until linux goes through a major rewrite gutting it of the cruft of 30 years of unix back history it will be a strange creature to most of the windows using community. on top of that it needs to be amazingly easy to install, configure, maintain and troubleshoot. while most longtime users will insist that some or all of these things are now at the level of windows i think they are blinded from reality.
a quick little example... most folks today have swallowed the idea that the "A" drive is their floppy and the "C" drive is their harddrive. most folks understand that their operating system is located in "C:\Windows" and that their programs are in "C:Program Files". now explain to them the reasoning behind \mnt\hd0 and \home. to folks that have come to terms with why things are one way, they now need to learn a different way and won't see any clear benefit from the difference. it just doens't make sense to many people. another quick example is the difference between kde and gnome and that some programs require or work better with one or the other or the lack of a good simple installer/uninstaller that "just works" across all popular flavors of linux...
say what you will about windows or os x but there are some good lessons to be learned from them on a user interaction level. distro's like ubuntu have a very friendly face sitting on top of a fairly complex and confusing system underneath. the problem with this is that there is very much a "nevermind the man behind the curtain" approach taken when you really do have to interact with what is going on behind the curtain. the real problems are things that are going to take a lot of folks time to understand.
abstraction like ubuntu helps to an extent but it isn't anywhere close to being complete. i guess i see this abstraction is part of the problem, because you aren't really solving the issue you are just hiding it from the user. if you could hide the problem in such a way that the user will *never* have to deal with the 'hard stuff' then you have more or less solved the problem. problem is, i don't think you can abstract it enough without breaking lots of things. the best example of good abstraction that i can think of is os x as you rarely have to deal with the unix side on even a weekly basis. it is underneath it all but there are only hints of it on the surface.
the only way i see things changing is if we spend a lot of time and money on educating users. the problem is, it might actually be easier to just fork linux and scratch the sticky areas and make them more like things windows users are used to (which is afterall the market you are trying to convert). of course this means nothing will work with it for a long time and it would be extraordinarily contraversial and risky. however, it seems that it paid off for microsoft when they started their nt project, which at first nothing worked with (though i don't think it was very contraversial). this is sort of what beos seemed to be doing but wasn't quite perfect on the abstraction side, but it was very user friendly yet powerful.
of course things aren't peachy keen in windows nt land either, but it is where the majority of the world is at right now... and if linux wants to hit the desktop in a big way, maybe that is what it will take to do it.
well i think the important thing is if this is a problem for you and you are an aol customer you have a greater chance of being heard than just an aim user. so aol customers, if you don't like this, tell aol. they will likely listen to you more than folks that are either using the official aim client or leeching off the aim network (like me)...
if they have a mac introduce them to applescript as it seems pretty easy to learn. if you haven't upgraded to os x yet (or have classic and can get your hands on a copy), try introducing them to hypercard.
if they have a pc or mac introduce them to konfabulator or when the new tiger os x comes out, dashboard...
i mention dashboard and konfabulator because they use javascript, which is very useful to know for other things, and is an easy way to get something really useful done without spending a lot of time to do it.
however... i'm not sure that when i was 5-10 years old i would have had the patience to sit down and learn most of this stuff. i would probably have just wanted to play games on the computer when i didn't have the opportunity to go outside and play with friends.
in fact, if i were a parent i would probably encourage this stuff to kids only on rainy days when they can't be doing something more social.
these guys were on my local news a week or so ago and all i could think is, gee thats nice, hope you don't get your head blown off making your point.
one of the news anchors was sort of taken aback after seeing the footage and made pretty much the same comment. you'll look pretty foolish when your point is made irrelevant because a cop mistook you for a gunman...
especially when that original poly count ends up being cut drastically due to compromises in the design (which i have a hard time believing they hadn't already made when claims of real time toy story like rendering). when i look back at the announcement of the ps2 all i see are a bunch of inflated figures, some would call lies, that excited press and fanboys into promoting a system that didn't deliver on promises made. it took a long time to see anything remotely like what they said the machine was capable of and even then, while quite impressive, isn't near toy story realtime.
this is pretty much standard of many product announcements but it seems to be the case especially with the gaming industry which is fueled by a sense of 'cool factor' and fanboyism, both in the public and the press...
