But we've already shat on them from a great height?
See title.
3500 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Apr 2007
I want something I can fit in my pocket. If I have to heft it about in a backpack or a bag, being fearful every single time someone bumps into me, I might as well get a laptop (you know.. a real computer and not a big toyphone) for the same price and do more with it.
Seriously, what are Apple thinking by ignoring the 7" form factor? Ah well, more money for the droids I guess.
It's funny. I still go into a DSG store very occasionally for a phone top-up or something. Watching the cashier blink and poke at the screen in confusion, I'll usually say "just give it here. See that button? Yeah, the e-topup/e-voucher thing? That's the one. Now the icon for Three network.. 10 pounds please.. like me to cash the till up for you too?"
Though these days I'll usually just use the self service tills at the local Tesco, yes. Same thing except I'm actually supposed to be operating it myself.
This is DSG we are talking about. These are the people that will charge one price for walking into the store and asking, and another price for walking into the store with a smartphone/tablet, pre-ordering the product IN THE STORE, and then still subjecting you to the same godawful hard sales techniques when you go to pick up the product that comwes from the same place, and costs the same amount to store in the shop.
It may be a "web price", but it's hardly a web purchase is it? That pre-order scheme was made with one thing in mind: To get you into the store where they can pester you to buy a warranty, instead of buying off the web where you just uncheck the little box that says "rape my bank account please."
That's what I used to do. Couldn't see any sense in turning a customer away when I could just grab OpenOffice, tell it to create a link to "www.pcworld.co.uk" and double-clickie.
Of course the manager would get on at us for doing so. Fortunately you found a store where the staff hadn't had all sense of individuality beaten out of them yet.
..you don't have to prang a car hard to fuck it up completely. They are designed to fall apart around you these days, so you don't become one with the metal framework. 50mph into a sufficiently solid barrier will really ruin your day, and you'll be thankful for crumple zones when you wake up in hospital.
..."2D acceleration" meant little more than having a honking great RAMDAC pumping pixels to the screen at inordinately high rates. That 2D part of things hasn't really evolved at all since then because it doesn't need to.
However, the GPUs in a modern 3D graphics card can be re-jiggered to process all sorts of numbers.
"Mark my words, Google will lock down the apps "market" in the next year or so because they can and it's an income stream."
I think the lawsuit from Amazon would be an awesome beast to behold, if that were to happen and their new budding Amazon market app were to be banned. Not to mention the other alternative markets that come on the cheaper, non-google droids. I think you'd hear the words "class action" within maybe five minutes of that announcement?
I don't think Google would be that stupid.
Just because it doesn't involve smashing atoms into their component particles, doesn't mean modern computerised windfarms are anything short of mind-bogglingly complex. Yes, the basic operation is "wind makes a set of blades turn around", but that's a little like saying "stuff enough uranium in one place and it gets very hot".
That and aerogeneration as we know it hasn't been around for much longer than nuclear power. It's a modern technology. Oh, there's some small scale electrical generation going back to the late 19th century, and people have been filling sails with wind for millennia. The heavy duty stuff however, only really started appearing in the 30s and 40s, possibly due to revolutions (har har) in aerofoil design.
Now if you can put a big metal and chicken-wire frame around the things and make them look like giant desk fans, you could probably get rid of the one real environmental impact of wind farms which is the exploding pink feather clouds that tend to result from flocks of birds flying through the blades.
...Nokia *phones* can be quite good. They are phones. They make calls. They have a battery life that lasts for longer than the length of a gnat's fart. They're cheap, and they work. Every functionality you could want from a *phone*.
Nokia *smartphones* on the other hand... ew. Either an operating system that they have said is getting canned so there's really no point buying if you want to buy apps a year down the line, or an operating system made by Microsoft.
...so forgive me if this has already been mentioned.
I'd say the inability of the system to dial its thermal use down when a known-intermittent source is bulging at the seams with juice is less a fault of aerogenerators and more a fault of the system. You've put down plenty of reasons why the current business model needs a kick up the arse but not much convincing me that wind, wave, solar etc are all hopelessly crap.
Still, good troll I suppose.
..Also a subject of this semester's Computing in Society module, where the prof pretty much reached the same conclusion. In 20 years, will there be Word v6 file readers still around? What happens to all the documents still written in it?
Open standards. Good for more than just feeling superior about.
