It's not quite the same, but the WoW addon community kind of works like this. We develop addons for a variety of reasons, though often it's because the default game does something we don't like or doesn't do something we want it to do.
Some addons end up only being useful to the original authors, many are complete crap, many are duplicates of other functionality, many are quite useful for their intended purposes/niches, and a few of them are absolutely game-changing.
Two MMO-type worlds I can think of that do have the "user generated content" are "There" and "Second Life". The odd thing with There was that in order to develop content, you had to spend "There bucks" which often translated into having to spend real money using RMT. Second Life seems to be totally about the micro transactions, but from what I can see developing content doesn't actually cost you money (in game or RMT).
I messed around with "There" a bit... wrote an autopilot using Perl... was entertaining, but other than playing games of spades and exploring around a bit, I didn't really get much out of it. I tried Second Life... for like 6 hours... In that time, I ran into WAY too much cyber sex stuff. It was just plain uncomfortable, and I never went back.
Tried EVE... Never got a chance to get bothered by the brutal anything-goes PvP, cuz the initial grinding was so incredibly tedious. Set up a skill to train and log off... BRILLIANT!
I'll stick to raiding Ulduar for now... got ROFLPWONED by Iron Council our first time there... read up on strats, ready for another try.
While some Americans seem to have trouble with some "Britishisms"; I think there's a rather large and dedicated "Brit-com" fan base here who either have no problem with them or to whom a bit of cultural "went over my head" doesn't detract from their enjoyment too much.
As I grew older, I never lost my love of British television. (I think that Spaced is possibly the second funniest TV series I've ever watched... next to Red Dwarf.
At any rate, I am by far not the only American who enjoys British television and humor (though I may be a bit on the extreme end, owning a region free dvd player with PAL to NTSC conversion and ordering regularly from amazon.co.uk). While I do understand that some folks may not quite get it or like it, my point was not to underestimate the size and loyalty of potential fan base here.
I have a theory that the real reason lots of folks are buying netbooks is because it's the one place they can walk into a store and walk out with a product with Windows XP (instead of Vista) pre-installed.
Ok, it's not a very good theory... but it's mine and I own it, and what it is too.:)
Seriously though, back when MS didn't take netbooks seriously, Linux was cheapest/easiest for OEMs to go with. Once MS decided to bring their weight to bear, I'm sure there were the "you WILL stop preinstalling Linux and you WILL preinstall XP, right?" kind of back-room pressure.
In the end, it's a non-story.
IF the US passed a law tomorrow saying that no computer could be sold with an operating system pre-installed, and that people had to buy one to install, MS would still have a big share because lots of folks are comfortable with it. However, over the longer term more and more folks would migrate to Linux; due to either price or just eventual "head-space" familiarity (brand recognition, whatever you wanna call it).
I bought a very nice little Samsung netbook, and it came with Windows preinstalled as well... Not exactly difficult to fix that though, now is it?
Of course, it never quite occurrs to them that the more obnoxious they get with their ads, the more people who will resort to blocking technologies.
Back when ads were just simple banner images without all the annoying pop-up, pop-under, flashing, and annoying sounds, I didn't really mind them. As they started adding those annoying features, I went out of my way to actively block them.
From that point on, just about ANY ad on a web page (except for the non-annoying google text ones) pretty much turns me off from the advertiser... if I could see them which I pretty much don't due to the aforementioned blocking.
By definition, anyone who is willingly blocking advertisements is probably among the vast majority of people who are NOT likely to click through anyway. If I were an advertiser, I'd be glad they were out of the pool. Of course, I'm pretty sure most web advertising providers charge by impression (cuz they'd go broke if they charged for actual results.
The real money in Internet advertising isn't in having your ad be successful, it's in providing services to those who THINK they're going to make money advertising their wares.
Ahh, but if you have enough wind turbines distributed over large and varied areas (East, west, and gulf coasts), I'd think that you'd never have a situation where all such areas were becalmed.
Just have to go massively parallel... heck a Beowulf cluster:p
To me, the idea of such a massive amount of clean power would make some of these "hydrogen economy" ideas feasable.
