Admittedly, most of them were not overwhelmingly good-looking. Some were, however. They're out there. It's all a question of whether you really want to be with someone who owns some non-six-sided dice and knows a programming language or two.
Basically, if the object of your affections is a student on a college campus, you can monitor her movement around the campus by finding out her class schedule, checking the school computer systems to see when and where she logs in, and so on. Collect all this data for a while, and then when you decide to make your move, work out where she'll be and when, and leave a small gift or a single rose at each location. Then, at various points in the day, arrange to be in the same location, act as though it's a complete coincidence, and strike up a conversation with her. There's no way this plan can fail!
But I really found it very frustrating when I was a Mac user, that I had to either continually upgrade the OS, or else lose access to new versions of things like VLC and Mozilla.
As opposed to, say, Windows? I'd been using Quickbooks Pro on Windows 2000, but Intuit stopped supporting the payroll service for the version I was using. The newer, supported version of Quickbooks required XP, so I had to pay (a lot more than the cost of an OS X upgrade) to buy that, too.
I know exactly how you feel. I just don't understand why your dislike applies to only one platform.
Why would I comment about Windows? I really don't use it except at work. I don't really have a huge knowledge of or attachment to that platform. Please bear in mind I'm not making an argument for why other people should not use Mac - I'm just talking about my experience with the platform... How I was drawn in and why I ultimately left.
Prior to trying Mac I was a Linux user. I got a Powerbook 'cause I liked the idea of a Unixy laptop that would be easy to maintain and have a reasonable selection of commercial software available. But I got rather frustrated with it for a variety of reasons: The experience of running Unix software on a Mac is lousy, and after a while I couldn't run any new software because everything was being released for newer versions of the OS.
Obviously I still need to upgrade the software on my Linux systems if I want to continue to run new versions of things: I need the right libraries and so on... But I don't have to pay for it. I like that.
Being a programmer myself I understand that there's real value that goes into each new release of the OS, and from that perspective it's worth paying for: but when I'm just using the system, a lot of that value seems artificial. A lot of that value isn't obvious because it's in areas of the OS the user doesn't see. (The exceptions, like desktop search and improvements to the window management, I mostly don't care about.) It felt like there was nothing in that new version of the OS I wanted, except the ability to continue getting new versions of VLC, Mozilla, Blender, and ports of various Unix programs. I could get all that on Debian for free.
And how many of you OS9/Classic Mac apps ran on your Vista box?
A better analogy would be "how many of your Windows 3.0 apps ran on your Vista box?" Or you could even go as far forward as Windows 98 and it'd still be a reasonable comparison - twelve years in the past for Windows, twelve years in the past for Mac. I think Windows would do pretty well at that test. The Mac platform has gone through two serious upheavals in that time, so I think the fact that it fails is at least understandable - but it also tends to make me frustrated in terms of actually using the platform.:)
Going the other way (which is what my post was about) I think Windows would still do pretty well. Taking today's apps on systems from six years ago: How many Windows apps these days don't run on XP?
Realistically I think Linux doesn't rate too well in terms of forward and backward compatibility either. Changes to the libraries are probably the big problem there. But the updates are free and the distro makes 'em easy, so I don't mind as much usually.:)
Where do these assholes get off screaming about Microsoft's upgrade treadmill and abandonment when they pull stupid and unnecessary stunts like this so there's more room to bloat up their stupidly unnecessary and broken "features" (hello Autisticbar?) that nobody actually wants?
For sure I hate what they did to the location bar (and prefer not to use its current, rather stupid name) - but I am curious... Do you find some connection between the current behavior of the Firefox location bar and Autism, or is this word choice solely the result of a slight similarity between "Awesome" and "Autism"?
Don't get me wrong, here: I do understand that an OS has to change as it develops, in order to make any progress... And I understand that an almost unavoidable consequence of this is that older versions of the OS will not be able to support programs built for newer versions, and that maintaining application code for older versions of the OS is a lot of extra work...
But I really found it very frustrating when I was a Mac user, that I had to either continually upgrade the OS, or else lose access to new versions of things like VLC and Mozilla. It's a cultural thing, I guess: I'm used to those kinds of updates being free. This is why my 12" powerbook has been gathering dust ever since I got a EEE.
If you were the Chinese, why wouldn't you do this?
