I'm not smart enough to know. I was just lending a lesser-educated view to the discussion. But, to me, it seems that Shared LIbraries fall under file management, which falls squarely in the OS function category. I'm probably wrong though.
I've only ever seen a true BSOD once in my use of Windows. I've only ever seen it once this week...on the huge 60" plasma screens at the gym I go to. Embarrassing, that.
WTF? Why does your desktop have a wireless card? Maybe I don't understand. All my desktop computers (3) in my house have wireless cards. What's the issue? Plenty of bandwidth, none of the wires.
What you are calling gray areas seem to be easily placed in the OS category. You mention a bunch of "tools" (network stack, CLI, GUI, etc.) that are the embodiment of a computer system or help keep the system running, which to me is the definition of an OS.
These threads are always fun to read.
If an app comes comes preinstalled in Windows it's bloat (and Microsoft's fault, even though most of the adware/shareware/freeware has nothing to do with them). If an app comes preinstalled with l/unix, it's a feature. I know next to nothing about Linux, but I can say that, yes, software included in WinOS IS bloatware, by marketed design. All the fluff thrown in there is to check a block so they can write Windows can do "feature x", just like does! Or, they force small companies to pay them money to include their crap demo ware. I'm willing to bet that the preloaded apps in Linux are better thought out, and since there's no money involved, have no ulterior motives.
I go to Best Buy all the time. All their wall mounted displays use the same horrible daisy-chain video feed, so there is no point in comparison shopping those. They generally do have a little fake living room setup for a mediocre Sony Wega or something, but I have yet to see any of them prominently pushing the Blu-ray player aspect. I don't buy my stuff from big box because they don't carry the high-endish gear I buy. Going to a specialty shop is much better, in that they already have reference disks for you to use, and you don't look like a tool putting one in at Best Buy.
We all have access to the same roads. Some people are just bitter that others can afford Porsches. (Substitute Internet for roads and high speed Internet for Porsches.)
I agree that it is a concern that we don't end up having a two-tiered system of the haves and have-nots, in all practicality shutting the have-nots out of the information loop, but that's not what's happening (yet). People are just complaining because Mr. Moneybags can afford $100/month high speed internet access while starving college student is stuck in the $12/month slow lane. That's life.
I didn't meet "that guy". The guy I spoke with was actually not "at work" when we were talking about HD and cable. He was also not a salesman. He also gave me some insight that they were already delivering the 15mbps in Houston, but not yet in San Antonio and Austin, because those two markets have two or three providers each, so they wanted to sweeten the deal to entice people to choose TWC over AT&T (and some other carrier) when the competition really started getting fierce.
And I could say that Toyota Prius owns a ridiculously exaggerated market share in my market of choice to support my argument too, but I won't. There's more to the world than the good ol' USofA (considering we have the worst taste in vehicles in the world, there's no wonder the big 3 have nice market share in the US....in the US). What's the Ford F-150s market share in, oh, say, the UK? How's about the Chevy Malibu doing in Germany? But getting back ON topic...
most people's televisions don't even support Full HD (like mine). Which is exactly why the Blu-ray player is not direct competition to DVD players. Those who don't think Blu-ray is a visual upgrade have no need for an HD tv then anyway since the quality is obviously lost on them in the first place. The lack of HD tvs in homes is what is keeping Blu-ray sales down, because the player is reliant on a TV that most people don't have yet.
I agree the players are expensive, and have gotten more expensive with the demise of competition. But, for that market segment that wants to spend more money on the best picture quality, Blu-ray is the only choice (since many "on-demand" and hd programming with cable are not full HD).
Apple is what, around 10% of personal computing now (not sure the exact numbers). Name a major automobile manufacturer that enjoys even a 5% market share.
I'm pretty sure ANY company would accept an "abysmal" 10% market share.
Blu-ray players HAVE gone way up, and will continue to, since they are now the ONLY player in their niche of the market...HD playback. PS3 alone has shot up only AFTER the HD war ended. As an owner, I can say for certain the PS3 increase has not been due to the release of some must have game (still waiting there). I can't say for sure on other Blu-ray players, but my PS3 is also a very good DVD player, so I don't see how you think Blu-ray is in competition with DVD, since it does both. It really is NO competition, in my book.