btw, to be fair, apple is another company that is guilty of this kind of thing however they usually do deliver on their promises.
actually, i've been thinking about another issue that can reduce battery life: the video card.
why not have a speedstep like technology in your graphics card? if it ran slower when not doing 3d acceleration it would reduce power consumption and heat. it would thereby reduce heat and battery usage in laptops and reduce heat and electricity usage in desktops.
i'm sure i'm not the first to think of this but i'm going to go patent it anyway... so sue me!;p
btw, just read this in the latest deadtree issue of egm:
starting april 1st $10 or more downpayment pre-orders for the new zelda will get a limited edition wind waker bonus disc that is redone with the same 'mature' graphics look & feel of the new zelda game. it also includes a few extra levels that were cut from the released game because miyamoto said "it had gotten too big for all ages to play".
i'm curious to see how the game looks and plays with the non cell shaded look. the screenshot comparison in the magazine was interesting. here's a link to a pic.
for all of you zelda 'kiddie graphics' haters, keep an eye out for this as you are missing out on a really great game!
example: sega 32X. while it was a great idea sega shot themselves in the foot with it.
interestingly, if you look at the n64 they had the ram upgrade module. it did seem to do well for the games that used it. if i recall, perfect dark was the first game that could use it (but didn't require it) and it came in the box with the game. i'm not sure if there were any games that required its use though (anyone?) and maybe this is partly why it was successful.
woz up y'all? me and my iigs went for a super drive earlier but on our way here i realized we were running on nt and knew that wouldn't do for long.
i was beginning to kernel panic but fortunately we found an all night openfirmware. while we were there one of the guys saw someone in the back trying to break open the filevault. long story short we dragged and dropped him in the trashcan and the owner promised to give all three of us ipods!
it depends a lot on what generation ipod you have. with older ipods you have to put the ipod itself into 'disk mode' for windows to see it as a drive. newer ipods (the mini included) this is no longer the case and they work out of the box as a normal usb storage device.
not sure what is going on with your 4th gen (i have a 40g 4th gen and a 4g 1st gen mini), because any computer with firewire and/or usb should be able to read it as a hard drive without installing any software at all.
many (most?) windows machines lack the firmware to be able to boot directly off a usb or firewire drive.
good point, however i think apple isn't a good example in many ways because most of what apple has brought out in a product people really do want: fun, stylish, user friendly yet powerful system that removes much of the hassle folks have when using a computer.
however i think there are two factors that have kept "most people" from buying a mac: lack of clones and price. interestingly, the two are very closely related. apple stands alone in it's market as they don't allow clones (except for a relatively brieft time in the 90's) and thus doesn't have competing mac computers to force them to keep the pricing low.
i think there is an argument that could be made nowadays that the pc doesn't necessarilly compete against the mac because the pc has cheaper hardware but an os that leaves many folks wanting. the mac on the otherhand doesn't compete against the pc because mac user's are fairly entrenched and faithful to the platform and aren't necessarily as concerned with price. i think the barrier is that pc users use it because of a seeming lack of choice at a similar pricepoint and it's prevalence in the market (widely distributed at home and office). ie, you hear of many switchers to mac today but very few switchers from mac to pc...
you are confusing success as defined by "winning 1st place in the market" and "making profits for your shareholders". the two are VERY different but they are both used as methods of measuring success.
many companies make money for their shareholders but aren't the biggest player in their market. interestingly, you can win in the marketplace and still not make any money for your shareholders but still be seen as a success (take amazon.com for many, many years it wasn't making money as it was constantly expanding).
companies like apple and nintendo at various points in their life were winners in the marketplace but are now making profits for their shareholders. however, i'm sure they would enjoy doing both...
this is cool and all, but users should be made aware that while the ipod can store general files and even boot and run linux the ipod wasn't designed to do it longterm and apple recommends against it.
the problem is mostly due to the enclosed design that traps heat inside the case with no airflow, which is partly why (aside from the nice look) the back of the ipod is made of metal, to dissipate the heat. this isn't a problem when you use the ipod as a music player as it only accesses the disk every now and then. the only time when it really ever heats up is when you are first putting a lot of music on it or when you do a restore.
btw, for those that haven't seen the innards of the ipod it has it's mainboard, hard drive and battery all sandwiched back to back.
