Having never before touched Vista, I had to show a guy how to get the machine on the wifi network at a coffee shop. He was full of "why this?" and "why that?" questions about Vista vs XP.
I got a little tired of constantly having to answer, "I don't know. I don't use Windows."
Too true. I remember a friend of mine doing tech support at this big company and he told me that some woman had run out of hard drive space so she started deleting things because she never used those files.
You already have a lot of responses, so you may not see this one, but how is this for a Java on Solaris experience.
A newer version had come out. Ubuntu let me know and a button press or two later, it was installed.
On Solaris, which is, as you point out, Sun's OWN OS, I had to hunt around java.com, get a tar ball, figure out where the hell it wanted it to be installed to, change some permissions and so on.
An elitist is someone who sneers at anyone trying to make something readable, watchable or in anyway good. Typical elitist gatherings are gossip groups of people who all watch the same things, think the same things and read the same things. At these gatherings, they regurgitate the same pithy quotes which, typically, were read on bumper stickers of other elitists, which reinforce their opinion that they are the most morally perfect people to have ever walked the earth, all without actually needing to do anything.
I remember Unreal, the single player game... There was that one early scripted sequence where doors close, it is dark, lights are red and get attacked by that lizard guy.
Then I remember running through huge levels devoid of anything resembling fun.
I remember reading the OpenCL announcement (I like to pretend that I know what I'm talking about in programming matters) and Nvidia did indeed say that they would be supporting it.
With regards to proprietary software, one problem I have with it is that it forces a hardware/OS combo. Wine exists, but nothing is ever going to get Office to work on UltraSparc. If, God help us, some proprietary stuff becomes a de facto standard for some things (say hello, Flash!) then anyone running anything on a non-preapproved hardware/software combo is out of luck.
Since you mentioned W:ET, I think one problem is that is not under active development by the developers anymore. Its like a 10 year old SourceForge project that no one has maintained in 8 years: yeah, can probably get it to work, but it isn't necessarily going to be easy.
With regards to desktop suitability, I think Macs are a good case study. It was a decade ago that Apple started its resurgence, with the iMac. After all that time, all those products, all that praise and all that advertising, Apple is still under 10%. Mac OS X's usability is rarely ever questioned, but even so, it still hasn't come close to majority status.
Question: what percentage of Windows desktops are business PCs? I have no idea, but I'd guess that if you were just counting home market share, Windows is rather less dominant (but still the heavy majority) where people have a choice what to run.
The confusion of RAM and the hard drive never really bothered me too much. RAM is like short term memory and the hard drive is like long term memory.
I think referring to the computer as the CPU comes from Apple people back in the day. Every person that was an Apple user referred to it as the CPU, without exception.
But even really smart people can be amazingly stupid, at least from time to time. It doesn't mean that they are stupid all the time, just that they are, well, people.
Case in point, I had this professor of ethics who was an incredibly bright guy. When in high school, one of his experiments went on the space shuttle. Attended Harvard, got his PhD at Brown. He had a phenomenal memory and a great broad understanding of his field.
He also was fired because he was living in his office, since he spent all his money on heroin. Actually, he didn't make enough money to support his habit, so he robbed houses. Pretty stupid.
"Replacing a beloved natural monument with a man-made one is sure to bring out emotions. Will a clearer understanding of the design help sway public opinion?"
Definitely. They will be more accurate with their condemnations.
"So I'm not sure how familiarity would skew the results."
Analogy time! Lets assume you know two languages. One is your native (use it all the time, think in it, etc) the other you are familiar with, but its not your native tongue, you don't use it remotely as often and you never think in its terms. When presented with text, your time-to-understand your native language would be faster than with the other. Like I wrote, though, it is just a thought.
A second consideration is light reflection (bear with me). In my experience, it is easier to see muscle definition on a darker skinned person than on a lighter skinned one. That white bodybuilders are usually as tanned as they can get, I think, lends some credence to this. *If* that is the case, then there is a variation in perception time due to skin tonal differences.
