My father in law has been using an ugly display for a couple of years now. It's probably a result of an incompatibility between the VIA integrated graphics and the monitor's resolution. It bothers me a lot (when I need to service his PC), but he doesn't seem to care (I asked him). So even though to your eyes reducing the screen resolution on an LCD monitor is a travesty, I'd suggest that you ask the real users. You may be surprised to find out that they don't care. That will allow you to buy normal monitors. If you need to service them, just up the resolution to native.
Other thoughts:
Eyesight will vary between people, so I assume no single solution will be good for all. I think that getting users' opinions would be the best to get a feel for it. You might want to keep a couple of solutions at hand to show users and let them choose what's good for them.
I assume that for some the solution of working at quarter resolution (960x600 on an 1920x1200 screen) will be okay. While a height of 600 isn't optimal, it's become somewhat of a standard on netbooks, so it's apparently usable in some cases.
TV's are a good solution, and you may be able to get a service electrician to disable the TV tuner. I had that done once to a CRT TV, and it's probably possible to do on LCD's too, for someone already familiar with fixing them. Taking away the remote may be good enough, though.
I think that Daniel Lyons just doesn't remember Bill Gates or what Microsoft did. I mean, sure, in the 90's Microsoft controlled the OS market. Windows 95 ruled. And then came 98, 98SE, ME. Yes, that was really visionary. And it was Bill Gates who ignored the internet, and let other browsers control the entire market. On the other hand, it was on Ballmer's watch that the Xbox appeared, and grew into a real success.
And now to contradict what I said above, because Daniel Lyons made an even bigger mistake. Gates continue to lead Microsoft's product strategy until 2006, which makes it silly to blame Ballmer for most of the 2000's.
On a final note, I heard Bill Gates talk over the years and read what he was saying. He had technical vision, but it was often at odds with the market. IMO he was bad at understanding where technology was going. Microsoft has always been a follower, rarely an innovator. It just won because it knew how to get into a market and continue to improve its products to the point where they were good enough.
I did find having mail and web together comfortable, and being able to edit the odd text web page wasn't a bad feature. Problem was that SeaMonkey just fell so far behind that Firefox provided a lot more useful features, either built in or through add-ins.
I think it may be too late for SeaMonkey. It might have caught up with Firefox, but it already lost long time users like me. It'd be a hassle to go back.
I've seen people using "game developers" a couple of times when they mean publishers. Would these same posters replace RIAA with "musicians" as easily? It's insulting to game developers.
Global warming denialists tend to use math and physics. Their typical strategy is to find errors in anthropomorphic global warming articles, as well as provide calculations (based on math and physics) that show how other factors could explain the warming. Global warming fans, on the other hand, usually prefer to try to discredit the denialists (i.e., use personal attacks) and use emotion in their argument (claiming that things are obvious, playing on how catastrophic the consequences are, etc.). At least that's the feeling I get as I follow this subject.
In my experience, optimisation does take a lot of time.
One way that optimisation takes time is straighforward: people use profilers (or code reviewer, common sense, or whatever) to find bottlenecks and fix them. This is common, regardless of the app.
The other is less obvious: people design their code to work more quickly, and sacrifice readability. Most programmers I know practice what I call "premature optimisation" -- sometimes wrong ones. For example, one programmer I knew used shifts for all multiplications by powers of 2. This was not only hard to read but also causes bugs due to operator precedence. I later showed him an article that told that on modern processors shifts are a lot slower than multiplication. Another common practice in C/C++ is to loop on pointers, instead of use an index into the array. All these practices which are meant to optimise code a little (when it's usually not needed) can cost a large amount of time, because they make the code more buggy, harder to debug and harder to maintain.
Math may be an art, in the same sense that programming is art, but it's not an art form. I like Wikipedia's definition of art: "Art is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions." In this sense, programming is not an art, but computer games are. Yes, the work 'art' has other meanings, some of which apply to math and programming, but it's not the same meaning applied to music or painting.
That's why to me this article doesn't make sense or propose a real solution. Math is no different than history or science, or, for that matter, literature. They are all taught mainly as a collection of facts, with just glimpses of the way these are arrived at. Putting math on a different pedestal IMO makes it more difficult to reach a better solution to teaching it, rather than seeing where the problems of teaching lie.
Frankly, everything that's taught in school is boring. You need a good teacher who really likes the subject to make it feel interesting. Even if he or she teaches the exact same material, it'd feel more interesting. That's in my experience, at least.
The CPU specs look to me like a problem for Intel. Because the Atom's core has pretty low performance, the limit of one core under 2GHz means that it'd be easy to pass in performance. It might still win in power, but 15W is high enough for faster solutions than the Atom.
