Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed


Forgot your password?

Comment Re:Is it a good game? (Score 1) 209

I've had my most enjoyable Pokemon play on a GameBoy Advance SP with Pokeman Emerald. They've really never put out a Pokemon game as good as Emerald ever since. The extra stuff that came after Emerald (aside from the additional Pokemon) is mostly just croft. (No, I am not interested in different clothing for my human player in Pokemon.) Watch out for counterfeit Emerald carts; they don't have the entire game, they just ripped part of it.

Comment Re:Samsung != Apple (Score 1) 133

Android phones are not driven in obsolescence by a team at Apple who urges developers to move onto the new API as soon as possible. So the App Store doesn't stop having current apps for Android phones for much, much longer than with Apple. Look at the number of current-version apps you can still get to run on a KitKat phone, and compare that to the apps you can get for a 3G iOS device today.

When you buy an iOS product you are buying from a company determined to make it obsolete within a year or two of you buying it.

Comment Re:Samsung != Apple (Score 1) 133

If a phone is available in the store at full retail, the clock for EOL has not started ticking. Now, we know that a true fanboy lines up to buy the phone at launch, and for Apple, those are the people who it's important to keep squealing with glee.

I had a 3 Gen iPod Touch 'go out of support' for new iOS versions less than a year after I bought it. I shouldn't be penalized that way for buying an Apple product late in the period when it is being foisted off on the market as 'current.' Incidentally that iPod is probably the last Apple hardware I will ever buy. There were two iPods that I bought before it.

Comment Re: She killed the calculator group. Never forget! (Score 3, Interesting) 319

What was the Corvalis Group going to do? Keep making really nice but rather expensive, calculators for an ever dwindling market? It's not a sustainable product line that could scale today to be anything but a nostalgia product. Besides which, the HP calculators have a high enough build quality that if you really need one you can track one down used for a price that is about the same as you'd pay, inflation adjusted, for a new one. There's nothing new to be added. Your HP-41, 48, or 15 is out there to acquire if you need it, for the few who want one.

Comment Re:What makes someone a Troll? (Score 1) 151

Excel is not a Lotus 1-2-3 clone. There were numerous Lotus clones on the market. I owned the one called 'Twin' for awhile. Excel was a complete new spreadsheet.

Incidentally, Visicalc was what everybody copied. That was the first spreadsheet.

IE was initially based on licensed code from NCSA Mosaic. Netscape is the company that 'hired away' the developers of Mosaic from their publicly funded jobs at NCSA (an academic institution) and privatized Mosaic.

Visual Studio was a continuation and adaptation of Visual Basic, which was a fairly successful early way of 'graphically' developing Windows applications. Manually making Windows applications with the SDK and classic Microsoft C was really difficult. And there were numerous of other IDEs around, not just Borland's Turbo IDEs.

But whatever. It's important not to let history be rewritten, but this is kinda off topic.

Comment Re:What makes someone a Troll? (Score 1) 151

What do you mean 'even the iPhone'?

Apple with their desktop OS were very very late in having anything but a joke of a multitasking system. They had to buy in an OS from outside the company to get real preemptive multitasking. The old Mac-OS was a joke. It isn't in their culture at Apple to do that kind of stuff.

Comment Re:just a few companies. Pay defendants' legal cos (Score 1) 151

Once the Judicial system starts routinely tossing out the stupidest most general patents, there will be a precedent by which patents are measured, no matter how many wallpaper patents are issued. Eventually, people paying the fees to be issued patents will wise up and demand that the Patent Office stop milling patents to collect fees from them.

At least that's the best case scenario I can dream up. It neuters the out of control Patent Office without any messy 'Patent Reform' needed.

May all your PUSHes be POPped.