An idiot? Because I don't take my (non-existent) reference disk in? That's pretty pretentious in my book. Granted, ALL the displays at big box stores suck, because they are connected to the same crappy source, so you can't get a good comparison anyways. Plus, I don't think I've actually seen Blu-ray players hooked up to the better hd tvs at those kind of places anyway.
You're doing it wrong. Every 'big box store' that I've visited has had at least one and often several Blu Ray players hooked up to HDTV's. REALLY????!!! Where? All the ones around here are all hooked up and slaved off the same crappy source. I haven't seen a single big box store (outside of the "Magnolia" boutique at a Best Buy in San Antonio) actually hook up to a digital source using composite video (let alone the HDMI!).
Oh wait, you said "at least one". My bad. But still, I would expect pretty much EVERY hd tv they have there to be hooked up to a digital source, using digital connections...but then again, people buy the stuff anyway, so why bother?
That's what's known as misleading statistics. It's easy going up an impressive percentage when your original value was really low. ...doesn't detract from the original claim that sales are way up, however. Not to mention that both Blu-ray AND HD-DVD had "really low" original values. I'd take a misleading statistic over a failed, defunct format any day.
Reminds me of the slashdot guy who said the same thing about Apple stock being up 1800%, as if that is no big deal, nor any indication of shifting trends in personal computing...
Very true. I bought a PS3 and don't play games on it. I couldn't find a regular Blu-ray for cheaper than the PS3 AND I have the added bonus that I have two video gaming boys that love to rent PS3 games from blockbuster when the visit.
A LOSS for the consumer? Are you serious? Not until the damned thing died did I buy a Blu-ray player.
HD-DVD discs were easy to author on home PC so your home movies could be burned to a STANDARD DVD-5 or DVD-9 with the pretty menus and all the glitz. Yeah, and with a $1000 Macintosh, iMovie HD does the same thing with standard dvd discs. I don't understand what HD-DVD has to do with that at all...I guess you can fit MORE of your home movies?
everyone gets an equal share of the information online I don't buy the equality line in this case. Wealthier people can afford better access. It's not like the less wealthy people are being denied access. Even in the poorest school districts, schools have around a 95% access rate to the Internet, which is on par with wealthier schools. The equality issue here is just a petty complaint. I want to drive a Porsche, but I'm stuck driving a Mazda (required car analogy).
I talked to a TimeWarner rep when I lived in San Antonio last summer and he told me that they've had the infrastructure for 15mbps connections in place for a year or two, but cap the speeds between 5-10 on purpose. The "purpose", I see now, is that they want to try and milk every penny out of us for something that wouldn't cost them any more to deliver. I imagine it actually costs them money to cap our bandwidth anyway, so this is pretty dumb...especially now that I live in a market with another major provider (AT&T) for competition.
I don't know where we lost the communication but:
CR just gives reliability, repair cost, and other objective facts to help narrow down the cars you need to test. I'm not, nor have I disputed this. Where I have a problem with CR is AFTER all their data mining and objective reporting, they always slather a healthy dose of "don't buy this car because the cupholders suck" in the subjective bits attached to the data (i.e. the article).
I couldn't agree more with the test drive portion. I totally disagree with this though:
subjective reviews are only useful if you happen to agree with them. I can totally disagree with a subjective review but still find merit in the review. I do it all the time with Rottentomatoes.com and three of the car-pubs. I actually find MORE merit in a review I don't agree with than those that I do. Who wants to hear what they already think, anyway? Oh yeah, most people on slashdot. Guess I'm weird.
I also love the fact that our conversation is so far off-topic now, yet no/. geek has called us out.
