Because moving every thinking being to study only ( what you ) consider the most important problems of the age makes the entire species massively reactionary, and reduces the amount of broad knowledge that everyone ( including the people doing what you consider important research ) has access to. At the moment we have a form of selection which ensures that people who are interested in, and so probably naturally talented in, doing the research that suits them.
Also, we live in a purportedly free society, *tasking* individuals requires a very controlling central body, which has proved many times to be A Very Bad Idea.
Apple as a provider of computers also produce the best tools for my job. I have no idea how what box is under my desk could be expected to provide an image at all, but as someone who's perfectly capable of building a pc from parts, understands enough of all the main OSs to appreciate the pragmatic pros and cons, a power mac is at the moment the best professional choice for me ( slightly more initial outlay, much less time wasted babysitting the os, more reliability and generally professional quality across all hardware aspects ).
I really don't care about the company image either way, they make tools.
Seriously, it's time to stop being so easily and unfairly judgemental about other people's lives that you know nothing about, one such generation per... Especially when you're wasting yours staring into a glowing screen wiggling your thumbs with the sole intention of posting hurtful rhetoric.
> Pro's are not concerned with small form factors.
Depending on your definition of pro. I've personally used minidisc to record broadcast interview audio for the BBC, where the quality was 'good enough' and the portability of the device was a huge benefit.
> You'd have to live pretty far from civilization to make that faster than just driving to the store and buying the game.
Not during the majority of the 24 hour day when the game shops are closed, and not during the majority of the week where I'm working when the shops are open.
You could just as easily write a list of the trivial things you have to do to get to a store. Find car keys, find car, insert key in car, check car has energy, drive to energy supplier. And there's a good chance that a download process could be much simpler, especially after an initial setup. Plug device into wall socket, access store, choose game, make coffee, play game.
Most approaches to downloadable media are simpler and less time consuming than physically going to a store. Plus, game stores ( in England at least ) are either high street ( which I try to avoid ) blandness or back street smells-faintly-of wee and has pudgy attitude behind the counter.
As an aside, current physical stores are generally oppressive to half the population ( girls ) and downloadable content seems much more palatable.
It's not about the importance of the game, it's about how well virtual spending habits map to irl spending habits.
Personally, in an MMO I'm likely to spend down to my last copper to buy a hat-of-awesome, knowing that nothing bad will happen from the purchase. I'll not starve, my house won't be taken away, and my gf won't leave ( not that getting a new one would be a problem now I have a hat-of-awesome ) and I can just grind as much as is necessary to get more cash as soon as I need it.
My irl spending habits are necessarily much more considered, so I'd consider any research done on one economy applied to the other to be seriously flawed at the core.
What parts of English culture are you proud of ? It's now unchangable history ? The ( exploitative ) Empire ? The ( not very genetically English ) Queen ? The ( as borrowed and mixed up as anywhere in Europe's ) Language ? The ( generally soggy and badly cooked ) Food ? The regular invasions of and resulting mixed genotype that comes of being a small island ?
My childrens, childrens... children will hopefully have as mixed a genotype as possible, for all it's benefits, and with the way the planet is going, a slightly darker skin may come in handy too.
I believe his point was more that Englishness & Britishness is impossible to define, and any definition you care to uphold is likely to exclude the paragon of Englishness, Her Majesty. To be English is already to be mixed race.
I live in London, it's a dirty, generally grey and badly working city enlivened by areas of other cultures, exotic smells, tastes and spectacle it would be much worse without.
As an Englishman, and a Yorkshireman to boot, I can say with absolute certainty that I'd rather live in a predominantly multiracial area ( I do ) where my genetic heritage is a footnote compared with my interactions with other human beings, my values and my ability to do things, than to be categorised in any way as similar to someone ( you ) who has no idea of their own history ( you absolutely sure your genetic makeup is *pure* anglo-saxon, oh hang on ) and who feels they are able to judge many others based entirely on the differing colour of their skin.
You didn't build this country, and as you're very unlikely to be old enough to have actively participated in the wars, empire or any period when this sceptred isle was ( questionably ) glorious, you're actively blaming others for your own lack of success, whilst triumphing and extrapolating your smallmindedness to others who do not agree.
