No, I think GGP was onto something. Take World of Goo for instance. Assuming you aren't already trained in structural engineering--or even if you are--how quickly you pick up on concepts, and how well you integrate them into your long- and short-term planning, and how well you remember those skills again later, these are all easily tested with what amounts to a physics sandbox.
Granted, in the game they actually give you the things you need to succeed at the tasks they assign, which is so completely different from public education that you can no longer even draw the analogy, but still--the interactivity and short turnaround, and the need to clear the previous task before you move on make it clear whether or not you're learning.
Suppose your system is some sort of order-taking system. And one of the things it must do is print your name on a mailing label. How do you handle that if the name doesn't _fit_ on the mailing label? Or if there is no name at all? Or if the mailing label printer doesn't handle the name's character set? Or if the postal service for the countries in question have standards for names which are not met?
Actually, I was just thinking about a related problem--TFA says not everyone has a family name, but if you work in an office, for example, you may need to specify for the office workers involved, "What do you call this person? Mr/Mrs/Sir/Madam !%@#!@%$ ?"
The answer is, of course, to delegate that to the person about whom the form is being filled. They've sent themselves mail before, and they know what they want to be called. Let them enter any string they could possibly want in the actual name field, as long as they have a proper ID to back it up, and then have a field below that which has to be readable for the people doing paperwork--possibly only latin characters within a certain character limit, for example, though that's obviously US/Euro-centric.
In the end, having a backup "This has to be formatted a certain way for logistical reasons" bonus field that only gets used in edge cases and pseudo-edge cases isn't really all that hard; the hard thing is knowing that it needs to be done, under what circumstances, and what sorts of values you might possibly be expecting. An article like TFA helps a little bit, but like you said, what about mailing addresses? Or other strange things?
Trust me, if I considered my education complete, or competently done, I wouldn't have written the previous post. I would like to think, in spite of your anger, that I'm aware of that. But somehow, it doesn't strike my intuition as something that I have a way to look research, or to change.
And THAT is what keeps America behind in science. It's not that people don't tacitly acknowledge that we need to find out how to control malaria or land on mars; but who understands it at the time in their life when they're choosing their direction?
I didn't, and now I'm a ways down a different path, and it would be hard to turn back. That's all I'm sayin'.
You make one mistake--I'm talking about the environment I grew up in. Sure, I can look for new fields now, but it's the role of teachers and parents to find the things that interest their kids, and make it accessible. They didn't. So I don't have the background in biochemistry, biology, neurology, etc, that would be needed to go into those fields, because I had no reason as a child to go looking.
Sadly misinformed? Yeah, I know. That was pretty much the whole point of my post.
It's not just whether or not it pays. I would call myself a decently intelligent (and pretty well educated) person; at 25, I can honestly say I never even though of a career in science, not because science itself wasn't interesting, but because:
* School made it seem like anything interesting was already known, and in particular, there didn't seem to be anything that both needed research and was in reach (as opposed to, say, QM or string theory, which might take multiple doctorates to understand fully) * I don't think I ever heard of any research fields that interested me * I have only a vague concept of what it would be like to be a researcher, but it seems unpleasant * There were no engineering challenges, except maybe AI, that I would be interested in sinking my teeth into * There were no companies or organizations doing anything really tasty that I'd want to be a part of
So now I'm hoping to get into game design, which actually addresses all of these concerns, even if it doesn't produce anything of note (by which I mean, in contrast to anything of scientific or engineering import).
I could totally believe, however, that people in third worlds see what we (first-world countries in particular) already know, even get the same textbooks as us, but they don't see their world as being "complete" in the same way I (and other first-worlders, I'm sure) do. They could easily be really motivated to jump on engineering challenges, and they probably have lots of companies doing lots of tasty things that give them an opportunity to do something interesting.
I think every time I post a new position I get 100 candidates more qualified than your dumbass.
