But the truth is, Linux has been "coming of age" for about 3 bloody years. And in my opinion, it isn't yet ready for the home desktop.
Three years ago, I started playing with Linux, and I totally agree it wasn't ready. Two years ago, I still played with Linux, and it still wasn't ready. Six months ago, I was playing with Linux, and it wasn't ready yet.
Then, two weeks ago I needed to set up a laptop for a visiting friend. It had a basic Debian Sid installation on it with networking support, and that's it. I hadn't used the laptop in six months and, with no CD-ROM drive available (it's an Omnibook 900) I didn't have much choice -- so I did a quick apt-get update upgrade, then installed Gnome, gdm and X.
Then I rebooted, and started setting it up. Audio worked. There was a Firefox apt package. Gaim supported Y! and AIM (among others). When I installed Flash into Firefox, there was audio. It looked nice, and fonts in Firefox matched the rest of the apps. Essentially, all the things that failed last time were working.
I was astounded. Then I released it to my friend, who had never used Linux. In the week she stayed with us, she only asked for help once, and that was to get an icon for GAIM on her desktop.
For the first time since I tried Linux and said "boy, I wish it wasn't so clunky and awkward compared to BeOS", I can say that Debian Sid is ready for daily use by newbies, and with improvements to the installer (currently underway) it will be ready for installation by newbies, too.
Since I don't know of a slashdot for gardeners (stemdot?) I recommend going to your local greenhouse, and telling them you want something...
1. for indoors (duh); 2. that will get light from [whatever direction your window faces]; 3. that generally requires a drenching of water once a week, but can handle twice a week and won't die if it doesn't have water for two weeks.
They'll have a whole selection for you. Unless, of course, you'd rather stick with doing the equivalent of asking people in the gardening forum what kind of computer to buy for ordering seeds online.;)
but in practice "Jane and Joe Sixpack"...don't give a crap. Even if it's turned on in Outlook by default, they'll get tech support...to turn it off...
Good point, but the wrong one. The issue isn't to get people who don't want encryption to use it, but to get people who want encryption but aren't technically minded to have access to it.
Out of curiosity, is there such a thing in the Free Software movement as a usability team, or guide, or anything? Or is it, as it too often appears, just one developer after another making it up as they go along?
This isn't my way of saying "Free Software usability sucks because the developers don't know how to use usability", but rather pointing out that even a bad UI can be acceptable to the end user if it is consistent and universally applied -- whereas a terrific design in one app will initially seem less than stellar if it's surrounded by other apps that follow a different standard.
Hands up everybody who has actually installed this, let alone uses it often enough to warrant it being newsworthy.
(raising my hand)
Used it daily for months, hated to let it go, but with the shutdown of development it couldn't keep up with the hardware. Very happy to see this continuing to move forward, and hopefully something useful will come of it someday.
Oh, and if you're looking for a great user of BeOS in this day and age, check out TuneTracker.
Consider that many other companies have creative and smart people (although not necessarily as many of them); I work at a web consultancy that I won't name, and while I'm not claiming we're google, we're still chock full of brilliant and creative people.
Trouble is, we're so busy these days that we don't have that 20% to spend -- instead, many of us decided we'd rather have a sustainable work/life balance, so we work very hard through the day and do our best to leave at a reasonable hour.
At the end of the day, being able to walk out around 6pm knowing you've accomplished a great deal and don't have to hang around for "face time" is pretty motivating in and of itself.
In the letter, he says that a pro-game advertisement running alongside a poor review for the same game makes the reader think the review is honest and advertisement is biased, and claims that usually it's the other way around.
I'm sorry, but every single advertisement ever written for anything anywhere, is biased. To claim otherwise is ridiculous.
>On the one side is the innocent corporation which would never think to hold back service until the people are willing to pay through their teeth for it.
>On the other side is the innocent government which would never think to render everyone's communications legally monitorable.