Don't mistake lack of talent for genius. Microsoft are in a very poor position with Windows, their last version had a large amount of bad press from the same people deriding this advert and their resulting sales were so bad they've had to rebrand a service pack and attempt to start again in the eyes of the public. Courting bad press at this stage would be monumentally stupid ( It's what ? Crap like the last one, moves on ).
A simpler answer would be that they've never managed to produce a good looking anything, ever. This is more of the same.
They've certainly got people talking about it, so if the goal was to create web inches of copy then they've succeeded. If the brief was to make Win 7 look in any way like a quality product then they've failed.
Microsoft is not a company capable of employing an advertising agency to make a subtly manipulative advert, the look and feel of their primary OS product is enough to show that their corporate culture isn't capable of understanding the more human arts.
They paid ( very probably a large amount ) and it looks like they wrote a brief that was 'we want it to be somewhere between youtube and, erm, what else does the internet love ?' because they wanted to look hip. Then they insisted that they need to cover all possible demographics for fear of alienating anyone ( a black guy, a middle aged woman ), Etc.
What about the hidden camera until you access the data they want, then small-but-fast piece of lead through window and back of skull ( extra points for not getting too much brain on the monitor ) attack ?
With a good enough camera you might not even need the bullet ?
The quickest way to stop our terrible casualties is to go visit your mp and tell them that unless they put their full weight behind the idea of removing our troops from Afghanistan then you'll not vote for them next election.
As a British tax payer I'd much rather that the money was spent on something constructive.
A return generalisation : If I'd chosen to use my above averagely intelligent brain and limited lifespan to sit in a cubicle writing code that efficiently moved some data from one place to another, perhaps in the service of moving other people's money about, then I'd also be bitter about this *trash* running around constantly re-inventing the greatest communications network the world has ever seen.
Web trash ( C++ / Java / OpenGL / AS / HTML / Etc. )
I know you're ac so I shouldn't, but this is primarily about people who are locked to IE for some other reason ( work policy, Etc. ). They probably would change if they could, and this gives them a way to nominally run IE, but still have Chrome functionality.
It's very clever on google's part, it gives them a way into the traditionally Microsoft locked down business environment, it lets the managers of these networks run IE for the IE-only-intranet, and also provide modern browser functionality. It's quite an aggressive move.
Chrome doesn't have to become your new browser, Chrome OS doesn't have to become your new do-everything-OS, it has to be useful to some people, on some platforms, worldwide. More potential customers for google = more customers for google ( and by customer, I mean eyeballs-on-adverts ).
I didn't realise it had to be on the same scale as the-most-corrupt to qualify as corruption ? Nepotism and chronyism are corruption of the highest order when done at a government level, the people get less than they deserve through personal greed. Retroactive laws which benefit the government as an institution over the people they are sworn to defend and uphold is corruption.
And vote for who exactly in this two horses of slightly different colour race ? Tory ? Lib Dem ? Green ? Pirate ? Honestly, you believe a change of management to something incredibly similar will change things ?
I'm sorry, I've lived through this sceptred isle being 'managed' by both major parties. I'll consider, research and vote as always, but I expect only a different colour tie on the man at the top.
+1 Agree ( on the subject of blind Randian following, if not on the generally insulting nature of your post. ).
I'm always amazed at how seriously America seems to take that particular novel. I can see it as a laboured anti-communist rant by someone scarred as a child by an oppressive regime, but to accept it as a nations philosophy ? To accept it as a basis for running ( and ruining ) the worlds economy ?
"Greenspan, 82, acknowledged under questioning that he had made a âoemistakeâ in believing that banks, operating in their own self-interest, would do what was necessary to protect their shareholders and institutions. Greenspan called that âoea flaw in the model... that defines how the world works."
Human behaviour is that two greedy people will fight till one has nothing. And if the 'collateral' happens to be the rest of the world, then fuck em, I got mine.
Surely it would be possible to provide a system whereby as the original owner you can reclaim the files ?
It could be possible to use such a system to ensure that your files will never be stolen, if you lose your ipod, request new keys for the tracks that are lost & revoke the old ones on the missing ipod ?
I'm not saying that it would be, and it's academic as I'd be avoiding such a system but still.
To agree, EC2 for me is a scalable render farm over which I have complete control and only pay for usage. This is incredibly useful for custom graphics programs, and enables me to do things which I'd just not be able to afford ( or wait for ) otherwise.
I also like Dropbox a cloud based service which synchronizes a folder on any linked machines, allowing you access to the files via a web interface, it automatically keeps file versions and allows sharing between accounts.