I'm going to take a stab in the dark and say either this is an exaggeration by 50-100x, or you really have no way to tell who's qualified for the position. No, he isn't irreplaceable. However, HR managers who believe that good employees (as opposed to line workers) are, in fact, replaceable, are going to send their business into the gutter. Because, frankly, the existence of replacements doesn't mean that YOU will find one.
Because I get the feeling you aren't working for a company everyone wants to work at--not Google or some amazing game studio or anything else really fun. So they won't be coming to you. That means that pretty much every resume you'll get is just someone looking for "a job, any job." Those applicants are not going to be the five-star workers. Probably not even three-star. However, what you're asking for is someone who's at least 3-4 stars, like the submitter claims to be--hard working, competent, learns fast, trying to be professional, actually getting things done, has proven himself, and who has clearly become the go-to guy for these sorts of things.
You don't want a prima donna. Got it. And GP's grandstanding is pretty assholeish. However, if it was you who was in charge of his living or dying, he would be justified in his assholishness (if not in his method), because I'm pretty sure you wouldn't pay him what he was worth. And guess what? Between the two of you, you'll probably be the one who's wrong. Now, maybe the GP is really just trolling businesses and doesn't know Jack Schitt. On the other hand, what he suggested could easily come naturally--because in the big push before a launch, people can get burned out and actually need that kind of incentive to stay instead of being reamed up the ass. And all you just did was screw him out of both fair pay for his current work, and future employment. Thanks.
See, now, this is what I don't get: Google published this, probably after their own lawyers got a look at it, and knowing full well that people were chumming the waters for legal cases. They didn't try to hide anything, and they aren't trying to deceive anyone.
And yet, the vibe I get from their opposition isn't, "we're going to slap you on the wrist for this little unintentional crime you're completely honest about." It's more like, "This prove you're a criminal of the worst kind and deserves to have the book thrown at you."
It's isn't just that it's illogical. They sound like they're panicked about something. If you were to ask me, I'd say that they were getting terrified thinking that there really were honest people out there--not just naive people who only tell the truth "because they don't know better" or because they're suckers--which would shatter certain politicians' world views wholesale. Now they're trying to slander and debase a company that proves that their worldview is a lie, by trying to turn a little truth into a mountain of lies.
Frankly everywhere you see this kind of overreaction to an honest mistake, you should be looking very closely for corruption. Mistakes happen all the time, so the only thing they could really be objecting to is the "honest" part.
Why must decisions always be placed in someone else's hands?
I've been thinking about government lately. Basically what I figure is this: government was in place in order to force at least one person to actually find out the truth and act on it, one person for whom that was their job. However, in the process of finding out and doing, you learn a lot of other things, which actually makes you halfway objective. Prior to the internet age, it was literally impossible for mundanes to both know enough to be objective and still hold down the day jobs required to feed and maintain society.
I figure--and this isn't a rallying speech--that the penultimate or ultimate form of government would be one where the facts are put in place, publicly, with the mechanisms to verify claims, tie them to people, and keep track of reputations, and everyone has access to them. At that point, people are allowed to make choice on their own, and issues of law are determined by an (actual, honest-to-god) educated democracy.
It's not like we're ready for that sort of thing yet, but the internet shows that for once that sort of thing might actually be possible. And frankly, it's a better idea than just being listened to because you were able to get a job in politics. Become known as corrupt, and have evidence showing that, and you're out of the voting pool. Become known as wise, and have corroboration--not merely people fawning over you, but data showing you've been right--and hey, you might actually be able to change something.
In firefox on windows, in an IE tab, running chrome tab opened to a page running SUSE TestDrive (or any other version of Linux in a web browser), which is itself running Lynx.
the problem is often that hollywood wants to take a HUGE hit that has little to no story, and convert it into something it is not (such as doom) or worse, they don't add anything at all to it.. and leave it as a special effects set piece..
Actually, I think the problem is that when the video game is a hit, licensing is huge, and since licensing is huge, the company that gets the licensing has to be huge, and if the company that does the movie is huge and just bought a huge license, they're probably going to try to crank something out that will sell, not one that is going to be a cult classic or--in any other way--a good movie.