Of course, being a programmer, I have a "belt and suspenders" mentality too: so go for lots of really big solar farms too, just to cover the bases.
Excellent point. The problem with the iPhone is that without jailbreaking, you can only EVER do to your iPhone what Apple will allow.
Google is not being evil here. The phone's wide open as you say... Google has every right to determine what they will and won't allow in their store. The difference is that you can easily work around it without having to violate the DMCA or risking that google will kill your phone the way Apple does.
MacOSX has worse than deficiency of people who criticise as they have people who actively criticise the critics and even attempt to silence them. MacOSX has a deficiency of people who listen and act on it....just to put it out the way I see it.
Indeed. It's called "Steventology", and it's just annoying.
Every OS / environment has its good and bad sides. Often the definition of good/bad is VERY personal.
For instance:
I don't mind using Windows as a user desktop environment... Though there are plenty of things wrong with it (especially Vista), I kind of LIKE the GUI itself.
As a server environment, I LOVE Linux, Solaris, and BSD, but I almost never touch the GUI, preferring a command shell. Just never found a WDM for *nix that I liked enough to want to use as my every-day interface to my computer. (though for server management, that really minimalist one we used to have on some SunOS4 boxes way way back wasn't horrid)
MAC pre-OsX days was just horrible. I HATED supporting them, but honestly, they're not too bad now that they're based on the BSD kernel. However, I HATE HATE HATE the MAC GUI.
What ultimately determines my choices is interoperability and available software. I'd be able to adjust to *nix as a primary os at work, but for home, I've got too much investment in software that runs on Windows (SoundForge, Vegas, Acid, Lightroom, bunches of games, etc...) (yes, Lightroom runs on mac, but as I mentioned I hate the Mac UI), and I refuse to try and wrangle them to work through an emulator.
So, *nix is really great for some things, and not so great for others. That's my own personal opinion, and I can see how folks could be on one far end or another (love / hate it), and that's ok. In the end, the (computer) world is a better place for having so many choices.
This is indeed really good news as previous testing consisted of cutting open the skull and counting the rings.
I kid in part, but I could have sworn that the only way to positively diagnose Alzheimer's was in a post-mortem. If it's possible to detect in the very early stages, before it becomes debilitating, those who have it may get a chance to put some things in order and make their wishes (DNR, Long-term care options, etc) known to loved ones.
My grandfather died of Alzheimer's, but the doctors would never call it that. They mumbled something about "Organic Brain Deterioration" os somesuch (I was only 14 when he died, so memory's a bit fuzzy). We all knew it was Alzheimer's though. Formerly BRILLIANT man just utterly gone. The day I beat him in a game of checkers, I knew something wasn't right, and that probably a year before he showed any obvious signs.
Ok, so the achievement system is real, but it's also a joke... MY BRAIN HURTS.
I will admit that I play WOW, and for the most part, I could care less about the achievement system there. However, there have been some games where I HAVE gone after the achievements for no discernible reason. Ghost Recon and Portal come to mind. I dunno. I guess in a video game, they can help with "replayability" but on Slashdot? ~shrug~
Ah well... At least I knowingly took the bait on THIS April Fool joke. 4/1 is always a bit of a paranoia theater day for me cuz I have some rather mischievous co-workers.
Then you can either be 35 with a degree of 35 without one in four years.
In other words, if getting a degree is something you want to do, then every day you put it off is another day longer before your task is complete.
It took me about 12 years to finish off my stupid 2 year degree due to various life circumstances (in the beginning it was money, later on it was time and dedication). Am I glad I did it? YES! Will it matter to my career? probably not, I've got 10 years professional experience DOING what I got my degree in. For me, it was personal... finishing what I started really.
A 4 year degree in ANY feild is better than no degree no matter what career line you end up in.
I'm currently posting from my netbook (not home at the moment) which has a copy of Steam on it. If I feel like it, I can fire it up and play one of my smaller "timekiller games" like "world of goo" or "Peggle Deluxe" without violating any licenses/rules. When I get home, I can play on my main pc, or my gaming laptop... wherever. I've never had any trouble playing non-online games on Steam while a connection was unavailable either.