There's a free 2Gb a/c and a $9.99 pcm, 50Gb a/c.
For me it's a 50Gb usb stick I can't lose, don't need to remember to update, and is accessible from anywhere. For my gf it's a folder on her desktop that means that if she loses her laptop then she won't lose her data.
I've not personally tried, but I believe it's possible to host a truecrypt or similar container there. ( You'd lose the web interface for anything other than the whole file I'd think. )
Billy Bragg's career is based around protesting, my now ex girlfriend is a BBC music journalist and he's known to be outraged on demand about any cause you care to put in front of him. My father was one of those striking miners and I survived for a year as a child on the generosity and charity of others, none of whom used it for self promotion.
Billy Bragg is an emotional tourist selling my ( now destroyed ) heritage and history for personal gain.
See, hate is easy. Money donated to an establishment set up to oppose these laws ( is there one ? ) would likely, given that we're heading towards an election, be spent on a public awareness campaign. They would likely try to get the support of a well respected celebrity, someone universally respected by the country. One of The Beatles would be a perfect fit in encouraging the general public that artists are not well represented by these laws.
I'm not disputing that there is a PR element to this announcement, but as in your example, one airplane flight versus the massive amount of press generated by the event ? If you were in charge of such an event, your intention to publicise as fully as possible would you consider this a satisfactory compromise ? Awareness which could realistically cause millions of people to make a small positive change vs. a drop in the ocean plane flight ?
Doing good is hard, especially so when people use hypocritical standards to judge you.
Funny. They're openly spending time ( which is money ) and effort to publicly make a statement it seems you agree with and your problem with them is that they're not doing enough. If they contribute money are you going to next ask them to self-immolate ?
Wake me up when you've publicly put your career, reputation and social standing in a place directly opposite your governments intentions.
And I'll find a way to berate you for not doing enough.
Slashdot Mirror
Because moving every thinking being to study only ( what you ) consider the most important problems of the age makes the entire species massively reactionary, and reduces the amount of broad knowledge that everyone ( including the people doing what you consider important research ) has access to. At the moment we have a form of selection which ensures that people who are interested in, and so probably naturally talented in, doing the research that suits them.
Also, we live in a purportedly free society, *tasking* individuals requires a very controlling central body, which has proved many times to be A Very Bad Idea.
Code / Design / Video Production / Audio Production - Why ?
Apple as a provider of computers also produce the best tools for my job. I have no idea how what box is under my desk could be expected to provide an image at all, but as someone who's perfectly capable of building a pc from parts, understands enough of all the main OSs to appreciate the pragmatic pros and cons, a power mac is at the moment the best professional choice for me ( slightly more initial outlay, much less time wasted babysitting the os, more reliability and generally professional quality across all hardware aspects ).
I really don't care about the company image either way, they make tools.
gp. Maybe it's Mr Godwin who mods you down ?
Seriously, it's time to stop being so easily and unfairly judgemental about other people's lives that you know nothing about, one such generation per ... Especially when you're wasting yours staring into a glowing screen wiggling your thumbs with the sole intention of posting hurtful rhetoric.
> Pro's are not concerned with small form factors.
Depending on your definition of pro. I've personally used minidisc to record broadcast interview audio for the BBC, where the quality was 'good enough' and the portability of the device was a huge benefit.
> You'd have to live pretty far from civilization to make that faster than just driving to the store and buying the game.
Not during the majority of the 24 hour day when the game shops are closed, and not during the majority of the week where I'm working when the shops are open.
You could just as easily write a list of the trivial things you have to do to get to a store. Find car keys, find car, insert key in car, check car has energy, drive to energy supplier. And there's a good chance that a download process could be much simpler, especially after an initial setup. Plug device into wall socket, access store, choose game, make coffee, play game.
Most approaches to downloadable media are simpler and less time consuming than physically going to a store. Plus, game stores ( in England at least ) are either high street ( which I try to avoid ) blandness or back street smells-faintly-of wee and has pudgy attitude behind the counter.
As an aside, current physical stores are generally oppressive to half the population ( girls ) and downloadable content seems much more palatable.
It's not about the importance of the game, it's about how well virtual spending habits map to irl spending habits.
