The truth is, human beings as a whole are fundamentally cowards. Until you understand and accept that, you can't really even begin to understand human beings and their motivations.
You just can't say you could pick a handful of people from any country in any part of the world and expect them to act any different than you describe in your examples.
You may be right about the games you are talking about. I've honestly never heard of them, either.
But he's right that EA sucks AND destroys good game franchises. A few games that you say are wonderful gems doesn't change that.
Life isn't a cartoon where good and evil are black and white, for God's sake.
Overall, assuming you are right about those games being completely wonderful games, I'd still say EA sucks. If nothing else because they've f*cked up all the games that I love that the original "ea sucks" poster mentioned.
I did love Command and Conquer, but it was flushed down the toilet on EA's watch.
I did and still love BF1942, bought BF2, and bought BF2142. I still go back and play BF1942, often with the Forgotten Hope mod. BF2 gameplay never came close to the fun of BF1942, for a lot of reasons. I played it for a week or two. BF2142 is about the same, but a little better. It still didn't last more than a few days in playability before I went back to other games.
BF1942 had lots of patches up to 1.62. But it NEVER crashed repeatedly out of the box and with patches. BF2 and BF2142 both did. I couldn't really explain to my kids a week or two ago why BF2142 kept crashing, although less often after I installed the patch they released the day after I bought it. BF2142 still crashes in the middle of joining ALL multiplayer games. More reasons EA sucks.
So, say what you want to attack or defend EA. All I can say is I just wish they would LEAVE OTHER GAME COMPANIES ALONE UNTIL THEY GET THEIR DEVELOPMENT SHIT TOGETHER!
And, I have yet to see anyone (except Chinese gold farmers) who would grind 100% of the time they play WoW.
I have a level 60 and 4-6 level 30+ chars. I "grind" in playing those chars about 10% of my total time, which is 80-100 hours a month. Grinding in WoW is not different from playing through levels destroying everything in Doom 3 or other FPS's. FPS and other game puzzles are equivalent to quests in WoW. If you think running through a certain level in Doom 3 or HL2 for the 20th time is NOT grinding, you are very sadly mistaken.
What do people like me who have been playing WoW "casually" for 1 1/2 years do the other 90% of the time? Run around discovering new or "secret" areas, helping lowbies do their quests, and chatting with other players in LFG (AKA "Global Barrens Chat") about every possible thing there is to discuss from politics to computers to sex.
WoW is really more than a game, and if you really play all of it (not just fighting, farming, and raiding), you'll see that. It's a completely different way to interact with other human beings, kind of like... oh, like the surfing the web to communicate with other people is. Saying WoW players are addicted is an overexaggeration like the fabled "Internet Addiction". Websurfing can be overdone the same way WoW playing can be, no doubt.
I kind of see raiding in WoW as being like a series of virtual paintball tournaments. Or even casual baseball teams (for example, my company has a company baseball team that plays other company teams) where you aren't required to play with, but you choose to. Choosing to be on a team requires that you be there for scheduled events. That may cut into your other personal activities. That's why I don't raid, because other family stuff is far more important to me.
-- How do you have to wait an hour for HL2 in Steam to unlock?
I use HL2 in Steam, and I only had to wait for it to download, which was far quicker than driving to my local Best Buy or waiting for Amazon.com. There was no unlocking delay. I installed it on my daughter's PC so she could play it when I wasn't (which is a lot of the time since I've played HL2 about 10-20 times all the way through), and there was no unlocking delay or other problems. Just login and play the first time. No problems for either of us in offline mode, either.
-- How does the pirate version load and play faster off the CD than from Steam?
That just doesn't make sense because running it in Steam runs it 100% from the local hard disk. So, the video was stuttering in HL2 under Steam and it's Steam's fault? Sounds like a configuration problem to me. Or a crappy video card. I noticed *some* stuttering when playing on my daughter's PC, but it was pretty rare (maybe a couple of times an hour). Sorry, maybe I'm missing some bug that apparently a lot of people have had, but I still don't get how a pirated version of HL2 would fix a game bug???
-- "robbed of playing on HL2 for 9 months because I moved into a room with no net connection and offline mode was broken"
All I can say is, that was really inconvenient that you couldn't figure out a way to connect to the net for 9 frickin' months. The only answer is "DOH, shoulda thought about that possibility before buying through Steam!" I don't know what to say since it's kind of a given that the way Steam works requires some net connection in some period *less* than 9 months!! Again, I've never had a problem with offline mode working for me. It often goes into offline mode when it doesn't connect to the servers fast enough after logging in.
-- "It's the same with DVDs too now"
You are over-exaggerating. Yeah, get the pirated DVD, and it's like videotape on DVD. If you don't care about the video or sound quality, just keep buying pirated DVD's because you obviously don't care about the features of the DVD format. Not to mention missing extras on the pirated DVD. All those things make the legitimate $15 (!!) DVD well worth it even IF you have to channel-skip or fast-fast-fast-forward past the starting trailers and warnings. One of those two always works for me, so I don't get the big deal.
Yeah, and Blizzard had nothing to do with the fact that I haven't bought an Xbox 360 and have absolutely no plans to buy the PS3 or Wii.
I'm a longtime PC gamer, and Warhammer is boring to me. Not everybody will be into it, but that doesn't mean PC Gaming is dead. I think this is big news for Warhammer fans, and that's about it (although I know no PC gamers who are Warhammer fans).
I like WoW for the whole MMORPG experience, and I see nothing on the Xbox 360 or PS3 that comes close. I have a friend who's been trying to get me to buy an Xbox 360 for months, and he can't give me a good reason to buy one considering I like MMO's. He's an Xbox 360 gamer purely for eye candy, and that's not the kind of gamer I am.
Not to mention that I'm not the kind of gamer who takes over the living room for myself when nobody else wants to watch me play games. I have a wife and 3 kids with far different interests than the games I play.
Consoles just don't work for guys like me, and with the gamer demographic constantly increasing in age, there are more and more gamers like me. The only thing that would come close to replacing my gaming laptops would be a handheld like DS or PSP with built-in networking for some kind of (good) MMO. I'd buy that...
The real question is how long can you work with the default settings of XP, which service pack version of XP are you talking about, and if you are even using it to access the Internet.
Anecdote:
I've set up Windows XP computers at work LITERALLY thousands of times. If I let a Windows computer install by itself while plugged into the network (with Internet access) so it finishes the install while I'm at lunch (for one hour), it will be infected with a virus by the time I get back from lunch. That's how great the "default settings" are in Windows XP.
Believe me, if you're using the "default settings" of Windows XP SP-anything, it's only a matter of time before that computer is screwed...
If you put your laptop to sleep a couple of times a day, and have no problem coming out of sleep or hibernate modes, then you are unique.
We have 45 salespeople with laptops who put their Windows laptops to sleep all the time without problems, but that's only because they shut down or restart once a week to avoid freezes, etc.
We have about 4-5 Mac laptops over the last 6 years that are always left in sleep mode, and I'm talking continuous sleep mode for up to a year at a time. We've never had a problem with Mac laptops going into or coming out of sleep mode.
Of all the salespeople we have with Windows laptops, many, many of them tell me how they close the lid of their laptop to put it to sleep, put it in their briefcase, then go to a customer or home (at the end of the day), and when they get to their destination, their briefcase is 150 degrees F because their laptop didn't actually go to sleep. And, either this causes a freeze-up, automatic shutdown because the laptop couldn't stay running with the screen on for more than 45 minutes, or it generally concerns me and them that the screen or hard disk could get screwed up. That hasn't with the Mac laptops in about 7+ years.
If you've never had problems like I'm describing, then you are very lucky or just have a new laptop (less than 6 months old). I'm telling you, however, that most people who use Windows laptops do have these problems and just live with them.
[rant]
If you don't think that Windows drivers can get corrupted on desktops, laptops, and servers for no real reason, causing bluescreens and general hard crashes, you haven't used Windows for very long. Why else would people like me have to reinstall drivers on Windows computers/servers even though the computer is never shut down or rebooted?
What's amazing with Windows is how you can use 3 apps on a Windows machine for 6 months, and have problems like these even though you never change anything after you initially set it up. I have a Windows desktop at home that I use to browse the web and play 3-4 different games, all of which were installed from the beginning. Everything else I do on our Mac laptops and computers. So, I use that desktop 2-3 times a week, maybe 10 hours a week. It should work the same way on day 180 that it worked on day 1, right?
Wrong.
Nothing has changed except installing high priority Windows patches (which you can't avoid) -- nothing else has been installed, and the games were patched only on day 1. But, boot and login times are slow, and I'm having video choppiness in some, but not all the games.
And, I'm not some idiot who doesn't have antivirus installed from day 1, or who would install miscellaneous crap without knowing it. Everything is the same, but Windows just *degrades* over time from continuous unchanging use. It shouldn't, but it does. So, even with a computer like that, I know I'm going to be reinstalling Windows a year after day 1. That's better than the 3-6 months I get with other Windows computers that are heavily used and changed, but still, why does Windows just fall apart while other OS's don't?
And, don't tell me it's because we install so much more crap in Windows than on other machines because we can. I've had Windows servers that are set up, locked down from day one, don't change, run 24x7, and then their video or ethernet drivers get corrupted causing a bluescreen that won't go away until I reinstall the drivers.
[/rant]
Sorry about that, but a lot of us on Slashdot have a lot (and I do mean a lot) of experience with the Windows frustrations that some people think are myths...
It's funny how the original post is reflective of how ubiquitous the iPod has become. I'll throw in my own anecdote:
I fly about 15 times a year for business. In the last 6 months, out of about 8 flights, only 1 has told the passengers they can now turn on/off their "portable electronic devices". The rest of them told us we could now turn on/off our "iPods and other portable electronic devices". It didn't even occur to me until maybe a half hour after the first time I heard it. They just assumed most of us who had small electronic devices had iPods.
