I thought the "best of both worlds" in OSX referred to having the OSS commandline tools and Cocoa GUI. What in the world would I want with KDE desktop on my Mac?? Ok, I admit that there is ONE GUI program from Linux that I really missed on OS X. And that was PAN (Pimp Ass Newsreader). Fortunately there is a Macport for it. Yeah, it uses X11, stands out like a sore thumb, doesn't integrate with the rest of my apps, but it is the best news reader I've found.
At over $60 for expanded basic, the web definitely replaced TV.
The real problem with the "web" replacing TV is that few people want to sit in front of their comptuer to watch TV/movies. While the "internet" may kill cable (unllikely as cable companies probably already control your internet), the "web" most certainly won't kill "TV". Whatever transmission medium is, it has to have a set top box or some other dedicated entertainment center hardware to view on a large screen in front of your couch. Nothing less than that will replace traditional cable TV.
I doubt the cable companies will give up so easily. Before we see wide-spread internet video (not just YouTube, but full shows and movies), we'll see cable companies offer more and more On-Demand programming. If I could get any show or movie on demand with the ability to skip commercials over cable and only pay for what I view (and not have to pay for 100 channels I never even browse), there'd be no reason to bother with video in a browser for anything more than YouTube.
Bring back the wild west. Bring back the buggy, unforseen, wild, insulting, violent mess that was Ultima Online back in the early years. There were no cookie cutter classes. There was gambling, extortion, confidence tricksters, scammers, spammers, raiders, looters, exploiters, thieves, honorable and dishonorable fighters and gangs. There was somewhat of a safety zone in towns. There were no factions, everyone and everything was fair game. There was no one way to play the game, I'm sure people have so many interesting stories about how they or friends played. I had a friend who liked to spend his time stealing useless items. He was a weird looking fellow and a clepto. He also enjoyed running around town naked. He would yell at the NPCs and get angry at the guards when they caught him and killed him. That was his take of the game
You might like Eve Online then. Lots of different ways to play. I played for weeks as "Yarnosh the Used Ship Dealer." I went along a little bit with the plot and quests, but mostly I just played the market and made a small fortune buying used ships and reselling them. Eventually I was building battleships on my own. What's cool is that I didn't ever feel the urge to grind because my experience was based on real time (and real skill), not killing. I coudl progress while doing whatever I wanted.
Interesting economy too. A portion of it is artificial with NPCs buying/selling useless stuff, but mostly it is driven by player supply/demand. And unlike WOW, it is trully *massive* MORPG. Just one (per continnent, i think) server. And last I plyed, there were no instances. You've got tens of thousands of people running around the same universe.
Also Eve is famous for ruthless PvP. Once you're out of protected space, anything can and will happen. And there is real incentive to get out there into unprotected space because that is where the real money is. It is a game were scammers and griefers are just a part of a game.
The only problem I remember from the game is the huge corporations. Last I heard there was one corporation or alliance that pretty much owned a good portion of the universe.
Actually, it is a lot easier to develop a site in strict/picky mode because a simple HTML/CSS validation will often tell you what is wrong. Where you might spend hours debugging something manually when using a "quirks" mode. Quirks mode is for lazy developers who think that they save time by not closing their P tags.
It is like developing Perl or C with full warnings turned on. It can be a pain to satisfy every pedantic complaint of the parser, but eventually you learn to do it right the first time and you might even find that the warnings indicate a much more serious error in the program logic.
That's kind of my point. The market here is being filled domestically because it's a crappy career choice. When people were being paid well and treated well in the late 90's people were flocking to engineering. Now there are less and less engineering majors because people know they are much better off with a medical degree, law degree, or going into finance.
I find it difficult to believe that those with a real aptitude for engineering are going into fields like finance or law as an alternative. The personality types and and natural skill sets are just so different. Although certainly there is a percentage of people who dont' really care what they do for a living and base their schooling primarily on the job market. The thing is that these people usually end up being merely "average" (or worse, incompetent) at what they do. The real talent... the people who were born to do a certain type of work... do what they love regardless of the job market. And they're good at it.
I can't speak for engineering, but as far as IT goes, I must say that I'd really love it if the mediocre talent.. the people who majored in CS or got some certification because they heard IT was lucrative... would have chosen something else. Inevitably you'll have to work with these people and it sucks.
Maybe US is getting it right. Maybe discouraging the mediocre talent from entering high tech fields is better than padding the ranks. Quality vs. quantity and all that. Let the people who don't have a natural draw to engineering go into finance, law, or whatever the career du jour is.