no, macintosh is the entire package. i don't think you would find a single one of the original design team, for instance, that would say different. in fact that is sort of the point of why they started the whole macintosh project in the first place, because it was an entire package instead of a pile of components (like many computers of the time) or an incomplete package like the apple ii. it gives the user a complete experience, which the hardware alone doesn't. call it marketing hogwash or whatever, but the entire idea behind the macintosh is the experience.
the os has had a rather generic name for much of it's life (i would say os x is pretty generic too, but then again so is windows if you think about it)...
understanding that this is geared for consoles not computer games (so no, you won't see spacewar or elite there) it would seem that there are some games like pacman, tetris and street fighter that are pretty important to gaming to name a few others.
pacman is pretty obvious. tetris made the gameboy relevent. street fighter set the standard for every fighting game since.
i would also suggest that they should put e.t. in there too as it was umm... quite influential. however it might be best located in near the bathrooms or somesuch...
(it should be noted that some of these games started as a computer game but were much more successful as a console port)
yeah, well as you said the line is pretty vague. for example, you can find wolf3d, doom and quake on consoles and hell you can even find commander keen on gameboy! i think to many people computer game and video game mean the same thing even if you and i know the (ever increasing subtle) difference...
i'd say that review would be accurate if you were reviewing 1) an older version of azureus and were using 2) an older version of the java library. the performance of azureus is directly related to the version of java you have.
that said, there is still one issue that i have with any of these types of clients and that is when they do their final checksum on the downloaded file it usually snags a large amount of horsepower. in my opinion it should use very low priority doing that final check as quite frankly i don't care if it were to take 5 minutes to do the check if it didn't steal power from me while doing something important. i'm not usually in that big of a rush to get something to give up the juice...
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until linux goes through a major rewrite gutting it of the cruft of 30 years of unix back history it will be a strange creature to most of the windows using community. on top of that it needs to be amazingly easy to install, configure, maintain and troubleshoot. while most longtime users will insist that some or all of these things are now at the level of windows i think they are blinded from reality.
a quick little example... most folks today have swallowed the idea that the "A" drive is their floppy and the "C" drive is their harddrive. most folks understand that their operating system is located in "C:\Windows" and that their programs are in "C:Program Files". now explain to them the reasoning behind \mnt\hd0 and \home. to folks that have come to terms with why things are one way, they now need to learn a different way and won't see any clear benefit from the difference. it just doens't make sense to many people. another quick example is the difference between kde and gnome and that some programs require or work better with one or the other or the lack of a good simple installer/uninstaller that "just works" across all popular flavors of linux...
say what you will about windows or os x but there are some good lessons to be learned from them on a user interaction level. distro's like ubuntu have a very friendly face sitting on top of a fairly complex and confusing system underneath. the problem with this is that there is very much a "nevermind the man behind the curtain" approach taken when you really do have to interact with what is going on behind the curtain. the real problems are things that are going to take a lot of folks time to understand.
abstraction like ubuntu helps to an extent but it isn't anywhere close to being complete. i guess i see this abstraction is part of the problem, because you aren't really solving the issue you are just hiding it from the user. if you could hide the problem in such a way that the user will *never* have to deal with the 'hard stuff' then you have more or less solved the problem. problem is, i don't think you can abstract it enough without breaking lots of things. the best example of good abstraction that i can think of is os x as you rarely have to deal with the unix side on even a weekly basis. it is underneath it all but there are only hints of it on the surface.
the only way i see things changing is if we spend a lot of time and money on educating users. the problem is, it might actually be easier to just fork linux and scratch the sticky areas and make them more like things windows users are used to (which is afterall the market you are trying to convert). of course this means nothing will work with it for a long time and it would be extraordinarily contraversial and risky. however, it seems that it paid off for microsoft when they started their nt project, which at first nothing worked with (though i don't think it was very contraversial). this is sort of what beos seemed to be doing but wasn't quite perfect on the abstraction side, but it was very user friendly yet powerful.
of course things aren't peachy keen in windows nt land either, but it is where the majority of the world is at right now... and if linux wants to hit the desktop in a big way, maybe that is what it will take to do it.
well i think the important thing is if this is a problem for you and you are an aol customer you have a greater chance of being heard than just an aim user. so aol customers, if you don't like this, tell aol. they will likely listen to you more than folks that are either using the official aim client or leeching off the aim network (like me)...