One reason that comes to mind: Suppose I took the time to write some subversive hypervisor into the BIOS that I'm exporting... If I'm lucky, this nets me some ill-gotten secret data. But if I screw up, it means the system would crash, or the next version of Microsoft Windows won't work with my BIOS, and people will think my product is garbage, and my company will have a very bad year.
The same applies to just about any product... You can get sneaky with it, but at a practical level that's one more technical problem that would have to be solved for whatever product you're building, and if you screw it up, it reflects badly on your company and their products in general.
You know that 2/3 of the phrase "trust but verify" is meaningless oxymoronic bullshit designed to mask the harshness of the only significant word, right? Like "strong but sensitive" or "sexy but geeky".
I don't get it.... You're saying "but" is the only meaningful word?
So the robots would be a big problem, but you have no trouble with Paul having a CG sidekick with big floppy ears and a strangely Jamaican accent?
OK, I like the idea of Stilgar having a funny Jamaican accent and big floppy ears... This could be a trait of the Fremen, like they developed this trait over generations through exposure to the spice or something... Make him a little clumsy - but we don't want him to be a total clown so despite his clumsiness he should somehow save the day.
And, you know what? I know we're trying to be more faithful to the original work, but this whole "butlerian jihad" bit really seems a minor point... How about we add some robots, huh?
I dunno how people shop for a family on a bike..I've had small 2-seater sports cars all my life and I have to be creative quite often just to fit my purchases into them?!?
Personally, I never have.:) It's just the two of us so far, and when we did have the supermarket just down the street, we'd tend to do fairly minimal shopping trips when biking down. Anything we bought had to fit into our two panniers (one per bike) - that fills up quickly, of course. But biking down for groceries is something I enjoyed and would like to do again - even if it's necessarily just for small trips. We're looking into getting a cargo bicycle for this...
How does the said food get into the grocery store, if the city is not built for cars (trucks)?
You misunderstand, I think.
A city built for cars is designed around the idea that anybody, going anywhere for anything, is going to be driving - most of them just a single person in a normal-size car.
A city not built around this assumption would still have perfectly good roads, just not built to handle that kind of rush-hour volume. It would have fewer alternate routes and significantly less parking - but trucks could still get to grocery stores. Likewise, living in such a place doesn't mean you don't have a car, it just means you're not using it all the time.
Well, we have a better invention, the human-adapted city. In cities that were build for people and not for cars, the grocery store is no more than two blocks away..
And the food costs quite a bit more because it has a much smaller customer base than most supermarkets. Oh yeah, it also has less variety because, again, it has a smaller customer base.
You know, I don't know if that's necessarily true. Our local supermarket (before it sadly shut down a couple years ago) had, for instance, a very good deli section, a good selection of gluten-free products, produce section at least as good as any other local supermarket, plus a beer and wine aisle (unusual for a supermarket in Massachusetts, where liquor licenses are unnecessarily hard to come by). The only thing that was missing were the aisles and aisles of crap that are in most supermarkets. I mean, two whole aisles dedicated to toys, DVDs, and seasonal junk? Really...
Can't remember how the costs stacked up. It was on par with Stop & Shop, I believe, but not as cheap as Market Basket.
I believe you're overestimating things a bit - it mostly depends on customer demand. If a DS or PSP with phone capabilities were designed today, it would have WiFi, VoIP and 3.5G in addition to just being able to call your mother. How would those capabilities be "a joke" in five years?
Because people's expectations of a high-end mobile phone are changing every year. How good is the web browser? Will it be as good as, and include all the features of the web browsers on mobile phones five years in the future? And what happens when 4G comes out, or people decide 802.11g is no longer good enough, or that 64GB is really not enough storage?
A game console is kept as a stable platform for a period of several years, even as graphics technology, etc. passes it by. This is not the case with phones - the platform hasn't quite stabilized to the point where this is practical. A phone platform that remains stagnant for that kind of time is simply surpassed by its competitors.
Personally, I've had my phone (a Treo 650) for about five years. I still find it quite useful, which is why (despite the shiny and exciting new options) I haven't upgraded. But its capabilities are pretty laughable compared to the options available now. I think the same is true now.
This is why Sony nor Nintendo should be looking to create a gaming phone, they should be looking to create PSP/DS with phone capabilities. Otherwise it's just going to fail.