Basically, yes, Steam is DRM, but it's actually been beneficial. I've already been through a few computer upgrades and I LIKE that I can just back up the games folders, install on a new computer, and not have to worry that when it calls home it's going to say "Hey, you can't use this, you've already activated elsewhere" like a lot of other modern software.
Just see how many times you can move your MS Office installation from one computer to another (A version with activation, not one of the older ones). Trust me, you carry it through enough upgrades/reinstalls, you eventually get to where you have to contact MS and 'splain 'em why you're activating... again.
As one of those people who donated to you (before in-game reminders... I think) and who has been using Quest Helper since before you rescued it from oblivion, I'm very sad to see that you may not be able to continue to update/maintain it as well due to needing a RealJob(tm)
As someone who has authored and published their own addon, I TOTALLY understand how demanding the user community can be. They're quick with the generalized complaints, but not actual useful info that will help debug the issues at hand. They want everything perfect, free, and NOW, but they often fail to realize that what you're doing is an act of love (in the "I love this game and want to make it even better" sense).
At the same time, I can see how Blizzard is drawing a very strong line in the sand against in-game advertising. Personally, I wish they would allow something like "This addon is supported by donations: www.addonname.com", but I can see how it would take actual manpower to verify that such in game solicitations were not just strawmen for something less benign.
Thank you for all your hard work and dedication thus far and for whatever you do out of the goodness of your heart in the future. I for one will be sending another donation... not as a "keep going" but as a "fee for services rendered", and to show my support for the theory and practice of open source development.
Why would you even spell that out? I bet the NCSE also promotes teaching of water being wet and the sun being a hot thing we orbit.
I'm guessing because it wasn't all that long ago that the Church would have you burned at the stake as a heritic for saying that WE orbit the SUN.../just being pedantic, I actually agree with you, but some folks need it spelled out for them
I've never understood why religious folk have such a hard time with evolution. I mean, can't they just say "okay, fine, evolution is the process, and God is the architect". Far as I can see, that kind of solves it.
I do not recall any teacher or textbook saying that evolution proves that God doesn't exist. (For me, bigotted religious zealots did quite a good job of that all on their own).
I know there are those born again types who fervently believe that the Earth is only 6000 years old so they'll never be satisfied until the schools are beginning and ending each lesson with a prayer and throw out all textbooks in favor of bibles, but cummon, there have got to be SOME sane people in Texas.
... and from the description, the Google solution reminds me a LOT of Zope.
For those who don't know, Zope is a CMS written in Python and the database is pretty much a really big object. (In fact, I think it's technically an OODBMS instead of an RDBMS, but I could just be talking out my arse.
Zope doesn't have a learning curve, it has a learning butte, but once you scratch and claw your way to the summit, the view is kinda nice... It's just that when you get there, you can't help but to notice that there's a whole tour bus of geriatric patients that got a nice air conditioned ride to the same spot on the SQL express.
I'm going to hold out till we get the official release version, but I'm right there with you. I HATE wasted screen real estate and gimmicky gadgets.
I can "de-vista" Vista in about 5 minutes... completely turn off Aero, remove the gadget bar thing, turn on classic menus and interfaces, turn off the UAC, reduce the size of icons on the desktop, and a few other things. It turns out not to be all that bad to use then, but at this point, it is indeed looking like Windows 7 will not be giving us those options.
I'm ready and willing to go Linux, just need that last little push. This may be it.
I've got an easy solution for that: make some folders and group things logically. Works for me. I do NOT want to have to search for my applications. As it stands I've got tons of stuff installed, but I can easily find it all because I spend a little time and thought on organizing my start menu.
You know something? I don't mind Vista that much... know why? Cuz I can turn off all the whisbang crap and still use that start menu just like Windows NT 4, Win 2k, and Win xp (after de-xp-ing it).
I can't stand most of the eye candy they added in Vista. Takes up graphics, cpu, and memory that I don't care to spend.