When I was little, my Dad used to do this to check which was the most charged (most zap = most charged). He used to let me do it, too. I vaquely remember the sensation, and really can't bring myself to feel it again
My dad used to do this with cigarettes. I vaguely remember the nausea, and really can't bring myself to feel it again.;-)
I never found the 9V battery to be painful. I used to test them with my tongue all the time. Of course, I was usually only testing them when I thought they might be weak... so...
To be fair to Dell this happened on my PowerBook and not so much on my MacBook Pro... But sometime I do get a tingle, in the right condition.
Hey man! Keep it on the down-low! That tingle is just the joy of owning a Mac (particularly a MBP). Don't let the PC suckers know or they'll come over to our camp and ruin things.
Why not say "Anything produced by fools are horrendous abominations."
Because my experience is that Access, more than most other complex pieces of software, tends to end up in the hands of those without the proper skills (I won't say fools, as you do). At least in part because it is packaged along side relatively simple office tools. And I have to support it. Yeah, I'm a little annoyed by it. You got a problem with that?
Now, maybe if I had a man with your J2EE/MS Access/VBA/ prowess as a coworker it wouldn't be a problem, but you're there and I'm here supporting MS Access and Filemaker abominations.
Or is only possible for fools to create bad Access apps? What is your point? And what's your point about my point?
My point is that you made it sound like I don't acknolowedge that the source of the bad programs is the users. You just went on some stupid rant which you probably just copy/pasted from the last time someone criticizes a programming lnaguage or other tool.
Sounded like you had a gripe about Access and how easy it lets fools build foolish things - a common attitude on Slash - to which the standard answer is "they should not build tools to make it easy for stupid people to stupid things".
Buzz off, troll. I don't need your "standard answer." Why don't you try making an insightful and engaging reply next time.
Seriously -- it's two more pins. Why wasn't the spec designed right in the first place?
They probably just assumed that most people using portable storage (as opposed to say a fixed external RAID) would just go with Firewire, which can provide lots of power.
Firewire is more expensive and a non-native interface.
SATA -> Firewire drive enclosures are pretty cheap. The difference in cost is insignificant.
FW800 is the closest to eSATA in performance, and even then, it's more expensive and slower
Yes, but Firewire is a much more flexible. Supports high end scanners, printers, networking, hard drives, optical drives, cameras, audio mixers, all kinds of stuff. Firewire is also very efficient. If I had a choice between a Firewire port and eSATA (even with power), I'd not hesitate to go with Firewire. No contest. Does eSATA even allow device chaining? That is a big advatange of Firewire right there.
The ONLY case I can think of where I might want 3G/s eSATA is for external RAID enclosures on a high performance workstation (server would use fibre channel or good ol' fashioned SCSI). Other than that, I don't see the point of eSATA.
Instant on PC is still useful, though I don't want to bother with yet another mini-OS. Always on PC is the only way for a geek to go.
Well, from what I gather it (splashtop) has to be built into the BIOS of the computer. It isn't necessarily going to be available to just anyone. It could be an added bonus when shopping for a new a computer, but I dunno. I just use sleep mode and get instant-on that way.
My XP laptop takes longer to bring back from hibernation than it does to boot
Then use sleep mode more often. Geez.
Sure, this might not be The Wave of The Future®, but managed correctly, this sort of thing could carve a nontrivial niche in the market.
Yes, that niche market of hopelessly impatient and short sighted users. Oh, and maybe that small market for peopel who have an hour or less to live. To whom 10 extra seconds is actually a long time. Remember, we're not really talking about instant boot here. We're just talking about faster boot.
I do blame most of this on Vista, because my girlfriends Mac takes less than 10 seconds (same router).
Takes 10 seconds to reestablish a connection or 10 seconds to recover from hibernation. If it is the former, even that seems too long. My Mac is back on the wireless before I even get a chance to type anything in the browser.
If your PC is off, and you want to check movie times on your way out the door, being able to rapidly boot into an environment with a web browser would be appealing.
Try using a (web enabled) phone and you can literally do it on your way out the door. Making a PC instantly available is an increasingly disminishing benefit.
For the type of user that leaves their PC off most of the time, the ability to accomplish a single task rapidly could be appealing.
Or they could just try hibernating their existing OS and get the same effect. Seriously, marketing a new OS based on boot time is just stupid.
Don't blame the tool because people use it inappropriately and then ask you to fix it.
What is this? Some kind of stock response? Didn't you read what I wrote?
"Access databses produced by people who don't know what they are doing are horrendous abominations."
Re:SQLite Gui_
on
Sun Buys MySQL
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Question: Does your mom effectively use MS Access now?