The fact is, most people won't even consider iPod alternatives. The reasons are varied, but for me it's because I've owned 4 MP3 players, including one Creative, before the two iPods I've bought (one is 3rd generation, and the latest is 5th generation), and every one of them sucked for a handful of reasons. Each one sucked for a different set of reasons, but they all sucked for more than one or two reasons.
I just got tired of wasting my money on "iPod alternatives", so I don't even consider them any more. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
On the integrated graphics, I think the MacBook has the same integrated video the Mac Mini has, which I've been using for about a month. I've tested dozens of apps in Mac OS X and Windows on my Mac Mini, and the integrated graphics performed WAY better than I expected. The only recent game I had any problem running because of the graphics was Doom 3. Half Life 2, World of Warcraft (Win and Mac) both ran comparable to my Powerbook with ATI Radeon 9700 and my AMD desktop with NVidia 6800GT.
We use Solidworks for engineering our products at work, and I showed one of our engineers how it ran on the Mac Mini in Windows XP with a very complex 400mb model, and we were both quite impressed. Especially considering it's an $800 computer, and he needs a $2500 computer to get noticeably better 3D video performance ($750 of that is a high-end workstation card).
Anyway, the point is, don't just write it off because it's integrated video. Not all integrated video is created equal...
Pretty weird comments here about how "bad" Vonage's service is.
I've used Vonage in my house for a year. In my house, I have a 17 year-old, 14 year-old, and a wife with all her family overseas (in Vietnam). Needless to say, we have heavy phone usage. So heavy that it only took a year for most of the numbers to be rubbed off the buttons of the phone, and the earpiece is similarly rubbed down (cordless phone).
I use Comcast cable Internet in California with 6 mbit down, 768 kbit up connection. Half of that year I had 2mbit down and 256k up on my Internet connection, but upgraded this year. I'm a computer/I.T. geek, and use the Internet connection *heavily*. I run a web/backup/mail server for 4 domains in my house office over this connection. Both teenagers use the Internet heavily as well (music, movies, etc.), although not quite as much as me.
All this stuff has worked flawlessly over the last year except for two incidents when Comcast had big latency problems, which caused voice delays with our phone. That was a little bit painful, but not a big deal for any of us since the problems were resolved in a day each time by Comcast.
My point? A person who has real broadband plugs in the Vonage box, and generally has good, idiot-proof, plug-and-play performance. There are idiots who are going to try to use Vonage over crap DSL connections, and of course it'll be Vonage's fault because they don't know how crappy their connections really are. I've never met any non-techie who had DSL that actually verified what they were being told their connections speeds are -- techies like me do, and I get what I pay for.
The truth is there's no way to know how many of these complaints are due to ISP problems or just plain underhanded ISP practices. SBC and MSN DSL both lie to their users about the real bandwidth they are getting -- they oversell their bandwidth to get more customers, lower prices, etc. Maybe you could say they were isolated incidents, but I've talked to literally dozens of people I work with who are surprised to discover how they're not getting what they're paying for.
Anyway, I think the point is that if broadband companies won't be honest with their customers about their real available bandwidth, the government needs to step in to deal with it.
Companies like Vonage are going to continue to get black eyes if they have to depend on their customers buying their products/services based on specs that are out-and-out lies.
I've worked in I.T. in a small to medium business for 15 years. I've seen all kinds of "snobs" as described in this article, and not just I.T. people.
Years ago, the stereotype belonged to UNIX gurus. But, along the way, I've seen almost every kind of contractor act in similar ways, some worse than others. The difference is those contractors are preceded by nice, friendly salespeople. Usually if the contractor is an ass, you can just go back to the salesperson and request you never have to hear from that contractor again. That pretty much guarantees an attitude adjustment on the part of the ass in question.
The problem here is generally those Linux gurus are not preceded by nice, friendly sales reps. But, if they work for a company in the same way as I described above, you just go through the same thing to get him banned from ever coming back to your company. Unfortunately, the article doesn't detail how these people came into contact with the snobs in the first place.
If you come into contact with one of these guys just based on what you heard, it probably will be hit-and-miss, just like any other contractors. Those independent guys won't get much business because they don't have nice salespeople to deal with customers who had to talk to them on their bad days. Face it, all of us technical people have bad days when we don't work/play well with others.
If you are an independent Linux guru, you ALWAYS have to remember when dealing with customers considering Linux that you are also the salesperson. It's just like the bad-old days when the only people selling the greatness of the Mac were advocates like me.
Based on my experience with colleagues in other companies in the last year, we are entering/in a golden time for Linux growth in a big way. Auditors and consultants everywhere are actually rewarding I.T. people like me for moving away from Windows toward Linux. Some are actually recommending it.
I haven't seen the current level of pro-UNIX (now basically pro-Linux) attitude in probably 8 or more years in I.T. -- 4 years ago, these people were attacking us for using UNIX anywhere instead of Windows, so I was constantly on the defensive. Today, it seems to mostly be a no-brainer that we want our mission-critical apps to run on Linux or UNIX.
When I told service vendors (IKON, for example, but many others) 2 years ago that I wanted their server or appliance apps running in Linux/UNIX instead of Windows, they were surprised and said they'd try but most of the solutions were Windows-only. Today, when I tell them the same thing, their response is that they are porting their apps to Linux, and it's only a matter of time. When I ask when, their selling point ends up being the release date of their app on Linux.
All I can say as a past and current Mac OS X/Linux/UNIX advocate is to remember why you work on Linux in the first place, and set your attitude accordingly when dealing with potential new "customers" of Linux. Hopefully I'm not wrong in assuming that Linux "gurus" work in Linux because they love it and/or open source. You show that attitude to newbies, and you can't go wrong. And in the end, we're all better off.
OK, if we're going to post bits of text from other sites, lets post the whole thing.
It is possible that between Woz, Jobs, and Bushnell, somebody isn't remembering it right. It was decades ago, after all.
Even if Jobs screwed over Woz, they were kids. I remember when I was that age, I did a few things that I am ashamed of today, some of them having to do with money. And, what I did back then has nothing to do with the kind of person I am today or have been for the past 15 years.
In other words, as you grow old you do in fact realize that people change. People can and do change.
Q From e-mail:
I was in Barnes & Noble last night and stumbled onto a book by Gil Amelio which detailed his "500 days at Apple." I think his book was called "On the Firing Line." Anyway, given my interest in reading your comments in the wake of "Pirates," I looked up references to you. In one, he recounts your explanation of the Woz/Jobs friendship rift. He asserts that you told him that way back in the 70s, before the Apple I, you were working on something for Atari with Jobs. You did all of the work, and you and Jobs were supposed to get $1000. When you produced the product, Jobs gave it to Atari and came back to you with $300, saying all he got from them was $600. You didn't find out until the mid-eighties that Jobs actually did get $1000, and he ripped you off. Can you confirm this story?
WOZ:
I don't like to stir up old things that carry a negative note, but Steve was actually paid more like $3000 or $5000 or something. Nolan Bushnell, who paid him, gave the amount in a recent book, "Silicon Valley Guys." I was actually sort of thankful that Gil got it wrong, because it didn't sound as attrocious as it really was.
To clarify, this happened before Apple, when Steve and I were best friends with little to our names. Steve said we'd split it 50/50. If he'd just said that I could have $50 for doing it I would have done it anyway for the fun and honor of designing an arcade game.
You can see why I cried deeply when I found out the truth. I get hurt and cry very easily when people don't treat others well, or when the "right" thing isn't happening. Also, Steve doesn't remember the incident this way, so consider another possibility: that those saying the payment was large could be remembering it incorrectly. This is old stuff, and it's best not to use it as an indicator of Steve today.
From what I've seen, Parallels is just VirtualPC without the CPU emulation. Maybe like VMWare on Windows. And, honestly, as an I.T. person of over 15 years, VMWare is only good for testing configurations, software, etc. It's not really good enough for real work.
I agree that the ideal is to be able to run Windows and OS X apps in OS X without having to boot Windows. That's why WINE is the best solution for people like us, maybe even Codeweavers Crossover Office, once they come out with it for OS X.
We've been using CXOffice Pro for a few months in SuSE Linux, and it is very nice -- makes it so the user can hardly tell they're not using Windows.
There is the complication of application compatibility in WINE (or CXOffice, which is based on WINE), though. I can run quite a few Windows apps directly in OS X using Darwine right now:
Lotus Notes 6.x compatibility is broken in it again, though (damnit!). That's really the only Windows app I need to run that I can't run in Mac OS X (Notes Admin/Designer).
Pretty cool to install and run WinZip in Mac OS X, though.
For compatibility and speed, though, dual-booting Windows XP using Apple's Boot Camp on my Mac Mini is the best way for me to get my work done for now...
Has Anyone Tried Installing Linux After Boot Camp?
on
Going To Boot Camp
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Has anyone tried installing or even booting up off of a Linux install CD/DVD after installing Boot Camp?
I heard a few people complaining here on Slashdot that Apple is ignoring the Linux community with this Boot Camp beta, although a lot of people pointed out that a few distros already had EFI boot capability.
I got a Mac Mini last night, installed Boot Camp, installed and reinstalled WinXP several times trying to figure out what partitions would work for my purposes. That took until well past midnight, so I'm finishing up setup for OS X and WinXP this morning at work, since this is for work (where the only Windows app I ever, ever have to use is Lotus Domino Admin and Designer since they dropped Mac support after R5).
We use SuSE Linux 10 Pro on some entry-level desktops and SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 on all our servers. I popped in the SuSE 10 DVD, tried to pick it for booting in the Startup Disk control panel, and it worked! I tried picking it during boot-up, and it also worked. I got it to the point where I could resize the Windows partition to install Linux, and everything else gave no errors.
