I'll believe it when I see time travelers from the future who have used their warp drives and FTL travel to come backward in time to tell us about it. (According to special relativity, the ability to travel faster than light is equivalent to the ability to travel backwards in time.)
Or a Delorean.
I don't think Samsung are "deathly afraid of Apple". Not then they're currently the leaders in market share, and actually supply the hardware to Apple, to make their phones/tablets/laptops. It's kind of a win-win...
I wonder how much profit Apple makes per phone compared to Samsung? I'd say Apple is probably more profitable because they have one new phone model in two colors every what, 12 - 18 months? One model, two colors. Samsung models may not be that different, but having one is cheaper than two or many.
We had the Wii - managed to score one the weekend it came out. But after about 18 months it became apparent this was going to have some real dumbed-down titles. A few stick out in my mind, most notably the Endless Ocean and Endless Ocean 2 games. I miss those enough I've been thinking of picking up a Wii after the Wii U comes out to replay them, when the price drops.
As for the Atari 2600 I had as a kid - I recall that having a greater variety of games that were almost more challenging. I don't miss it enough to buy the controller/ROM combination, but I distinctly remember titles we traded with friends and played for years. Maybe some of that is nostalgia for long summers and the lack of overall console variety then, but I was distinctly unimpressed with the Wii; with the notable exception the two titles I mentioned above.
When our Wii gave up the ghost I relented and bought an XBox for my son and that's been a great console - a good variety of games and ab online game store worth dropping some dough on. There will have to be something extraordinary for my generally Nintendo-friendly family to even consider by a Wii U. They lost us with the terribly poor game selection on the Wii and DS systems.
Agreed. Cell phones are cheap as fuck. It's the service that beats you down. I have never owned a smart phone, because while I'm fine paying a couple hundred bucks every two or three yeras for a phone, I'm *not* fine paying a couple hundred bucks a *month* for a plan.
I don't think the three of us on the family plan with iPhones pay that on AT&T. That comes with the super cool unlimited 3G that is suddenly limited at 4GB per month, but the day I hit is the day something is really wrong in the universe. But a couple hundred a month for the plan - did it come with a person?
Restrict the video only in places where they can't handle the freedom of speech without maniacal violence. Google got it right for the first time in a while.
That would make for a mighty small internet in most places.
Well put. I like choice - in RAM, screen size, and so on. I have a MacBook Air precisely because I've always enjoyed a minimalist computer setup. The thing is a dream for me because it runs the four applications I use all the time. It was the same thing with the Acer Linux netbook I had for about two years - no hard drive but just enough for Mozilla, Thunderbird, Angband and a text editor.
"Europe Sets Sights on Steroid Tracking Radars"
These debates have always bothered me. Does a nation/society/culture/state/collective do nothing with its resources if there are some with less than others? Seriously
My sig paints a picture of my general mindset around 'progress' - I kind of find space exploration a silly idea but what the hell does it matter what I think? It's not like I set national budgets or anything like that. Nevertheless, can't we ask that question of every resource expenditure of ourselves and others? What business did I have buying my kid an XBox 360 when I don't have 100% of his expected college expenses saved?
It's called donationware, a variant of shareware, and its an old way of getting paid for your work. I think I saw the first example of it back in the mid 80's on the BBS scene.
It's not new, and it's not news.
I really miss those days. Being able to download something and use it for a week or so before deciding to get the full deal or pay the shareware fee. A few game companies do this, like Spiderweb Software - you can play a huge chunk of the game before it stops and requires payment. By the time the demo is over you're pretty sure it will run on your computer and there's no question about liking it or not.
... I use a surprisingly small number of applications. In the last decade the types of applications I always run on my computer are one each of the following:
Having tried this with Windows, Linux, and MacOS I can say the solution that works out-of-the box for me is MacOS. I'd rather use open source software because I like donating money to software I use rather than paying for a silly license that puts a smile on the face of an attorney somewhere.
When I tried this with Linux I have to do a lot research to make sure the phone works with the OS and the software available for the OS. I've tried using Songbird and Lightning/Sunbird as well as the full suite of Mozilla-based applications. Inevitably something I use a computer for is not available in a single Linux distribution. If the phone works the calendar is crappy or Songbird doesn't sync with that phone.
So for me it does boil down not just to the software that's available but to device compatibility. I'm sure it's possible but computers are less hobby and more appliance for me. On an odd notes I was able to do all of this on an older MacBook I didn't know what to use for. So with the exception of the OS, obviously, I had all my music in open source applications: OpenOffice, Songbird, Thunderbird, Instantbird, Inform 7, Sunbird and a small handful of text editors. I couldn't find the right Linux counterparts.
All seems condemned in the long run to approximate a state akin to Gaussian noise. -- James Martin