I would question whether it is even possible to make a GUI for any database that a) is easy to use, b) provides enough options to make a wide variety of applications, and c) requires no knowledge of SQL or database design. This is one of those "pick two" situations. Even Access requires a fair amount of skill to use properly... far more than Word or Excel. And even with a modicum of skill, databases produced in MS Access tend to be horrible abominations. What could a SQLite GUI do better?
Seconded, thoroughly - in addition I would like some decent gui tools for single-user data-storage requirements; it's annoying that any pc user who wants to maintain a list of (contacts/friends/must-see-movies/must-read-books/etc) puts everything into a spreadsheet.
Or worse, MS Access of Filemaker. Access databses produced by people who don't know what they are doing are horrendous abominations. I've no interest in having yet another user friendly database system that users can abuse and ask me to support. You want me to support your database? Give me the time, budget, and specs, and I'll whip up a Ruby on Rails front end in no time. But please, for the love of god, don't play DBA.
Please ignore most of the other replies to your post. They don't know what they're talking about and while you're wrong, it is not for the reasons they put forward.
How can I be "wrong" when I never even made a claim? I simply noted that I find it ironic that Microsoft is chided for bundling software when one of my main complaints is that they don't bundle *enough* (good) software. By comparison, Apple would seem (at least on the surface) to be more guilty of using their OS to gain market hold on many areas of software outside of the OS. Just look at iLife, iTunes, Safari, etc. But I also understand that they don't necessarily do this to choke out competition as Microsoft has shown to do. They are just trying to provide a complete "package." It is a fine line, I suppose.
Because IE, with all its intentional bugs, idiosyncracies and protocol-breaking "features" has long been one of the main instruments of it.
So there wouldn't be any problem with IE being bundled if IE was more standards compliant?
The reason this whole thing seems strange to you is because Microsoft's anticompetitive behavior was sufficiently distant in the past that the noxious effects seem to have been forgotten.
The reason it seems strange to me is that I am sufficiently distanced from Windows that I am not very affected by their practices. I would rather see Windows bundled with decent software (IE7 is much better than IE6) than have it cripple by forced unbundling (for the relatively rare occasion that I have to use it). Well, that is what my rational half wants, anyway. The other half of me just wants to see WIndows butchered into oblivion by whatever means. Fortunately Microsoft is doing a good enough job of that on their own.
The alternatives exist, but because of the artificial problems that Microsoft has made (like Kerberos, Word Document's format, etc.) the monopoly is maintained.
Fine, but what does this have to do with bundling software?
Get it through your fucking head. Apple is not a monopoly. It's market share is too fucking low. As such, it is not held to the same rules as Microsoft. End of fucking story.
It isn't that simple. A true monopoly only exists when there are no viable alternatives. Apple (and even Linux) is a viable alternative. Now, I know a lot of people FEEL stuck with Windows because a) they are too lazy to learn something else, b) don't want to buy a new comptuer to get OS X, or c) depend on certain applications that require WIndows, but that doesn't mean they are. Just because Windows happens to be the most popular solution at the moment doesn't necessarily give WIndows a monopoly.
But whatever, lets just say Microsoft has a monopoly. What does that have to do with bundling software? Would you really prefer that Windows came with no browser at all? Isn't Windows already useless enough out of the box?
The reason I'm making this argument is because I think that the current hysteria about Microsoft's supposed monopoly is actually bad for users. I don't want Microsoft or anyone else forced to not bundle something as basic as a web browser with the OS. If for nothing else, I need IE to download Firefox. I suppose I could remember the URL and FTP it with that shitty ftp client they include with Windows, but having a default browser helps. Who cares if they bundle IE or Windows Media Player with Windows? The only problem I have with bundled software in Windows is that I don't like the particular versions they ship. Fortunately, I am free to use a Mac 99% of the time and I don't have to buy/download a bunch of third party software just to have a usable base system.
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I thought the "best of both worlds" in OSX referred to having the OSS commandline tools and Cocoa GUI. What in the world would I want with KDE desktop on my Mac?? Ok, I admit that there is ONE GUI program from Linux that I really missed on OS X. And that was PAN (Pimp Ass Newsreader). Fortunately there is a Macport for it. Yeah, it uses X11, stands out like a sore thumb, doesn't integrate with the rest of my apps, but it is the best news reader I've found.
The real problem with the "web" replacing TV is that few people want to sit in front of their comptuer to watch TV/movies. While the "internet" may kill cable (unllikely as cable companies probably already control your internet), the "web" most certainly won't kill "TV". Whatever transmission medium is, it has to have a set top box or some other dedicated entertainment center hardware to view on a large screen in front of your couch. Nothing less than that will replace traditional cable TV.