Honestly, if the interface doesn't give me the option to revert to the classic stuff, it may well push me over to the Linux side. I already got my biggest Wish: UltraEdit is coming out for Linux, There's very little still holding me to Winderz as it is.
"The world would be no poorer if there were no more killergames."
Actually, I was thinking about the fact that the videogame / entertainment industry is one of the bright spots in the world economy during our current recession. So in a very REAL sense, the world WOULD be poorer.
That makes quite a lot of sense actually. (the reason why, not the call for more police powers due to the beating)
I mean even though there's not an American alive today who witnessed the American Revolution, we've still managed to inherit a sense that you've got a fundamental right to defend yourself. Is it really true that in some places, you can be charged with a crime for defending yourself from a criminal attack say, even in your own home? (I don't mean with guns, but just any form of self defense). That is completely foreign to my sensibilities... can't speak for anyone else though.
In some ways, I guess we Americans share some of the legislative silliness. There are plenty of laws on the books here that strive to make something that's already illegal even more illegal, like that's somehow going to matter to someone who has already set their mind to committing a crime, or who commits a crime in the heat of the moment. That kind of knee jerk reaction seems to happen when politicians feel they "gotta do SUMTHIN" (or that the politicians feel their constituents want to see something done. For my money, I still believe that we're better off the less laws they make.
Yep that's very similar to what I said, but in my case, I replaced it with a Home Theater Master... an even more-expensive-than-my-pronto choice, but I haven't regretted it. Those two were the first (and only) remotes I've ever encountered that truly could replace every single one of the dozen or so remotes I had lying around.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not quite the same, but the WoW addon community kind of works like this. We develop addons for a variety of reasons, though often it's because the default game does something we don't like or doesn't do something we want it to do.
Some addons end up only being useful to the original authors, many are complete crap, many are duplicates of other functionality, many are quite useful for their intended purposes/niches, and a few of them are absolutely game-changing.
Two MMO-type worlds I can think of that do have the "user generated content" are "There" and "Second Life". The odd thing with There was that in order to develop content, you had to spend "There bucks" which often translated into having to spend real money using RMT. Second Life seems to be totally about the micro transactions, but from what I can see developing content doesn't actually cost you money (in game or RMT).
I messed around with "There" a bit... wrote an autopilot using Perl... was entertaining, but other than playing games of spades and exploring around a bit, I didn't really get much out of it. I tried Second Life... for like 6 hours... In that time, I ran into WAY too much cyber sex stuff. It was just plain uncomfortable, and I never went back.
Tried EVE... Never got a chance to get bothered by the brutal anything-goes PvP, cuz the initial grinding was so incredibly tedious. Set up a skill to train and log off... BRILLIANT!
I'll stick to raiding Ulduar for now... got ROFLPWONED by Iron Council our first time there... read up on strats, ready for another try.
than ./ ? ... yeah, actually I think Fark and Something Awful have us beat :)
While some Americans seem to have trouble with some "Britishisms"; I think there's a rather large and dedicated "Brit-com" fan base here who either have no problem with them or to whom a bit of cultural "went over my head" doesn't detract from their enjoyment too much.
I grew up watching plenty of British TV including: Dr. Who; The Tomorrow People; Are You Being Served; Monty Python's Flying Circus; The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy; Fresh Fields; May to December; The Prisoner; Benny Hill (didn't like that one so much); Yes Minister; The Young Ones; and more. Maybe I didn't get all the references in terms of cultural significance (who the hell WAS Reginald Maulding; and why were the Pythons so convinced that his naughty bits were particularly naughty?)
As I grew older, I never lost my love of British television. (I think that Spaced is possibly the second funniest TV series I've ever watched ... next to Red Dwarf.
At any rate, I am by far not the only American who enjoys British television and humor (though I may be a bit on the extreme end, owning a region free dvd player with PAL to NTSC conversion and ordering regularly from amazon.co.uk). While I do understand that some folks may not quite get it or like it, my point was not to underestimate the size and loyalty of potential fan base here.
