Writing in his bog Tello thinks that the first 120,000 first-day sales was "pure overexcited fanboism”. In other words those who are stupid enough to buy anything that Steve Jobs suggests have all put in their orders. However those with half a brain cell have decided to wait and see if the hype bears out.
Tello is famous in Apple investor circles for making predictions of the company's quarterly revenues and earnings that are as good as, and more often better, than those published by professional analysts.
It would be nice to think that the great unwashed have realised that the US tech press have sacrificed their credibility to hawk the iPad for Jobs' Mob and are going to ignore the over priced netbook without a keyboard in droves.
Aaaand for the people who actually want a good tablet, I give you the WePad:
The WePad features an 11.6 inch, 1366 x 768 pixel display, a 1.66GHz Intel Atom N450 processor, GMA 3150 graphics, a 6 hour battery, Webcam, 2 USB ports, and a flash card reader. There’s also a UMTS modem.
Unfortunately, the Germans don't think either the word "we" as well as the word "pad" are funny. Or maybe they do; Germans are into strange, strange things.
Microsoft's Aaron Greenberg has claimed that Xbox 360 has "nearly twice" PS3's installed base - partly because its lack of a Blu-ray drive allows it to be sold at a more attractive price point.
The Xbox product director claimed that "being $100 cheaper [than PS3] is part of the reason we're nearly twice their installed base".
It's likely he was referring to Xbox 360's North American installed base, with 360 and PS3 widely reported to be neck-and-neck in Europe.
"Sony bet on the physical disc, and there are costs associated with that," Greenberg told Edge magazine.
Uh-huh. The faster we get away from physical media, the better, I say.
I so say that. I do.
But I wouldn't limit the Xbox 360's success to its price alone; this wouldn't make sense anyways since the cheapo Xbox doesn't have a hard drive, but it has a boatload of great games, a near-perfect online store slash community that I only dream would make it to the PC, and of course, sex appeal. You know, 'cause of that come-hither, uh, ring? Green means go, red means it's hot?
That sorta works.
Chipmaker Nvidia is helping invent a slew of cool technologies that hold the potential to change the way we work and play. The company, which makes processors that enhance images and boost the brawn of computers and phones, is pushing 3-D entertainment into homes and high-def video onto handsets. But the gadget Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang is most excited about? Touchscreen tablets such as Apple's forthcoming iPad.
"We have found our most personal computer," declares Huang, who notes that Nvidia is working on 50 different tablets. "This is big, and it's going to change the computer industry."
Not all of Huang's peers share his unbridled enthusiasm for tablets in general, and for Apple's version in particular. If the iPad, which will retail for as little as $499, is a success, it could indeed change the computing industry, but not necessarily to the liking of some of its biggest players.
OK, maybe you need help not buying an iPad. I certainly don't, and some people may want to be pushed into it, because the rational parts of their brain left without Apple branding are shouting NO NO NO! so here's a little pro and con:
The Litany of iPad Resistance
and
The Litany of iPad Submission
Reminder: it looks stupid and may only be used lounging. Fundamental flaw: you can't listen to iTunes and browse the Internet.
You don't need a tablet.
Nobody does.
and you can't use it for when a kid breaks his nose and bleeds all over the place. seriously, my friend justin broke his nose and his mom was in there with a tampon faster than kudzu. people say things like that in kansas, "faster than kudzu"
Als er elf war, bekam er mit dem Amiga 500 einen eigenen Computer. 1987 war das Gerät auf der Hannoveraner Messe Cebit vorgestellt worden. Die Öffentlichkeit staunte, Mrozek auch: „Die neuen Möglichkeiten waren gigantisch.“ 23 Jahre später steht für ihn in Hannover wieder ein wichtiger Termin an. Dieses Mal will er derjenige sein, der die Augen der Besucher zum Leuchten bringt. Am Samstag wird er auf der Cebit seine mobile Spielekonsole vorstellen. Pandora heißt sie. „Mit ihr wollen wir den Traum der Community erfüllen.“
Die Community, das sind Menschen wie Mrozek, die von den alten Spielen für den C64 und den Amiga auch heute noch begeistert sind. Nur eines stört die Leidenschaft der Retro-Liebhaber: Die Hardware ist meist nicht mehr erhältlich — und nicht jeder verfügt wie Mrozek über eine umfangreiche Sammlung. Seine Konsole soll Abhilfe schaffen: Mit den aktuellen High-Tech-Spielzeugen von Sony und Nintendo kann die Pandora zwar nicht mithalten, die alten Atari-Spiele laufen aber einwandfrei.
