Other people here have already discussed the "you'll get in trouble from work/authorities for prefetching things on to your computer you don't even know you're loading" deal, so I won't touch that. They've also discussed the "You'll use more bandwidth" thing.
Here's my complaint, from an entirely different direction: two years from now, is every default installation of Mozilla and/or Firefox going to require me to change a laundry list of preferences in order to avoid features I don't want?
I mean, go ahead and put these features in, but don't activate them automatically: do what Opera does (asks if the user wants to activate a feature) or just leave them off by default, and add a menu option to turn it on.
Having these things turned on by default is going to be an inconvenience going forward, and smacks a bit of elitist "we know what's better for your web browsing experience than you do" attitude, you know what I mean?
At this point, I'd be thrilled with setting optional parameters like this to 'off' by default, and updating the default installation home page (visible on first execution of the app) to a page listing "Great optional features", along with buttons to turn them on and a quick note on how to turn them back off if desired.
That's why the company I work for does fixed-time, fixed-price projects with measurable business results. We get projects done on time, and we solve actual, quantifiable problems. Our overall record is far above the industry average.
Normally, I'm not one to shill for "the man", but how often do you get the chance to work for a company that actually does things right? I won't say the name, though.
I will say that the vendor situation is a bad one; often (not always) vendors are dictated by the clients, and those vendors want the business we have in addition to their own, so things can get quite sticky.
Conversely, a qualified vendor that works with you instead of against you is worth their weight in gold, and we'll send those folks other business.
Re:I would love a mac, but the pricing is insane
on
Return of the Mac
·
· Score: 1
You know, we can end all this discussion of PC versus MAC by acknowledging the underlying desires: we ALL want a computer that looks and works like the mac, but we ALL want a computer that can be built from commoditized (and therefore very low-priced) pieces of hardware.
It's just that some people aren't as hung up on the cost, and some people aren't as hung up on the user experience and attractiveness.
Funny you should mention class dominance. I just bought an iPod shuffle from a friend who, two weeks after buying it, received an iPod photo from his wife as a gift.
I was already in the market for a cheap flash mp3 player exclusively to plug into my car stereo for commutes (it has an aux in miniplug jack), and while shopping noticed that none of the stores had 512MB players for the same price as the iPod Shuffle. I had to go up another $30, and yeah, they had screens, but all I wanted to do was load some songs in and put it on shuffle for the daily drive.
Well, at that particular task, the Shuffle dominates. Lowest price point with highest cool factor and largest amount of storage. I went into it specifically trying to avoid an iPod; in this case, the most heavily-marketed product also turned out to be the best value and best functionality for my needs.
Although: the other two contenders, both creative players, had replaceable batteries. That's why I didn't buy the shuffle until I found it used, to bring it into "disposable mp3 player" priceland.
I also have a G4 tower dual-booting Debian and OSX 10.3. I initially did it because I was curious to see how they'd compare (as I found Debian's current testing release with Gnome to be very mac-like); now I keep it that way because:
1. Debian actually feels a lot faster than OSX on the same machine;
2. I already have a PC chock-full of music production software, photo manipulation software, office apps, and games, and it's much much faster than the G4 tower;
3. The aforementioned PC is also a Debian dual-boot (with Win2k) and it's nice to have a common UI for both machines at times;
4. I can't figure out for the life of me how to remove Yaboot from the G4. Heh.
I think it's the game CONTROLLERS that make a big difference. For instance, I just can't get used to playing 1st-person shooters with a handheld controller (and believe me, I've tried). On a keyboard, though, it makes perfect sense and works really, really well for me -- consequently, I can do serious damage in 1st person shooters on a PC, but on a console, I get schooled by everyone. Hell, I get schooled if my dog steps on a controller.
Also, games like Locomotion and Worms are far easier to play on a crisp screen with mouse control than they would be on a handheld controller.
So give me a game console I can plug into my DVI monitor, and that I can control with a keyboard and mouse, and I'll be good to go.