Well, that's it, then, isn't it. Those customers who can't afford (or don't want to pay for) the private broadband networks at least have a low-cost option for job hunting and education, and those customers who want privacy (and presumably a better experience) are willing to pay more for it. Nothing to see here.
Oh, wait -- except that the corporation is not willing to compete under those conditions, and would rather charge more for no privacy and a poorer experience. Tsk.
Seeing as how so many big business supporters argue that government can't do things like this profitably, shouldn't the big business here be smiling, confident that they'll be able to make a profit because the government's pipeline will be too expensive? I wonder why they're not smiling.
Oh, wait -- if that whole "the government can't do it efficiently" thing is just a smokescreen for preserving monopolies, that would explain it. Hmm.
Just wanna clear this up, seeing as how I'm a car guy more than a computer guy these days:
>Geo was a Chevy brand, made by Suzuki (and various other incorrect comments)
Geo was a Chevy brand that resold the following cars:
Toyota Corolla == Geo Prism Suzuki Sidekick == Geo Tracker Suzuki Swift == Geo Metro
Eventually GM figured out that the additional branding was pointless, and dropped the "Geo" in favor of "Chevrolet".
Upshot: if you want a really reliable used car for rock-bottom prices, buy a used Prism. Mechanically identical to the Corolla of the time, but usually heavily incentivized by Chevrolet because people were too foolish to realize the cars were identical -- brand new, you could get Prisms for a few thousand less than an identical new Corolla. For the same year used, same options, and same condition, you can get the Prism for thousands less than the Corolla, too. Proof positive that people base their purchasing decisions more on branding than on tangibles.
People are being really harsh about this guy's idea, especially in his own comments section (often by people stating they've come over from/.) -- wouldn't it be better if this energy spent discussing the viability went towards some experiments to determine the validity? I mean, come on -- you can SAY it won't/shouldn't/can't work all you want, but all this guy is saying is that it DID work for him. I'll take actual over theoretical every day of the week.
So don't say it won't work, and don't say it will -- just try it, and tell us what happens.
Gee whiz. My ISP (dslextreme) runs their own game servers for customers to use if they want really low latency -- and they provide explicit setup instructions for XBox Live and PS2 online gaming.
You're right about the open format thing being huge. I once wrote a piece of music using sequencing software that (unbeknownst to me, because I was not knowledgeable at the time) used a proprietary protocol. Years later, when I attempted to resurrect the file (the only copy of that particular song I could find was the original file backup) I couldn't find the sequencer program disk, nor could I purchase another (the company was out of business).
Ultimately, I was able to open it by begging random strangers via usenet, one of whom had the program and was kind enough to open it and save it as a MIDI file for me -- but it's not good policy to rely on the kindness of strangers (insert Blanche DuBois joke here).
I convinced my wife to switch over after her Eudora Pro started crashing and driving her crazy (kept deleting her preferences file and whatnot) and she found out how much it would cost to upgrade to the next version.
To be fair, I let her try Outlook Express first, but she hated it. The Thunderbird transition took a while, since it couldn't properly import Eudora mail at the time, but once somebody figured out how to make that work, it was smooth sailing.
I agree completely. I did exactly as the person above suggested, except for one detail: I dropped out of school after 2.5 years to work for minimum wage in my field, and I've never looked back. Meanwhile, I'm working at a very well-respected and profitable web consultancy, and I've had tons of great jobs.
Here's the kicker: I didn't even go to college for what I'm doing now (I went for television/mass media, for chrissakes), but landed a job in this field after doing so well at related jobs, like so:
Television -> CD-ROM-based video -> Kiosk programming -> Web programming --> Interactive usability studies
I'm not saying "don't get a degree", mind you -- in some ways, I wish I had -- rather, I am attempting to reinforce the idea that it's your skill, talent, work experience and networking ability that will keep you gainfully employed.
Did I mention I was NOT laid off in four rounds of layoffs at my company during the downturn?
>The voter selects a candidate on the screen. The machine prints a receipt with the selection. If the selection matches what the voter intended her or she feeds it back into the machine where it it saved. If the printout is wrong, the voter tears it up and has the option to go back to the first step. No vote is counted until a verified receipt is scanned back in.