I doubt the cable companies will give up so easily. Before we see wide-spread internet video (not just YouTube, but full shows and movies), we'll see cable companies offer more and more On-Demand programming. If I could get any show or movie on demand with the ability to skip commercials over cable and only pay for what I view (and not have to pay for 100 channels I never even browse), there'd be no reason to bother with video in a browser for anything more than YouTube.
-matthew
You might like Eve Online then. Lots of different ways to play. I played for weeks as "Yarnosh the Used Ship Dealer." I went along a little bit with the plot and quests, but mostly I just played the market and made a small fortune buying used ships and reselling them. Eventually I was building battleships on my own. What's cool is that I didn't ever feel the urge to grind because my experience was based on real time (and real skill), not killing. I coudl progress while doing whatever I wanted.
Interesting economy too. A portion of it is artificial with NPCs buying/selling useless stuff, but mostly it is driven by player supply/demand. And unlike WOW, it is trully *massive* MORPG. Just one (per continnent, i think) server. And last I plyed, there were no instances. You've got tens of thousands of people running around the same universe.
Also Eve is famous for ruthless PvP. Once you're out of protected space, anything can and will happen. And there is real incentive to get out there into unprotected space because that is where the real money is. It is a game were scammers and griefers are just a part of a game.
The only problem I remember from the game is the huge corporations. Last I heard there was one corporation or alliance that pretty much owned a good portion of the universe.
-matthew
One has to wonder what was driving your desire to "grind" in the first place.
Actually, it is a lot easier to develop a site in strict/picky mode because a simple HTML/CSS validation will often tell you what is wrong. Where you might spend hours debugging something manually when using a "quirks" mode. Quirks mode is for lazy developers who think that they save time by not closing their P tags.
It is like developing Perl or C with full warnings turned on. It can be a pain to satisfy every pedantic complaint of the parser, but eventually you learn to do it right the first time and you might even find that the warnings indicate a much more serious error in the program logic.
-matthew
I find it difficult to believe that those with a real aptitude for engineering are going into fields like finance or law as an alternative. The personality types and and natural skill sets are just so different. Although certainly there is a percentage of people who dont' really care what they do for a living and base their schooling primarily on the job market. The thing is that these people usually end up being merely "average" (or worse, incompetent) at what they do. The real talent... the people who were born to do a certain type of work... do what they love regardless of the job market. And they're good at it.
I can't speak for engineering, but as far as IT goes, I must say that I'd really love it if the mediocre talent.. the people who majored in CS or got some certification because they heard IT was lucrative... would have chosen something else. Inevitably you'll have to work with these people and it sucks.
Maybe US is getting it right. Maybe discouraging the mediocre talent from entering high tech fields is better than padding the ranks. Quality vs. quantity and all that. Let the people who don't have a natural draw to engineering go into finance, law, or whatever the career du jour is.
-matthew
My dad used to do this with cigarettes. I vaguely remember the nausea, and really can't bring myself to feel it again.
I never found the 9V battery to be painful. I used to test them with my tongue all the time. Of course, I was usually only testing them when I thought they might be weak... so...
Hey man! Keep it on the down-low! That tingle is just the joy of owning a Mac (particularly a MBP). Don't let the PC suckers know or they'll come over to our camp and ruin things.
Because my experience is that Access, more than most other complex pieces of software, tends to end up in the hands of those without the proper skills (I won't say fools, as you do). At least in part because it is packaged along side relatively simple office tools. And I have to support it. Yeah, I'm a little annoyed by it. You got a problem with that?
Now, maybe if I had a man with your J2EE/MS Access/VBA/ prowess as a coworker it wouldn't be a problem, but you're there and I'm here supporting MS Access and Filemaker abominations.
My point is that you made it sound like I don't acknolowedge that the source of the bad programs is the users. You just went on some stupid rant which you probably just copy/pasted from the last time someone criticizes a programming lnaguage or other tool.
Buzz off, troll. I don't need your "standard answer." Why don't you try making an insightful and engaging reply next time.
-matthew
They probably just assumed that most people using portable storage (as opposed to say a fixed external RAID) would just go with Firewire, which can provide lots of power.
-matthew
SATA -> Firewire drive enclosures are pretty cheap. The difference in cost is insignificant.
Yes, but Firewire is a much more flexible. Supports high end scanners, printers, networking, hard drives, optical drives, cameras, audio mixers, all kinds of stuff. Firewire is also very efficient. If I had a choice between a Firewire port and eSATA (even with power), I'd not hesitate to go with Firewire. No contest. Does eSATA even allow device chaining? That is a big advatange of Firewire right there.