We have some other odd linux live-boot CD's and even Solaris x86 that we're going to try just for the heck of it. I'm not going to go as far as to install any of them until I've tested the OS X and Win XP dual-booting for about a week, since that would be most useful for our users.
I'm the I.T. Director in a business with about 300 employees world-wide, and the fact that we could boot Mac OS X, Win XP, and Linux on Apple hardware essentially removes all obstacles to purchasing these computers. I've been a Mac fan for 15 years since I started working here, and in the last 5 years it's been virtually impossible for me to convince the President or CEO that in certain cases it makes sense to buy a Mac. The reason has always been that "they don't run Windows".
For guys like me and companies like us, Apple is going to start to see business they haven't seen in years because of what they did yesterday...
The appeal of Linux to students and scientists I'll believe, because it's CHEAP for students, and scientists have very specific veritical market needs and can make Linux work for their uses.
Linux companies (except possibly Novell/SuSE in the past 6 months) do NOT market to desktop and home users. Ask an average desktop/home user if they know what Linux is -- 90% of the time, they've never heard the word. The other 10% have heard the word, but don't have a clue what it is.
Linux companies do not market to business users for anything other than servers. I know, because I'm an I.T. Director heading up the move of our company's entry-level desktops and laptops from Windows and Office to SuSE Linux 10 and OpenOffice. The migration is an uphill battle just from a technical point of view, and I've used Linux for about 12 years at work. No Linux company ever did any marketing to get me to make that decision.
What software runs natively in Linux that does not run natively in Mac OS X? And I'm talking about the average user, not techies. I run Windows XP, Mac OS X, and Linux everywhere, and I honestly have more mainstream software available to me in Mac OS X than I do in Linux. What isn't is not mainstream, runs in Windows, or runs in Mac OS X or Linux using the same OSS -- WINE. There is very, very little OSS that compiles and runs in Linux that I can't compile and run in Mac OS X with similar ease. Most OSS that I compile and run in Mac OS X and Linux already auto-configures for Mac OS X/Darwin automatically to ease the compile process.
I don't know of any non-server software that runs natively in Windows and Linux, but not OS X -- maybe you can list some?
On Linux dev support from Apple, how many people buy a UNIX-based Mac to run Linux??? Do you think it makes sense for Apple to support that very limited number of users?
The fact is that Intel Macs running Macs OS X UNIX and Windows XP in a dual boot setup really divides the *NIX community. Why? Because if you can dual boot Windows XP with your favorite *NIX OS, why would you triple boot Windows XP, Linux, and UNIX (unless, of course, you're a developer)?
Most people like me who use Mac OS X and Linux and appreciate both, will choose one or the other to dual boot with Windows XP. And guess which *NIX OS people like me who already own a Mac will choose? Hint: I won't run Linux on my Macs, and I have no desire to. And, I'm very sure that people who really want Linux (and aren't just using Linux like me because we have to dual-boot Windows for work) have no desire to use Mac OS X, and won't buy a Mac to dual-boot Windows XP and Linux.
To me, and I'm sure to Apple execs, this makes the Linux on Mac question very clear...
And on the other side of the same coin, the people who do prefer to watch new movies at the theater instead of DVD at home are still going to do so even if they have the choice from day 1 when the movie is released.
The movie theater experience appeals to those people that all of us are complaining about -- people who want to go out with a group of friends to watch a new movie are extremely unlikely to stay at home watching it on DVD. And, the extra money is worth it to them.
Those kids would rather leave their homes/parents behind to go watch the new movie in total freedom with their friends -- it's a social thing a lot of us Slashdotters don't get. I also know plenty of people in their 20's who don't yet own a house or nice home theater system, and they'd much rather get out of their crappy apartment to meet with friends and watch the movie in a nice big theater. I know that's the way I was in my early 20's toward the end of college and even after when I had a crappy entry-level job paying for my crappy apartment/room.
Now, I own a house, have 3 little kids, have a nice big/loud home theater system, and there's no way I'll go to the theater to watch a new movie unless my 4-6 year-olds push me to. Often we just can't because of our 1 year-old, but they deal with it because what's a 3-6 month wait for the DVD to a little kid?
So, having kids and a nice home theater (and my own house where I won't tick off the neighbors with loud sound), I go to the theater only on very special occasions, maybe once a year. However, being a teenager or college student, you have very good incentive to go to the theater, for a variety of reasons.
The bottom line is, those two groups of people won't give a rat's butt whether the movie is released on DVD simultaneously with the theater release, or not.
The problem the movie industry creates for themselves by releasing movies to theater and DVD at separate times is the high cost of separate marketing campaigns! I can't tell you how many movies I missed on DVD because they weren't blockbusters I was waiting for (like any Pixar movie) because the DVD marketing campaign didn't get to me.
I see the marketing for the movie when it goes to the theater, think "I gotta get that when it comes to DVD", then never see the marketing when it comes to DVD. Then I end up buying it a year or more later at a bargain price ($9.99-$12.99) when I would have paid $19.99-$24.99 when it came out.
OK, AC, let's just say it doesn't run slower on the same hardware, something you cannot say about new versions of Windows.
On all my Macs, including my Powerbook 12" & 15" G4's, the latest version of OS X runs significantly faster than the prior versions.
In fact, I run OS X on a 5 year-old G3 desktop, and it's much faster than any prior version of OS X was. The early OS X versions were painfully slow sometimes.
That isn't to say that the latest OS X is faster than running OS 9 on an old Mac like that G3 desktop -- you can't compare because the OS is completely different.
Oh by the way, you want to give us some references to articles or forums where others are talking about how slow Tiger is on their PowerBook G4? You can't just make blanket statements like you did without putting forth some evidence.
The problem is that the WoW macros are not scripts. So, a macro in-game just executes a command or set of commands simultaneously when you hit that macro or key. The effect is that you cannot use the in-game macros to script a series of actions, which is what they obviously do not want people doing because it's a limited form of botting.
80-90% of the time when I'm fighting with my feral Druid in WoW, the series of actions I use is mostly the same. If I could script that with a macro, that would be just wrong because I wouldn't be actually playing the game. Not to mention it goes against the social interaction aspect of WoW because I could walk away at any time while leaving my character to auto-fight.
What this guy was doing with keyboard macros was exactly what WoW does not allow you to do with the game's built-in macros, which is script a series of actions so the computer can mostly, if not completely, play the game for you.
It's a very fine line, but it's there, and I agree with Blizzard not allowing macro scripts in-game.
I do not agree with them banning him over this instead of just warning him. That was way too harsh.
Unless they repeatedly warned him in-game one of the many times he was botting (err, sorry, "macro-ing"), and he just didn't see it. I'd say from reading the entire article, it's very possible that he missed an in-game warning. I've received in-game warnings before and almost missed them because of the level of activity in the chat screen.
And, if he didn't respond repeatedly to people talking to him in-game while he was macro-ing and he didn't respond to in-game warnings, he wasn't playing the game, he was botting.
But, how does that give him an unfair advantage over other players? I've done exactly what he described with my Druid -- fighting low-level, easy "mobs" to level up certain weapon fighting skills as far as possible. With my Druid it was "Unarmed" I was leveling up because I was sick of getting my butt kicked if an enemy could disarm me and the Druid had to fist-fight. So, I have to do this over and over and over and over and over... you get it -- maybe 1-2 hours to level my Unarmed fighting skill way up.
If you've done that kind of repetitive skill leveling, you see the advantage this guy had over me. After a period of time, I got sick of the over-and-over-and-over thing, and left to do something else. How many hours could this guy do it without giving a crap either way? That is an unfair advantage....
Wow, you must be a game company marketing exec, or must have been brainwashed by one!
The fact is that there are a lot of people (especially today) who use Windows PC's AND Mac PC's, but in slightly different settings. For some, it's Windows at work, Mac at home. For others, like me, it's Windows/Linux in the home office, Mac(s) in the living room.
Since I play my games in the living room so I can relax near my family, the TV isn't dedicated to a console box. We use the Macs in the living room for kids stuff and casual home/family/work stuff. The Windows/Linux boxes in my home office are used for hardcore work, servers, and truly solo gaming (late at night or early in the morning when I'm really playing solo).
I play WoW because I can play on any Mac in the living room or any "box" in the home office. Half-Life 2 is worth playing in my home office because I can pick it up and play it any time I decide to game solo.
WoW can be played by casual gamers so it conforms to your schedule (running on whatever PC you have where you are), or hardcore gamers who arrange their lives around their MMO gaming with friends.
I'm seeing the same problems with DDO that the reviewer is seeing, that the game developer seems to be intentionally blocking out certain groups from even playing the game. Not just Mac users, but casual gamers, people who have lives, etc.
The lack of Mac support compared to DDO's prime competitor, WoW, is just one indicator of the fact that DDO is really only made for people who already sit down to play tabletop D&D every week at a scheduled time. Or, at least in drawing gamers into that traditional D&D-style gameplay.
That's fine, but it's not going to get them anywhere near a mainstream audience. I can't see them going beyond the niche tabletop D&D players and possibly DDO LAN parties. That's probably what they want, so I hope the company who developed DDO doesn't expect much revenue, or this will be the shortest-lived MMO in HISTORY.
Obviously, you know nothing about the real military.
I was in the U.S. Army, and we do not do whatever we're told by our superiors "give or take". There's no give or take involved since the Vietnam War. I know you said "Professional soldiers", but we are talking about the U.S. military, not just any merc.
The U.S. Armed Forces Code of Conduct is taken very, very seriously by all of the members of the U.S. military. All U.S. soldiers are required to know it BY HEART and to understand every word of it, and it's impact on them as a modern soldier.