Er, you were able to get the cable for free, which is a substantial cost of the project. You also were able to get the labor for free via your own actions and that of your brother, which is a substantial cost of the project.
So no, $700 for that wasn't a rip-off; that takes into account (a) insurance, (b) warranty and (c) the guy makes his living doing this.
Same with your friend; he drilled through brick, hung air-con ducts, etc. -- that's a LOT of labor, and unless you do it yourself, you have to pay other people to make it worth their while. After all, they don't get the benefit of the installation like you do. Take your current hourly salary and multiply it by the hours spent, and you'll see what I mean.
I say this as a person who ran his own cable over the winter; if I could have had someone else do it the way I did and only pay $700, I would have jumped at it in a heartbeat (phone, ethernet to three rooms, coax to one, all from a common closet, and the phone and coax running outside).
I don't think the ipod actually completely fills the RAM cache. I believe it only caches the current song.
I say this because I get hella less battery life when I'm skipping through songs than when I just let it play.
Actually, your experience suggests that the iPod DOES cache multiple songs in normal mode, but when skipping around, it likely repeatedly loads up multiple songs in the cache -- but then you interrupt playback of those songs to play a different song, and so it loads up the cache again with songs (starting with the one you just skipped to). That would, in fact, eat battery life much faster.
If it did NOT cache multiple songs under any condition, though, the battery life would be the same.
Does this help in any way to keep IT talent in Canada, versus the current draining of much of that talent to the US? Mind you, I was told of this draining by a co-worker who himself "drained" from Canada, so that's just one person's opinion...
Re:The myth is dead! Long live the myth!
on
The Solar Death Ray
·
· Score: 1
Yeah, the mythbusters seem to be getting good at missing the obvious. Recently, I saw one in which two girls on the show "busted" the myth that talking to your plants helps them grow faster. How did they test? By playing RECORDINGS of people talking. Um, hello, do boom boxes emit carbon dioxide when they play? I couldn't even bear to watch the outcome.
Coming up next: "busting" the myth that trees clean the air, by putting pictures of trees on the wall in a smoky room.
Well, I personally have a cable that runs from my Yamaha keyboard's host out to my PC's 9-pin serial port to pass MIDI signals -- and have an older palm pilot with a serial cradle and a penpad with a serial port -- so it's not UNHEARD of to need one.
I'm running debian testing on a G4 tower; I had debian and OSX side-by-side, but with that (now) low-speed CPU, I can get more (of what I need to do) done more quickly in debian.
Yeah, an old acquaintance of mine was very big on apple's future at that time, and bought a huge pile of it. Last I'd heard, he used the money to start his own small business, and is doing well.
>Perhaps a bit of genetic engineering would give >the critters a taste for tumor tissues or fat >cells (and an abhorrence for critical tissues >such as nerve cells, muscle tissue, or blood >vessels).
Seems practical, as we ourselves seem to have a genetically engineered abhorrence for maggots.
I enjoyed Puzzle Pirates immensely when I had an account, although I found myself unwilling to invest the time to go beyond playing puzzles and having day-to-day fun with strangers. Still, the underlying technology seemed to work well enough, and it was a good time.
You know, if you look for games that entertain you instead of just grabbing the latest greatest, you get a lot of fun for very little money.
Case in point: I bought Locomotion when it came out, at $30. Now you can get it for $20 or less. The thing is, I've had it for a long time, and I still play it at least once a week, because it's a terrific game (I also played the living daylights out of the rollercoaster tycoon series).
Similar: My wife and I still blow each other up in Worms Armageddon every so often. I barely paid anything for it.
Also: WarioWare, same deal, was $30 when released, and worth $50. We still play that, too.
Heck, I just picked up an old copy of Test Drive LeMans for my old Dreamcast (lost my old copy) for $9, and I -still- enjoy it immensely.
But: in my backpack is a copy of UT2004 that I purchased and have barely played.
