both last long enough that I only have to charge them every few days.
Personally, they're both great devices and I'm surprised there's such a big sales difference in Japan. In the US they're level and I'm not sure I really believe there's much of a difference in Europe - the figures in TFA don't seem to match the message they're pushing.
I hope they get it back, I was looking forward to that game.
So sure, you could add heuristics until the cows come home so file(1) can guess what the file is. Or you could use a marker (extension, fork, whatever) so it KNOWS what it is. I don't know about you, but I'm always a little worried when computers have to guess things...
Well for Java I want to use Eclipse, but I don't use that for C (probably emacs) or letters (as you point out, probably not plain text but you get the point).
And there's the problem:
images.c: ASCII English text
Great. It's "English text". Well, actually no it's not. It's C source code. I notice that you still have ".c" on the end of your filenames - surely that's redundant? Or maybe not.
Until file(1) can tell the difference between C code and Java code and a letter to my grandmother it's not so useful.
If you're seeing things like tints on certain inputs then it's the fault of your TV. There's nothing inherently "red" about VGA and nothing inherently "washed out" about component. I run component and VGA into my HDTV and they both look identical, I only use one over the other for convenience. Whilst I agree that there is scope for a digital signal (DVI/HDMI) to look better than an analogue one, there really shouldn't be any difference between the high bandwidth analogue connections (Component/VGA).
Which is interesting, because all the developers I've spoken to (and yes, I do know some actual game developers actually working on these things) rather like the 360.
FUD. It's been stated again and again by MS that the failure rate of the 360 is comparable to other consumer electronics devices, i.e. in the 3-5% range. Sure the forums are full of people complaining, but you should know better that to look to forums (particularly gaming ones) for reliable information. Just to present the other side of the picture, I know 7 people with 360's and not one of them has had a single problem.
Look, we all know that not everyone fills in the forms. But that means better savings for those of us that do! If Philips are doing a $50 mail in rebate on a TV they can count on having to pay out maybe 50% of those $50 refunds. But if it's an instant rebate, or just a regular discount, they'll have to provide 100%. So they'll drop the rebate/discount to $25.
I fill in rebate forms all the time, and I can only think of one time I didn't get my money. I've saved hundreds and hundreds of dollars just by doing a little paperwork and reading the small print. So as far as I'm concerned, keep them mail in and keep them big.
I think they'll probably just license an engine/middleware that works on both platforms and code to that. Leave the hardware specific stuff to the middleware vendors.
Indeed I do, and I agree with it. Although I'm not an Apple fan by any stretch of the imagination I do have strong attachments to products from a few other niche manufacturers. Pandering to the masses to get wide market appeal can sell a lot of boxes but it doesn't always (ever?) get the best overall product, especially from a technical point of view. And that's one of the reasons I'm not so keen on Apple - they have a lot more than 2% marketshare in the mp3 player market :)
Anyway, apologies for the nitpick!
Apple has come to understand you can run quite a profitible biz by having 7-10% marketshare
Well then they better get moving - their actual market share right now is closer to 2%.