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I was all prepared to point out that his eyes should have blown out and all that sort of thing... except it's nowhere near vacuum, and I appear to just be a miserable b*st*rd.
And it's a toy friggin' train.
Posted by: Wonderduck at Tuesday, June 18 2013 01:22 PM (4qAlp)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
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Monday, June 17
The Moment Sony Returned To Relevance
Sony Electronics has not been a happy bunny the last few years. Though they've produced some fine products, they haven't been the trend-setter and status symbol they once were.
At E3 this year, in one shining moment, they turned around all those problems and made themselves relevant again. Not just relevant, but hugely important:
Note that all he really said was: We are not going to screw you over any more than we already do. And the response was just short of a standing ovation.
For those not following the story, Microsoft recently launched the third model of the Xbox, the Xbox One.* It requires an internet connection, and phones home once a day, and deactivates itself if it can't connect. All your games are attached to your account, so you can't simply lend the disk to a friend or sell it; you have to go to a registered second-hand game dealer and have the game de-registered from your account and registered to theirs - and that's if the developer has decided to allow that at all. Oh, and Kinect, the motion-sensor-camera-recorder-thingy, is now a core part of the system and must be connected and on to use the system. Though in theory you can deactivate some of its functions.
And to rub salt into the wound, the PS4 is 50% faster** and $100 cheaper. The difference in price is largely made up by the Kinect hardware; the Sony equivalent adds $60 to the price of the PS4. But the Sony one you can unplug.
I'll leave it to the gentle reader to discover the allegorical implications in this little tale.
Oh, and Sony? If you ship the Xperia Z Ultra as something like the rumours (1080p 6.44" screen, Snapdragon 800, 2GB RAM, 64GB flash, microSD, and a stylus), I'll likely buy two. You just nailed my wishlist.
* Yeah.
** Mileage may vary, but the PS4 and Xbox One have the exact same AMD graphics engine, except that the PS4 has 50% more cores - 1152 vs. 768.
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All this is purely marketing. Sony was sliding in Microsoft's direction for a while, with things like PSP Go. It's fairly obvious that digital distribution is the way to go. All Microsoft have to do is to correct their "phone home" silliness and voila, they are a generation ahead.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Monday, June 17 2013 03:24 AM (RqRa5)
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Yep, it's pure marketing, but it's brilliant marketing. It's a classic example of never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. All Sony needed to do was sit back while Microsoft told their customers to go fuck themselves, and then not do that.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, June 17 2013 01:32 PM (PiXy!)
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But the point is, they are alrady doing "that". They only pretend they are somewhat different, for propaganda purposes.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Tuesday, June 18 2013 02:37 AM (RqRa5)
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They are not doing that to prospective PS4 owners. Yet, anyway; tomorrow is another fish. And that's all that they needed. It's a low hurdle to jump, but the only other runner in the race decided to cut their own legs off.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, June 18 2013 09:01 AM (PiXy!)
If it's pretty but lacks functionality, make it ugly but functional.
If it's dull but functional, make it pretty but useless.
No you don't get a say in the matter. You will want what you have been told to want.
iOS 7 is just nasty. Must remember to update my iPad to iOS 6 at some point before 7 comes out.
The new Mac Pro Mini is interesting; the world's first high-end workstation that requires a desktop dock. (Available 5¼" drive bays: Zero. Available 3½" drive bays: Zero. Available 2½" drive bays: Zero. Available PCIe slots: Zero.) Up to 12 cores and 64GB RAM, which is exactly the same as the previous model. On the other hand, it's small and looks like an ashtray.
There's a lot of fuss going on about the Mac Pro Mini. If Apple had released it as a new product alongside a lightly updated (socket 2011) full-size Mac Pro, everyone would be ecstatic. But no.
Ask any Mac Pro users where "small size” sits on their list of workstation needs and they will tell you it's down at the bottom, squarely between "should make my bed in the morning” and "covered in fur.”
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Tuesday, June 11 2013 01:09 PM (F7DdT)
2iOS 7. There are worse things on the internet, true, but it's pretty damn awful.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, June 11 2013 04:10 PM (PiXy!)
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I just took a look at the Mac Pro. What a weird design. At Ars Technica they describe it is a PC designed for Darth Vader, and started referring to it as the "Vader Pro".
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Wednesday, June 12 2013 03:09 AM (+rSRq)
And with a little flup on my doorstep, another Kickstarter project delivers the goods. This time, dice. In each of six colours (red, blue, green, yellow, black, and white): d4, d6, d7, d8, d10, d12, d14, d16, d18, d20, d22, d24, and d30.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, June 11 2013 12:19 PM (PiXy!)