So yeah, they might charge $60, but that doesn't mean people will buy it. My local healthy snack shop used to charge $1.39 for a product I liked, and I bought one every weekday with my lunch. Then they raised it to $1.49, and I bought one every weekday with my lunch. Then they raised it to $1.99, and I haven't bought one since -- and it's been at least six months.
Somebody will always drop off the curve after a certain price has been surpassed, and it's a matter of hitting it so that the additional income from your price hike isn't eaten right back up by the number of people who might have purchased your product, but now will not.
Dunno. I've got five IP addresses on my home DSL account, all static -- and only two in use. I figure the day I get DDOS'd, I can repoint my domain names to a different IP address until they're done. 24 hours downtime on the domain, sure, but that beats indefinitely down!
Of course, that assumes it's a bot attack and not a personal attack (wherein they're hitting the domain name instead)...
My ISP, dslextreme, blocks port 25 by default. To have it unblocked, you fill out an online form -- and expose yourself to a port scan from them every so often, to make sure you're not an open relay.
"...and still I know the wife's WinXP machine that's fully patched hardware and software firewalled is owned and can't find out how..."
Yeah, my father's computer is like this, too. No software I've found will tell me why the drive is constantly spinning, etc...so it's either a very insidious infection, or WinXP has serious issues.
Consider telling your mom "Hey mom, I just bought you a new PC. Here's the deal, though: since you don't have the time or money to keep your computer from getting infected, I had to get you a different kind of computer. It's very easy to use, and does lots of great stuff, but looks a little different. The good part is, you won't get disconnected again. Oh, and I'm putting this little box (router) between you and the internet for your protection. Don't worry, you don't have to actually touch it or do anything, it'll just work."
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As a matter of fact, I did -- still sitting in my games box, still gets fairly regular use. :)
Other people here have already discussed the "you'll get in trouble from work/authorities for prefetching things on to your computer you don't even know you're loading" deal, so I won't touch that. They've also discussed the "You'll use more bandwidth" thing.
Here's my complaint, from an entirely different direction: two years from now, is every default installation of Mozilla and/or Firefox going to require me to change a laundry list of preferences in order to avoid features I don't want?
I mean, go ahead and put these features in, but don't activate them automatically: do what Opera does (asks if the user wants to activate a feature) or just leave them off by default, and add a menu option to turn it on.
Having these things turned on by default is going to be an inconvenience going forward, and smacks a bit of elitist "we know what's better for your web browsing experience than you do" attitude, you know what I mean?
At this point, I'd be thrilled with setting optional parameters like this to 'off' by default, and updating the default installation home page (visible on first execution of the app) to a page listing "Great optional features", along with buttons to turn them on and a quick note on how to turn them back off if desired.
That's why the company I work for does fixed-time, fixed-price projects with measurable business results. We get projects done on time, and we solve actual, quantifiable problems. Our overall record is far above the industry average.
Normally, I'm not one to shill for "the man", but how often do you get the chance to work for a company that actually does things right? I won't say the name, though.
I will say that the vendor situation is a bad one; often (not always) vendors are dictated by the clients, and those vendors want the business we have in addition to their own, so things can get quite sticky.
Conversely, a qualified vendor that works with you instead of against you is worth their weight in gold, and we'll send those folks other business.
You know, we can end all this discussion of PC versus MAC by acknowledging the underlying desires: we ALL want a computer that looks and works like the mac, but we ALL want a computer that can be built from commoditized (and therefore very low-priced) pieces of hardware.
It's just that some people aren't as hung up on the cost, and some people aren't as hung up on the user experience and attractiveness.
Just sayin'.
No your an idiot.
You should probably move out of that glass house, or learn how to use contractions.
Funny you should mention class dominance. I just bought an iPod shuffle from a friend who, two weeks after buying it, received an iPod photo from his wife as a gift.