Yeah, here it is "translated".
So the Open Pandora is a little late. Like, by a couple of years. But they've been good years, with the closing of Gitmo, the discovery of kinda-black Presidents, and, shit, Gitmo's still open.
Just like the Pandora--the world's first completely-open-source gaming handheld*!
*It's not.
Buy one here! It'll exist eventually!
Roger Smith, Chief Technology Officer, U.S. Army Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training and Instrumentation, spoke with Michael Peck.
Q. Do you see the military using serious games for the Wii and Xbox 360?
A. We wanted to get on to the Microsoft Xbox because it only costs $300, when a PC may cost $1,000. They did not want to work with the military. They gave us three reasons. Number one, when they sell an Xbox 360, they lose money. It costs more to make an Xbox 360 than to sell it in the store. The only way they make that revenue up is by kids going out and buying an average of 17 of those games a year. Their concern was that the military would develop a game for the Xbox 360 and buy thousands of the boxes and buy exactly one game for each of them.
Their second concern was that the military could cause a shortage of Xbox 360s.
The third reason was around the question of, “do we want the Xbox 360 to be seen as having the flavor of a weapon? Do we want Mom and Dad knowing that their kid is buying the same game console as the military trains the SEALs and Rangers on?” They said we will not give the military a license to burn a game that runs on the Xbox 360. So we’re not pursuing it at all because they won’t. As I talk to people in my own organization and other parts of the military, I find many people don’t know that fact. Everybody is going to get around to looking into it and they don’t know that some people have already looked into it.
It... I just makes so much common sense. Where's the conspiracy? Where's Halliburton? Acorn? No, this can't be why the Army didn't get to use the Xbox.
Supply and demand, consumer markets, pshaw. The only compelling reason is that Microsoft is in bed with... Goo, wait, Appl, screw! They're secretly China!
'Course, that would mean that the Pentagon'd be getting plenty of Xboxes any day now.
Still, better than preverts.
Wednesday January 27, 2010
Sure, the iPad's got a much larger screen, and a faster processor, and even 3G, but it's just a bigger iPod Touch.
The killer application for the iPhone, was in fact, its ability to fit right into your pocket. Can you see yourself grabbing an iPad while you dash out your front door? Not me. It's big. And I already have my notebook, which also happens to be a MacBook Pro. Sure, call me an Apple fanboy, I don't care. My main desktop is in fact, a custom built PC. But even someone like me who has an Apple product, I can't vouch for the iPad.
The most critical point about the iPad, is the fact that it can't multi-task. Like the iPod Touch and the iPhone, it can only run one application at any given time. Despite having a powerful CPU on the inside, the iPad is crippled because of its operating system, the same operating system behind the iPhone. Fundamentally, if you already have a notebook and an iPhone, the iPad will have a difficult time finding a place in your daily routine.
Here's the deal: from now on, if you need another euphemism for menstruation, you can say "She's switching to Apple."
I can't see this being the success that the iPod was. It's too big, it's got a crap battery, and it doesn't do anything special. If Apple made an actual e-book reader, that would have been interesting. If Apple made a thinking screen, that'd be cool. But they made a really big-ass iPhone, and stripped it of its phone-ness.
You're supposed to make them smaller and faster, for Christ's sake. Bigger and more periody is pretty much the opposite of cool.
Wednesday December 30, 2009
A tipster just sent in these Nexus One screenshots that supposedly confirms two things: that Google will sell it unlocked and unsubsidized for $530, and that Google will sell it by themselves. Plus, some other very interesting details.
Some of the most important bits of info we extracted (assuming the tipster is accurate, and it seems like he is). Oh, and take a look at our hands on with the device in case you haven't familiarized yourself with it yet.
