Linked by Eugenia Loli on Mon 21st Mar 2011 23:27 UTC
Geeks.com, home of several cheap iPods, sent us in for a review an 8 GB iPod Touch 4th Gen for a review. Here's what we found.
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RE: best small-personal media player
by miscz on Tue 22nd Mar 2011 00:21
in reply to "best small-personal media player"
Member since:2005-07-17
I've been using a combination of fairly simple Nokia smartphones and a separate media player for years. I love that my phone battery lasts ages and the phone is actually desinged to call/text people.
I tried using my phone as a media device. There are few advantages like pausing music while receiving a call. On the other hand with bluetooth headphones and music playing the battery didn't last through a day at work.
RE[2]: best small-personal media player
by WereCatf on Tue 22nd Mar 2011 01:00
in reply to "RE: best small-personal media player"
Member since:2006-02-15
On the other hand with bluetooth headphones and music playing the battery didn't last through a day at work.
I suppose the phone was poorly optimized for such use. I can have music playing the whole day, with wifi and bluetooth on and in constant use, and still last 18 hours straight.
So yeah, poorly optimized phones won't last long, well optimized ones will last just as long as any other media player devices.
RE: best small-personal media player
by modmans2ndcoming on Thu 24th Mar 2011 03:01
in reply to "best small-personal media player"
Member since:2005-11-09
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:15 UTC
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:11 UTC, submitted by Drumhellar
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
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Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 21:41 UTC
Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 17:04 UTC
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.More News »
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Member since:
2006-02-15
I am probably somehow dysfunctional or something but I have absolutely no use for such devices. I carry a mobile phone with me all the time anyways and a mobile phone does all the things one these does while also including the ability to send and receive SMS messages and phone calls. Ie. it's basically just better to buy a phone that can do both tasks than shell out money for two devices where the functionality overlaps.
With ever more powerful mobile phones and even plain feature phones nowadays starting to sport really good multimedia features and big screen the need for separate media player devices is only bound to diminish over time. Manufacturers need to think of something new that would set these devices over the competition from mobile phone market in order to keep their place in the overall market, innovate a bit more. It remains to be seen if they can do that or will competition from mobile phones with multimedia capabilities continue to push them out.