Of course, we still have the issue of whether or not the scanning machine is working properly, but I propose to fix that by having people run their votes through three machines (each one provided by a different political party) -- if the three machines don't match, manual recount.
Easy. You make the code available on a web site, and you make the machines able to compile the code on boot-up. Then if you arrive with a CD-R of the code, and request the machine to be booted off of your copy, an MD5SUM is done between your CD-R and the CD-Rs brought by the party representatives on-site.
Oh, and the polling place machines would have been originally booted on a randomly-selected CD-R from that set of CD-Rs (from the party reps) after they arrived in the morning and MD5SUMd against each other.
>A) So as long as Ford sells enough cars to "be successful", they shouldn't make attempts to keep cars from being stolen off their lots or from their factories?
Just a reminder that software is not a loaf of bread, so your comparison is not legitimate.
However, as to your other points, it is worth noting that unique serial numbers ARE a loaf of bread, from the customer's perspective, and insisting on a unique serial number in order to use the program does prevent users from casually sharing their software (lest their serial number be cancelled).
As you know, serious piracy comes from dedicated bands of people who find workarounds for the unique serial number, so all you're doing here is preventing casual piracy, not all piracy. The question then becomes one of stopping as much casual piracy as possible without annoying users so much that they won't buy legitimate copies, either.
For instance, you say that buying two copies worked for you, and I'm sure you're not the only one. As for me, I might buy a single copy of a game for $50 if I know I can make copies and play with a few work friends on our internal network (even though those friends won't be able to play online, or by themselves, as with Bungie's Myth game) -- but if you try to force my casual work friends to buy copies as well, then the $200 might be too much, and I won't even spend the original $50.
In this example, Valve eliminated $150 worth of casual piracy, but Valve lost $50 of actual revenue...so they'd better hope that for every person like me, there's a person like you, or otherwise you're looking at a net loss.
To return to your analogy, you could prevent casual auto theft by requiring the car owner to make a phone call to Ford every time they want to drive the car, but no owner will stand for that, especially if once and a while the Ford Call Center system breaks down. Meanwhile, the serious car theves (the ones with tow trucks) will keep on stealing the cars. So instead you improve your locks, add standard alarm systems, and hope for the best.
It's interesting that arguably more people are willing to accept software authentication than, say, the fictional auto authentication system above. I mean, that says customers are (mostly) willing to jump through more hoops of inconvenience to protect the software producers from potential loss than to protect themselves from actual loss. But not all people are willing to jump through these hoops, and that's why some are complaining.
Incidentally, I can honestly tell you that the single and only reason I'm not buying Half-Life 2 is that I'm not convinced I can get enough people at work to spring for their own copies for after-hours gaming. I believe hearing someone on the other side of the wall shout "F***" when you shoot them is an integral part of gaming, so I don't care about the Internet play options. So instead of Half-Life 2, we're going to keep on playing Unreal Tournament -- at least three copies that I know of are paid for, and that's $150 more than the $0 Valve is going to get from us. As you say, we just won't play. I'm sure Valve is fine with that, and I'd be willing to bet that Epic is, too.
Note: potential loss, because they don't lose a dollar from their balance sheet every time a copy is made -- they just lose a potential dollar, and there is no way to quantify the number of people who would have purchased the game if the copy had not been available.
True, that. Perhaps one of these days we'll be able to perform a web search, select a result, and see where the server is located and where the hops are being made on the big, spinning keyhole globe.:)
I can think of one use: getting kids interested in geography.
I downloaded and played with this -- and I'm mostly geography ignorant, even as an adult, because I don't have much interest -- and I was simply blown away by (a) how much fun it was to play with, and (b) how much more a sense of scale you get from zooming in on your own house, then telling it to do a live pullout-pan-zoomin to New Delhi.
In short, it might make the classroom globe obsolete...I'm in the process of digging up a few machines so that I can lock it down, install this software, and buy a few years' worth of subscriptions for local schools.