Read every word of it, since you obviously never have:
Pay close attention to article 6: "I will never forget that I am an American, fighting for freedom, responsible for my actions, and dedicated to the principles which made my country free."
Every U.S. soldier is responsible for his own actions, not his superior who ordered him to do something illegal. A soldier who follows an order that is illegal or just plain wrong according to that soldier's morals is just as guilty as his superior who gave him that order.
The bottom line: Any U.S. soldier can refuse to carry out an order if he believes it is illegal, and that soldier's judgement of whether an order is illegal is governed by his own morals.
A robot has no morals, but if this Army robot is just a machine remote controlled by a U.S. soldier, then that soldier will be held accountable for any action by the robot, which is just an extension of him.
Given that freedom that every U.S. soldier has to evaluate the orders they are given, there will still be incidents where soldiers with bad or no morals do horrible things when carrying out their orders.
But, how is it any different when a U.S. citizen decides to take an automatic weapon to a school to gun down a couple of dozen kids?
It all comes down to the morals of the indvidual, regardless of whether the person is a U.S. citizen or soldier. U.S. soldiers are no better or worse than the average U.S. citizen.
Yeah, the difference is that Notes/Domino works on any platform you can buy. Does Exchange?
Didn't think so.
We used Exchange on Windows Server years ago, and now we use Domino on Linux. Server reboots are nonexistent, and sometimes we have a 2 minute downtime to restart Domino.
Instead of saying "As far as I know", just say you don't know.
Deploying a Domino server is simple (simple like 20 minutes after OS install, it's done), given that you have some training. If you manage an Exchange environment, either you have the training, which is all you need with Notes/Domino, or you're self taught, which means you really need training.
Exchange is a high-maintenance nightmare with an easy up-front learning curve, and Notes/Domino is a low-maintenance solution with a steeper up-front learning curve. Exchange sucks you into an increasingly high investment because it looks easy to admin, but (soooo much like Windows Server 2003) it just doesn't work as advertised.
By the way, we have Domino running on $1300 Linux servers that easily serve 100 users each. It's FUD that Notes/Domino has high software/hardware requirements. Compare that with Exchange/Win2k3 server requirements and costs -- the server OS license is $1000-$3000 alone!
There are plenty of ways that I can do better than other players in WoW that isn't considered cheating by Blizzard or most players:
-- I have a 6mbit cable connection, which is really going to allow me to advance in the game much faster than players limited to a modem or crappy DSL connection. Believe me, there are plenty of players out there using modem connections, I've played with them, and I can literally run circles around them while they die over and over, which ends up costing them serious money and time.
-- Having a slower video card doesn't handicap you as much, but does to some extent. You have more control over your video settings to even things out than when it comes to your connection, but it certainly helps to have a top-of-the-line video card that allows me to easily zoom out and see farther away than other players.
-- Getting a guild together made up of high level Real-Life friends gives you a HUGE advantage over other solo players like me. Sure, you can just make the friends online, but it's a lot easier if you already have a group of level 60 geeks (especially family members) waiting to help you almost any time you want. I've been seriously left in the dust because of this many times, ESPECIALLY when it comes to WoW objectives that are mostly based on gold (epic mount, mount, etc.). I've seen players in a guild who would literally give 100-500 gold to members based solely on the fact they are Real-Life family members. Is nepotism any less cheating than buying gold from a gold farmer? I don't think so.
I think the first and especially third points are, by far, the most common way that a random level 1 player can get to level 60 in a couple of weeks. I've moved up a couple of high-end levels (mid to high 50's) in an hour or so each just by tagging along with level 60's who were just bored and wanted to show me how much butt they could kick.
I also think that the fact that getting a big gold hand-out from a family member or simply buying it with real world money shows there are serious flaws in the gameplay of WoW itself. Anything that costs a huge amount of gold or has ridiculous drop percentages is just Blizzard's way of telling you, "Hey, we're scraping the bottom of the barrel in content here, so just bite the bullet and start grindin'!".
Grinding is a substitute for good game content, and WoW has been (and still is) lacking a lot of good game content in the high levels (level 40+) for a long time.
Not to mention how many high level quests are so bugged that you have to wait weeks to do them. Some of the quests allow you to make stupid mistakes that can easily be solved with a bunch of gold, which encourages more gold begging/buying. Many high level quests are blatant in how they expect you to grind or waste huge amounts of time gathering crap to complete the quest. Most people just buy the crap to complete the quest in a few minutes.
The real problem with WoW is that they set up the content so that you can easily advance by cheating. Then they're surprised when people actually do cheat?!?!?
Give me a break, Blizzard, come up with more/better/less buggy content, then you can complain more about cheating (which is probably why you don't hear Blizzard complaining too much about it).
Oh and, in the meantime, if you're going to crack down on cheaters who buy gold from gold farmers, why don't you just start regulating/restricting all sales/transfers/trades of 100 gold or more in the game? Then you'll stop ALL the B.S....
Sorry, but a search on Dice.com is hardly solid evidence of your point. Not to mention that 500 jobs is pretty pathetic, relatively speaking -- I've seen far more than that for the silicon valley, but maybe Dice.com just doesn't have much.
There are a lot of tech service organizations in San Francisco that have been working hard to get our business in the silicon valley, but like somebody else said, the silicon valley companies typically build things (Palm, Apple, HP) or provide services that require a lot of space (Google, eBay) for servers and people.
Any tech business that has any need for building space will avoid San Francisco like the plague -- it's too expensive. We warehouse electronics products (50,000+ square feet) in silicon valley, and there's no way we'd do that in San Francisco.
If anything, companies are moving further south or east toward lower priced areas that are more central to where most of their employees live. In fact, it's not a coincidence that we're moving our North American headquarters, where I work, from the northwest part of the silicon valley to the opposite side of the silicon valley. Most of our customers and employees are located closer to the east or south parts of the silicon valley.
There are definitely tech jobs in San Francisco, but they are definitely a narrow subset of the whole. Most tech businesses, like ours, have been in cost-cutting mode in the last 5 years, and a large part of that is cutting facilities costs, which are sky-high in San Francisco.
As people piled into the bay area in the past 7-9 years, that high facilities cost has spread south from San Francisco to the northwest silicon valley. Sure, the silicon valley is rebounding and 2005 is the first year in 5 years where we had a net increase in jobs (according to the SJ Business Journal), but we now have 4 business neighbors around us where 7 years ago it was 19. All those other buildings have been vacant for 4 years. Those tech businesses never came back.
I own a house in the northeast silicon valley, and the move of employees and businesses to the east silicon valley (and beyond) has more than tripled the value of my house in the last 5 years. Land developers are building like crazy using all the vacant lots for commercial and residential buildings (lots that supposedly have been vacant since the orchard/farm days 15-20+ years ago).
Before that I rented a house in Sunnyvale (near where we work), and to buy that house or others in the area 7 years ago was incredibly outrageous. If you look at any map of property value increases in the silicon valley, it's centered in the east and northeast silicon valley -- because that's where businesses and employees are moving to save money.
You don't see a lot of development here in the Sunnyvale area, because it's mostly developed and there's really nowhere to expand. Where I live in the northeast silicon valley, I can drive one mile to find farms, horses, cows, and everything else you'd expect to see in a rural area. There's *plenty* of room to expand, so that's where everybody is going.
It's really not confusing -- SuSE Linux, for example, installs on any server, laptop, or desktop computer we have at work with NO additional drivers needed. Everything works. Compare that to installing Windows XP, and spending an extra half hour finding and installing a huge number of system-specific drivers. That easily takes a half hour on the average machine.
What do you mean by "devices without ANY Linux drivers"? There are plenty of devices that you can't download drivers for, but they work just fine in Linux. I don't think that's bad, is it?
The only real problem area for Linux today is wireless cards, mainly because NDISWrapper is such a pain in the butt to use. If you don't mind using it, though, then even that's no problem.
The reality is that there is obscure hardware out there with drivers only for Windows and nobody in the Linux community has bothered to write drivers. At the same time, those wonderful Windows drivers for that obscure hardware are often crappy and the cause of a large number of Windows problems.
This thing with the drivers is just like the huge Windows myth about all the software available. The reality that every Windows user finds out after they buy their computer is that a LOT of that software they thought they could use because it's "Designed for Windows" won't work because their computer doesn't meet one of a long list of requirements (and I don't just mean disk space or memory) or because it has a problem with some other software they have installed. Believe me, I've run into plenty of walls with Windows (pun intended) where I could not have two pieces of software installed.
The whole argument behind using Windows because of the huge base of available software and drivers is just a giant lie that nobody wants to admit to because it would mean they admit they got screwed when they bought their computer.
At the end of the day, every typical computer user ends up using 3-5 pieces of software and 2-3 pieces of hardware with their computer because that's what they've found works. Once they have it working like that they leave it alone because they've been burned in the past by some software they installed just for the hell of it, and it hosed their computer.
For example, I hear this guy asking a salesperson at the local computer megastore about which USB hub to buy for his computer because he needs 3-4 USB ports, but only has 2. The salesguy tells him he'd be better off adding a USB card to his computer, because it's cheaper. The customer tells him he's never opened his computer and doesn't want to.
Most PC owners are like that, and they're not using USB video encoders because their video cameras use firewire. I can also tell you that those same people would rather buy a whole new computer with firewire than open their computer and add a $10 firewire card.
The reality is the whole driver and software availability issue with leaving Windows is just smoke and mirrors hiding the fact that these poor people don't want to go through the pain they went through when they started using (Windows) computers in the first place.
Slashdot Mirror
The truth is, human beings as a whole are fundamentally cowards. Until you understand and accept that, you can't really even begin to understand human beings and their motivations.
You just can't say you could pick a handful of people from any country in any part of the world and expect them to act any different than you describe in your examples.