Yeah, it's $530 unsubsidized. Google's not going to be selling the phone at cost, like so many people considered. They're not going to save us from the "making money off of hardware" culture we've got right now, so this is basically just another Android handset, albeit a really good one.
Well, even though it got rooted before it even launched, I rather like my CMDA network. So boo, how hard is it to stick another antenna in there?
Although that would probably push the price up above $530, which, I dunno. I'm starting to think I'd be happy if someone made a cell phone with no more features than one of those Casio watches I had fifty of when I was a kid, and, like, a battery that lasted ungodly amounts of time. Can you see it in your head? Just a black candy bar with 15 buttons and a digital display? With Indiglo! I'd love the hell out of a phone like that.
make that into a cell phone, damn it
Just because Sony said that the PS3 would have a ten year life span, that doesn't mean the company isn't apparently moving forward with the PlayStation 4.
According to insider info (along with some speculation!), Japanese website PC Watch is reporting that Sony is looking to alternatives to the PS3's Cell architecture, which some developers have found to be challenging. One early alternative include Cell and Intel's Larrabee. Wanting a bit more horsepower, Sony has apparently abandoned this plan. Sony was also apparently considering a modified version of the Synergistic Processor Unit, but is now supposedly working on designs that include a mulit-core CPU.
Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are all believed to be exploring new system architecture. And with the exception of a possible Wii HD, PC Watch Impress states that it takes 24 months to produce new consoles, making 2011 difficult for new hardware and 2012 or even as late as 2013 more possible.
So like, only the Wii doesn't already have a multi-core processor. Not counting the GPU, the PS3 has a nine-core CPU. Remember, Cell? Fancy and new-fangled and people hated coding for it? Even before it was released?
Man, short memories all around.
In unrelated news of the blindingly obvious, AT&T wants more money. I mean, AT&T has a legitimate inquiry and would never pressure the FTC in order to implement a phone service model that will only benefit the major broadband carriers, that'd be unethical.
Getting Boxee, the awesome web-to-TV software, set up in your living room used to be a headache. Not anymore thanks to the Boxee Box (around $200; Q1 2010). This angled wonder lets you consume all the free movies, TV shows and music from the internet, all from your couch – and hooks it up to your system with just a single HDMI cable. Like the standard Boxee software, it also sucks in your own videos, music and photos, playing just about any media format that still resides on your broken down laptop.
Two hundred bucks for a DVR running a Boxee? What's the catch? Does a remote add an extra bill? Proprietary cables a la Xbox?
Does... does it smell funny?
Confession time: I love the smell of Taiwanese factory air. You know what I'm talking about. That surely carcinogenic, sterile, PCB and silicon smell that comes with fingerprint-free hardware fresh out of its retail packaging, only ever been handled by loving, white cotton-gloved hands.
Yeah well, it's pavlovian.
Remember that $200 internet tablet Michael Arrington wanted to introduce? Now it’s a $499 tablet and the company behind it wants nothing to do with Michael Arrington anymore.
Arrington had a falling out with Fusion Garage recently, the company that developed the device’s operating system and which founder Chandra Rathakrishnan claims was behind all of the work in designing the hardware and sourcing its manufacture by OEMs. While Arrington says he’s going to sue over the death of the so-called CrunchPad, Rathakrishnan and company are moving ahead with the tablet under a new name: joojoo.
The joojoo will weigh 2.4 pounds, feature a 12.1 inch, capacitative touchscreen display, and a custom interface designed for interacting with web services. The OS boots in about 9 seconds, and features shortcuts on the home screen for a number of web services including Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, and CNN. You can scroll across the screen to unveil additional items. The joojoo will feature caching capabilities that will let you do things like compose emails while offline.
Here's the skinny. Someone stole the CrunchPad. It's easier than you'd think. But to give you an approximation of the gravity of such theft, it'd be like Foxconn telling Apple to buzz off and to let them sell the iPhone without 'em.
Speaking of bees, joojoo, are kidding me? joojoo?
Do I need to write it out in IPA?
Thursday December 3, 2009
China is arguably the world's biggest potential electronics market. If you can make a product that's a big hit with Chinese consumers it's almost as big a deal as a hit product in the U.S. -- and China's buying power is expected to only grow even more in the near future. Thus optimism was high when the iPhone finally launched in China.