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I finally lost my Kickstarter virginity this evening... not over a computer game, though. Ursula Vernon's "Digger" omnibus could not be denied, and since I was throwing away money anyway I sprinkled some in the direction of Patrick Rothfuss' "Name Of The Wind" playing cards project.
So, come year end I should have some neat new stuff. *wry grin*
Posted by: GreyDuck at Tuesday, June 11 2013 01:27 PM (CUkqs)
"Number One, to keep the American people safe. And Number Two, to uphold the constitution and constitutional rights to privacy and to civil liberties..."
Wrong order, bub.
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Friday, June 07
Sita Sings The Blues
This is some seriously funky stuff.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
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Irritatants
The next time someone asserts that the United States is a Christian nation, or was founded on Christian principles, I'm going to drop Mount Rushmore on their head.
(Prompted by the twaddle spouted by Andrew Klavan over at PJTV, but it's a video and their video player sucks, so unless they post a transcript I can't be bothered tearing his nonsense to tiny shreds as it deserves.)
irritatant, n: Something that gives one the irrits.
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Their soi-disant video player is actually a wrapper for Youtube, unless they've changed it in the last few weeks. It's probably not worth the effort of doing a view source and tracking down the right URL, though.
Posted by: RickC at Saturday, June 08 2013 09:25 AM (WQ6Vb)
The first pictures I saw of the Asus PadNote Fone made it look like an ugly piece of do-not-want, whatever the specs.
Found a better picture.
Want now.
6" 1080p IPS screen, stylus, Android 4.2, 3G, but with an Atom processor rather than Arm. Which does not seem like a sensible choice, at least not until the next-gen Baytrail / Merrifield Atoms come out. But it's the only device even announced so far that has a 1080p+ screen in the gap between 5 and 9 inches. Possibly only 16GB of built-in storage, which is barely adequate, but supports up to 64GB of microSD.
I think the problem here is that it's just too big to be convenient as a phone. My Droid DNA has a 5" screen and I think it's about as big a phone as I could manage. Anything larger would be a problem.
About the stylus: my iPaq has a stylus, and there's a place in the iPaq to store it. That doesn't appear to be the case for this one. If the stylus is loose, it's going to get lost or broken.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Friday, June 07 2013 01:20 AM (+rSRq)
2
I rarely use my phone or either of my big tablets (Nexus 10, iPad 3), but use my Nexus 7 constantly. So I'm looking for something that will be a tablet 98% of the time and isn't much smaller than the Nexus 7, but can make phone calls when needed. I'm sure most people will have other priorities, but Samsung has sold millions of Galaxy Notes, so it's not that small a market segment.
It does have a little bay for the stylus, it's just in the corner that you can't see in that photo.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, June 07 2013 01:50 AM (PiXy!)
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I was going to say, the Galaxy Notes have a stylus bay exactly where you can't see in that pic.
It's pretty nice. The phone knows when you've removed or inserted it, and will give you haptic feedback.
Posted by: RickC at Friday, June 07 2013 12:10 PM (WQ6Vb)
Where's the 11.6" Haswell Windows 8 notebook with the detachable 2560x1600 screen which turns into an Android tablet with a Wacom digitiser and a stylus and WiDi for using it as a detached touchscreen and a Thunderbolt dock for desktop use?
Given what has been shown at Computex this year, it's possible that there's a device with those exact specs and I just missed it.
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Given Bluestacks, you could almost have such a thing already.
Posted by: RickC at Thursday, June 06 2013 08:45 AM (WQ6Vb)
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Last time I tried it the Bluestacks experience wasn't exactly stellar. Which is a shame, because it's something that should work, and would be incredibly useful.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, June 06 2013 02:35 PM (PiXy!)
Posted by: Wonderduck at Thursday, June 06 2013 03:51 PM (lpH3d)
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It not only makes coffee, it even drinks it for you!
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, June 06 2013 04:37 PM (PiXy!)
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I tried Bluestacks recently on a Trinity A8-5600K with a discrete Radeon 5670. It worked decently. I think the problems were more that it's a little twitchy than any slowness per se. Since my new i5-3570K doesn't (yet) have a discrete card I haven't tried it there (with an AMD card you can download BS from the AMD website.)
Posted by: RickC at Friday, June 07 2013 12:11 PM (WQ6Vb)