The apps that need the most power are games. With gaming shifting to consoles, partly because of value for money they represent to buyers (when not taking into account game costs) and partly because publishers and developers prefer a platform with less piracy, that's a main "killer app" moving away from the PC, making it even more "good enough".
Moving games out of PC space is likely to hurt Windows as a dominant OS. Maybe some years in the future we'll see Microsoft as a hardware maker instead of an OS maker.
Don't know about Muslims, but I can definitely see the value of a law against disparaging remarks and physical violence committed against practicing Jedi due to their religion.
Stupid resolution, but let's hold the Muslim countries to it, and make sure they don't say anything bad about Christians or Jews (or Hindus,...), and that they make sure non-Muslims are never hurt in any way due to their religion.
Interestingly, the estimate for energy cost of TV's, as mentioned in the article, is "around 822 kilowatt hours a year". That's about what a refrigerator takes (more than mine takes, and mine isn't small). Since refrigerators do all come with a label about power consumption (at least here), and other household products also do, it makes sense to label TV's also.
Restricting the TV's sold may be overzealous, but certainly labeling them is a good idea. An educated buyer can make decisions. Currently the power consumption is not clear up front, which is why it's taken less into consideration.
I agree and disagree. "Knowing what to do when you get it" is IMO not that related to talent and experience.
The people who are successful are those who have the most business sense. You can have all the opportunities and talent and experience and you'll be on the payroll of someone who makes the actual money. Or you'll produce a great freeware product that will make many people happy but will not make you very successful (as things are measured).
If you're not the kind of person to drive yourself into the public light and stay there, talent and experience will get you a job that will possible make you comfortably wealthy, but it will not bring you to the level of these people.
Check this out. I think I'd have loved that at 13 (had a Sinclair ZX81 at that age), and it's very appealing even today, though I don't think I'll have the time to play with it seriously, so haven't bought it. There's a site for this (mentioned on that page) with extra games and apps with source code.
I agree. Developers would never say such a thing. It's like writers saying "I don't want my book to be in libraries." Developers just want the publisher to pay for the development. It's the publisher who wants to maximise profits.
IMO DLC of this sort will be fine if it cost $20 to fight the big boss regardless of how you got the game.
I think that the best way would be to tell your boss you're uncomfortable with this and ask if it's okay not to participate in the process. That would be best, and would work if you're on good terms.
Unfortunately, if you're asking the question here, I'd assume that's not the case, at least from your side, since you automatically try to go the forceful way, instead of negotiating a position that would be okay for you and not hurt your employer too badly.
I don't think the mouse is going away, but hopefully the single most cumbersome control device in regular use would slowly be replaced, and that's the gaming controller. I don't know if it'd die within the next five years, but since the Wii doesn't have it (except as an option, and one not frequently supported), but it gives me hope.
I agree. Much as some Linux distros try to aim at end users, the basic attitude is still an OS by programmers for programmers.
On second thought, I wonder if it's really that, or just the way the vocal Linux fans see it. They seem to do a good job at dissuading people from using Linux.
Just have some poor non-Linux-user read a thread like this, with the multitude of demands to fix bugs herself (or himself), and people saying that changes to make the OS more usable by laypeople are bad. Do you think that after reading this such a user would have any wish to try Linux?
It's obvious from posts here that a lot of Linux fans just don't want non-programmers to use the OS. They seem to be happiest when few people are using Linux, because:
1. The OS is geared for them, and nobody else 2. They can feel fulfilled by bitching about nobody using Linux
Unfortunately for them, it looks like there's a chance of Linux becoming more mainstream thanks to being bundled on devices like the Eee PC.
Windows update work the same, and is even more flexible. I usually either choose to just get notified, or to have the updates download, and I install them when I want.
Frankly, I'm sorry I upgraded to Firefox 3. Had problems with my google homepage and with YouTube since. Good thing there's IE Tab.
Agreed. We have computers which identify faces, and we have robots which can navigate our house or yard to vacuum or mow the lawn. We can talk on the phone to computers and get reasonable responses (sometimes). It's just that we don't think of this as AI, even though some decades back it would have been considered amazing AI. We see the limitations of these technologies, but even when they get better, we still won't consider them AI.
Haven't touched Windows Solitaire in a while, but I'm hopelessly addicted to Spiderette on DChoc Solitaire.
In general, I find I play more phone games than PC games. The phone is with me most times, it's easy to carry, and it has some nice turn based games: DChoc Solitaire is one, but also a few RPG's like Orcs & Elves (way to go Carmack!).
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My father in law has been using an ugly display for a couple of years now. It's probably a result of an incompatibility between the VIA integrated graphics and the monitor's resolution. It bothers me a lot (when I need to service his PC), but he doesn't seem to care (I asked him). So even though to your eyes reducing the screen resolution on an LCD monitor is a travesty, I'd suggest that you ask the real users. You may be surprised to find out that they don't care. That will allow you to buy normal monitors. If you need to service them, just up the resolution to native.