Personally, in an MMO I'm likely to spend down to my last copper to buy a hat-of-awesome, knowing that nothing bad will happen from the purchase. I'll not starve, my house won't be taken away, and my gf won't leave ( not that getting a new one would be a problem now I have a hat-of-awesome ) and I can just grind as much as is necessary to get more cash as soon as I need it.
My irl spending habits are necessarily much more considered, so I'd consider any research done on one economy applied to the other to be seriously flawed at the core.
Don't blame me, I voted CannonballHead !
Horses sweat. Men perspire and women gently glow.
At least according to my grandma.
What parts of English culture are you proud of ? It's now unchangable history ? The ( exploitative ) Empire ? The ( not very genetically English ) Queen ? The ( as borrowed and mixed up as anywhere in Europe's ) Language ? The ( generally soggy and badly cooked ) Food ? The regular invasions of and resulting mixed genotype that comes of being a small island ?
... children will hopefully have as mixed a genotype as possible, for all it's benefits, and with the way the planet is going, a slightly darker skin may come in handy too.
My childrens, childrens
I believe his point was more that Englishness & Britishness is impossible to define, and any definition you care to uphold is likely to exclude the paragon of Englishness, Her Majesty. To be English is already to be mixed race.
I live in London, it's a dirty, generally grey and badly working city enlivened by areas of other cultures, exotic smells, tastes and spectacle it would be much worse without.
As an Englishman, and a Yorkshireman to boot, I can say with absolute certainty that I'd rather live in a predominantly multiracial area ( I do ) where my genetic heritage is a footnote compared with my interactions with other human beings, my values and my ability to do things, than to be categorised in any way as similar to someone ( you ) who has no idea of their own history ( you absolutely sure your genetic makeup is *pure* anglo-saxon, oh hang on ) and who feels they are able to judge many others based entirely on the differing colour of their skin.
You didn't build this country, and as you're very unlikely to be old enough to have actively participated in the wars, empire or any period when this sceptred isle was ( questionably ) glorious, you're actively blaming others for your own lack of success, whilst triumphing and extrapolating your smallmindedness to others who do not agree.
Anecdotal evidence for your argument; -1.
( And apologies for feeding trolls. )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GWQgb015Lc
Thank you. You're right, it's much better. I'm now quite excited about this Windows 95, maybe I'll switch.
Don't mistake lack of talent for genius. Microsoft are in a very poor position with Windows, their last version had a large amount of bad press from the same people deriding this advert and their resulting sales were so bad they've had to rebrand a service pack and attempt to start again in the eyes of the public. Courting bad press at this stage would be monumentally stupid ( It's what ? Crap like the last one, moves on ).
A simpler answer would be that they've never managed to produce a good looking anything, ever. This is more of the same.
They've certainly got people talking about it, so if the goal was to create web inches of copy then they've succeeded. If the brief was to make Win 7 look in any way like a quality product then they've failed.
Microsoft is not a company capable of employing an advertising agency to make a subtly manipulative advert, the look and feel of their primary OS product is enough to show that their corporate culture isn't capable of understanding the more human arts.
They paid ( very probably a large amount ) and it looks like they wrote a brief that was 'we want it to be somewhere between youtube and, erm, what else does the internet love ?' because they wanted to look hip. Then they insisted that they need to cover all possible demographics for fear of alienating anyone ( a black guy, a middle aged woman ), Etc.
Cool is, trying isn't.
What about the hidden camera until you access the data they want, then small-but-fast piece of lead through window and back of skull ( extra points for not getting too much brain on the monitor ) attack ?
With a good enough camera you might not even need the bullet ?
The quickest way to stop our terrible casualties is to go visit your mp and tell them that unless they put their full weight behind the idea of removing our troops from Afghanistan then you'll not vote for them next election.
As a British tax payer I'd much rather that the money was spent on something constructive.
A return generalisation : If I'd chosen to use my above averagely intelligent brain and limited lifespan to sit in a cubicle writing code that efficiently moved some data from one place to another, perhaps in the service of moving other people's money about, then I'd also be bitter about this *trash* running around constantly re-inventing the greatest communications network the world has ever seen.
Web trash ( C++ / Java / OpenGL / AS / HTML / Etc. )
/ Up and over we go
I know you're ac so I shouldn't, but this is primarily about people who are locked to IE for some other reason ( work policy, Etc. ). They probably would change if they could, and this gives them a way to nominally run IE, but still have Chrome functionality.