Sold as the "ZTE Racer". It's an okay cheapy droidphone, but some people don't like single-touch resistive screens. I especially don't like pulling the thing out of my pocket to find it's called the emergency services in my pocket.
FIVE TIMES.
There should be a feature in these phones so that the emergency service guys can determine whether a phone has been triggered in a pocket and set an alarm off or something. Better yet, make it so that the screen can't be brought up with the "unlock or press emergency call button RIGHT FUCKING HERE" just by pressing a button on the front of the bloody device.
So how easily could these be mass-produced? What about a few hundred thousand of them waving in the current under a floating platform? Implanting them under pavements?
Could be an awesome universal mechanical to electrical energy converter, depending on the efficiency. Maybe use it to harness every ounce of juice from vibrations in power station equipment? Provide cheap electricity off-grid? Lots of potential, if it can be made by the milion.
If only to replace this DS lite with the knackered hinge/shoulder button. Not at this price though, might give it a little while.
Say what you like about Ninty's later-gen consoles not having a bajillion shader pipelines or being able to render things down to subatomic accuracy. Nintendo are first and foremost a game company, unlike any of the competition. They are undeniably good at what they do. The games tend to be cheaper as well, which in my eye is a double plus.
This coming from someone who always bought Sega consoles...
Developer: I've stripped out a bunch of info from these header files and am using them under my own copyright agreement.
IP lawyer: But the authors might sue you and anybody who uses your stuff!
Author 1: No we won't.
IP Lawyer: But the authors might sue you and anybody who uses your stuff!
Author 2: No we won't, really.
IP Lawyer: But the authors might sue you and anybody who uses your stuff!
Author 1, Author 2, Developer: *sigh*
"I'm shocked that so many people are just happy to let them do whatever the fuck they want, and genuflect at their name."
And no other drivelling, idiotic, slack-jawed fashion victims do that for any other consumer electronics manufacturer parading themselves as Messianic, do they?
By acting as the self-appointed Arbiter of Morality, as opposed to just deleting malware, Apple and its app store will always have this trouble. You can't cater to one special interest group without catering to them all, and by agreeing to censor you become a lot more liable for any objectionable content.
Same problem with national firewalls and other such hysterically child-contemplating ideas.
Of when Blue Yonder (now Virgin Media) had a rule barring you from hosting anything other than "personal use" servers over broadband, and no servers at all on dialup. That somewhat insane rule (almost as insane as running a server on dialup) didn't last too long!
Anyway, in some parts of the country, VM are still the only feasible choice for broadband so are a de facto monopoly. I understand AT&T are in a similar position. "You pays your money, you makes your choice" doesn't sound quite so justifying of onerous business practice in this case, surely?
Already got close to the 2gb limit once on their £5 deal due to youtubing on the bus in the mornings. Plus 300 minutes? Methinks I know what package I'm getting next month.
Also, the Rate Article and Post Reply links are way too close together on a 7" toyslab. I didn't mean to give this article 1/10, honest!
Apple don't do a complete code audit of every app in their store. What's to stop a similarly spiked app with a rootkit on board making it in? Only one hardware platform to figure out how to root, too.
Well, unless it gets banned for not having a convincingly wet sound to the farts available, or something.
"Currently Android tablets are sharply divided into two categories -- sub-$200 junk and wayyyyy too expensive."
I keep pimping this 7" toy I've got here (selective quoting opportunity right there), a Commtiva N700. Also sold as a Linx 7, amongst probably a couple of other names. It has a capacitive screen, Froyo and 512MB RAM. Not the biggest on-board flash ROM at the same 512MB, but you get a micro SD card slot so that's less important.
It's not as snappily responsive as a higher-end tablet like the Tab or Pad, but it's what I would regard as good enough. No Flash because of the 600mhz clock speed, but that hasn't been a big problem. While something like Captain Forever could be nice to try on a toy like that (and if you haven't ever played it, get yourself to www.captainforever.com and have fun), there's still plenty of games in the Android Marketplace that don't depend on Adobe's plugin.
Price-wise, it's £300, as opposed to the Tab's £450 and the iPad's £_shitloads_via_a_contract. Has features like tethering and portable AP functionality without having to root the thing, and £300 is the wifi+3g, SIM-free, no-network-lock, you-actually-own-the-device price.
Plus, at seven inches, it'll fit in a large pocket. The protective wallet you get with it isn't bad either. Find a shop selling this thing and ask to have a play with it, see what you think and whether you like the price in $.