Isn't this what unions are for, so that skilled, talented and experienced people can band together and demand better hours/wages/benefits for themselves?
Of course, the corporations can settle for inexperienced/unskilled/untalented people who aren't (or can't be) part of the union, but their product will suffer as a result.
Meanwhile, someone else will form a game company, hire the union guys, and put out a killer product that makes them tons of cash.
Once upon a time, I watched little to no TV -- and by that, I mean I watched a Simpson's episode once every few weeks, and that was it.
Then TiVo came along (my wife, who watches TV, wanted it) and I was totally drawn in. Freed from having to pay attention to programming schedules and whatnot, and given the ability to pause live TV and skip commercials, I started watching more TV. Now, a weekly roster includes NASCAR racing, three or four programs from the Cartoon Network, the Daily Show, and other tidbits.
Then, several months ago, TiVo tried a new kind of advertisement wherein an interstitial ad popped up when you tried to reach the main menu, asking you if you wanted to find out more, or continue on to the menu. It infuriated me (and others in public forums) because it put the advertising in the way of the menu I was trying to access, which was highly intrusive.
I was ready to get rid of TiVo at that point, but evidentally the TiVo folks got a lot of flak for it, because the next ad showed up as a link in the main menu instead -- and I decided it was acceptable since I could safely ignore it.
Well, my jury's still out on this one. If the ads are merely visual annoyances that can be ignored (I do, after all, watch NASCAR, so I'm used to it) I'll continue the service, but if the ads in any way interfere with the usability of the device, I think I'm done.
And that, at the end of the day, would be a good thing. It's too easy to forget that TV is a toy, not a necessity.
Slashdot Mirror
But the truth is, Linux has been "coming of age" for about 3 bloody years. And in my opinion, it isn't yet ready for the home desktop.
:)
Three years ago, I started playing with Linux, and I totally agree it wasn't ready. Two years ago, I still played with Linux, and it still wasn't ready. Six months ago, I was playing with Linux, and it wasn't ready yet.
Then, two weeks ago I needed to set up a laptop for a visiting friend. It had a basic Debian Sid installation on it with networking support, and that's it. I hadn't used the laptop in six months and, with no CD-ROM drive available (it's an Omnibook 900) I didn't have much choice -- so I did a quick apt-get update upgrade, then installed Gnome, gdm and X.
Then I rebooted, and started setting it up. Audio worked. There was a Firefox apt package. Gaim supported Y! and AIM (among others). When I installed Flash into Firefox, there was audio. It looked nice, and fonts in Firefox matched the rest of the apps. Essentially, all the things that failed last time were working.
I was astounded. Then I released it to my friend, who had never used Linux. In the week she stayed with us, she only asked for help once, and that was to get an icon for GAIM on her desktop.
For the first time since I tried Linux and said "boy, I wish it wasn't so clunky and awkward compared to BeOS", I can say that Debian Sid is ready for daily use by newbies, and with improvements to the installer (currently underway) it will be ready for installation by newbies, too.
But that's just my opinion.
In soviet russia, the Lexus runs on YOU.
Since I don't know of a slashdot for gardeners (stemdot?) I recommend going to your local greenhouse, and telling them you want something...
;)
1. for indoors (duh);
2. that will get light from [whatever direction your window faces];
3. that generally requires a drenching of water once a week, but can handle twice a week and won't die if it doesn't have water for two weeks.
They'll have a whole selection for you. Unless, of course, you'd rather stick with doing the equivalent of asking people in the gardening forum what kind of computer to buy for ordering seeds online.
but in practice "Jane and Joe Sixpack"...don't give a crap. Even if it's turned on in Outlook by default, they'll get tech support...to turn it off...
Good point, but the wrong one. The issue isn't to get people who don't want encryption to use it, but to get people who want encryption but aren't technically minded to have access to it.
Out of curiosity, is there such a thing in the Free Software movement as a usability team, or guide, or anything? Or is it, as it too often appears, just one developer after another making it up as they go along?
