I really don't see how breaking Windows into two versions will solve anything on the desktop front. You're thinking too short term. Imagine the Apps and OS are completely seperate... the Apps people will notice that there are all these OTHER OSs out there... soon Office 2000 begins appearing on the Mac (they're still on 98... which is just a port of 97), Linux, BeOS, Solaris, etc. And now that they're not bundled with every new computer, they have to drop their price to stay competative. The OS company now has a lot less leverage. (Many companies, including the one that I work, HATE windows, but are dependant on the Office file types for external document sharing). Hardware vendors suddenly realize that they don't want to have the only video card not supported in Linux/BeOS/whatever... Soon all the OSs are competing on a level playing field. Windows HAS to improve or just die off. We end up with better OSs and software. And we all have punch and pie.
It sounds like a good idea... but it would piss off an enormous amount of people. How about doing the exact opposite (sort of)? Instead of abolishing the TLD why not just let any three-letter TLD be registered? Entertainment sites could get whatever.fun. Porn sites would flock to whatever.ass. Assholes could finally get their whatever.web and shut the hell up. And, of course Mr. T could have whatever.mrt. Best of all, companies would finally give up in their quest to register every possible trademark and sue anyone who crosses their way. Everyone wins!
I wouldn't put too much faith in that article. The author was quite obviously biased (he set out to prove how bad macs were, instead of doing an study on which machine was really more powerful). Not to mention the fact that it reads like a paper you could find in a 10th grade Computer Science class.
You can find plenty of benchmarks and statistics on the web that will tell you whatever you want to hear about the wintel/macintosh debate. The bottom line is: simply pick the system that's right for you. Don't buy a system just because some asshole releases some amazing new benchmark. Actually go to a computer store (I know, this may be a stretch... but hear me out, you can still order the blasted thing online if you want) and sit down with the systems that you're considering. Try out MacOS X. Launch Netscape/IE/whatever. Fire up Quake 3. Click around. Get a feel for it. Go over to the Windows section and find the PIII/Althon that you're considering. Do the same. Now forgetting all the benchmarks, hype, and marketing crap, which do you want?
Even if you somehow stumble across the fastest PC in the world, it will be outdated in a couple of months. Last summer I purchased a 550 mhz PIII. They're coming out with ones twice that speed now. I'm still blown away by the performance of this machine. Remember that computer speed is relative, not to other computers, but to what you need.
Cheers,
x1r0k3wl
Re:See a sampling of questions asked of Jeeves...
on
AskJeeves Interview
·
· Score: 2
For a slightly less censored view of the average internet user, check out MetaSpy. Be careful, though; it's highly addictive. A friend of mine even went so far as to write a little program that retrieved new searches and scrolled them past in a little ticker-tape window just so he wouldn't miss anything.
I was just thinking of the same game. It worked fine in black & white mode with a regular (non-overclocked) TI-85. Running in sweet, sweet greyscale was a bit of a stretch, however.
I wrote an article very similar to this for a short-lived, now-defunct website called Cyberdelia. Cyberdelia was a tech/geek humor site, and I, well, interviewed the Ask Jeeves search engine for it. I'm not at all surprised that someone might have the same idea that I did, but I am surprised that they would have it this far into Ask Jeeves' existence (our article was written about the time the Ask Jeeves hype started).
Maybe I'm just paranoid... or maybe I'm just pissed I didn't post my article to Slashdot a year ago.
Bah,
-x1r0k3wl
P.S. Oh and for the record, none of Jeeves' answers were altered for my article... I always just took his first response.
DVD's can be double sided and/or double density. Many movies are released currently with widescreen on one side and pan & scan on the other. A very few (the Big Lebowski comes to mind) let you choose which format you prefer in a menu system. Just as you can choose from widescreen and pan & scan on a single disk, you could choose original or SE.
I know it's a bit off topic, but the developers of Metal Gear Solid used LEGOs to make rough drafts of most of the game environments. They even flew a mini video camera on a stick through the models and so they could see what it looked like on a TV before ever sitting down at a computer.
Even so, I think the idea of people commonly sharing DVD-sized files over the internet is a pretty ridiculous one, and you're probably justified in referring to the MPAA's concerns as "groundless paranoia".
I would be careful calling DVD piracy "groundless paranoia." When CD's first came out, they too were viewed as almost limitless in size. One couldn't imagine storing the contents of a 650 mb CD on their harddrive, let alone actually transfering the things over a modem. Of course, storage and bandwidth got better and cheaper, but, more importantly, advances in compression (mp3) really set the scene for piracy. People with 56k modems happily wait half an hour to get a song, and with consumer broadband on the horizon, the situation is looking better and better for audio pirates.
With Phillips releasing CD copiers that work sans-computer, CD piracy is reaching new heights, even amoung the low-tech.
Labeling the MPAA's conserns about piracy as "groundless paranoia" is horribly short-sighted. While I do think that they have a valid point, I do not think that they have a case.
The three-blink menu option and "liquid funneling warping cool thing" are more than just wasteful eyecandy. For someone new to computers (or just new to a mouse) the three-blink menu option lets them know, for sure, what they just told the computer to do. For anyone who has tried to teach an overzealous student who continually misses icons or menus, this is obviously useful. Similairly, the funneling minimize animation provides a clear explaination to the question "where did that window go?" and goes a huge distance to help new users get a clear grasp on minimizing. Remember, Mac's are designed for user friendliness and visualization really does help.
On they other hand, I would be greatly disappointed in Apple if they didn't allow you to turn these features off.