It's very clever on google's part, it gives them a way into the traditionally Microsoft locked down business environment, it lets the managers of these networks run IE for the IE-only-intranet, and also provide modern browser functionality. It's quite an aggressive move.
Chrome doesn't have to become your new browser, Chrome OS doesn't have to become your new do-everything-OS, it has to be useful to some people, on some platforms, worldwide. More potential customers for google = more customers for google ( and by customer, I mean eyeballs-on-adverts ).
I didn't realise it had to be on the same scale as the-most-corrupt to qualify as corruption ? Nepotism and chronyism are corruption of the highest order when done at a government level, the people get less than they deserve through personal greed. Retroactive laws which benefit the government as an institution over the people they are sworn to defend and uphold is corruption.
And vote for who exactly in this two horses of slightly different colour race ? Tory ? Lib Dem ? Green ? Pirate ? Honestly, you believe a change of management to something incredibly similar will change things ?
I'm sorry, I've lived through this sceptred isle being 'managed' by both major parties. I'll consider, research and vote as always, but I expect only a different colour tie on the man at the top.
Heh, you sure sound bitter, did your only girlfriend leave you for someone with an iPhone ?
+1 Agree ( on the subject of blind Randian following, if not on the generally insulting nature of your post. ).
... that defines how the world works."
I'm always amazed at how seriously America seems to take that particular novel. I can see it as a laboured anti-communist rant by someone scarred as a child by an oppressive regime, but to accept it as a nations philosophy ? To accept it as a basis for running ( and ruining ) the worlds economy ?
"Greenspan, 82, acknowledged under questioning that he had made a âoemistakeâ in believing that banks, operating in their own self-interest, would do what was necessary to protect their shareholders and institutions. Greenspan called that âoea flaw in the model
Human behaviour is that two greedy people will fight till one has nothing. And if the 'collateral' happens to be the rest of the world, then fuck em, I got mine.
Surely it would be possible to provide a system whereby as the original owner you can reclaim the files ?
It could be possible to use such a system to ensure that your files will never be stolen, if you lose your ipod, request new keys for the tracks that are lost & revoke the old ones on the missing ipod ?
I'm not saying that it would be, and it's academic as I'd be avoiding such a system but still.
To agree, EC2 for me is a scalable render farm over which I have complete control and only pay for usage. This is incredibly useful for custom graphics programs, and enables me to do things which I'd just not be able to afford ( or wait for ) otherwise.
I also like Dropbox a cloud based service which synchronizes a folder on any linked machines, allowing you access to the files via a web interface, it automatically keeps file versions and allows sharing between accounts.
There's a free 2Gb a/c and a $9.99 pcm, 50Gb a/c.
For me it's a 50Gb usb stick I can't lose, don't need to remember to update, and is accessible from anywhere. For my gf it's a folder on her desktop that means that if she loses her laptop then she won't lose her data.
I've not personally tried, but I believe it's possible to host a truecrypt or similar container there. ( You'd lose the web interface for anything other than the whole file I'd think. )
Billy Bragg's career is based around protesting, my now ex girlfriend is a BBC music journalist and he's known to be outraged on demand about any cause you care to put in front of him. My father was one of those striking miners and I survived for a year as a child on the generosity and charity of others, none of whom used it for self promotion.
Billy Bragg is an emotional tourist selling my ( now destroyed ) heritage and history for personal gain.
See, hate is easy. Money donated to an establishment set up to oppose these laws ( is there one ? ) would likely, given that we're heading towards an election, be spent on a public awareness campaign. They would likely try to get the support of a well respected celebrity, someone universally respected by the country. One of The Beatles would be a perfect fit in encouraging the general public that artists are not well represented by these laws.
I'm not disputing that there is a PR element to this announcement, but as in your example, one airplane flight versus the massive amount of press generated by the event ? If you were in charge of such an event, your intention to publicise as fully as possible would you consider this a satisfactory compromise ? Awareness which could realistically cause millions of people to make a small positive change vs. a drop in the ocean plane flight ?
Doing good is hard, especially so when people use hypocritical standards to judge you.
Funny. They're openly spending time ( which is money ) and effort to publicly make a statement it seems you agree with and your problem with them is that they're not doing enough. If they contribute money are you going to next ask them to self-immolate ?
Wake me up when you've publicly put your career, reputation and social standing in a place directly opposite your governments intentions.
And I'll find a way to berate you for not doing enough.