This isn't my way of saying "Free Software usability sucks because the developers don't know how to use usability", but rather pointing out that even a bad UI can be acceptable to the end user if it is consistent and universally applied -- whereas a terrific design in one app will initially seem less than stellar if it's surrounded by other apps that follow a different standard.
Hands up everybody who has actually installed this, let alone uses it often enough to warrant it being newsworthy.
(raising my hand)
Used it daily for months, hated to let it go, but with the shutdown of development it couldn't keep up with the hardware. Very happy to see this continuing to move forward, and hopefully something useful will come of it someday.
Oh, and if you're looking for a great user of BeOS in this day and age, check out TuneTracker.
Isn't this why people have firewalls between their brand new computers and the internet?
Er, wait...make that:
Isn't this why people SHOULD have firewalls between their brand new computers and the internet?
Consider that many other companies have creative and smart people (although not necessarily as many of them); I work at a web consultancy that I won't name, and while I'm not claiming we're google, we're still chock full of brilliant and creative people.
Trouble is, we're so busy these days that we don't have that 20% to spend -- instead, many of us decided we'd rather have a sustainable work/life balance, so we work very hard through the day and do our best to leave at a reasonable hour.
At the end of the day, being able to walk out around 6pm knowing you've accomplished a great deal and don't have to hang around for "face time" is pretty motivating in and of itself.
I agree. I was about to post a snarky comment, then read yours and realized that this is actually a good thing.
In the letter, he says that a pro-game advertisement running alongside a poor review for the same game makes the reader think the review is honest and advertisement is biased, and claims that usually it's the other way around.
I'm sorry, but every single advertisement ever written for anything anywhere, is biased. To claim otherwise is ridiculous.
>On the one side is the innocent corporation which would never think to hold back service until the people are willing to pay through their teeth for it.
>On the other side is the innocent government which would never think to render everyone's communications legally monitorable.
Well, that's it, then, isn't it. Those customers who can't afford (or don't want to pay for) the private broadband networks at least have a low-cost option for job hunting and education, and those customers who want privacy (and presumably a better experience) are willing to pay more for it. Nothing to see here.
Oh, wait -- except that the corporation is not willing to compete under those conditions, and would rather charge more for no privacy and a poorer experience. Tsk.
Seeing as how so many big business supporters argue that government can't do things like this profitably, shouldn't the big business here be smiling, confident that they'll be able to make a profit because the government's pipeline will be too expensive? I wonder why they're not smiling.
Oh, wait -- if that whole "the government can't do it efficiently" thing is just a smokescreen for preserving monopolies, that would explain it. Hmm.
Just wanna clear this up, seeing as how I'm a car guy more than a computer guy these days:
>Geo was a Chevy brand, made by Suzuki
(and various other incorrect comments)
Geo was a Chevy brand that resold the following cars:
Toyota Corolla == Geo Prism
Suzuki Sidekick == Geo Tracker
Suzuki Swift == Geo Metro
Eventually GM figured out that the additional branding was pointless, and dropped the "Geo" in favor of "Chevrolet".
Upshot: if you want a really reliable used car for rock-bottom prices, buy a used Prism. Mechanically identical to the Corolla of the time, but usually heavily incentivized by Chevrolet because people were too foolish to realize the cars were identical -- brand new, you could get Prisms for a few thousand less than an identical new Corolla. For the same year used, same options, and same condition, you can get the Prism for thousands less than the Corolla, too. Proof positive that people base their purchasing decisions more on branding than on tangibles.
People are being really harsh about this guy's idea, especially in his own comments section (often by people stating they've come over from /.) -- wouldn't it be better if this energy spent discussing the viability went towards some experiments to determine the validity? I mean, come on -- you can SAY it won't/shouldn't/can't work all you want, but all this guy is saying is that it DID work for him. I'll take actual over theoretical every day of the week.
So don't say it won't work, and don't say it will -- just try it, and tell us what happens.
