Month: April 2004

Nokia announces N-Gage QD, I have my doubts

I feel sorry for Nokia, N-Gage really makes a crappy game device. The button lag and tiny screen (size, not resolution) just kills my enjoyment on many games. THPS on N-Gage is pretty darn good, but the N-Gage controls IMHO make it unplayable. Plus, I dunno if I’m just old or what (26), but the tiny screen makes me sick after 15 minutes of staring at it. What I like about my game Vector Blaster is that it’s not a game you have to hold 8 inches from your face to see all the detail, you can sit semi-comfortably with it at arms length and still discern what’s happening.

When I first played Tomb Raider on the N-Gage I wondered if Scandinavians were all cross-eyed and the tiny display on the N-Gage was the result of a poor marketing study that didn’t take into account the rest of the world, or anyone over the age of 17, or anyone that wore glasses, or was far-sided, or never expected to play games on a bumpy bus/subway/etc…

I was hoping the N-Gage QD would fix the button-lag and display size issues, I feel that’s 20x more important than MMC, 5-way d-pad, and side-talkin combined. Game play should be #1 if they’re gonna sell it as a game device. If QD sells, its gonna sell as a phone, not as a game device. Sad.

GUFT Notes

I went to a talk on GUFT a few weeks ago, I meant to post my notes online.. Here they are, a little late… 🙂

The talk was given by Zach Welch, the infamous Gentoo fork’er. GUFT is a component of the Open Lean project.

He’s making the assumption that there’s an army of developers out there willing to work on what they’re told. i don’t think open source works that way. i think people work on what they are motivated to work on, or what they need to work on for their own personal/corporate project.

Open source people may not realize this, but keeping projects from forking keeps a central authority with a vested interest tied to the project and driving it. would redhat linux be the enterprise level / reliable operating system it is today if redhat, inc didn’t think they could make some money creating it?

This is enforcement of policy through tools… that never works :/

AT&T Wireless purchases Cellular One in Oregon

I’ve been a Cellular One customer for over 2.5 years. I’ve been very happy with the cost, quality of service, and coverage they offer in Oregon. I’ve been out in the boonies in the Oregon Cascades and have been pleasantly surprised that my phone still worked. TDMA in Oregon is amazing, I hope it never goes away. There’s hardly a square foot in this state that isn’t covered by TDMA antennas.

But today, I am very upset. Cellular One has decided to sell all of it’s Oregon business to AT&T Wireless. Someone at Cell One must be making a lot of money from this, because the customer is getting screwed. At Cell One my service was $10/mo, $.10/min in network, and $.35/min out of network (the “network” was basically the southern Willamette Valley and all of Eastern Oregon), with zero minutes per month. I love this deal.. my phone bill averages $12-$19 month.

Under AT&T Wireless my service will increase to $20/mo, $.45/min, with 60 minutes per month. That sucks. Compared to Cell One, that’s like paying $.17/min for my first 60 minutes and $.45 afterwards. Wow. What a great deal.

I’m shutting off my Cellular One service.

I think I’m going to switch to T-Mobile’s GSM network (I have an N-Gage laying around I can use). The coverage stinks, but T-Mobile’s pre-paid wireless works out to be much cheaper for the amount of calls I make. It basically works out to be $8.50/mo for about 55 minutes of talk time on their pre-paid plan if you buy a $25 card every 3 months. I know this is a little cheaper that Cell One, but you can’t make phone calls at 8000ft with GSM in Oregon. 🙂