The ONLY case I can think of where I might want 3G/s eSATA is for external RAID enclosures on a high performance workstation (server would use fibre channel or good ol' fashioned SCSI). Other than that, I don't see the point of eSATA.
Well, from what I gather it (splashtop) has to be built into the BIOS of the computer. It isn't necessarily going to be available to just anyone. It could be an added bonus when shopping for a new a computer, but I dunno. I just use sleep mode and get instant-on that way.
Then use sleep mode more often. Geez.
Yes, that niche market of hopelessly impatient and short sighted users. Oh, and maybe that small market for peopel who have an hour or less to live. To whom 10 extra seconds is actually a long time. Remember, we're not really talking about instant boot here. We're just talking about faster boot.
-matthew
Takes 10 seconds to reestablish a connection or 10 seconds to recover from hibernation. If it is the former, even that seems too long. My Mac is back on the wireless before I even get a chance to type anything in the browser.
-matthew
Try using a (web enabled) phone and you can literally do it on your way out the door. Making a PC instantly available is an increasingly disminishing benefit.
Or they could just try hibernating their existing OS and get the same effect. Seriously, marketing a new OS based on boot time is just stupid.
-matthew
What is this? Some kind of stock response? Didn't you read what I wrote?
"Access databses produced by people who don't know what they are doing are horrendous abominations."
Question: Does your mom effectively use MS Access now?
I would question whether it is even possible to make a GUI for any database that a) is easy to use, b) provides enough options to make a wide variety of applications, and c) requires no knowledge of SQL or database design. This is one of those "pick two" situations. Even Access requires a fair amount of skill to use properly... far more than Word or Excel. And even with a modicum of skill, databases produced in MS Access tend to be horrible abominations. What could a SQLite GUI do better?
-matthew
Or worse, MS Access of Filemaker. Access databses produced by people who don't know what they are doing are horrendous abominations. I've no interest in having yet another user friendly database system that users can abuse and ask me to support. You want me to support your database? Give me the time, budget, and specs, and I'll whip up a Ruby on Rails front end in no time. But please, for the love of god, don't play DBA.
-matthew
What? You mean the Internet STILL has ads!? I nearly forgot after running adblock plus for so long.
How can I be "wrong" when I never even made a claim? I simply noted that I find it ironic that Microsoft is chided for bundling software when one of my main complaints is that they don't bundle *enough* (good) software. By comparison, Apple would seem (at least on the surface) to be more guilty of using their OS to gain market hold on many areas of software outside of the OS. Just look at iLife, iTunes, Safari, etc. But I also understand that they don't necessarily do this to choke out competition as Microsoft has shown to do. They are just trying to provide a complete "package." It is a fine line, I suppose.
-matthew
Detain you as a terrorist, of course.
So there wouldn't be any problem with IE being bundled if IE was more standards compliant?
The reason it seems strange to me is that I am sufficiently distanced from Windows that I am not very affected by their practices. I would rather see Windows bundled with decent software (IE7 is much better than IE6) than have it cripple by forced unbundling (for the relatively rare occasion that I have to use it). Well, that is what my rational half wants, anyway. The other half of me just wants to see WIndows butchered into oblivion by whatever means. Fortunately Microsoft is doing a good enough job of that on their own.
-matthew
Fine, but what does this have to do with bundling software?
-matthew
It isn't that simple. A true monopoly only exists when there are no viable alternatives. Apple (and even Linux) is a viable alternative. Now, I know a lot of people FEEL stuck with Windows because a) they are too lazy to learn something else, b) don't want to buy a new comptuer to get OS X, or c) depend on certain applications that require WIndows, but that doesn't mean they are. Just because Windows happens to be the most popular solution at the moment doesn't necessarily give WIndows a monopoly.
But whatever, lets just say Microsoft has a monopoly. What does that have to do with bundling software? Would you really prefer that Windows came with no browser at all? Isn't Windows already useless enough out of the box?
The reason I'm making this argument is because I think that the current hysteria about Microsoft's supposed monopoly is actually bad for users. I don't want Microsoft or anyone else forced to not bundle something as basic as a web browser with the OS. If for nothing else, I need IE to download Firefox. I suppose I could remember the URL and FTP it with that shitty ftp client they include with Windows, but having a default browser helps. Who cares if they bundle IE or Windows Media Player with Windows? The only problem I have with bundled software in Windows is that I don't like the particular versions they ship. Fortunately, I am free to use a Mac 99% of the time and I don't have to buy/download a bunch of third party software just to have a usable base system.