Actually, I really don't think so. The time will come where what you say is correct, but I believe now is not the time. Here's why.
Basically, both phones and portable game systems are, in terms of their hardware and software, and the expectations of the users, continually evolving. However, I think phones are still evolving faster than game systems. New telephony technologies continue to be rolled out, network coverage in the US is still inconsistent between carriers and spotty in some places, and the iPhone, which is the item by which most people have set their standards and expectations for a high-end phone, is at present just a few years old - and has already gone through a couple revisions. Compare this to Nintendo DS and Sony PSP: DS has gone through two major hardware revisions in five years, and only the most recent of those changed the hardware specs significantly. The situation for the PSP is similar: roughly the same amount of time, and a similar amount of change to the platform over time.
I think that combining a phone with a gaming device at this time would probably still be a bad idea. Turning a phone into a game platform involves more than adding game controls to it - it means turning it into a platform stable enough that players and game publishers will be willing to invest themselves in it. Game platforms stay the same for years so that publishers can make money on software. Phones, at present anyway, are still caught up in a mad rush to one-up one another. A game machine with phone capabilities could be good now, but a couple years down the road its capabilities as a phone would practically be a joke. This doesn't preclude establishing a stable game system as a subset of a particular phone line's capabilities - but then the "game platform" games would be inferior to the "phone native" games or something like that...
Forrester: You should never start a sentence with a conjunction.
Erhardt: And to help you remember all these grammatical rules, we're sending you a short, called "Your friend at the end". It's got all kind of great information like how to properly formulate sentences!
Slashdot Mirror
Get it right, you can sue for OVER 9000! dollars.
Or 8000, in the original Japanese...
OK, fair enough. It's just that on Slashdot, you don't often hear people saying they're switching from OS X to a Free Unix.
Yeah, what the hell is wrong with Slashdot these days? XD
Can you imagine if you'd gone through all the trouble to hack the ROM, and finished up just as your girl was losing interest in the game? XD
I am not convinced that such a creature exists.
I've met several.
Admittedly, most of them were not overwhelmingly good-looking. Some were, however. They're out there. It's all a question of whether you really want to be with someone who owns some non-six-sided dice and knows a programming language or two.
Basically, if the object of your affections is a student on a college campus, you can monitor her movement around the campus by finding out her class schedule, checking the school computer systems to see when and where she logs in, and so on. Collect all this data for a while, and then when you decide to make your move, work out where she'll be and when, and leave a small gift or a single rose at each location. Then, at various points in the day, arrange to be in the same location, act as though it's a complete coincidence, and strike up a conversation with her. There's no way this plan can fail!
But I really found it very frustrating when I was a Mac user, that I had to either continually upgrade the OS, or else lose access to new versions of things like VLC and Mozilla.
As opposed to, say, Windows? I'd been using Quickbooks Pro on Windows 2000, but Intuit stopped supporting the payroll service for the version I was using. The newer, supported version of Quickbooks required XP, so I had to pay (a lot more than the cost of an OS X upgrade) to buy that, too.
I know exactly how you feel. I just don't understand why your dislike applies to only one platform.
Why would I comment about Windows? I really don't use it except at work. I don't really have a huge knowledge of or attachment to that platform. Please bear in mind I'm not making an argument for why other people should not use Mac - I'm just talking about my experience with the platform... How I was drawn in and why I ultimately left.
Prior to trying Mac I was a Linux user. I got a Powerbook 'cause I liked the idea of a Unixy laptop that would be easy to maintain and have a reasonable selection of commercial software available. But I got rather frustrated with it for a variety of reasons: The experience of running Unix software on a Mac is lousy, and after a while I couldn't run any new software because everything was being released for newer versions of the OS.
Obviously I still need to upgrade the software on my Linux systems if I want to continue to run new versions of things: I need the right libraries and so on... But I don't have to pay for it. I like that.
Being a programmer myself I understand that there's real value that goes into each new release of the OS, and from that perspective it's worth paying for: but when I'm just using the system, a lot of that value seems artificial. A lot of that value isn't obvious because it's in areas of the OS the user doesn't see. (The exceptions, like desktop search and improvements to the window management, I mostly don't care about.) It felt like there was nothing in that new version of the OS I wanted, except the ability to continue getting new versions of VLC, Mozilla, Blender, and ports of various Unix programs. I could get all that on Debian for free.