a few ideas...
if they have a mac introduce them to applescript as it seems pretty easy to learn. if you haven't upgraded to os x yet (or have classic and can get your hands on a copy), try introducing them to hypercard.
if they have a pc or mac introduce them to konfabulator or when the new tiger os x comes out, dashboard...
i mention dashboard and konfabulator because they use javascript, which is very useful to know for other things, and is an easy way to get something really useful done without spending a lot of time to do it.
however... i'm not sure that when i was 5-10 years old i would have had the patience to sit down and learn most of this stuff. i would probably have just wanted to play games on the computer when i didn't have the opportunity to go outside and play with friends.
in fact, if i were a parent i would probably encourage this stuff to kids only on rainy days when they can't be doing something more social.
these guys were on my local news a week or so ago and all i could think is, gee thats nice, hope you don't get your head blown off making your point.
one of the news anchors was sort of taken aback after seeing the footage and made pretty much the same comment. you'll look pretty foolish when your point is made irrelevant because a cop mistook you for a gunman...
yeah the shuffle is apparently actually built by asus according to an article on digitimes from a while back...
especially when that original poly count ends up being cut drastically due to compromises in the design (which i have a hard time believing they hadn't already made when claims of real time toy story like rendering). when i look back at the announcement of the ps2 all i see are a bunch of inflated figures, some would call lies, that excited press and fanboys into promoting a system that didn't deliver on promises made. it took a long time to see anything remotely like what they said the machine was capable of and even then, while quite impressive, isn't near toy story realtime.
this is pretty much standard of many product announcements but it seems to be the case especially with the gaming industry which is fueled by a sense of 'cool factor' and fanboyism, both in the public and the press...
btw, to be fair, apple is another company that is guilty of this kind of thing however they usually do deliver on their promises.
nice! i wasn't aware of that, thanks. just seemed like such an obvious thing i wondered why i've not heard of it before.
heh, or maybe they are chasing killer tomatoes or the celery stalks at midnight.
actually, i've been thinking about another issue that can reduce battery life: the video card.
;p
why not have a speedstep like technology in your graphics card? if it ran slower when not doing 3d acceleration it would reduce power consumption and heat. it would thereby reduce heat and battery usage in laptops and reduce heat and electricity usage in desktops.
i'm sure i'm not the first to think of this but i'm going to go patent it anyway... so sue me!
btw, i really hope this isn't an egm april fools joke as it very well could be as they are known for doing this sort of thing...
btw, just read this in the latest deadtree issue of egm:
starting april 1st $10 or more downpayment pre-orders for the new zelda will get a limited edition wind waker bonus disc that is redone with the same 'mature' graphics look & feel of the new zelda game. it also includes a few extra levels that were cut from the released game because miyamoto said "it had gotten too big for all ages to play".
i'm curious to see how the game looks and plays with the non cell shaded look. the screenshot comparison in the magazine was interesting. here's a link to a pic.
for all of you zelda 'kiddie graphics' haters, keep an eye out for this as you are missing out on a really great game!
example: sega 32X. while it was a great idea sega shot themselves in the foot with it.
interestingly, if you look at the n64 they had the ram upgrade module. it did seem to do well for the games that used it. if i recall, perfect dark was the first game that could use it (but didn't require it) and it came in the box with the game. i'm not sure if there were any games that required its use though (anyone?) and maybe this is partly why it was successful.
woz up y'all? me and my iigs went for a super drive earlier but on our way here i realized we were running on nt and knew that wouldn't do for long.
i was beginning to kernel panic but fortunately we found an all night openfirmware. while we were there one of the guys saw someone in the back trying to break open the filevault. long story short we dragged and dropped him in the trashcan and the owner promised to give all three of us ipods!
ooyyy...
movie ref for those not in the know... an awful but silly (awfully silly?) movie, heh.
while i would agree that some folks get the two confused hemos added the usb remark...
all pre 3rd gen ipod were strictly firewire. 3rd gen and on have both usb and firewire. if you can boot off usb or firewire this will work on an ipod.
it depends a lot on what generation ipod you have. with older ipods you have to put the ipod itself into 'disk mode' for windows to see it as a drive. newer ipods (the mini included) this is no longer the case and they work out of the box as a normal usb storage device.