You used R/T numbers. They are consistently the slowest since 1990 (when I became a "car-guy"). They are the James May (of Top Gear UK fame) of drivers. Yes, I know there is WAY more to a car than numbers, and obviously I'm just teasing you about the MS3 and the Z. After all, I am a car guy, and I do realize that, numbers aside, the Z is a real sports car and mine is a practical-yet-fast hatchback that hauls my drums, my wife and my 2 kids:-)
Here's some more track numbers though (from the SAME source, Car and Driver in this case, since many people like to pick the slowest times from one source for the car they dislike and the fastest times from yet another source):
Skid Pad:.88 for the Z,.87 for the MS3
0-60: 5.4 for the Z, 5.6 for the MS3
1/4 mile: 14.1 (101mph) for the Z, 14.4 (99) for the MS3
70-0 : 164ft. for the Z, 166 for the MS3
Top Speed: 156 for the Z, 155 for the MS3
All in good fun, but with a slight hint of seriousness--those are some amazing numbers on the MS3's part, especially when directly compared with the Z (never would have thought it myself, even as a self-proclaimed car guy). It actually would appear that the Mazda team set the Z in their sights, as opposed to the more common comparo of the Subaru WRX.
Lastly, the Z has a way better exhaust note, and real car guys know that is very important!
I work at a software company. I'm often heard saying, "why don't we fix the shit we've got now before we worry about version2beta"?
I think the same thing applies here.
Now, I realize the value in staying on top of the industry and always looking forward, but, as in the case with my company, when you constantly divert talent and resources to the "next great thing" before the current shitty thing even works well, you'll never have a good product. You'll have a product, which appeases the board, I suppose, but you'll have a shoddy product. Continue that for many years (cough, Microsoft, cough) and your user base will finally tire and move on to other stuff.
Well snarky doesn't make you right, nor does all caps. Starting sentences off with capital letters does lend more credibility, though, as well as, uh, not yelling WRONG anytime you suffer the slightest bout of cognitive dissonance.
I'm not sure what your system settings are, but I'm sure they are different than mine. I guess that makes me wrong?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not smart enough to know. I was just lending a lesser-educated view to the discussion. But, to me, it seems that Shared LIbraries fall under file management, which falls squarely in the OS function category. I'm probably wrong though.
Grown ups don't use Linux for grown up tasks, except for defending the nation for the next 20 years or so. Just ask Future Combat Systems.
Better yet, compare the systems after a period of time of average use. I think we'd find the XP system starts degrading over time and normal use.
What you are calling gray areas seem to be easily placed in the OS category. You mention a bunch of "tools" (network stack, CLI, GUI, etc.) that are the embodiment of a computer system or help keep the system running, which to me is the definition of an OS.
If you look at the APA writing style handbook, it'll tell you that conventional wisdom need not be cited.
It was my understanding that they are already paying for the 15mbps anyway, and actually have to put things into place to cap us at 10.
I go to Best Buy all the time. All their wall mounted displays use the same horrible daisy-chain video feed, so there is no point in comparison shopping those. They generally do have a little fake living room setup for a mediocre Sony Wega or something, but I have yet to see any of them prominently pushing the Blu-ray player aspect. I don't buy my stuff from big box because they don't carry the high-endish gear I buy. Going to a specialty shop is much better, in that they already have reference disks for you to use, and you don't look like a tool putting one in at Best Buy.
I agree that it is a concern that we don't end up having a two-tiered system of the haves and have-nots, in all practicality shutting the have-nots out of the information loop, but that's not what's happening (yet). People are just complaining because Mr. Moneybags can afford $100/month high speed internet access while starving college student is stuck in the $12/month slow lane. That's life.
That cuts man....real deep.
I didn't meet "that guy". The guy I spoke with was actually not "at work" when we were talking about HD and cable. He was also not a salesman. He also gave me some insight that they were already delivering the 15mbps in Houston, but not yet in San Antonio and Austin, because those two markets have two or three providers each, so they wanted to sweeten the deal to entice people to choose TWC over AT&T (and some other carrier) when the competition really started getting fierce.
I agree the players are expensive, and have gotten more expensive with the demise of competition. But, for that market segment that wants to spend more money on the best picture quality, Blu-ray is the only choice (since many "on-demand" and hd programming with cable are not full HD).
I'm pretty sure ANY company would accept an "abysmal" 10% market share.