And how many of you OS9/Classic Mac apps ran on your Vista box?
A better analogy would be "how many of your Windows 3.0 apps ran on your Vista box?" Or you could even go as far forward as Windows 98 and it'd still be a reasonable comparison - twelve years in the past for Windows, twelve years in the past for Mac. I think Windows would do pretty well at that test. The Mac platform has gone through two serious upheavals in that time, so I think the fact that it fails is at least understandable - but it also tends to make me frustrated in terms of actually using the platform. :)
Going the other way (which is what my post was about) I think Windows would still do pretty well. Taking today's apps on systems from six years ago: How many Windows apps these days don't run on XP?
Realistically I think Linux doesn't rate too well in terms of forward and backward compatibility either. Changes to the libraries are probably the big problem there. But the updates are free and the distro makes 'em easy, so I don't mind as much usually. :)
Where do these assholes get off screaming about Microsoft's upgrade treadmill and abandonment when they pull stupid and unnecessary stunts like this so there's more room to bloat up their stupidly unnecessary and broken "features" (hello Autisticbar?) that nobody actually wants?
For sure I hate what they did to the location bar (and prefer not to use its current, rather stupid name) - but I am curious... Do you find some connection between the current behavior of the Firefox location bar and Autism, or is this word choice solely the result of a slight similarity between "Awesome" and "Autism"?
Don't get me wrong, here: I do understand that an OS has to change as it develops, in order to make any progress... And I understand that an almost unavoidable consequence of this is that older versions of the OS will not be able to support programs built for newer versions, and that maintaining application code for older versions of the OS is a lot of extra work...
But I really found it very frustrating when I was a Mac user, that I had to either continually upgrade the OS, or else lose access to new versions of things like VLC and Mozilla. It's a cultural thing, I guess: I'm used to those kinds of updates being free. This is why my 12" powerbook has been gathering dust ever since I got a EEE.
bedeutet das wir endlich diesen verdammten Haie mit Lasern auf dem Kopf?
If you were the Chinese, why wouldn't you do this?
One reason that comes to mind: Suppose I took the time to write some subversive hypervisor into the BIOS that I'm exporting... If I'm lucky, this nets me some ill-gotten secret data. But if I screw up, it means the system would crash, or the next version of Microsoft Windows won't work with my BIOS, and people will think my product is garbage, and my company will have a very bad year.
The same applies to just about any product... You can get sneaky with it, but at a practical level that's one more technical problem that would have to be solved for whatever product you're building, and if you screw it up, it reflects badly on your company and their products in general.
You know that 2/3 of the phrase "trust but verify" is meaningless oxymoronic bullshit designed to mask the harshness of the only significant word, right? Like "strong but sensitive" or "sexy but geeky".
I don't get it.... You're saying "but" is the only meaningful word?
*whoosh*
So the robots would be a big problem, but you have no trouble with Paul having a CG sidekick with big floppy ears and a strangely Jamaican accent?
OK, I like the idea of Stilgar having a funny Jamaican accent and big floppy ears... This could be a trait of the Fremen, like they developed this trait over generations through exposure to the spice or something... Make him a little clumsy - but we don't want him to be a total clown so despite his clumsiness he should somehow save the day.
It's a kids movie made from a kids book. What did you expect?
A small measure of dignity?
Mesa think isa great idea.
And, you know what? I know we're trying to be more faithful to the original work, but this whole "butlerian jihad" bit really seems a minor point... How about we add some robots, huh?
I haven't read any Harry Potter and I have found all the HP films to be very enjoyable, personally.
What did you think of that great little dancing number the rival schools did during their entrance at the beginning of "Goblet of Fire"?
I dunno how people shop for a family on a bike..I've had small 2-seater sports cars all my life and I have to be creative quite often just to fit my purchases into them?!?
Personally, I never have. :) It's just the two of us so far, and when we did have the supermarket just down the street, we'd tend to do fairly minimal shopping trips when biking down. Anything we bought had to fit into our two panniers (one per bike) - that fills up quickly, of course. But biking down for groceries is something I enjoyed and would like to do again - even if it's necessarily just for small trips. We're looking into getting a cargo bicycle for this...
How does the said food get into the grocery store, if the city is not built for cars (trucks)?
You misunderstand, I think.