not sure what is going on with your 4th gen (i have a 40g 4th gen and a 4g 1st gen mini), because any computer with firewire and/or usb should be able to read it as a hard drive without installing any software at all.
many (most?) windows machines lack the firmware to be able to boot directly off a usb or firewire drive.
yes, you can work a 5 hour day. no problem! as long as it is at least 8 or more days a week.
good point, however i think apple isn't a good example in many ways because most of what apple has brought out in a product people really do want: fun, stylish, user friendly yet powerful system that removes much of the hassle folks have when using a computer.
however i think there are two factors that have kept "most people" from buying a mac: lack of clones and price. interestingly, the two are very closely related. apple stands alone in it's market as they don't allow clones (except for a relatively brieft time in the 90's) and thus doesn't have competing mac computers to force them to keep the pricing low.
i think there is an argument that could be made nowadays that the pc doesn't necessarilly compete against the mac because the pc has cheaper hardware but an os that leaves many folks wanting. the mac on the otherhand doesn't compete against the pc because mac user's are fairly entrenched and faithful to the platform and aren't necessarily as concerned with price. i think the barrier is that pc users use it because of a seeming lack of choice at a similar pricepoint and it's prevalence in the market (widely distributed at home and office). ie, you hear of many switchers to mac today but very few switchers from mac to pc...
you are confusing success as defined by "winning 1st place in the market" and "making profits for your shareholders". the two are VERY different but they are both used as methods of measuring success.
many companies make money for their shareholders but aren't the biggest player in their market. interestingly, you can win in the marketplace and still not make any money for your shareholders but still be seen as a success (take amazon.com for many, many years it wasn't making money as it was constantly expanding).
companies like apple and nintendo at various points in their life were winners in the marketplace but are now making profits for their shareholders. however, i'm sure they would enjoy doing both...
this is cool and all, but users should be made aware that while the ipod can store general files and even boot and run linux the ipod wasn't designed to do it longterm and apple recommends against it.
the problem is mostly due to the enclosed design that traps heat inside the case with no airflow, which is partly why (aside from the nice look) the back of the ipod is made of metal, to dissipate the heat. this isn't a problem when you use the ipod as a music player as it only accesses the disk every now and then. the only time when it really ever heats up is when you are first putting a lot of music on it or when you do a restore.
btw, for those that haven't seen the innards of the ipod it has it's mainboard, hard drive and battery all sandwiched back to back.
no, macintosh is the entire package. i don't think you would find a single one of the original design team, for instance, that would say different. in fact that is sort of the point of why they started the whole macintosh project in the first place, because it was an entire package instead of a pile of components (like many computers of the time) or an incomplete package like the apple ii. it gives the user a complete experience, which the hardware alone doesn't. call it marketing hogwash or whatever, but the entire idea behind the macintosh is the experience.
the os has had a rather generic name for much of it's life (i would say os x is pretty generic too, but then again so is windows if you think about it)...
understanding that this is geared for consoles not computer games (so no, you won't see spacewar or elite there) it would seem that there are some games like pacman, tetris and street fighter that are pretty important to gaming to name a few others.
pacman is pretty obvious. tetris made the gameboy relevent. street fighter set the standard for every fighting game since.
i would also suggest that they should put e.t. in there too as it was umm... quite influential. however it might be best located in near the bathrooms or somesuch...
(it should be noted that some of these games started as a computer game but were much more successful as a console port)
yeah, well as you said the line is pretty vague. for example, you can find wolf3d, doom and quake on consoles and hell you can even find commander keen on gameboy! i think to many people computer game and video game mean the same thing even if you and i know the (ever increasing subtle) difference...
i'd say that review would be accurate if you were reviewing 1) an older version of azureus and were using 2) an older version of the java library. the performance of azureus is directly related to the version of java you have.
that said, there is still one issue that i have with any of these types of clients and that is when they do their final checksum on the downloaded file it usually snags a large amount of horsepower. in my opinion it should use very low priority doing that final check as quite frankly i don't care if it were to take 5 minutes to do the check if it didn't steal power from me while doing something important. i'm not usually in that big of a rush to get something to give up the juice...
what if i don't pay the fine? they gonna kill me?