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The-vice

So after having shamelessly delayed all of my china entries save for the one promising them, I have had no choice but to churn out useless filler entries to appease the general masses (Norwegians not included).

Allow me to defend myself, Your Honor, by clarifying that this is due to the advent of the new school year and that most of the time that would have been spent sitting on my bed and sipping apple juice mixed with sprite while mercilessly massaging my keyboard are now spent sitting in a classroom with twenty one other people who would rather be sitting at home on their beds sipping apple juice mixed with sprite and massaging their keyboards. In other words, it's been a productive first month of the new school year.

But every weekend I do get the opportunity to sit down on my bed and pull out my beloved laptop (or Palm, in this case) and catch up on old times, as well as liberate at least forty people of their heads virtually. Of course, most of the time was spent on the latter but now that the recent head pandemic has passed, it now gives us the opportunity to move over to more intellectual entries. (These may include the vague possiblity of Samuel finally producing another entry, but as I said, intellectual discussions please.)

So once again we find ourselves brushing upon the topic of De Thevice, a hypothetical device that boasts the features of all the current portable devices that are relevant to us today, such as the mobile phone (which also happens to be a hybrid device) and the mp3 player and laptop.

But why bring up such a controversial and heretic topic at such a controversial and heretic time?

For those who happen not to own a 360 or Wii (look, it's a fact that we're going to have to face sooner or later, my dear Sony fanboys.), many other devices may have drawn your attention (with the merits of Adobe Photoshop).

Most of them may be hybrid devices, (though it is my strict belief that we should judge them based on their character and not their parentage) such as the PSP, PS3, iphone, and so and so forth and God forbid that Sony every create any thing that doesn't have a name starting with P. Earlier on, a similar attempt to bring two distant devices in holy matrimony ended in a abrupt seperation: The N-gage.

We have yet to see how the iphone performs (hopefully something along the lines of beatboxing), but the PS(P+3) have both failed, or at least not performed as well, in terms of the secondary functions they boasted. In the PS3's case, the features of a home entertainment system (also known locally as the little sister), and in the PSP's case, also an entertainment system, but rather portability instead of resolution ten times higher than anything to be found on the USS Enterprise.

The PS3 failed because of its irrational need for Blu-Ray (still it refuses any help, much to the dismay of its family), a new disc format which capable of holding a lot more than DVDs (in the same fashion where Jean Grey can hold a lot more than the Juggernaut), but because of the already existing popularity of the more masculine DVD (a great apology to all the feminists reading this blog, and a greater enquiry as to why they are reading it). The blu-ray disc also seems to fail in the very area it claims to excel in: resolution. While it may be true that blu-ray holds more than your average RPG character (will the real Link please stand up?), it fails in allowing the human eye to catch up (since the days of being able to project this month's stocks onto a wall using your eyes are still but a dream), since most people agree that there doesn't seem to be any noticeable difference in terms of resolution between DVD and blu-ray. So while blu-ray may be superior to DVD technically, in terms of praticality mother still knows best.

And yet despite the failure of such devices, the market moves increasingly towards the siren-like wails of multi function devices. The mobile phone (or comms droid, if you've decided to pop back into the 20th century to get away from all the nukes) you carry in your hand is a testament to this. Chances are if you aren't playing Snake 2, you've got a camera in your phone. Then after failing miserably at level 250, you proceed to enquire of your friend about a multiplayer bluetooth match. Suddenly the mobile phone is an entertainment device as it is a communication device. (Studies have shown that entertainment and communication are not to be confused, especially if you have a diplomat for a buddy.)

So why is it that the multi function mobile phone (or as everyone calls it today, the mobile phone) has thriven like Soviets in a library, and yet devices such as the N-gage have failed despite their very aim being incoporating multiple functions into one device?

Let's take a look at the problems with the N-gage, as well as other issues that might arise with similar devices:

1. The N-gage can be compared to that of progressive creationism. By compromising in both areas of a phone and a gaming device, it proceeded to flip on its transexual arse and die. The screen was taller than it was wide, which was more of a desirable feature in women than electronics, and the dialing pad was impossible to use without both hands. The original N-gage is also well known for glueing tacos to people's heads: instead of putting the screen to your face as you talked, you had to press the side of the N-gage onto your cheeks (hi there!), leading to great distress and a rapid climb in employment of personal pyschiatrists. So what did the N-gage fail in? User friendliness. By trying to stuff too many features into one device than was possible at the time the N-gage compromised on all of them, as well as user input.

2. As demonstrated in Iron Man's fight with the Hulk battery life is terribly important. And since fuel cells and strange aliens from space that supply infinite energy haven't been discovered yet, we require the use of the Lithium Ion/ Lithium Polymer/ Nickel Ion Battery. So far, these work fine in common devices, lasting about three days, in the case of phones, without charging and several hours for laptops. But what we can see from this is that different devices have different power requirements depending on their features. So while it might be possible to play cell-shaded games on the PSP, you might end up getting defeated by the devious "Low Battery" alert than the final boss' desperation move.

3 Fermat is generally known as a very mean person who enjoyed leaving mathematical dilenmas for the rest of the world to disprove/prove/get infuriated by even after his death, so it's no suprise that a single "o" could change anthing, because format is usually one of the problems when it comes to a portable electronic device. To solve the problem of having different formats for the exact same thing, many companies churn out converters, which usually can't be uninstalled or send adware into your computer like Noah sending chupacabras into the top deck of the Ark.

4. One common thing between women and electronics is that size does matter. Bringing your girlfriend to a bowling alley can be very embarassing without the right kind of girlfriend, especially when it turns out that the bowling alley was in fact your new portable cell phone. It's generally a rule that durability is inversely proportional to size, because as more features get crammed into a device, more components are needed and to keep the little bugger in the palm of your hand the components have to be made smaller, and thus more vulnerable to damage. Size may also affect user accessiblity, as seen in the case of small keyboards.

So what are the features to be desired in The Device?

Read everything that has been written since the numbers started. Now rectify those problems.

But as seen from the failure of the N-gage, we probably won't be getting such devices till the advent of the PS5 (or perhaps when Sony stops naming everything with the suffix of P and a numeral).

But there are also problems with the very concept of a multi purpose device covering all your needs.

Technology is a wonderful thing. Many a method has been devised to protect the IT user from various threats and heresies such as viruses and spam. Norton, however, does not provide protection from the actual physical laws of the universe. F=ma still applies, as does the usual law of “they didn’t see me do it”. Losing a mobile phone at this current time can already be a traumatic experience, so losing possession of your future ultimate device essentially erases your presence from the world, till of course you get another one and provided you backed up all your documents and files. Most shops however, have strict policies about serving non existent customers, so recovery may prove to be slightly difficult.
Losing your device would mean losing access to your bank accounts, your contacts, your clearance to the Bat Mobile, and more importantly, the possibility of someone else obtaining them. And while stronger security devices may be implemented to prevent access of another person’s information, humans, in their infinite creativity (in the presence of caffeine) and adaptability, will always find another way to be a thorn in the arse of the human race.