A city built for cars is designed around the idea that anybody, going anywhere for anything, is going to be driving - most of them just a single person in a normal-size car.
A city not built around this assumption would still have perfectly good roads, just not built to handle that kind of rush-hour volume. It would have fewer alternate routes and significantly less parking - but trucks could still get to grocery stores. Likewise, living in such a place doesn't mean you don't have a car, it just means you're not using it all the time.
Well, we have a better invention, the human-adapted city. In cities that were build for people and not for cars, the grocery store is no more than two blocks away. .
And the food costs quite a bit more because it has a much smaller customer base than most supermarkets. Oh yeah, it also has less variety because, again, it has a smaller customer base.
You know, I don't know if that's necessarily true. Our local supermarket (before it sadly shut down a couple years ago) had, for instance, a very good deli section, a good selection of gluten-free products, produce section at least as good as any other local supermarket, plus a beer and wine aisle (unusual for a supermarket in Massachusetts, where liquor licenses are unnecessarily hard to come by). The only thing that was missing were the aisles and aisles of crap that are in most supermarkets. I mean, two whole aisles dedicated to toys, DVDs, and seasonal junk? Really...
Can't remember how the costs stacked up. It was on par with Stop & Shop, I believe, but not as cheap as Market Basket.
I believe you're overestimating things a bit - it mostly depends on customer demand. If a DS or PSP with phone capabilities were designed today, it would have WiFi, VoIP and 3.5G in addition to just being able to call your mother. How would those capabilities be "a joke" in five years?
Because people's expectations of a high-end mobile phone are changing every year. How good is the web browser? Will it be as good as, and include all the features of the web browsers on mobile phones five years in the future? And what happens when 4G comes out, or people decide 802.11g is no longer good enough, or that 64GB is really not enough storage?
A game console is kept as a stable platform for a period of several years, even as graphics technology, etc. passes it by. This is not the case with phones - the platform hasn't quite stabilized to the point where this is practical. A phone platform that remains stagnant for that kind of time is simply surpassed by its competitors.
Personally, I've had my phone (a Treo 650) for about five years. I still find it quite useful, which is why (despite the shiny and exciting new options) I haven't upgraded. But its capabilities are pretty laughable compared to the options available now. I think the same is true now.
Why would someone keep this private and/or secret for so long?
The launch and subsequent explosion were broadcast live on TV. I think if I'd shot it, I might have assumed that it was entirely redundant.
This is why Sony nor Nintendo should be looking to create a gaming phone, they should be looking to create PSP/DS with phone capabilities. Otherwise it's just going to fail.
Actually, I really don't think so. The time will come where what you say is correct, but I believe now is not the time. Here's why.
Basically, both phones and portable game systems are, in terms of their hardware and software, and the expectations of the users, continually evolving. However, I think phones are still evolving faster than game systems. New telephony technologies continue to be rolled out, network coverage in the US is still inconsistent between carriers and spotty in some places, and the iPhone, which is the item by which most people have set their standards and expectations for a high-end phone, is at present just a few years old - and has already gone through a couple revisions. Compare this to Nintendo DS and Sony PSP: DS has gone through two major hardware revisions in five years, and only the most recent of those changed the hardware specs significantly. The situation for the PSP is similar: roughly the same amount of time, and a similar amount of change to the platform over time.
I think that combining a phone with a gaming device at this time would probably still be a bad idea. Turning a phone into a game platform involves more than adding game controls to it - it means turning it into a platform stable enough that players and game publishers will be willing to invest themselves in it. Game platforms stay the same for years so that publishers can make money on software. Phones, at present anyway, are still caught up in a mad rush to one-up one another. A game machine with phone capabilities could be good now, but a couple years down the road its capabilities as a phone would practically be a joke. This doesn't preclude establishing a stable game system as a subset of a particular phone line's capabilities - but then the "game platform" games would be inferior to the "phone native" games or something like that...
"Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow."
--that's a simile, not an analogy
A simile is a type of analogy. I think you got "analogy" confused with "metaphor".
Forrester: You should never start a sentence with a conjunction.
Erhardt: And to help you remember all these grammatical rules, we're sending you a short, called "Your friend at the end". It's got all kind of great information like how to properly formulate sentences!
Forrester: Conjugate this, boobie!
Erhardt: Enjoy!
Does this help?
Hmmm.. A wiener man. Does he own a hot dog stand?