I was already in the market for a cheap flash mp3 player exclusively to plug into my car stereo for commutes (it has an aux in miniplug jack), and while shopping noticed that none of the stores had 512MB players for the same price as the iPod Shuffle. I had to go up another $30, and yeah, they had screens, but all I wanted to do was load some songs in and put it on shuffle for the daily drive.
Well, at that particular task, the Shuffle dominates. Lowest price point with highest cool factor and largest amount of storage. I went into it specifically trying to avoid an iPod; in this case, the most heavily-marketed product also turned out to be the best value and best functionality for my needs.
Although: the other two contenders, both creative players, had replaceable batteries. That's why I didn't buy the shuffle until I found it used, to bring it into "disposable mp3 player" priceland.
I also have a G4 tower dual-booting Debian and OSX 10.3. I initially did it because I was curious to see how they'd compare (as I found Debian's current testing release with Gnome to be very mac-like); now I keep it that way because:
1. Debian actually feels a lot faster than OSX on the same machine;
2. I already have a PC chock-full of music production software, photo manipulation software, office apps, and games, and it's much much faster than the G4 tower;
3. The aforementioned PC is also a Debian dual-boot (with Win2k) and it's nice to have a common UI for both machines at times;
4. I can't figure out for the life of me how to remove Yaboot from the G4. Heh.
>Replace cooler with "makes more money so they can afford one."
Replace "makes more money so they can afford one" with "makes enough money that they bought the best tool, rather than the best one they could afford"
I think it's the game CONTROLLERS that make a big difference. For instance, I just can't get used to playing 1st-person shooters with a handheld controller (and believe me, I've tried). On a keyboard, though, it makes perfect sense and works really, really well for me -- consequently, I can do serious damage in 1st person shooters on a PC, but on a console, I get schooled by everyone. Hell, I get schooled if my dog steps on a controller.
Also, games like Locomotion and Worms are far easier to play on a crisp screen with mouse control than they would be on a handheld controller.
So give me a game console I can plug into my DVI monitor, and that I can control with a keyboard and mouse, and I'll be good to go.
>Essentially the asking cost was a rip off.
Er, you were able to get the cable for free, which is a substantial cost of the project. You also were able to get the labor for free via your own actions and that of your brother, which is a substantial cost of the project.
So no, $700 for that wasn't a rip-off; that takes into account (a) insurance, (b) warranty and (c) the guy makes his living doing this.
Same with your friend; he drilled through brick, hung air-con ducts, etc. -- that's a LOT of labor, and unless you do it yourself, you have to pay other people to make it worth their while. After all, they don't get the benefit of the installation like you do. Take your current hourly salary and multiply it by the hours spent, and you'll see what I mean.
I say this as a person who ran his own cable over the winter; if I could have had someone else do it the way I did and only pay $700, I would have jumped at it in a heartbeat (phone, ethernet to three rooms, coax to one, all from a common closet, and the phone and coax running outside).
I don't think the ipod actually completely fills the RAM cache. I believe it only caches the current song.
I say this because I get hella less battery life when I'm skipping through songs than when I just let it play.
Actually, your experience suggests that the iPod DOES cache multiple songs in normal mode, but when skipping around, it likely repeatedly loads up multiple songs in the cache -- but then you interrupt playback of those songs to play a different song, and so it loads up the cache again with songs (starting with the one you just skipped to). That would, in fact, eat battery life much faster.
If it did NOT cache multiple songs under any condition, though, the battery life would be the same.
Does this help in any way to keep IT talent in Canada, versus the current draining of much of that talent to the US? Mind you, I was told of this draining by a co-worker who himself "drained" from Canada, so that's just one person's opinion...
Yeah, the mythbusters seem to be getting good at missing the obvious. Recently, I saw one in which two girls on the show "busted" the myth that talking to your plants helps them grow faster. How did they test? By playing RECORDINGS of people talking. Um, hello, do boom boxes emit carbon dioxide when they play? I couldn't even bear to watch the outcome.