However, in the time since, the iPhone has proved an epic flop in China even as Chinese telecoms try to defend their weak sales. China Unicom, the phone's carrier only managed to sell 5,000 handsets in the phone's first few days, far less than at equivalent launches in the U.S., UK, France, and Germany. While the telecom says it is satisfied with the phone's sales performance, the numbers are disappointing for a phone that has burned up international sales charts.
One major problem is price. The phone is available in China for 6,999 yuan, or $1,024 without a contract, but can be purchased much cheaper in Hong Kong's so-called "grey market". The grey market cost in Hong Kong is approximately $800. Sales were also hindered by the exclusion of Wi-Fi from the phone, following China's ban on the standard, which it was trying to replace with its own standard. Since May China has begun reallowing Wi-Fi, but new Wi-Fi-ready models still aren't available yet in China.
No. No no no. You wanna know why the iPhone failed in China? Because Communist doesn't mean retarded. The iPhone, in America, looks pretty good, considering we're used to two-year contracts--like we're the serfs--and ultimately, because it's a gold medal-winner. At the US Phone Special Olympics.
See, in China, where they're up to 15G or whatever, bandwidth doesn't cost extra, phones will tether with the whole freaking Internet cafe, and can take DSLR-quality photos while simultaneously running their picoprojected XVID bootlegs of whatever movies just released in American theaters. And all for RMB700. That's not a codeword for a Southbridge, that's a Benjamin.
This is why we have to borrow money from China. And I hear you France, bitching about how you loaned us money too. Stop it. You got it from China, too.
Over the past two decades, Ricardo Dominguez has been utilizing electronics and the internet to piss off just about every high-level administrative authority in the US. In the late 90s, his performance-art-cum-activist organization the Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT) set up a participatory website-jamming network called the FloodNet system, which allowed anyone with an internet connection to gum up the official sites of the US Border Patrol, White House, G8, Mexican embassy, and others, rendering them inaccessible. The Department of Justice retaliated with an electronic attack on the EDT that aimed to destabilize the group and interrupt their online meddling. As any conspiracy wonk can tell you, it’s illegal for the government to use military force against civilians without declaring martial law; that’s the job of cops and FBI agents.
Dominguez, a Zapatista sympathizer and close friend of Subcomandante Marcos, claims the various forms of online mischief conducted by the EDT were experiments in electronic civil disobedience rather than true acts of sabotage. Their work led to massive virtual and physical sit-ins protesting the Mexican government between ’98 and ’99, attracting more than 100,000 participants. But his current project–the Transborder Immigrant Tool–is poised to enrage a much broader spectrum of the North American populace. By augmenting a low-cost Motorola phone with GPS and a battery of applications, Dominguez’s goal is to help illegal immigrants complete safe border crossings without being sent back by the Border Patrol or getting shot in the face by American “patriots.”
You know what? If you're smart enough to get that phone in Juarez or wherever, haul your ass across a border using our own satellite network to get you here, I want you making my Wendy's Applewood Smoked Bacon Deluxes. Because you're not a completely fucking idiot, and when I say "no pickles" I won't get pickles and pickle relish.
And if you haven't had Wendy's Applewood Smoked Bacon Deluxe, you really should consider it. Even Bacon Today was quite taken by it.
At a fast food establishment, I have never met its equal. The truth is that rapid, high-volume production and bacon are not a match made in heaven. Fast food bacon is usually limp and soggy as a result. In order for bacon to be truly delicious it must be given some time, love and attention in the kitchen.
[Read Full Story at
VICE]
Careful what you say – that iPhone over there could be a live microphone.
Which is to say there’s a new, free iPhone app called Soundbiter designed to monitor the world’s audio and upload it to Twitter and Facebook with the push of a button.
When running, the Soundbiter app is constantly recording, keeping an audio buffer of a minute or so. Then when you hear a good joke, a fine guitar riff or a politician’s slip-of-the-tongue, you hit the apps’s only button, which saves the last 60 seconds of sound. From there, it’s a cinch to edit, upload, title and publish the sonic snippet to Twitter or Facebook.