Other thoughts:
Eyesight will vary between people, so I assume no single solution will be good for all. I think that getting users' opinions would be the best to get a feel for it. You might want to keep a couple of solutions at hand to show users and let them choose what's good for them.
I assume that for some the solution of working at quarter resolution (960x600 on an 1920x1200 screen) will be okay. While a height of 600 isn't optimal, it's become somewhat of a standard on netbooks, so it's apparently usable in some cases.
TV's are a good solution, and you may be able to get a service electrician to disable the TV tuner. I had that done once to a CRT TV, and it's probably possible to do on LCD's too, for someone already familiar with fixing them. Taking away the remote may be good enough, though.
I use IZArc. Unlike 7-Zip, I find it easy to use, and it's free for home and commercial use.
I think that Daniel Lyons just doesn't remember Bill Gates or what Microsoft did. I mean, sure, in the 90's Microsoft controlled the OS market. Windows 95 ruled. And then came 98, 98SE, ME. Yes, that was really visionary. And it was Bill Gates who ignored the internet, and let other browsers control the entire market. On the other hand, it was on Ballmer's watch that the Xbox appeared, and grew into a real success.
And now to contradict what I said above, because Daniel Lyons made an even bigger mistake. Gates continue to lead Microsoft's product strategy until 2006, which makes it silly to blame Ballmer for most of the 2000's.
On a final note, I heard Bill Gates talk over the years and read what he was saying. He had technical vision, but it was often at odds with the market. IMO he was bad at understanding where technology was going. Microsoft has always been a follower, rarely an innovator. It just won because it knew how to get into a market and continue to improve its products to the point where they were good enough.
I did find having mail and web together comfortable, and being able to edit the odd text web page wasn't a bad feature. Problem was that SeaMonkey just fell so far behind that Firefox provided a lot more useful features, either built in or through add-ins.
I think it may be too late for SeaMonkey. It might have caught up with Firefox, but it already lost long time users like me. It'd be a hassle to go back.
I've seen people using "game developers" a couple of times when they mean publishers. Would these same posters replace RIAA with "musicians" as easily? It's insulting to game developers.
Global warming denialists tend to use math and physics. Their typical strategy is to find errors in anthropomorphic global warming articles, as well as provide calculations (based on math and physics) that show how other factors could explain the warming. Global warming fans, on the other hand, usually prefer to try to discredit the denialists (i.e., use personal attacks) and use emotion in their argument (claiming that things are obvious, playing on how catastrophic the consequences are, etc.). At least that's the feeling I get as I follow this subject.
In my experience, optimisation does take a lot of time.
One way that optimisation takes time is straighforward: people use profilers (or code reviewer, common sense, or whatever) to find bottlenecks and fix them. This is common, regardless of the app.
The other is less obvious: people design their code to work more quickly, and sacrifice readability. Most programmers I know practice what I call "premature optimisation" -- sometimes wrong ones. For example, one programmer I knew used shifts for all multiplications by powers of 2. This was not only hard to read but also causes bugs due to operator precedence. I later showed him an article that told that on modern processors shifts are a lot slower than multiplication. Another common practice in C/C++ is to loop on pointers, instead of use an index into the array. All these practices which are meant to optimise code a little (when it's usually not needed) can cost a large amount of time, because they make the code more buggy, harder to debug and harder to maintain.
Math may be an art, in the same sense that programming is art, but it's not an art form. I like Wikipedia's definition of art: "Art is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions." In this sense, programming is not an art, but computer games are. Yes, the work 'art' has other meanings, some of which apply to math and programming, but it's not the same meaning applied to music or painting.
That's why to me this article doesn't make sense or propose a real solution. Math is no different than history or science, or, for that matter, literature. They are all taught mainly as a collection of facts, with just glimpses of the way these are arrived at. Putting math on a different pedestal IMO makes it more difficult to reach a better solution to teaching it, rather than seeing where the problems of teaching lie.
Frankly, everything that's taught in school is boring. You need a good teacher who really likes the subject to make it feel interesting. Even if he or she teaches the exact same material, it'd feel more interesting. That's in my experience, at least.
The CPU specs look to me like a problem for Intel. Because the Atom's core has pretty low performance, the limit of one core under 2GHz means that it'd be easy to pass in performance. It might still win in power, but 15W is high enough for faster solutions than the Atom.
The apps that need the most power are games. With gaming shifting to consoles, partly because of value for money they represent to buyers (when not taking into account game costs) and partly because publishers and developers prefer a platform with less piracy, that's a main "killer app" moving away from the PC, making it even more "good enough".