I have a theory that the real reason lots of folks are buying netbooks is because it's the one place they can walk into a store and walk out with a product with Windows XP (instead of Vista) pre-installed.
Ok, it's not a very good theory... but it's mine and I own it, and what it is too. :)
Seriously though, back when MS didn't take netbooks seriously, Linux was cheapest/easiest for OEMs to go with. Once MS decided to bring their weight to bear, I'm sure there were the "you WILL stop preinstalling Linux and you WILL preinstall XP, right?" kind of back-room pressure.
In the end, it's a non-story.
IF the US passed a law tomorrow saying that no computer could be sold with an operating system pre-installed, and that people had to buy one to install, MS would still have a big share because lots of folks are comfortable with it. However, over the longer term more and more folks would migrate to Linux; due to either price or just eventual "head-space" familiarity (brand recognition, whatever you wanna call it).
I bought a very nice little Samsung netbook, and it came with Windows preinstalled as well... Not exactly difficult to fix that though, now is it?
Of course, it never quite occurrs to them that the more obnoxious they get with their ads, the more people who will resort to blocking technologies.
Back when ads were just simple banner images without all the annoying pop-up, pop-under, flashing, and annoying sounds, I didn't really mind them. As they started adding those annoying features, I went out of my way to actively block them.
From that point on, just about ANY ad on a web page (except for the non-annoying google text ones) pretty much turns me off from the advertiser... if I could see them which I pretty much don't due to the aforementioned blocking.
By definition, anyone who is willingly blocking advertisements is probably among the vast majority of people who are NOT likely to click through anyway. If I were an advertiser, I'd be glad they were out of the pool. Of course, I'm pretty sure most web advertising providers charge by impression (cuz they'd go broke if they charged for actual results.
The real money in Internet advertising isn't in having your ad be successful, it's in providing services to those who THINK they're going to make money advertising their wares.
Triple-boxer here... never had that happen to me.
I believe I have smart terrain following turned off. My guess is that one of the "automagical" camera features along those lines is to blame.
Ahh, but if you have enough wind turbines distributed over large and varied areas (East, west, and gulf coasts), I'd think that you'd never have a situation where all such areas were becalmed.
Just have to go massively parallel... heck a Beowulf cluster :p
To me, the idea of such a massive amount of clean power would make some of these "hydrogen economy" ideas feasable.
Of course, being a programmer, I have a "belt and suspenders" mentality too: so go for lots of really big solar farms too, just to cover the bases.
Intriguing at any rate.
Excellent point. The problem with the iPhone is that without jailbreaking, you can only EVER do to your iPhone what Apple will allow.
Google is not being evil here. The phone's wide open as you say... Google has every right to determine what they will and won't allow in their store. The difference is that you can easily work around it without having to violate the DMCA or risking that google will kill your phone the way Apple does.
Indeed. It's called "Steventology", and it's just annoying.
Every OS / environment has its good and bad sides. Often the definition of good/bad is VERY personal.
For instance:
I don't mind using Windows as a user desktop environment... Though there are plenty of things wrong with it (especially Vista), I kind of LIKE the GUI itself.
As a server environment, I LOVE Linux, Solaris, and BSD, but I almost never touch the GUI, preferring a command shell. Just never found a WDM for *nix that I liked enough to want to use as my every-day interface to my computer. (though for server management, that really minimalist one we used to have on some SunOS4 boxes way way back wasn't horrid)
MAC pre-OsX days was just horrible. I HATED supporting them, but honestly, they're not too bad now that they're based on the BSD kernel. However, I HATE HATE HATE the MAC GUI.
What ultimately determines my choices is interoperability and available software. I'd be able to adjust to *nix as a primary os at work, but for home, I've got too much investment in software that runs on Windows (SoundForge, Vegas, Acid, Lightroom, bunches of games, etc...) (yes, Lightroom runs on mac, but as I mentioned I hate the Mac UI), and I refuse to try and wrangle them to work through an emulator.