A third (I'm making these up as I go) is the pretty universal, dark vs. light. As in the light of day (I can see stuff) and the dark of night (I can't see stuff and that stuff wants to eat me). My guess is that black has mostly been viewed as the color of evil due to that. Football teams wearing black are perceived to be more aggressive (http://joeclark.org/basicblack.html). Both metal heads and hip hop people went for black. The SS chose black. So on and so forth.
Fourthly: Higher testosterone levels tend to produce more masculine faces (http://www.citeulike.org/user/saslow/article/4118080) and more masculine faces tend to be viewed as potentially more aggresive. Blacks (at least American Blacks) have a higher testosterone level than their white countrymen (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3455741).
I took that test a ways back. Came out basically the same for both.
One question about said test, though, it would seem to me that if you are more familiar with one type of face (whites for whites, blacks for blacks) then you would have a faster time of decision with the more familiar than with the less familiar. Just a thought.
Violent movies with large audiences is good for a reduction in crime during the movie and an even greater reduction later that night.
I had something derogatory to say about your gut feeling about the "subjugation of women" but opted not to do so for fear of derailing something that might actually be interesting, unlike a flame war (unless it is vi vs emacs).
One thing that I'm not seeing going in a good direction is new Spock's emo. It is going to be hard to play off the whole "that would be logical" aspect of Spock if they are going to have him SPOILERbangingUhuraSPOILER, loosing it when insulted, etc. What makes the character will be gone and we will be left with Spock Fonzarelli.
Slashdot Mirror
Hell, I get that from friends using *Windows*
Having never before touched Vista, I had to show a guy how to get the machine on the wifi network at a coffee shop. He was full of "why this?" and "why that?" questions about Vista vs XP.
I got a little tired of constantly having to answer, "I don't know. I don't use Windows."
"They will have problems where ever they go."
Too true. I remember a friend of mine doing tech support at this big company and he told me that some woman had run out of hard drive space so she started deleting things because she never used those files.
She started in the Windows directory.
You already have a lot of responses, so you may not see this one, but how is this for a Java on Solaris experience.
A newer version had come out. Ubuntu let me know and a button press or two later, it was installed.
On Solaris, which is, as you point out, Sun's OWN OS, I had to hunt around java.com, get a tar ball, figure out where the hell it wanted it to be installed to, change some permissions and so on.
On Sun's own damn OS... Mind boggling.
Funny, that's how I feel about ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, PBS, HBO...
So I just don't watch TV.
Elitist != someone who is elite
An elitist is someone who sneers at anyone trying to make something readable, watchable or in anyway good. Typical elitist gatherings are gossip groups of people who all watch the same things, think the same things and read the same things. At these gatherings, they regurgitate the same pithy quotes which, typically, were read on bumper stickers of other elitists, which reinforce their opinion that they are the most morally perfect people to have ever walked the earth, all without actually needing to do anything.
Speaking for the other 99.9% of 6 digit id people: GLQuake.
I remember Unreal, the single player game... There was that one early scripted sequence where doors close, it is dark, lights are red and get attacked by that lizard guy.
Then I remember running through huge levels devoid of anything resembling fun.
I'll never forget the first time trying to play software rendered Quake after getting accustomed to GLQuake. It was horrendous.
"Is that brown pixel a wall? Oooh! I think I saw a moving red pixel. Let me run after it... oh shit. That was lava."
I remember reading the OpenCL announcement (I like to pretend that I know what I'm talking about in programming matters) and Nvidia did indeed say that they would be supporting it.
I presume that you have handed in your slashdot account resignation?
s/fewer lawyers/less money/g
And the answer is revealed...
All in all, a good, fair minded comment.
With regards to proprietary software, one problem I have with it is that it forces a hardware/OS combo. Wine exists, but nothing is ever going to get Office to work on UltraSparc. If, God help us, some proprietary stuff becomes a de facto standard for some things (say hello, Flash!) then anyone running anything on a non-preapproved hardware/software combo is out of luck.
Since you mentioned W:ET, I think one problem is that is not under active development by the developers anymore. Its like a 10 year old SourceForge project that no one has maintained in 8 years: yeah, can probably get it to work, but it isn't necessarily going to be easy.