You may be right about the games you are talking about. I've honestly never heard of them, either.
But he's right that EA sucks AND destroys good game franchises. A few games that you say are wonderful gems doesn't change that.
Life isn't a cartoon where good and evil are black and white, for God's sake.
Overall, assuming you are right about those games being completely wonderful games, I'd still say EA sucks. If nothing else because they've f*cked up all the games that I love that the original "ea sucks" poster mentioned.
I did love Command and Conquer, but it was flushed down the toilet on EA's watch.
I did and still love BF1942, bought BF2, and bought BF2142. I still go back and play BF1942, often with the Forgotten Hope mod. BF2 gameplay never came close to the fun of BF1942, for a lot of reasons. I played it for a week or two. BF2142 is about the same, but a little better. It still didn't last more than a few days in playability before I went back to other games.
BF1942 had lots of patches up to 1.62. But it NEVER crashed repeatedly out of the box and with patches. BF2 and BF2142 both did. I couldn't really explain to my kids a week or two ago why BF2142 kept crashing, although less often after I installed the patch they released the day after I bought it. BF2142 still crashes in the middle of joining ALL multiplayer games. More reasons EA sucks.
So, say what you want to attack or defend EA. All I can say is I just wish they would LEAVE OTHER GAME COMPANIES ALONE UNTIL THEY GET THEIR DEVELOPMENT SHIT TOGETHER!
And, I have yet to see anyone (except Chinese gold farmers) who would grind 100% of the time they play WoW.
... oh, like the surfing the web to communicate with other people is. Saying WoW players are addicted is an overexaggeration like the fabled "Internet Addiction". Websurfing can be overdone the same way WoW playing can be, no doubt.
I have a level 60 and 4-6 level 30+ chars. I "grind" in playing those chars about 10% of my total time, which is 80-100 hours a month. Grinding in WoW is not different from playing through levels destroying everything in Doom 3 or other FPS's. FPS and other game puzzles are equivalent to quests in WoW. If you think running through a certain level in Doom 3 or HL2 for the 20th time is NOT grinding, you are very sadly mistaken.
What do people like me who have been playing WoW "casually" for 1 1/2 years do the other 90% of the time? Run around discovering new or "secret" areas, helping lowbies do their quests, and chatting with other players in LFG (AKA "Global Barrens Chat") about every possible thing there is to discuss from politics to computers to sex.
WoW is really more than a game, and if you really play all of it (not just fighting, farming, and raiding), you'll see that. It's a completely different way to interact with other human beings, kind of like
I kind of see raiding in WoW as being like a series of virtual paintball tournaments. Or even casual baseball teams (for example, my company has a company baseball team that plays other company teams) where you aren't required to play with, but you choose to. Choosing to be on a team requires that you be there for scheduled events. That may cut into your other personal activities. That's why I don't raid, because other family stuff is far more important to me.
-- How do you have to wait an hour for HL2 in Steam to unlock?
I use HL2 in Steam, and I only had to wait for it to download, which was far quicker than driving to my local Best Buy or waiting for Amazon.com. There was no unlocking delay. I installed it on my daughter's PC so she could play it when I wasn't (which is a lot of the time since I've played HL2 about 10-20 times all the way through), and there was no unlocking delay or other problems. Just login and play the first time. No problems for either of us in offline mode, either.
-- How does the pirate version load and play faster off the CD than from Steam?
That just doesn't make sense because running it in Steam runs it 100% from the local hard disk. So, the video was stuttering in HL2 under Steam and it's Steam's fault? Sounds like a configuration problem to me. Or a crappy video card. I noticed *some* stuttering when playing on my daughter's PC, but it was pretty rare (maybe a couple of times an hour). Sorry, maybe I'm missing some bug that apparently a lot of people have had, but I still don't get how a pirated version of HL2 would fix a game bug???
-- "robbed of playing on HL2 for 9 months because I moved into a room with no net connection and offline mode was broken"
All I can say is, that was really inconvenient that you couldn't figure out a way to connect to the net for 9 frickin' months. The only answer is "DOH, shoulda thought about that possibility before buying through Steam!" I don't know what to say since it's kind of a given that the way Steam works requires some net connection in some period *less* than 9 months!! Again, I've never had a problem with offline mode working for me. It often goes into offline mode when it doesn't connect to the servers fast enough after logging in.
-- "It's the same with DVDs too now"
You are over-exaggerating. Yeah, get the pirated DVD, and it's like videotape on DVD. If you don't care about the video or sound quality, just keep buying pirated DVD's because you obviously don't care about the features of the DVD format. Not to mention missing extras on the pirated DVD. All those things make the legitimate $15 (!!) DVD well worth it even IF you have to channel-skip or fast-fast-fast-forward past the starting trailers and warnings. One of those two always works for me, so I don't get the big deal.
Yeah, and Blizzard had nothing to do with the fact that I haven't bought an Xbox 360 and have absolutely no plans to buy the PS3 or Wii.
I'm a longtime PC gamer, and Warhammer is boring to me. Not everybody will be into it, but that doesn't mean PC Gaming is dead. I think this is big news for Warhammer fans, and that's about it (although I know no PC gamers who are Warhammer fans).
I like WoW for the whole MMORPG experience, and I see nothing on the Xbox 360 or PS3 that comes close. I have a friend who's been trying to get me to buy an Xbox 360 for months, and he can't give me a good reason to buy one considering I like MMO's. He's an Xbox 360 gamer purely for eye candy, and that's not the kind of gamer I am.
Not to mention that I'm not the kind of gamer who takes over the living room for myself when nobody else wants to watch me play games. I have a wife and 3 kids with far different interests than the games I play.
Consoles just don't work for guys like me, and with the gamer demographic constantly increasing in age, there are more and more gamers like me. The only thing that would come close to replacing my gaming laptops would be a handheld like DS or PSP with built-in networking for some kind of (good) MMO. I'd buy that...
The real question is how long can you work with the default settings of XP, which service pack version of XP are you talking about, and if you are even using it to access the Internet.
Anecdote:
I've set up Windows XP computers at work LITERALLY thousands of times. If I let a Windows computer install by itself while plugged into the network (with Internet access) so it finishes the install while I'm at lunch (for one hour), it will be infected with a virus by the time I get back from lunch. That's how great the "default settings" are in Windows XP.
Believe me, if you're using the "default settings" of Windows XP SP-anything, it's only a matter of time before that computer is screwed...
If you put your laptop to sleep a couple of times a day, and have no problem coming out of sleep or hibernate modes, then you are unique.
We have 45 salespeople with laptops who put their Windows laptops to sleep all the time without problems, but that's only because they shut down or restart once a week to avoid freezes, etc.
We have about 4-5 Mac laptops over the last 6 years that are always left in sleep mode, and I'm talking continuous sleep mode for up to a year at a time. We've never had a problem with Mac laptops going into or coming out of sleep mode.
Of all the salespeople we have with Windows laptops, many, many of them tell me how they close the lid of their laptop to put it to sleep, put it in their briefcase, then go to a customer or home (at the end of the day), and when they get to their destination, their briefcase is 150 degrees F because their laptop didn't actually go to sleep. And, either this causes a freeze-up, automatic shutdown because the laptop couldn't stay running with the screen on for more than 45 minutes, or it generally concerns me and them that the screen or hard disk could get screwed up. That hasn't with the Mac laptops in about 7+ years.
If you've never had problems like I'm describing, then you are very lucky or just have a new laptop (less than 6 months old). I'm telling you, however, that most people who use Windows laptops do have these problems and just live with them.
[rant]
If you don't think that Windows drivers can get corrupted on desktops, laptops, and servers for no real reason, causing bluescreens and general hard crashes, you haven't used Windows for very long. Why else would people like me have to reinstall drivers on Windows computers/servers even though the computer is never shut down or rebooted?
What's amazing with Windows is how you can use 3 apps on a Windows machine for 6 months, and have problems like these even though you never change anything after you initially set it up. I have a Windows desktop at home that I use to browse the web and play 3-4 different games, all of which were installed from the beginning. Everything else I do on our Mac laptops and computers. So, I use that desktop 2-3 times a week, maybe 10 hours a week. It should work the same way on day 180 that it worked on day 1, right?
Wrong.
Nothing has changed except installing high priority Windows patches (which you can't avoid) -- nothing else has been installed, and the games were patched only on day 1. But, boot and login times are slow, and I'm having video choppiness in some, but not all the games.
And, I'm not some idiot who doesn't have antivirus installed from day 1, or who would install miscellaneous crap without knowing it. Everything is the same, but Windows just *degrades* over time from continuous unchanging use. It shouldn't, but it does. So, even with a computer like that, I know I'm going to be reinstalling Windows a year after day 1. That's better than the 3-6 months I get with other Windows computers that are heavily used and changed, but still, why does Windows just fall apart while other OS's don't?
And, don't tell me it's because we install so much more crap in Windows than on other machines because we can. I've had Windows servers that are set up, locked down from day one, don't change, run 24x7, and then their video or ethernet drivers get corrupted causing a bluescreen that won't go away until I reinstall the drivers.
[/rant]
Sorry about that, but a lot of us on Slashdot have a lot (and I do mean a lot) of experience with the Windows frustrations that some people think are myths...
What, like a Walkman?
It's funny how the original post is reflective of how ubiquitous the iPod has become. I'll throw in my own anecdote:
I fly about 15 times a year for business. In the last 6 months, out of about 8 flights, only 1 has told the passengers they can now turn on/off their "portable electronic devices". The rest of them told us we could now turn on/off our "iPods and other portable electronic devices". It didn't even occur to me until maybe a half hour after the first time I heard it. They just assumed most of us who had small electronic devices had iPods.