Slashdot Mirror
I really don't see how breaking Windows into two versions will solve anything on the desktop front. You're thinking too short term. Imagine the Apps and OS are completely seperate... the Apps people will notice that there are all these OTHER OSs out there... soon Office 2000 begins appearing on the Mac (they're still on 98... which is just a port of 97), Linux, BeOS, Solaris, etc. And now that they're not bundled with every new computer, they have to drop their price to stay competative. The OS company now has a lot less leverage. (Many companies, including the one that I work, HATE windows, but are dependant on the Office file types for external document sharing). Hardware vendors suddenly realize that they don't want to have the only video card not supported in Linux/BeOS/whatever... Soon all the OSs are competing on a level playing field. Windows HAS to improve or just die off. We end up with better OSs and software. And we all have punch and pie.
It sounds like a good idea... but it would piss off an enormous amount of people. How about doing the exact opposite (sort of)? Instead of abolishing the TLD why not just let any three-letter TLD be registered? Entertainment sites could get whatever.fun. Porn sites would flock to whatever.ass. Assholes could finally get their whatever.web and shut the hell up. And, of course Mr. T could have whatever.mrt. Best of all, companies would finally give up in their quest to register every possible trademark and sue anyone who crosses their way. Everyone wins!
x1r0k3wl
I wouldn't put too much faith in that article. The author was quite obviously biased (he set out to prove how bad macs were, instead of doing an study on which machine was really more powerful). Not to mention the fact that it reads like a paper you could find in a 10th grade Computer Science class.
You can find plenty of benchmarks and statistics on the web that will tell you whatever you want to hear about the wintel/macintosh debate. The bottom line is: simply pick the system that's right for you. Don't buy a system just because some asshole releases some amazing new benchmark. Actually go to a computer store (I know, this may be a stretch... but hear me out, you can still order the blasted thing online if you want) and sit down with the systems that you're considering. Try out MacOS X. Launch Netscape/IE/whatever. Fire up Quake 3. Click around. Get a feel for it. Go over to the Windows section and find the PIII/Althon that you're considering. Do the same. Now forgetting all the benchmarks, hype, and marketing crap, which do you want?
Even if you somehow stumble across the fastest PC in the world, it will be outdated in a couple of months. Last summer I purchased a 550 mhz PIII. They're coming out with ones twice that speed now. I'm still blown away by the performance of this machine. Remember that computer speed is relative, not to other computers, but to what you need.
Cheers,
x1r0k3wl
For a slightly less censored view of the average internet user, check out MetaSpy. Be careful, though; it's highly addictive. A friend of mine even went so far as to write a little program that retrieved new searches and scrolled them past in a little ticker-tape window just so he wouldn't miss anything.
-x1r0k3wl
I was just thinking of the same game. It worked fine in black & white mode with a regular (non-overclocked) TI-85. Running in sweet, sweet greyscale was a bit of a stretch, however.
Cheers,
x1r0k3wl
I wrote an article very similar to this for a short-lived, now-defunct website called Cyberdelia. Cyberdelia was a tech/geek humor site, and I, well, interviewed the Ask Jeeves search engine for it. I'm not at all surprised that someone might have the same idea that I did, but I am surprised that they would have it this far into Ask Jeeves' existence (our article was written about the time the Ask Jeeves hype started).
Maybe I'm just paranoid... or maybe I'm just pissed I didn't post my article to Slashdot a year ago.
Bah,
-x1r0k3wl
P.S. Oh and for the record, none of Jeeves' answers were altered for my article... I always just took his first response.
DVD's can be double sided and/or double density. Many movies are released currently with widescreen on one side and pan & scan on the other. A very few (the Big Lebowski comes to mind) let you choose which format you prefer in a menu system. Just as you can choose from widescreen and pan & scan on a single disk, you could choose original or SE.
Cheers,
x1r0k3wl
I know it's a bit off topic, but the developers of Metal Gear Solid used LEGOs to make rough drafts of most of the game environments. They even flew a mini video camera on a stick through the models and so they could see what it looked like on a TV before ever sitting down at a computer.
-x1r0k3wl
Even so, I think the idea of people commonly sharing DVD-sized files over the internet is a pretty ridiculous one, and you're probably justified in referring to the MPAA's concerns as "groundless paranoia".
I would be careful calling DVD piracy "groundless paranoia." When CD's first came out, they too were viewed as almost limitless in size. One couldn't imagine storing the contents of a 650 mb CD on their harddrive, let alone actually transfering the things over a modem. Of course, storage and bandwidth got better and cheaper, but, more importantly, advances in compression (mp3) really set the scene for piracy. People with 56k modems happily wait half an hour to get a song, and with consumer broadband on the horizon, the situation is looking better and better for audio pirates.
With Phillips releasing CD copiers that work sans-computer, CD piracy is reaching new heights, even amoung the low-tech.
Labeling the MPAA's conserns about piracy as "groundless paranoia" is horribly short-sighted. While I do think that they have a valid point, I do not think that they have a case.
-x1r0k3wl
The three-blink menu option and "liquid funneling warping cool thing" are more than just wasteful eyecandy. For someone new to computers (or just new to a mouse) the three-blink menu option lets them know, for sure, what they just told the computer to do. For anyone who has tried to teach an overzealous student who continually misses icons or menus, this is obviously useful. Similairly, the funneling minimize animation provides a clear explaination to the question "where did that window go?" and goes a huge distance to help new users get a clear grasp on minimizing. Remember, Mac's are designed for user friendliness and visualization really does help.
On they other hand, I would be greatly disappointed in Apple if they didn't allow you to turn these features off.
-x1r0k3wl
I could be wrong, but I was pretty sure that NT was based on OS/2. -x1r0k3wl