So, *nix is really great for some things, and not so great for others. That's my own personal opinion, and I can see how folks could be on one far end or another (love / hate it), and that's ok. In the end, the (computer) world is a better place for having so many choices.
Should have called it GladOS
Ok, so by the time this posts, 100 others will have said the same thing :(
This is indeed really good news as previous testing consisted of cutting open the skull and counting the rings.
I kid in part, but I could have sworn that the only way to positively diagnose Alzheimer's was in a post-mortem. If it's possible to detect in the very early stages, before it becomes debilitating, those who have it may get a chance to put some things in order and make their wishes (DNR, Long-term care options, etc) known to loved ones.
My grandfather died of Alzheimer's, but the doctors would never call it that. They mumbled something about "Organic Brain Deterioration" os somesuch (I was only 14 when he died, so memory's a bit fuzzy). We all knew it was Alzheimer's though. Formerly BRILLIANT man just utterly gone. The day I beat him in a game of checkers, I knew something wasn't right, and that probably a year before he showed any obvious signs.
Ok, so the achievement system is real, but it's also a joke... MY BRAIN HURTS.
I will admit that I play WOW, and for the most part, I could care less about the achievement system there. However, there have been some games where I HAVE gone after the achievements for no discernible reason. Ghost Recon and Portal come to mind. I dunno. I guess in a video game, they can help with "replayability" but on Slashdot? ~shrug~
Ah well... At least I knowingly took the bait on THIS April Fool joke. 4/1 is always a bit of a paranoia theater day for me cuz I have some rather mischievous co-workers.
In four years, you'll be 35, right?
Then you can either be 35 with a degree of 35 without one in four years.
In other words, if getting a degree is something you want to do, then every day you put it off is another day longer before your task is complete.
It took me about 12 years to finish off my stupid 2 year degree due to various life circumstances (in the beginning it was money, later on it was time and dedication). Am I glad I did it? YES! Will it matter to my career? probably not, I've got 10 years professional experience DOING what I got my degree in. For me, it was personal... finishing what I started really.
A 4 year degree in ANY feild is better than no degree no matter what career line you end up in.
For me, the pros outweigh the cons.
I'm currently posting from my netbook (not home at the moment) which has a copy of Steam on it. If I feel like it, I can fire it up and play one of my smaller "timekiller games" like "world of goo" or "Peggle Deluxe" without violating any licenses/rules. When I get home, I can play on my main pc, or my gaming laptop... wherever. I've never had any trouble playing non-online games on Steam while a connection was unavailable either.
Basically, yes, Steam is DRM, but it's actually been beneficial. I've already been through a few computer upgrades and I LIKE that I can just back up the games folders, install on a new computer, and not have to worry that when it calls home it's going to say "Hey, you can't use this, you've already activated elsewhere" like a lot of other modern software.
Just see how many times you can move your MS Office installation from one computer to another (A version with activation, not one of the older ones). Trust me, you carry it through enough upgrades/reinstalls, you eventually get to where you have to contact MS and 'splain 'em why you're activating... again.
As one of those people who donated to you (before in-game reminders ... I think) and who has been using Quest Helper since before you rescued it from oblivion, I'm very sad to see that you may not be able to continue to update/maintain it as well due to needing a RealJob(tm)
As someone who has authored and published their own addon, I TOTALLY understand how demanding the user community can be. They're quick with the generalized complaints, but not actual useful info that will help debug the issues at hand. They want everything perfect, free, and NOW, but they often fail to realize that what you're doing is an act of love (in the "I love this game and want to make it even better" sense).
At the same time, I can see how Blizzard is drawing a very strong line in the sand against in-game advertising. Personally, I wish they would allow something like "This addon is supported by donations: www.addonname.com", but I can see how it would take actual manpower to verify that such in game solicitations were not just strawmen for something less benign.
Thank you for all your hard work and dedication thus far and for whatever you do out of the goodness of your heart in the future. I for one will be sending another donation ... not as a "keep going" but as a "fee for services rendered", and to show my support for the theory and practice of open source development.