The fact is, most people won't even consider iPod alternatives. The reasons are varied, but for me it's because I've owned 4 MP3 players, including one Creative, before the two iPods I've bought (one is 3rd generation, and the latest is 5th generation), and every one of them sucked for a handful of reasons. Each one sucked for a different set of reasons, but they all sucked for more than one or two reasons.
I just got tired of wasting my money on "iPod alternatives", so I don't even consider them any more. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
On the integrated graphics, I think the MacBook has the same integrated video the Mac Mini has, which I've been using for about a month. I've tested dozens of apps in Mac OS X and Windows on my Mac Mini, and the integrated graphics performed WAY better than I expected. The only recent game I had any problem running because of the graphics was Doom 3. Half Life 2, World of Warcraft (Win and Mac) both ran comparable to my Powerbook with ATI Radeon 9700 and my AMD desktop with NVidia 6800GT.
We use Solidworks for engineering our products at work, and I showed one of our engineers how it ran on the Mac Mini in Windows XP with a very complex 400mb model, and we were both quite impressed. Especially considering it's an $800 computer, and he needs a $2500 computer to get noticeably better 3D video performance ($750 of that is a high-end workstation card).
Anyway, the point is, don't just write it off because it's integrated video. Not all integrated video is created equal...
Pretty weird comments here about how "bad" Vonage's service is.
I've used Vonage in my house for a year. In my house, I have a 17 year-old, 14 year-old, and a wife with all her family overseas (in Vietnam). Needless to say, we have heavy phone usage. So heavy that it only took a year for most of the numbers to be rubbed off the buttons of the phone, and the earpiece is similarly rubbed down (cordless phone).
I use Comcast cable Internet in California with 6 mbit down, 768 kbit up connection. Half of that year I had 2mbit down and 256k up on my Internet connection, but upgraded this year. I'm a computer/I.T. geek, and use the Internet connection *heavily*. I run a web/backup/mail server for 4 domains in my house office over this connection. Both teenagers use the Internet heavily as well (music, movies, etc.), although not quite as much as me.
All this stuff has worked flawlessly over the last year except for two incidents when Comcast had big latency problems, which caused voice delays with our phone. That was a little bit painful, but not a big deal for any of us since the problems were resolved in a day each time by Comcast.
My point? A person who has real broadband plugs in the Vonage box, and generally has good, idiot-proof, plug-and-play performance. There are idiots who are going to try to use Vonage over crap DSL connections, and of course it'll be Vonage's fault because they don't know how crappy their connections really are. I've never met any non-techie who had DSL that actually verified what they were being told their connections speeds are -- techies like me do, and I get what I pay for.
The truth is there's no way to know how many of these complaints are due to ISP problems or just plain underhanded ISP practices. SBC and MSN DSL both lie to their users about the real bandwidth they are getting -- they oversell their bandwidth to get more customers, lower prices, etc. Maybe you could say they were isolated incidents, but I've talked to literally dozens of people I work with who are surprised to discover how they're not getting what they're paying for.
Anyway, I think the point is that if broadband companies won't be honest with their customers about their real available bandwidth, the government needs to step in to deal with it.
Companies like Vonage are going to continue to get black eyes if they have to depend on their customers buying their products/services based on specs that are out-and-out lies.
Uum, adoption (and sales) of Vista will absolutely CRAWL.
Microsoft isn't that stupid...
I've worked in I.T. in a small to medium business for 15 years. I've seen all kinds of "snobs" as described in this article, and not just I.T. people.
Years ago, the stereotype belonged to UNIX gurus. But, along the way, I've seen almost every kind of contractor act in similar ways, some worse than others. The difference is those contractors are preceded by nice, friendly salespeople. Usually if the contractor is an ass, you can just go back to the salesperson and request you never have to hear from that contractor again. That pretty much guarantees an attitude adjustment on the part of the ass in question.
The problem here is generally those Linux gurus are not preceded by nice, friendly sales reps. But, if they work for a company in the same way as I described above, you just go through the same thing to get him banned from ever coming back to your company. Unfortunately, the article doesn't detail how these people came into contact with the snobs in the first place.
If you come into contact with one of these guys just based on what you heard, it probably will be hit-and-miss, just like any other contractors. Those independent guys won't get much business because they don't have nice salespeople to deal with customers who had to talk to them on their bad days. Face it, all of us technical people have bad days when we don't work/play well with others.
If you are an independent Linux guru, you ALWAYS have to remember when dealing with customers considering Linux that you are also the salesperson. It's just like the bad-old days when the only people selling the greatness of the Mac were advocates like me.
Based on my experience with colleagues in other companies in the last year, we are entering/in a golden time for Linux growth in a big way. Auditors and consultants everywhere are actually rewarding I.T. people like me for moving away from Windows toward Linux. Some are actually recommending it.
I haven't seen the current level of pro-UNIX (now basically pro-Linux) attitude in probably 8 or more years in I.T. -- 4 years ago, these people were attacking us for using UNIX anywhere instead of Windows, so I was constantly on the defensive. Today, it seems to mostly be a no-brainer that we want our mission-critical apps to run on Linux or UNIX.
When I told service vendors (IKON, for example, but many others) 2 years ago that I wanted their server or appliance apps running in Linux/UNIX instead of Windows, they were surprised and said they'd try but most of the solutions were Windows-only. Today, when I tell them the same thing, their response is that they are porting their apps to Linux, and it's only a matter of time. When I ask when, their selling point ends up being the release date of their app on Linux.
All I can say as a past and current Mac OS X/Linux/UNIX advocate is to remember why you work on Linux in the first place, and set your attitude accordingly when dealing with potential new "customers" of Linux. Hopefully I'm not wrong in assuming that Linux "gurus" work in Linux because they love it and/or open source. You show that attitude to newbies, and you can't go wrong. And in the end, we're all better off.
OK, if we're going to post bits of text from other sites, lets post the whole thing.
It is possible that between Woz, Jobs, and Bushnell, somebody isn't remembering it right. It was decades ago, after all.
Even if Jobs screwed over Woz, they were kids. I remember when I was that age, I did a few things that I am ashamed of today, some of them having to do with money. And, what I did back then has nothing to do with the kind of person I am today or have been for the past 15 years.
In other words, as you grow old you do in fact realize that people change. People can and do change.
Woz's Response To Jobs Question:
Q From e-mail:
I was in Barnes & Noble last night and stumbled onto a book by Gil Amelio which detailed his "500 days at Apple." I think his book was called "On the Firing Line." Anyway, given my interest in reading your comments in the wake of "Pirates," I looked up references to you. In one, he recounts your explanation of the Woz/Jobs friendship rift. He asserts that you told him that way back in the 70s, before the Apple I, you were working on something for Atari with Jobs. You did all of the work, and you and Jobs were supposed to get $1000. When you produced the product, Jobs gave it to Atari and came back to you with $300, saying all he got from them was $600. You didn't find out until the mid-eighties that Jobs actually did get $1000, and he ripped you off. Can you confirm this story?
WOZ:
I don't like to stir up old things that carry a negative note, but Steve was actually paid more like $3000 or $5000 or something. Nolan Bushnell, who paid him, gave the amount in a recent book, "Silicon Valley Guys." I was actually sort of thankful that Gil got it wrong, because it didn't sound as attrocious as it really was.
To clarify, this happened before Apple, when Steve and I were best friends with little to our names. Steve said we'd split it 50/50. If he'd just said that I could have $50 for doing it I would have done it anyway for the fun and honor of designing an arcade game.
You can see why I cried deeply when I found out the truth. I get hurt and cry very easily when people don't treat others well, or when the "right" thing isn't happening. Also, Steve doesn't remember the incident this way, so consider another possibility: that those saying the payment was large could be remembering it incorrectly. This is old stuff, and it's best not to use it as an indicator of Steve today.
From what I've seen, Parallels is just VirtualPC without the CPU emulation. Maybe like VMWare on Windows. And, honestly, as an I.T. person of over 15 years, VMWare is only good for testing configurations, software, etc. It's not really good enough for real work.
I agree that the ideal is to be able to run Windows and OS X apps in OS X without having to boot Windows. That's why WINE is the best solution for people like us, maybe even Codeweavers Crossover Office, once they come out with it for OS X.
We've been using CXOffice Pro for a few months in SuSE Linux, and it is very nice -- makes it so the user can hardly tell they're not using Windows.
There is the complication of application compatibility in WINE (or CXOffice, which is based on WINE), though. I can run quite a few Windows apps directly in OS X using Darwine right now:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/darwine/
Lotus Notes 6.x compatibility is broken in it again, though (damnit!). That's really the only Windows app I need to run that I can't run in Mac OS X (Notes Admin/Designer).
Pretty cool to install and run WinZip in Mac OS X, though.
For compatibility and speed, though, dual-booting Windows XP using Apple's Boot Camp on my Mac Mini is the best way for me to get my work done for now...
Has anyone tried installing or even booting up off of a Linux install CD/DVD after installing Boot Camp?
I heard a few people complaining here on Slashdot that Apple is ignoring the Linux community with this Boot Camp beta, although a lot of people pointed out that a few distros already had EFI boot capability.
I got a Mac Mini last night, installed Boot Camp, installed and reinstalled WinXP several times trying to figure out what partitions would work for my purposes. That took until well past midnight, so I'm finishing up setup for OS X and WinXP this morning at work, since this is for work (where the only Windows app I ever, ever have to use is Lotus Domino Admin and Designer since they dropped Mac support after R5).
We use SuSE Linux 10 Pro on some entry-level desktops and SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 on all our servers. I popped in the SuSE 10 DVD, tried to pick it for booting in the Startup Disk control panel, and it worked! I tried picking it during boot-up, and it also worked. I got it to the point where I could resize the Windows partition to install Linux, and everything else gave no errors.