Coming up next: "busting" the myth that trees clean the air, by putting pictures of trees on the wall in a smoky room.
Well, I personally have a cable that runs from my Yamaha keyboard's host out to my PC's 9-pin serial port to pass MIDI signals -- and have an older palm pilot with a serial cradle and a penpad with a serial port -- so it's not UNHEARD of to need one.
I'm running debian testing on a G4 tower; I had debian and OSX side-by-side, but with that (now) low-speed CPU, I can get more (of what I need to do) done more quickly in debian.
Garageband is a fun toy, though.
Yeah, an old acquaintance of mine was very big on apple's future at that time, and bought a huge pile of it. Last I'd heard, he used the money to start his own small business, and is doing well.
>Perhaps a bit of genetic engineering would give
>the critters a taste for tumor tissues or fat
>cells (and an abhorrence for critical tissues
>such as nerve cells, muscle tissue, or blood
>vessels).
Seems practical, as we ourselves seem to have a genetically engineered abhorrence for maggots.
I enjoyed Puzzle Pirates immensely when I had an account, although I found myself unwilling to invest the time to go beyond playing puzzles and having day-to-day fun with strangers. Still, the underlying technology seemed to work well enough, and it was a good time.
Thanks for pointing that out. It only amused me for a few minutes, so I've just given them nonsense info. No want to play no more.
You know, if you look for games that entertain you instead of just grabbing the latest greatest, you get a lot of fun for very little money.
Case in point: I bought Locomotion when it came out, at $30. Now you can get it for $20 or less. The thing is, I've had it for a long time, and I still play it at least once a week, because it's a terrific game (I also played the living daylights out of the rollercoaster tycoon series).
Similar: My wife and I still blow each other up in Worms Armageddon every so often. I barely paid anything for it.
Also: WarioWare, same deal, was $30 when released, and worth $50. We still play that, too.
Heck, I just picked up an old copy of Test Drive LeMans for my old Dreamcast (lost my old copy) for $9, and I -still- enjoy it immensely.
But: in my backpack is a copy of UT2004 that I purchased and have barely played.
So yeah, they might charge $60, but that doesn't mean people will buy it. My local healthy snack shop used to charge $1.39 for a product I liked, and I bought one every weekday with my lunch. Then they raised it to $1.49, and I bought one every weekday with my lunch. Then they raised it to $1.99, and I haven't bought one since -- and it's been at least six months.
Somebody will always drop off the curve after a certain price has been surpassed, and it's a matter of hitting it so that the additional income from your price hike isn't eaten right back up by the number of people who might have purchased your product, but now will not.
Dunno. I've got five IP addresses on my home DSL account, all static -- and only two in use. I figure the day I get DDOS'd, I can repoint my domain names to a different IP address until they're done. 24 hours downtime on the domain, sure, but that beats indefinitely down!
Of course, that assumes it's a bot attack and not a personal attack (wherein they're hitting the domain name instead)...
My ISP, dslextreme, blocks port 25 by default. To have it unblocked, you fill out an online form -- and expose yourself to a port scan from them every so often, to make sure you're not an open relay.
:)
It's a good thing.
"...and still I know the wife's WinXP machine that's fully patched hardware and software firewalled is owned and can't find out how..."
Yeah, my father's computer is like this, too. No software I've found will tell me why the drive is constantly spinning, etc...so it's either a very insidious infection, or WinXP has serious issues.
Consider telling your mom "Hey mom, I just bought you a new PC. Here's the deal, though: since you don't have the time or money to keep your computer from getting infected, I had to get you a different kind of computer. It's very easy to use, and does lots of great stuff, but looks a little different. The good part is, you won't get disconnected again. Oh, and I'm putting this little box (router) between you and the internet for your protection. Don't worry, you don't have to actually touch it or do anything, it'll just work."
Then drop a Mini Mac on them.
What about simply blocking most of the outgoing ports for those people? Just asking.