No no, it's true, you should always record everything you say when you're high. You are actually smarter when you're high, and all your friends will be embiggened by your... *shudder* "sonic snippets".
Look, I'm not even going to get into the privacy/ security ramifications of such an app. I'm just going to say this: congratulations, you just made the Internet dumber. No no, for decades we didn't think it was possible, but. There you have it.
Not even Google Wave will be able to save it.
[Read Full Story at
Wired]
@ Wired
The good news is that this feature-rich handset, running version 2.0 of Google’s Android OS, compares very favorably to the Goliath of the smartphone world as a utility mobile-computing device – and, oh yeah, a phone. The bad news is that there may be too many good things going on to make using this device the quick, intuitive, out-of-the-box experience it should be. That’s a problem, given that the iPhone has set the usability bar so high.
@ PC World
Especially snappy is the Droid's Web browser, which loads images quickly thanks to the powerful 550MHz processor and speedy hardware-accelerated graphics. Though you are at the mercy of your 3G high-speed data network coverage, once you're in it, Web surfing is breezy and smooth. Video from sites such as YouTube looks equally impressive; the playback of a high-definition YouTube cartoon ("Sita Sings the Blues") was excellent, with no stalling or audio dropouts. Audio also sounded great piped through a pair of high-quality headphones. The straightforward music player supports playlist building, album art, and shuffle and loop playback modes. You can purchase DRM-free music at the Amazon MP3 store via the preloaded app on the device.
OK, this needs to be said: no matter what your feelings about Motorola, Google, Android, Verizon, smartphones in general--that is a stunning photo. Maybe a little too narrow DOF, but that backdrop makes up for it. What is it, a driveway? And you know that the vignetting's fake, but damn, is it used right.
Also, Kurtis, get me one of these phones; I'm on Verizon. I promise to keep it charged! I promise!
HOW can image sensors - the most complicated and expensive part of a digital camera - be made cheaper and less complex? Easy: take the lid off a memory chip and use that instead.
As simple as it sounds, that pretty much sums up a device being developed by a team led by Edoardo Charbon, of the Technical University of Delft, in the Netherlands. In a paper presented at an imaging conference in Kyoto, Japan, this week, the team say that their so-called "gigavision" sensor will pave the way for cellphones and other inexpensive gadgets that take richer, more pleasing pictures than today's devices. Crucially, Charbon says the device performs better in both very bright light and dim light - conditions which regular digital cameras struggle to cope with.
While Charbon's idea is new and has a patent pending, the principle behind it is not. It has long been known that memory chips are extremely sensitive to light: remove their black plastic packages to let in light, and the onrush of photons energises electrons, creating a current in each memory cell that overwhelms the tiny stored charge that might have represented digital information. "Light simply destroys the information," says Martin Vetterli, a member of the EPFL team.
So even though flash is binary, there are two ways of getting gradiated data from that. First, is to mathematically deduce a value by weighing all the information from one pixel with its surrounding pixels. That's all fine and good, but it only tells you the value, not the hue. So what you've gotta do is put color and neutral-density filters across all the pixels, then average a group of those into one pixel's worth of data. All this right on the cusp of a flash shortage, too.
I suppose, anyway, I'm not an engineer. I mean, I was an engineer earlier, but I was also a spy, both of which turned out disastrously--ironically due to the presence of the other. I just need to learn, when it comes to Team Fortress, it's snipers and pyros for me. I'm not smart enough to combine killing with control schemes more complicated than W + left click.
and i call myself a pc gamer
With the release of "2012," the iPhone app tied to the forthcoming Sony Pictures film of the same name, a group of developers may have kicked off the future of games on the hit smartphone.
While the game itself is fairly simple and lasts just minutes, it incorporates features that may never have been tried before, and as such, could be among the small number of titles that are showcasing what will soon be considered par for the course.
In the minds of many industry observers, thanks to its integration of a functional operating system, an accelerometer, GPS and a camera, and the fact that thousands of developers, big and small, have released games for the iPhone, the Apple device has already surpassed Sony's PSP and Nintendo's DS as the most important, or at least most adaptable, portable gaming platform.