We have some other odd linux live-boot CD's and even Solaris x86 that we're going to try just for the heck of it. I'm not going to go as far as to install any of them until I've tested the OS X and Win XP dual-booting for about a week, since that would be most useful for our users.
I'm the I.T. Director in a business with about 300 employees world-wide, and the fact that we could boot Mac OS X, Win XP, and Linux on Apple hardware essentially removes all obstacles to purchasing these computers. I've been a Mac fan for 15 years since I started working here, and in the last 5 years it's been virtually impossible for me to convince the President or CEO that in certain cases it makes sense to buy a Mac. The reason has always been that "they don't run Windows".
For guys like me and companies like us, Apple is going to start to see business they haven't seen in years because of what they did yesterday...
The appeal of Linux to students and scientists I'll believe, because it's CHEAP for students, and scientists have very specific veritical market needs and can make Linux work for their uses.
Linux companies (except possibly Novell/SuSE in the past 6 months) do NOT market to desktop and home users. Ask an average desktop/home user if they know what Linux is -- 90% of the time, they've never heard the word. The other 10% have heard the word, but don't have a clue what it is.
Linux companies do not market to business users for anything other than servers. I know, because I'm an I.T. Director heading up the move of our company's entry-level desktops and laptops from Windows and Office to SuSE Linux 10 and OpenOffice. The migration is an uphill battle just from a technical point of view, and I've used Linux for about 12 years at work. No Linux company ever did any marketing to get me to make that decision.
What software runs natively in Linux that does not run natively in Mac OS X? And I'm talking about the average user, not techies. I run Windows XP, Mac OS X, and Linux everywhere, and I honestly have more mainstream software available to me in Mac OS X than I do in Linux. What isn't is not mainstream, runs in Windows, or runs in Mac OS X or Linux using the same OSS -- WINE. There is very, very little OSS that compiles and runs in Linux that I can't compile and run in Mac OS X with similar ease. Most OSS that I compile and run in Mac OS X and Linux already auto-configures for Mac OS X/Darwin automatically to ease the compile process.
I don't know of any non-server software that runs natively in Windows and Linux, but not OS X -- maybe you can list some?
On Linux dev support from Apple, how many people buy a UNIX-based Mac to run Linux??? Do you think it makes sense for Apple to support that very limited number of users?
The fact is that Intel Macs running Macs OS X UNIX and Windows XP in a dual boot setup really divides the *NIX community. Why? Because if you can dual boot Windows XP with your favorite *NIX OS, why would you triple boot Windows XP, Linux, and UNIX (unless, of course, you're a developer)?
Most people like me who use Mac OS X and Linux and appreciate both, will choose one or the other to dual boot with Windows XP. And guess which *NIX OS people like me who already own a Mac will choose? Hint: I won't run Linux on my Macs, and I have no desire to. And, I'm very sure that people who really want Linux (and aren't just using Linux like me because we have to dual-boot Windows for work) have no desire to use Mac OS X, and won't buy a Mac to dual-boot Windows XP and Linux.
To me, and I'm sure to Apple execs, this makes the Linux on Mac question very clear...
And on the other side of the same coin, the people who do prefer to watch new movies at the theater instead of DVD at home are still going to do so even if they have the choice from day 1 when the movie is released.
The movie theater experience appeals to those people that all of us are complaining about -- people who want to go out with a group of friends to watch a new movie are extremely unlikely to stay at home watching it on DVD. And, the extra money is worth it to them.
Those kids would rather leave their homes/parents behind to go watch the new movie in total freedom with their friends -- it's a social thing a lot of us Slashdotters don't get. I also know plenty of people in their 20's who don't yet own a house or nice home theater system, and they'd much rather get out of their crappy apartment to meet with friends and watch the movie in a nice big theater. I know that's the way I was in my early 20's toward the end of college and even after when I had a crappy entry-level job paying for my crappy apartment/room.
Now, I own a house, have 3 little kids, have a nice big/loud home theater system, and there's no way I'll go to the theater to watch a new movie unless my 4-6 year-olds push me to. Often we just can't because of our 1 year-old, but they deal with it because what's a 3-6 month wait for the DVD to a little kid?
So, having kids and a nice home theater (and my own house where I won't tick off the neighbors with loud sound), I go to the theater only on very special occasions, maybe once a year. However, being a teenager or college student, you have very good incentive to go to the theater, for a variety of reasons.
The bottom line is, those two groups of people won't give a rat's butt whether the movie is released on DVD simultaneously with the theater release, or not.
The problem the movie industry creates for themselves by releasing movies to theater and DVD at separate times is the high cost of separate marketing campaigns! I can't tell you how many movies I missed on DVD because they weren't blockbusters I was waiting for (like any Pixar movie) because the DVD marketing campaign didn't get to me.
I see the marketing for the movie when it goes to the theater, think "I gotta get that when it comes to DVD", then never see the marketing when it comes to DVD. Then I end up buying it a year or more later at a bargain price ($9.99-$12.99) when I would have paid $19.99-$24.99 when it came out.
OK, AC, let's just say it doesn't run slower on the same hardware, something you cannot say about new versions of Windows.
On all my Macs, including my Powerbook 12" & 15" G4's, the latest version of OS X runs significantly faster than the prior versions.
In fact, I run OS X on a 5 year-old G3 desktop, and it's much faster than any prior version of OS X was. The early OS X versions were painfully slow sometimes.
That isn't to say that the latest OS X is faster than running OS 9 on an old Mac like that G3 desktop -- you can't compare because the OS is completely different.
Oh by the way, you want to give us some references to articles or forums where others are talking about how slow Tiger is on their PowerBook G4? You can't just make blanket statements like you did without putting forth some evidence.
The problem is that the WoW macros are not scripts. So, a macro in-game just executes a command or set of commands simultaneously when you hit that macro or key. The effect is that you cannot use the in-game macros to script a series of actions, which is what they obviously do not want people doing because it's a limited form of botting.
... you get it -- maybe 1-2 hours to level my Unarmed fighting skill way up.
80-90% of the time when I'm fighting with my feral Druid in WoW, the series of actions I use is mostly the same. If I could script that with a macro, that would be just wrong because I wouldn't be actually playing the game. Not to mention it goes against the social interaction aspect of WoW because I could walk away at any time while leaving my character to auto-fight.
What this guy was doing with keyboard macros was exactly what WoW does not allow you to do with the game's built-in macros, which is script a series of actions so the computer can mostly, if not completely, play the game for you.
It's a very fine line, but it's there, and I agree with Blizzard not allowing macro scripts in-game.
I do not agree with them banning him over this instead of just warning him. That was way too harsh.
Unless they repeatedly warned him in-game one of the many times he was botting (err, sorry, "macro-ing"), and he just didn't see it. I'd say from reading the entire article, it's very possible that he missed an in-game warning. I've received in-game warnings before and almost missed them because of the level of activity in the chat screen.
And, if he didn't respond repeatedly to people talking to him in-game while he was macro-ing and he didn't respond to in-game warnings, he wasn't playing the game, he was botting.
But, how does that give him an unfair advantage over other players? I've done exactly what he described with my Druid -- fighting low-level, easy "mobs" to level up certain weapon fighting skills as far as possible. With my Druid it was "Unarmed" I was leveling up because I was sick of getting my butt kicked if an enemy could disarm me and the Druid had to fist-fight. So, I have to do this over and over and over and over and over
If you've done that kind of repetitive skill leveling, you see the advantage this guy had over me. After a period of time, I got sick of the over-and-over-and-over thing, and left to do something else. How many hours could this guy do it without giving a crap either way? That is an unfair advantage....
Wow, you must be a game company marketing exec, or must have been brainwashed by one!
The fact is that there are a lot of people (especially today) who use Windows PC's AND Mac PC's, but in slightly different settings. For some, it's Windows at work, Mac at home. For others, like me, it's Windows/Linux in the home office, Mac(s) in the living room.
Since I play my games in the living room so I can relax near my family, the TV isn't dedicated to a console box. We use the Macs in the living room for kids stuff and casual home/family/work stuff. The Windows/Linux boxes in my home office are used for hardcore work, servers, and truly solo gaming (late at night or early in the morning when I'm really playing solo).
I play WoW because I can play on any Mac in the living room or any "box" in the home office. Half-Life 2 is worth playing in my home office because I can pick it up and play it any time I decide to game solo.
WoW can be played by casual gamers so it conforms to your schedule (running on whatever PC you have where you are), or hardcore gamers who arrange their lives around their MMO gaming with friends.
I'm seeing the same problems with DDO that the reviewer is seeing, that the game developer seems to be intentionally blocking out certain groups from even playing the game. Not just Mac users, but casual gamers, people who have lives, etc.
The lack of Mac support compared to DDO's prime competitor, WoW, is just one indicator of the fact that DDO is really only made for people who already sit down to play tabletop D&D every week at a scheduled time. Or, at least in drawing gamers into that traditional D&D-style gameplay.
That's fine, but it's not going to get them anywhere near a mainstream audience. I can't see them going beyond the niche tabletop D&D players and possibly DDO LAN parties. That's probably what they want, so I hope the company who developed DDO doesn't expect much revenue, or this will be the shortest-lived MMO in HISTORY.
Obviously, you know nothing about the real military.
s tudy_guide_topics/code_of_conduct/the-code-of-cond uct.shtml
I was in the U.S. Army, and we do not do whatever we're told by our superiors "give or take". There's no give or take involved since the Vietnam War. I know you said "Professional soldiers", but we are talking about the U.S. military, not just any merc.
The U.S. Armed Forces Code of Conduct is taken very, very seriously by all of the members of the U.S. military. All U.S. soldiers are required to know it BY HEART and to understand every word of it, and it's impact on them as a modern soldier.