I'm guessing because it wasn't all that long ago that the Church would have you burned at the stake as a heritic for saying that WE orbit the SUN... /just being pedantic, I actually agree with you, but some folks need it spelled out for them
I've never understood why religious folk have such a hard time with evolution. I mean, can't they just say "okay, fine, evolution is the process, and God is the architect". Far as I can see, that kind of solves it.
I do not recall any teacher or textbook saying that evolution proves that God doesn't exist. (For me, bigotted religious zealots did quite a good job of that all on their own).
I know there are those born again types who fervently believe that the Earth is only 6000 years old so they'll never be satisfied until the schools are beginning and ending each lesson with a prayer and throw out all textbooks in favor of bibles, but cummon, there have got to be SOME sane people in Texas.
... and from the description, the Google solution reminds me a LOT of Zope.
For those who don't know, Zope is a CMS written in Python and the database is pretty much a really big object. (In fact, I think it's technically an OODBMS instead of an RDBMS, but I could just be talking out my arse.
Zope doesn't have a learning curve, it has a learning butte, but once you scratch and claw your way to the summit, the view is kinda nice... It's just that when you get there, you can't help but to notice that there's a whole tour bus of geriatric patients that got a nice air conditioned ride to the same spot on the SQL express.
I think I had a point in there somewhere.
Oh yeah, I remember now... GET OFF MY LAWN!
I'm going to hold out till we get the official release version, but I'm right there with you. I HATE wasted screen real estate and gimmicky gadgets.
I can "de-vista" Vista in about 5 minutes ... completely turn off Aero, remove the gadget bar thing, turn on classic menus and interfaces, turn off the UAC, reduce the size of icons on the desktop, and a few other things. It turns out not to be all that bad to use then, but at this point, it is indeed looking like Windows 7 will not be giving us those options.
I'm ready and willing to go Linux, just need that last little push. This may be it.
Thank you. The information provided makes me sad, but I thank you for it anyway.
~sigh~
I've got an easy solution for that: make some folders and group things logically. Works for me. I do NOT want to have to search for my applications. As it stands I've got tons of stuff installed, but I can easily find it all because I spend a little time and thought on organizing my start menu.
You know something? I don't mind Vista that much... know why? Cuz I can turn off all the whisbang crap and still use that start menu just like Windows NT 4, Win 2k, and Win xp (after de-xp-ing it).
I can't stand most of the eye candy they added in Vista. Takes up graphics, cpu, and memory that I don't care to spend.
Honestly, if the interface doesn't give me the option to revert to the classic stuff, it may well push me over to the Linux side. I already got my biggest Wish: UltraEdit is coming out for Linux, There's very little still holding me to Winderz as it is.
"The world would be no poorer if there were no more killergames."
Actually, I was thinking about the fact that the videogame / entertainment industry is one of the bright spots in the world economy during our current recession. So in a very REAL sense, the world WOULD be poorer.
So there Herr Killinzejoyyen.
That makes quite a lot of sense actually. (the reason why, not the call for more police powers due to the beating)
I mean even though there's not an American alive today who witnessed the American Revolution, we've still managed to inherit a sense that you've got a fundamental right to defend yourself. Is it really true that in some places, you can be charged with a crime for defending yourself from a criminal attack say, even in your own home? (I don't mean with guns, but just any form of self defense). That is completely foreign to my sensibilities... can't speak for anyone else though.
In some ways, I guess we Americans share some of the legislative silliness. There are plenty of laws on the books here that strive to make something that's already illegal even more illegal, like that's somehow going to matter to someone who has already set their mind to committing a crime, or who commits a crime in the heat of the moment. That kind of knee jerk reaction seems to happen when politicians feel they "gotta do SUMTHIN" (or that the politicians feel their constituents want to see something done. For my money, I still believe that we're better off the less laws they make.
Yep that's very similar to what I said, but in my case, I replaced it with a Home Theater Master... an even more-expensive-than-my-pronto choice, but I haven't regretted it. Those two were the first (and only) remotes I've ever encountered that truly could replace every single one of the dozen or so remotes I had lying around.