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Comment Specs (Score 4, Informative) 80

The article was all-around useless for the stuff that actually mattered. So here's a link to the specs page for the device on their official website:
http://www.kobobooks.com/kobovox_tech

Most important:
Device Size 192.4 mm X 128.4 mm (7.57 in. 5.06 in.)
Device Depth 13.4 mm (0.53 in.)
Weight 402.6 g (14.2 oz.)
Diagonal Display Size 7" FFS+ multimedia display; 1024 x 600 resolution
Screen Qualities Multi-touch screen with exceptional +/- 89 viewing angle
Processor 800 Mhz; 512 RAM
Operating System Full open access to Android 2.3
Storage 8GB of internal storage, holds 8,000 books** and unlimited Kobo eBook cloud storage
Memory Expansion Option to add a 32 GB SD Memory Card
Battery Life 7 hours***
United States

New Hampshire Bill Could Lead To Adoption of Approval Voting 416

Okian Warrior writes "The people at FreeKeene report: 'Four Republican state representatives have sponsored a bill that would replace first-past-the-post voting with approval voting for all state offices and presidential primaries. Under this system, voters would select every candidate they approve of (regardless of party), and the candidate with the highest overall vote total wins. This reduces strategic voting, and would often make elections easier for moderate and libertarian candidates. The bill, HB240, will have a public hearing Tuesday, February 1st, with the House Election Law committee.'"

Comment Re:Average appreciation? (Score 2) 188

Even more than this. I actually read the article (surprise!) and, while the article calls sales a double-edged sword, nothing in there seemed to actually support that claim. The biggest claim seemed to be that lowering the price drives the average price per game down. Which is... bad, supposedly? It didn't explain how. The rest of the article talked about how lowering the price attracted more eyes and more sales, which shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who's taken a basic econ course. It also talks briefly about how a sales chart, such as for the iPhone app store or Xbox live, can be self-sustaining. Which makes sense... but I'm not sure I see the problem. The games gets on the charts, people buy it, the game goes higher, more people buy it, after enough time has passed everyone interested has it and the game sinks off the chart. All that should show up as is a bubble in a chart of revenue.

The other comments were how lower prices can actually generate the same, or even higher, revenue which, once again, shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who's taken a basic econ class.

Honestly, the most interesting thing I got out of there was the comments about just how well Valve knows their market as far as price-points go. The actual argument about sales being double-edged seems... rather vacuous.

Comment Re:Nokia is full of shit (Score 3, Insightful) 514

This has come up a few times in this thread so far and, while it'd be technically right, I can't help but think it's missing the forest for the trees. Yes, in an ideal situation, an external antenna will be better than an internal one. But, as Apple has kindly demonstrated, it's far easier to mess with an external antenna.

Basically, while the maximum reception for an external antenna may be greater than the maximum reception for an internal antenna, the range of values for reception on the external antenna, combined with the ease of dragging the actual reception closer to the minimum number on that range for an external antenna, might make an internal antenna far more functional; especially if the difference in maximums isn't really that large.

Comment Re:To be fair, (Score 5, Insightful) 387

That's the thing, though. As far as I'm aware, they've absolutely failed to set any kind of precedent that might even be remotely in their favor and they've completely failed in instilling any type of fear in anyone who might think about pirating music. All they've really done is cost themselves a good chunk of money while flushing any type of good reputation they had down the toilet.

Comment Re:Wood vs. Oil - Bad Analogy (Score 1) 604

"

The reason this hasn't been looked into, is because it's far cheaper to mine it out of the ground or extract it from coal and shale. Assuming those processes become impossibly expensive, then making our own using production plants powered by renewable energy, or even nuclear, is a distinct possibility.

If I had to guess, the reason we're not looking into it is because the law of conservation of energy would smack anyone who tried. If you're expending energy to make energy, at best you'll break even. For all practical purposes, you'll probably have something like a 3:1 or 4:1 ratio of energy expended to energy created, if not something far worse.

United States

State Senator Caught Looking At Porn On Senate Floor 574

Everyone knows how boring a debate on a controversial abortion bill can get on the Senate floor. So it's no wonder that Florida State Sen. Mike Bennett took the time to look at a little porn and a video of a dog running out of the water and shaking itself off. From the article: "Ironically, as Bennett is viewing the material, you can hear a Senator Dan Gelber's voice in the background debating a controversial abortion bill. 'I'm against this bill,' said Gelber, 'because it disrespects too many women in the state of Florida.' Bennett defended his actions, telling Sunshine State News it was an email sent to him by a woman 'who happens to be a former court administrator.'"

Comment Really a surprise? (Score 2, Interesting) 93

Is this really a surprise to anyone? I'd wager the day for the vast majority of people goes something like "wake up, work/school, home, sleep", with the removal of work on Saturdays and Sundays and the possible addition of church or something on Sundays. It's not really that hard to predict something that consistent.

Comment Re:A reason not to rewrite React.... (Score 1) 387

Another pet peeve of mine is Windows' driver support. It's atrocious. Answer me why I can't install Windows and have all my hardware just work? Linux is capable of doing this. But with Windows, I can't even expect my networking to work out of the box. I have to hunt for a driver CD and install the drivers from there. Granted, I'm talking about Windows XP, which is presumably the decade old OS you are talking about. But I've heard plenty of horror stories about Vista/7 from coworkers. (Primarily that even once the drivers are installed, the network is unreliable at best).

The problem with using anecdotal evidence for things like this is everyone has a different story, solely because everyone has what essentially amounts to a different computer. My laptop, a Lenovo Ideapad Y530, has issues with the brightness controls in Ubuntu and OpenSuse. Fedora ran perfectly fine, surprisingly. OpenSuse couldn't even connect to my wireless network correctly, though I'm not entirely sure whether that was a PEBKAC or OpenSuse itself. Contrast this with Windows 7, which installed perfectly fine, found every single device on the laptop, and then promptly went out and handed me a program that handles energy-usage more efficiently, straight from Lenovo. And people who say Linux works perfectly fine with any hardware you can throw at it have quite clearly not spent any time trying to get obscure wireless cards working or printers that CUPS doesn't handle perfectly working. Obviously that's all anecdotal, but it's worth showing just how much it contrasts with your story. In reality, both OSes have issues with hardware. At least with Windows, all you generally need to do is hunt down a driver, whereas with Linux it can easily amount to a weeks worth of work.

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