Read every word of it, since you obviously never have:
http://www.armystudyguide.com/content/army_board_
Pay close attention to article 6: "I will never forget that I am an American, fighting for freedom, responsible for my actions, and dedicated to the principles which made my country free."
Every U.S. soldier is responsible for his own actions, not his superior who ordered him to do something illegal. A soldier who follows an order that is illegal or just plain wrong according to that soldier's morals is just as guilty as his superior who gave him that order.
The bottom line: Any U.S. soldier can refuse to carry out an order if he believes it is illegal, and that soldier's judgement of whether an order is illegal is governed by his own morals.
A robot has no morals, but if this Army robot is just a machine remote controlled by a U.S. soldier, then that soldier will be held accountable for any action by the robot, which is just an extension of him.
Given that freedom that every U.S. soldier has to evaluate the orders they are given, there will still be incidents where soldiers with bad or no morals do horrible things when carrying out their orders.
But, how is it any different when a U.S. citizen decides to take an automatic weapon to a school to gun down a couple of dozen kids?
It all comes down to the morals of the indvidual, regardless of whether the person is a U.S. citizen or soldier. U.S. soldiers are no better or worse than the average U.S. citizen.
Yeah, the difference is that Notes/Domino works on any platform you can buy. Does Exchange?
Didn't think so.
We used Exchange on Windows Server years ago, and now we use Domino on Linux. Server reboots are nonexistent, and sometimes we have a 2 minute downtime to restart Domino.
Instead of saying "As far as I know", just say you don't know.
Deploying a Domino server is simple (simple like 20 minutes after OS install, it's done), given that you have some training. If you manage an Exchange environment, either you have the training, which is all you need with Notes/Domino, or you're self taught, which means you really need training.
Exchange is a high-maintenance nightmare with an easy up-front learning curve, and Notes/Domino is a low-maintenance solution with a steeper up-front learning curve. Exchange sucks you into an increasingly high investment because it looks easy to admin, but (soooo much like Windows Server 2003) it just doesn't work as advertised.
By the way, we have Domino running on $1300 Linux servers that easily serve 100 users each. It's FUD that Notes/Domino has high software/hardware requirements. Compare that with Exchange/Win2k3 server requirements and costs -- the server OS license is $1000-$3000 alone!
There are plenty of ways that I can do better than other players in WoW that isn't considered cheating by Blizzard or most players:
-- I have a 6mbit cable connection, which is really going to allow me to advance in the game much faster than players limited to a modem or crappy DSL connection. Believe me, there are plenty of players out there using modem connections, I've played with them, and I can literally run circles around them while they die over and over, which ends up costing them serious money and time.
-- Having a slower video card doesn't handicap you as much, but does to some extent. You have more control over your video settings to even things out than when it comes to your connection, but it certainly helps to have a top-of-the-line video card that allows me to easily zoom out and see farther away than other players.
-- Getting a guild together made up of high level Real-Life friends gives you a HUGE advantage over other solo players like me. Sure, you can just make the friends online, but it's a lot easier if you already have a group of level 60 geeks (especially family members) waiting to help you almost any time you want. I've been seriously left in the dust because of this many times, ESPECIALLY when it comes to WoW objectives that are mostly based on gold (epic mount, mount, etc.). I've seen players in a guild who would literally give 100-500 gold to members based solely on the fact they are Real-Life family members. Is nepotism any less cheating than buying gold from a gold farmer? I don't think so.
I think the first and especially third points are, by far, the most common way that a random level 1 player can get to level 60 in a couple of weeks. I've moved up a couple of high-end levels (mid to high 50's) in an hour or so each just by tagging along with level 60's who were just bored and wanted to show me how much butt they could kick.
I also think that the fact that getting a big gold hand-out from a family member or simply buying it with real world money shows there are serious flaws in the gameplay of WoW itself. Anything that costs a huge amount of gold or has ridiculous drop percentages is just Blizzard's way of telling you, "Hey, we're scraping the bottom of the barrel in content here, so just bite the bullet and start grindin'!".
Grinding is a substitute for good game content, and WoW has been (and still is) lacking a lot of good game content in the high levels (level 40+) for a long time.
Not to mention how many high level quests are so bugged that you have to wait weeks to do them. Some of the quests allow you to make stupid mistakes that can easily be solved with a bunch of gold, which encourages more gold begging/buying. Many high level quests are blatant in how they expect you to grind or waste huge amounts of time gathering crap to complete the quest. Most people just buy the crap to complete the quest in a few minutes.
The real problem with WoW is that they set up the content so that you can easily advance by cheating. Then they're surprised when people actually do cheat?!?!?
Give me a break, Blizzard, come up with more/better/less buggy content, then you can complain more about cheating (which is probably why you don't hear Blizzard complaining too much about it).
Oh and, in the meantime, if you're going to crack down on cheaters who buy gold from gold farmers, why don't you just start regulating/restricting all sales/transfers/trades of 100 gold or more in the game? Then you'll stop ALL the B.S....
Sorry, but a search on Dice.com is hardly solid evidence of your point. Not to mention that 500 jobs is pretty pathetic, relatively speaking -- I've seen far more than that for the silicon valley, but maybe Dice.com just doesn't have much.
There are a lot of tech service organizations in San Francisco that have been working hard to get our business in the silicon valley, but like somebody else said, the silicon valley companies typically build things (Palm, Apple, HP) or provide services that require a lot of space (Google, eBay) for servers and people.
Any tech business that has any need for building space will avoid San Francisco like the plague -- it's too expensive. We warehouse electronics products (50,000+ square feet) in silicon valley, and there's no way we'd do that in San Francisco.
If anything, companies are moving further south or east toward lower priced areas that are more central to where most of their employees live. In fact, it's not a coincidence that we're moving our North American headquarters, where I work, from the northwest part of the silicon valley to the opposite side of the silicon valley. Most of our customers and employees are located closer to the east or south parts of the silicon valley.
There are definitely tech jobs in San Francisco, but they are definitely a narrow subset of the whole. Most tech businesses, like ours, have been in cost-cutting mode in the last 5 years, and a large part of that is cutting facilities costs, which are sky-high in San Francisco.
As people piled into the bay area in the past 7-9 years, that high facilities cost has spread south from San Francisco to the northwest silicon valley. Sure, the silicon valley is rebounding and 2005 is the first year in 5 years where we had a net increase in jobs (according to the SJ Business Journal), but we now have 4 business neighbors around us where 7 years ago it was 19. All those other buildings have been vacant for 4 years. Those tech businesses never came back.
I own a house in the northeast silicon valley, and the move of employees and businesses to the east silicon valley (and beyond) has more than tripled the value of my house in the last 5 years. Land developers are building like crazy using all the vacant lots for commercial and residential buildings (lots that supposedly have been vacant since the orchard/farm days 15-20+ years ago).
Before that I rented a house in Sunnyvale (near where we work), and to buy that house or others in the area 7 years ago was incredibly outrageous. If you look at any map of property value increases in the silicon valley, it's centered in the east and northeast silicon valley -- because that's where businesses and employees are moving to save money.
You don't see a lot of development here in the Sunnyvale area, because it's mostly developed and there's really nowhere to expand. Where I live in the northeast silicon valley, I can drive one mile to find farms, horses, cows, and everything else you'd expect to see in a rural area. There's *plenty* of room to expand, so that's where everybody is going.
Yeah, and as any person who lives in South San Francisco will tell you, it's not San Francisco.
I've lived in the south bay for 16 years, and we have more biotech customers in the east bay than in the peninsula area.
It's really not confusing -- SuSE Linux, for example, installs on any server, laptop, or desktop computer we have at work with NO additional drivers needed. Everything works. Compare that to installing Windows XP, and spending an extra half hour finding and installing a huge number of system-specific drivers. That easily takes a half hour on the average machine.
What do you mean by "devices without ANY Linux drivers"? There are plenty of devices that you can't download drivers for, but they work just fine in Linux. I don't think that's bad, is it?
The only real problem area for Linux today is wireless cards, mainly because NDISWrapper is such a pain in the butt to use. If you don't mind using it, though, then even that's no problem.
The reality is that there is obscure hardware out there with drivers only for Windows and nobody in the Linux community has bothered to write drivers. At the same time, those wonderful Windows drivers for that obscure hardware are often crappy and the cause of a large number of Windows problems.
This thing with the drivers is just like the huge Windows myth about all the software available. The reality that every Windows user finds out after they buy their computer is that a LOT of that software they thought they could use because it's "Designed for Windows" won't work because their computer doesn't meet one of a long list of requirements (and I don't just mean disk space or memory) or because it has a problem with some other software they have installed. Believe me, I've run into plenty of walls with Windows (pun intended) where I could not have two pieces of software installed.
The whole argument behind using Windows because of the huge base of available software and drivers is just a giant lie that nobody wants to admit to because it would mean they admit they got screwed when they bought their computer.
At the end of the day, every typical computer user ends up using 3-5 pieces of software and 2-3 pieces of hardware with their computer because that's what they've found works. Once they have it working like that they leave it alone because they've been burned in the past by some software they installed just for the hell of it, and it hosed their computer.
For example, I hear this guy asking a salesperson at the local computer megastore about which USB hub to buy for his computer because he needs 3-4 USB ports, but only has 2. The salesguy tells him he'd be better off adding a USB card to his computer, because it's cheaper. The customer tells him he's never opened his computer and doesn't want to.
Most PC owners are like that, and they're not using USB video encoders because their video cameras use firewire. I can also tell you that those same people would rather buy a whole new computer with firewire than open their computer and add a $10 firewire card.
The reality is the whole driver and software availability issue with leaving Windows is just smoke and mirrors hiding the fact that these poor people don't want to go through the pain they went through when they started using (Windows) computers in the first place.