I don't doubt that there are interesting, compelling, and most importantly, fun games for the iPhone. But there's still this one hurdle: the interface huffs donkey taint. It's like, the DS has had this touch screen forever, but do I ever bother playing with those controls? Maybe when I'm on the plane holding my soda 'cause I'm sitting at the bulkhead even though it doesn't have a tray table, because it's totally the best seat on the whole rig.
Seriously, you get on the plane without anyone bothering you, you get leg room, you can chat with the stewards and stewardesses, and most importantly, you're the first to get off the plane.
Yeah, I mean, boo touchscreens.
[Read Full Story at
cnet]
As of last week the Playstation Store is the only place PSPgo owners can go to pick up their games. Just how do the prices of the Sony-operated online store compare to the prices of the same games sold as used at retailers?
We checked with four online retailers and online shopping services to see how their prices compared to the ones found in the online Playstation Store. The results? A little surprising.
No, a surprise would be if Sony bundled a 16GB flash card with every PSP. A surprise would be if that flash card was SDHC. Hell, a surprise would be if they actually followed through with UMD digitizing kiosks.
With a library of digital content, this small selection of games currently available is insulting. It's like, sure, they don't have any huge titles for the PSP, so what can they do to make those Christmas bucks? Repackage old games for a profitable system.
Actually, what would be cool is an all-digital PS2 that you connect to your TV or monitor and plays Playstation Store games, and if you've got an external drive, lets you rip your own... Yeah, that ain't gonna happen, either.
From Stock Z2 to Fully Flashed with Audio, Fluxbox, Mouse, Aliosa27’s Latest Userland
Here is a video Mark and I made of the complete flashing and installation process, and a tour of the new userland features.
For those following along at home, the required setup artifacts are below. You will need
* Your zipit z2
* A linux computer with an internet connection (to download the packages below) and gparted installed
* A microSD card
Check it out, this guy has HULU running, DOSBox, even Debian. This is stupid cool fun for $50, I might just have to try this myself.
Which would be a much better idea than when I tried making a model Saturn V in middle school. Did you know you need wadding between rocket stages? Some stupid little paper is all that separates rocketry and backyard ballistic demolitions.
Monday September 28, 2009
A controversial cooker that 'grows' meat and fish by heating animal cells in your kitchen claimed first prize in the Electrolux design competition tonight.
The invention, called Cocoon, could develop food with the make-up and nutrients of real meat.
Mr Hederstierna, 27, said: 'This will create 100 per cent pure meat without the need for animals to be killed and with no risk of contamination. It will change everything.'
Wait, why is this controversial? I'm no vegelesbian, but if I had a meat appliance that turned powder into satisfaction (vegelesbian, hehe) I don't think I'd be upset by all the stem cells seared into deliciousness.
Unless this was somehow coop- or soy-based meatstistute. I don't care how sentient my protein was, I just care that it had a mitochondria that piggybacked its genetic material through viral means loved it.
Thursday September 24, 2009
The way consumers will get the three free games is this:
(1) Purchase a new PSPgo and connect it to the PlayStation Network
(2) Load up a UMD in the older PSP unit and then connect it to the PSN as well, registering the UMD
(3) Download a new PSPgo theme and wait for the UMD voucher offering 3 free games.
Read that again: you must still have the old PSP model to retrieve the free games. That certainly blows any kind of trade-in for the PSPgo out of the water.
According to the press release, the required UMD doesn't seem to be locked in to any particular title, however Sony has limited the list of free titles to sixteen games. These include Killzone Liberation, Medievil, Wipeout Pure, Buzz Brain Bender, Buzz Master Quiz, SOCOM U.S. Navy SEALs: Fireteam Bravo, Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters, Everybody’s Golf, Resistance: Retribution, Syphon Filter Dark Mirror, Lemmings, LocoRoco, Patapon, Syphon Filter: Logan’s Shadow, Echochrome, Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice, and Daxter.
I suppose at this point, having purchased at least four, if not six or seven PlayStations, that Sony was a company that loved you. That in fact, was capable of love even in rudimentary, consumer-relating ways.
No, if they had it their way, there'd be content-protection inserted into your very genitals, tacking DRM onto each DNA-bearing cell launched from its once wholly-owned home. Echochrome? I've never heard of half of these sperms titles.
navy seals!
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