Blu-ray players HAVE gone way up, and will continue to, since they are now the ONLY player in their niche of the market...HD playback. PS3 alone has shot up only AFTER the HD war ended. As an owner, I can say for certain the PS3 increase has not been due to the release of some must have game (still waiting there). I can't say for sure on other Blu-ray players, but my PS3 is also a very good DVD player, so I don't see how you think Blu-ray is in competition with DVD, since it does both. It really is NO competition, in my book.
An idiot? Because I don't take my (non-existent) reference disk in? That's pretty pretentious in my book. Granted, ALL the displays at big box stores suck, because they are connected to the same crappy source, so you can't get a good comparison anyways. Plus, I don't think I've actually seen Blu-ray players hooked up to the better hd tvs at those kind of places anyway.
Oh wait, you said "at least one". My bad. But still, I would expect pretty much EVERY hd tv they have there to be hooked up to a digital source, using digital connections...but then again, people buy the stuff anyway, so why bother?
Reminds me of the slashdot guy who said the same thing about Apple stock being up 1800%, as if that is no big deal, nor any indication of shifting trends in personal computing...
Very true. I bought a PS3 and don't play games on it. I couldn't find a regular Blu-ray for cheaper than the PS3 AND I have the added bonus that I have two video gaming boys that love to rent PS3 games from blockbuster when the visit.
I talked to a TimeWarner rep when I lived in San Antonio last summer and he told me that they've had the infrastructure for 15mbps connections in place for a year or two, but cap the speeds between 5-10 on purpose. The "purpose", I see now, is that they want to try and milk every penny out of us for something that wouldn't cost them any more to deliver. I imagine it actually costs them money to cap our bandwidth anyway, so this is pretty dumb...especially now that I live in a market with another major provider (AT&T) for competition.
I couldn't agree more with the test drive portion. I totally disagree with this though:
subjective reviews are only useful if you happen to agree with them. I can totally disagree with a subjective review but still find merit in the review. I do it all the time with Rottentomatoes.com and three of the car-pubs. I actually find MORE merit in a review I don't agree with than those that I do. Who wants to hear what they already think, anyway? Oh yeah, most people on slashdot. Guess I'm weird.I also love the fact that our conversation is so far off-topic now, yet no /. geek has called us out.
You used R/T numbers. They are consistently the slowest since 1990 (when I became a "car-guy"). They are the James May (of Top Gear UK fame) of drivers. Yes, I know there is WAY more to a car than numbers, and obviously I'm just teasing you about the MS3 and the Z. After all, I am a car guy, and I do realize that, numbers aside, the Z is a real sports car and mine is a practical-yet-fast hatchback that hauls my drums, my wife and my 2 kids :-)
Here's some more track numbers though (from the SAME source, Car and Driver in this case, since many people like to pick the slowest times from one source for the car they dislike and the fastest times from yet another source):
Skid Pad: .88 for the Z, .87 for the MS3
0-60: 5.4 for the Z, 5.6 for the MS3
1/4 mile: 14.1 (101mph) for the Z, 14.4 (99) for the MS3
70-0 : 164ft. for the Z, 166 for the MS3
Top Speed: 156 for the Z, 155 for the MS3
All in good fun, but with a slight hint of seriousness--those are some amazing numbers on the MS3's part, especially when directly compared with the Z (never would have thought it myself, even as a self-proclaimed car guy). It actually would appear that the Mazda team set the Z in their sights, as opposed to the more common comparo of the Subaru WRX.
Lastly, the Z has a way better exhaust note, and real car guys know that is very important!
peace, stu
I think the same thing applies here.
Now, I realize the value in staying on top of the industry and always looking forward, but, as in the case with my company, when you constantly divert talent and resources to the "next great thing" before the current shitty thing even works well, you'll never have a good product. You'll have a product, which appeases the board, I suppose, but you'll have a shoddy product. Continue that for many years (cough, Microsoft, cough) and your user base will finally tire and move on to other stuff.
I'm not sure what your system settings are, but I'm sure they are different than mine. I guess that makes me wrong?