Gee whiz. My ISP (dslextreme) runs their own game servers for customers to use if they want really low latency -- and they provide explicit setup instructions for XBox Live and PS2 online gaming.
:)
I guess I should consider myself a lucky guy.
You're right about the open format thing being huge. I once wrote a piece of music using sequencing software that (unbeknownst to me, because I was not knowledgeable at the time) used a proprietary protocol. Years later, when I attempted to resurrect the file (the only copy of that particular song I could find was the original file backup) I couldn't find the sequencer program disk, nor could I purchase another (the company was out of business).
Ultimately, I was able to open it by begging random strangers via usenet, one of whom had the program and was kind enough to open it and save it as a MIDI file for me -- but it's not good policy to rely on the kindness of strangers (insert Blanche DuBois joke here).
I convinced my wife to switch over after her Eudora Pro started crashing and driving her crazy (kept deleting her preferences file and whatnot) and she found out how much it would cost to upgrade to the next version.
To be fair, I let her try Outlook Express first, but she hated it. The Thunderbird transition took a while, since it couldn't properly import Eudora mail at the time, but once somebody figured out how to make that work, it was smooth sailing.
I agree completely. I did exactly as the person above suggested, except for one detail: I dropped out of school after 2.5 years to work for minimum wage in my field, and I've never looked back. Meanwhile, I'm working at a very well-respected and profitable web consultancy, and I've had tons of great jobs.
Here's the kicker: I didn't even go to college for what I'm doing now (I went for television/mass media, for chrissakes), but landed a job in this field after doing so well at related jobs, like so:
Television -> CD-ROM-based video -> Kiosk programming -> Web programming --> Interactive usability studies
I'm not saying "don't get a degree", mind you -- in some ways, I wish I had -- rather, I am attempting to reinforce the idea that it's your skill, talent, work experience and networking ability that will keep you gainfully employed.
Did I mention I was NOT laid off in four rounds of layoffs at my company during the downturn?
>The voter selects a candidate on the screen. The machine prints a receipt with the selection. If the selection matches what the voter intended her or she feeds it back into the machine where it it saved. If the printout is wrong, the voter tears it up and has the option to go back to the first step. No vote is counted until a verified receipt is scanned back in.
Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes. Exactly.
Of course, we still have the issue of whether or not the scanning machine is working properly, but I propose to fix that by having people run their votes through three machines (each one provided by a different political party) -- if the three machines don't match, manual recount.
Easy. You make the code available on a web site, and you make the machines able to compile the code on boot-up. Then if you arrive with a CD-R of the code, and request the machine to be booted off of your copy, an MD5SUM is done between your CD-R and the CD-Rs brought by the party representatives on-site.
Oh, and the polling place machines would have been originally booted on a randomly-selected CD-R from that set of CD-Rs (from the party reps) after they arrived in the morning and MD5SUMd against each other.
Just sayin'...
>You're argument is flawed
Your spelling is flawed. I'm just pointing it out for future reference.
>A) So as long as Ford sells enough cars to "be successful", they shouldn't make attempts to keep cars from being stolen off their lots or from their factories?
Just a reminder that software is not a loaf of bread, so your comparison is not legitimate.
However, as to your other points, it is worth noting that unique serial numbers ARE a loaf of bread, from the customer's perspective, and insisting on a unique serial number in order to use the program does prevent users from casually sharing their software (lest their serial number be cancelled).
As you know, serious piracy comes from dedicated bands of people who find workarounds for the unique serial number, so all you're doing here is preventing casual piracy, not all piracy. The question then becomes one of stopping as much casual piracy as possible without annoying users so much that they won't buy legitimate copies, either.
For instance, you say that buying two copies worked for you, and I'm sure you're not the only one. As for me, I might buy a single copy of a game for $50 if I know I can make copies and play with a few work friends on our internal network (even though those friends won't be able to play online, or by themselves, as with Bungie's Myth game) -- but if you try to force my casual work friends to buy copies as well, then the $200 might be too much, and I won't even spend the original $50.