Moving games out of PC space is likely to hurt Windows as a dominant OS. Maybe some years in the future we'll see Microsoft as a hardware maker instead of an OS maker.
Don't know about Muslims, but I can definitely see the value of a law against disparaging remarks and physical violence committed against practicing Jedi due to their religion.
Stupid resolution, but let's hold the Muslim countries to it, and make sure they don't say anything bad about Christians or Jews (or Hindus, ...), and that they make sure non-Muslims are never hurt in any way due to their religion.
The fantasy magazine I like best is Black Gate. Comes out about once a year.
Interestingly, the estimate for energy cost of TV's, as mentioned in the article, is "around 822 kilowatt hours a year". That's about what a refrigerator takes (more than mine takes, and mine isn't small). Since refrigerators do all come with a label about power consumption (at least here), and other household products also do, it makes sense to label TV's also.
Restricting the TV's sold may be overzealous, but certainly labeling them is a good idea. An educated buyer can make decisions. Currently the power consumption is not clear up front, which is why it's taken less into consideration.
They will have 64 bit support after beta, so hopefully you won't stay away just because you're pissed off right now.
"Big business, which typically thinks nothing about splashing out for newer, more up-to-date PCs"
Aren't businesses typically a lot after the curve when it comes to upgrading to a new OS? (Or, for that matter, to new hardware.)
I agree and disagree. "Knowing what to do when you get it" is IMO not that related to talent and experience.
The people who are successful are those who have the most business sense. You can have all the opportunities and talent and experience and you'll be on the payroll of someone who makes the actual money. Or you'll produce a great freeware product that will make many people happy but will not make you very successful (as things are measured).
If you're not the kind of person to drive yourself into the public light and stay there, talent and experience will get you a job that will possible make you comfortably wealthy, but it will not bring you to the level of these people.
Check this out. I think I'd have loved that at 13 (had a Sinclair ZX81 at that age), and it's very appealing even today, though I don't think I'll have the time to play with it seriously, so haven't bought it. There's a site for this (mentioned on that page) with extra games and apps with source code.
I agree. Developers would never say such a thing. It's like writers saying "I don't want my book to be in libraries." Developers just want the publisher to pay for the development. It's the publisher who wants to maximise profits.
IMO DLC of this sort will be fine if it cost $20 to fight the big boss regardless of how you got the game.
I think that the best way would be to tell your boss you're uncomfortable with this and ask if it's okay not to participate in the process. That would be best, and would work if you're on good terms.
Unfortunately, if you're asking the question here, I'd assume that's not the case, at least from your side, since you automatically try to go the forceful way, instead of negotiating a position that would be okay for you and not hurt your employer too badly.
I don't think the mouse is going away, but hopefully the single most cumbersome control device in regular use would slowly be replaced, and that's the gaming controller. I don't know if it'd die within the next five years, but since the Wii doesn't have it (except as an option, and one not frequently supported), but it gives me hope.
I agree. Much as some Linux distros try to aim at end users, the basic attitude is still an OS by programmers for programmers.
On second thought, I wonder if it's really that, or just the way the vocal Linux fans see it. They seem to do a good job at dissuading people from using Linux.
Just have some poor non-Linux-user read a thread like this, with the multitude of demands to fix bugs herself (or himself), and people saying that changes to make the OS more usable by laypeople are bad. Do you think that after reading this such a user would have any wish to try Linux?
It's obvious from posts here that a lot of Linux fans just don't want non-programmers to use the OS. They seem to be happiest when few people are using Linux, because:
1. The OS is geared for them, and nobody else
2. They can feel fulfilled by bitching about nobody using Linux
Unfortunately for them, it looks like there's a chance of Linux becoming more mainstream thanks to being bundled on devices like the Eee PC.
Windows update work the same, and is even more flexible. I usually either choose to just get notified, or to have the updates download, and I install them when I want. Frankly, I'm sorry I upgraded to Firefox 3. Had problems with my google homepage and with YouTube since. Good thing there's IE Tab.
Agreed. We have computers which identify faces, and we have robots which can navigate our house or yard to vacuum or mow the lawn. We can talk on the phone to computers and get reasonable responses (sometimes). It's just that we don't think of this as AI, even though some decades back it would have been considered amazing AI. We see the limitations of these technologies, but even when they get better, we still won't consider them AI.
Haven't touched Windows Solitaire in a while, but I'm hopelessly addicted to Spiderette on DChoc Solitaire. In general, I find I play more phone games than PC games. The phone is with me most times, it's easy to carry, and it has some nice turn based games: DChoc Solitaire is one, but also a few RPG's like Orcs & Elves (way to go Carmack!).