With regards to desktop suitability, I think Macs are a good case study. It was a decade ago that Apple started its resurgence, with the iMac. After all that time, all those products, all that praise and all that advertising, Apple is still under 10%. Mac OS X's usability is rarely ever questioned, but even so, it still hasn't come close to majority status.
Question: what percentage of Windows desktops are business PCs? I have no idea, but I'd guess that if you were just counting home market share, Windows is rather less dominant (but still the heavy majority) where people have a choice what to run.
The confusion of RAM and the hard drive never really bothered me too much. RAM is like short term memory and the hard drive is like long term memory.
I think referring to the computer as the CPU comes from Apple people back in the day. Every person that was an Apple user referred to it as the CPU, without exception.
I'm with you on the substance of what you say.
But even really smart people can be amazingly stupid, at least from time to time. It doesn't mean that they are stupid all the time, just that they are, well, people.
Case in point, I had this professor of ethics who was an incredibly bright guy. When in high school, one of his experiments went on the space shuttle. Attended Harvard, got his PhD at Brown. He had a phenomenal memory and a great broad understanding of his field.
He also was fired because he was living in his office, since he spent all his money on heroin. Actually, he didn't make enough money to support his habit, so he robbed houses. Pretty stupid.
I'm personally hoping that Congress repeals the laws of physics.
So, we make the site pink, stop arguing about what we think is best, start bashing men, engage in celebrity gossip and stop talking about technology.
Easy enough.
http://www.craigslist.org/
"Replacing a beloved natural monument with a man-made one is sure to bring out emotions. Will a clearer understanding of the design help sway public opinion?"
Definitely. They will be more accurate with their condemnations.
People who don't play WoW?
"So I'm not sure how familiarity would skew the results."
Analogy time! Lets assume you know two languages. One is your native (use it all the time, think in it, etc) the other you are familiar with, but its not your native tongue, you don't use it remotely as often and you never think in its terms. When presented with text, your time-to-understand your native language would be faster than with the other. Like I wrote, though, it is just a thought.
A second consideration is light reflection (bear with me). In my experience, it is easier to see muscle definition on a darker skinned person than on a lighter skinned one. That white bodybuilders are usually as tanned as they can get, I think, lends some credence to this. *If* that is the case, then there is a variation in perception time due to skin tonal differences.
A third (I'm making these up as I go) is the pretty universal, dark vs. light. As in the light of day (I can see stuff) and the dark of night (I can't see stuff and that stuff wants to eat me). My guess is that black has mostly been viewed as the color of evil due to that. Football teams wearing black are perceived to be more aggressive (http://joeclark.org/basicblack.html). Both metal heads and hip hop people went for black. The SS chose black. So on and so forth.
Fourthly: Higher testosterone levels tend to produce more masculine faces (http://www.citeulike.org/user/saslow/article/4118080) and more masculine faces tend to be viewed as potentially more aggresive. Blacks (at least American Blacks) have a higher testosterone level than their white countrymen (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3455741).
"2+2="
ooh! I know this! 5 5 5 5 5 5 5!!!!!1!!!
I took that test a ways back. Came out basically the same for both.
One question about said test, though, it would seem to me that if you are more familiar with one type of face (whites for whites, blacks for blacks) then you would have a faster time of decision with the more familiar than with the less familiar. Just a thought.
Not gaming data, movie data but has to do with violence in an entertainment form: http://www.nber.org/papers/w13718
Violent movies with large audiences is good for a reduction in crime during the movie and an even greater reduction later that night.
I had something derogatory to say about your gut feeling about the "subjugation of women" but opted not to do so for fear of derailing something that might actually be interesting, unlike a flame war (unless it is vi vs emacs).
I was going to mod you up, but then I realized you were joking.
kkdd:q
damn it.
I heard that the Hilton model will infect you with viruses...
One thing that I'm not seeing going in a good direction is new Spock's emo. It is going to be hard to play off the whole "that would be logical" aspect of Spock if they are going to have him SPOILERbangingUhuraSPOILER, loosing it when insulted, etc. What makes the character will be gone and we will be left with Spock Fonzarelli.