In this example, Valve eliminated $150 worth of casual piracy, but Valve lost $50 of actual revenue...so they'd better hope that for every person like me, there's a person like you, or otherwise you're looking at a net loss.
To return to your analogy, you could prevent casual auto theft by requiring the car owner to make a phone call to Ford every time they want to drive the car, but no owner will stand for that, especially if once and a while the Ford Call Center system breaks down. Meanwhile, the serious car theves (the ones with tow trucks) will keep on stealing the cars. So instead you improve your locks, add standard alarm systems, and hope for the best.
It's interesting that arguably more people are willing to accept software authentication than, say, the fictional auto authentication system above. I mean, that says customers are (mostly) willing to jump through more hoops of inconvenience to protect the software producers from potential loss than to protect themselves from actual loss. But not all people are willing to jump through these hoops, and that's why some are complaining.
Incidentally, I can honestly tell you that the single and only reason I'm not buying Half-Life 2 is that I'm not convinced I can get enough people at work to spring for their own copies for after-hours gaming. I believe hearing someone on the other side of the wall shout "F***" when you shoot them is an integral part of gaming, so I don't care about the Internet play options. So instead of Half-Life 2, we're going to keep on playing Unreal Tournament -- at least three copies that I know of are paid for, and that's $150 more than the $0 Valve is going to get from us. As you say, we just won't play. I'm sure Valve is fine with that, and I'd be willing to bet that Epic is, too.
Note: potential loss, because they don't lose a dollar from their balance sheet every time a copy is made -- they just lose a potential dollar, and there is no way to quantify the number of people who would have purchased the game if the copy had not been available.
True, that. Perhaps one of these days we'll be able to perform a web search, select a result, and see where the server is located and where the hops are being made on the big, spinning keyhole globe. :)
I can think of one use: getting kids interested in geography.
I downloaded and played with this -- and I'm mostly geography ignorant, even as an adult, because I don't have much interest -- and I was simply blown away by (a) how much fun it was to play with, and (b) how much more a sense of scale you get from zooming in on your own house, then telling it to do a live pullout-pan-zoomin to New Delhi.
In short, it might make the classroom globe obsolete...I'm in the process of digging up a few machines so that I can lock it down, install this software, and buy a few years' worth of subscriptions for local schools.
Isn't this what unions are for, so that skilled, talented and experienced people can band together and demand better hours/wages/benefits for themselves?
Of course, the corporations can settle for inexperienced/unskilled/untalented people who aren't (or can't be) part of the union, but their product will suffer as a result.
Meanwhile, someone else will form a game company, hire the union guys, and put out a killer product that makes them tons of cash.
I'm just sayin'.
Once upon a time, I watched little to no TV -- and by that, I mean I watched a Simpson's episode once every few weeks, and that was it.
Then TiVo came along (my wife, who watches TV, wanted it) and I was totally drawn in. Freed from having to pay attention to programming schedules and whatnot, and given the ability to pause live TV and skip commercials, I started watching more TV. Now, a weekly roster includes NASCAR racing, three or four programs from the Cartoon Network, the Daily Show, and other tidbits.
Then, several months ago, TiVo tried a new kind of advertisement wherein an interstitial ad popped up when you tried to reach the main menu, asking you if you wanted to find out more, or continue on to the menu. It infuriated me (and others in public forums) because it put the advertising in the way of the menu I was trying to access, which was highly intrusive.
I was ready to get rid of TiVo at that point, but evidentally the TiVo folks got a lot of flak for it, because the next ad showed up as a link in the main menu instead -- and I decided it was acceptable since I could safely ignore it.
Well, my jury's still out on this one. If the ads are merely visual annoyances that can be ignored (I do, after all, watch NASCAR, so I'm used to it) I'll continue the service, but if the ads in any way interfere with the usability of the device, I think I'm done.
And that, at the end of the day, would be a good thing. It's too easy to forget that TV is a toy, not a necessity.