If someone came to the writers of a really good video game with a really good movie script, and they just ran with that and said to hell with licensing, and to hell with any studio exec who wants to turn it into some kind of sales piece or show piece or whatever else, they'd do fine. But the situation changes in the minds of profit-mongers when they think they have a sure-fire super-profit machine on their hands, and they seem to screw things up whenever they jump on things like that. So I guess what I'm saying is, don't let them. That's all.
No, I'm pretty sure it would happen in lots of places where otherwise intelligent people are sick and fucking tired of being "sold" a bad situation--and lies.
PR and Marketing are most useful when you don't have good news--for "hard sells". It's not their only use, but it's a big one. The problem is that the easiest way to do hard sells is to lie, cheat, and evade.
For instance, if BP had jumped on this situation and fixed everything in a week or two, PR and Marketing could have run an ad campaign that said, "Hey, when something threatened to become a crisis, we jumped on it, because we're not a shitty company that would just let things fall to shit around us." It would only have run a couple weeks or something though, because nobody would know about it or care. The few people that did might be impressed, though.
However, they DID let things fall to shit around them. Now they have to explain why BP itself should not be seen forever after as the Gulf Oil Spill Disaster Company. But they should be seen as the Gulf Oil Spill Disaster Company--until such time as every single part of the company that was responsible for the disaster (where the disaster is the poor effort, not the actual well breakage) is purged from it and run outta town, and then they can be allowed back at the dinner table. They shouldn't even be trying to sell themselves as responsible (in the good sense of the word) right now, but that's what PR/M is for. And it IS gonna be a Hard Sell.
Again, I know you're trolling, but ffs. There are different levels of geekery needed at different levels of technical requirement, and sometimes, you may not even know you're moving up to the next bracket where things are going to get geekier.
Not every program developed for windows comes with a fully packaged installer, and programs from previous versions have problems like missing dlls, compatibility requirements, or just out-of-the-box, unfixable failure.
Linux takes this steps upon steps further when you come across programs that need to be built--and luckily most come with sane build scripts, but I've run across a "program" that was "distributed" as a flat source file before.
In both cases these are supposed to be things you can do with your computer. You go looking for a program that does what you want, and if you come across this kind of trouble, you either get geeky or get frustrated. They tend to be niche things, but that's why I said, "programmers are allowed to require a certain level of geekiness to get increased functionality". Of course, and obviously, most standard functions will work, barring technical faults or viruses.
And viruses do come up on Windows, and could easily come up more often on Linux. Knowing not to open install packages from shady sources is another "geeky" thing, as is knowing how to operate your antivirus, as are almost all other security concerns--including file backup. Trying to salvage files for someone who didn't know they needed to backup is the family geek's nightmare.
But if something goes seriously wrong with your iOS device, such that it isn't working right anymore, you have pretty much three options: wipe the disk and restore from backup with iTunes (done during syncing every day), take it to the store and have them give you a brand new one under warranty (then restore your files automatically with iTunes), or just buy a new one (then restore your files automatically with iTunes). There is no, and will never be any, "call the local geek and feel like a complete moron while he says how simple the problem is and does a million complex things" option.
Further, to your 'cult-following FUD' declaration: in my entire life I've owned one apple product, and it's neither an iPad nor an iPhone, but the iTouch, which has the lesser qualities of both--small screen and no phone or GPS. It's a decent device and I like it, but I'd need something substantially cooler before I was willing to join ANY tech cult. And, frankly, I'm hoping for that to be an Android device anyway; seems cooler to me.
Unfortunately for you, that doesn't stop me from thinking, or from being able to clearly state what is wrong with stupid arguments like yours.
Wow, a blatant troll at +3 insightful. Well, I suppose it only takes a handful of mods.
1. There is nothing sexy about a crippled CPU with no connectivity.
There is something intriguing, and perhaps sexy from the right viewpoint, about a device that responds instantly and smoothly to your input, and which has consumer-level (finished) applications that look gorgeous. A device that was nothing but "shiny" would have no, or few, practical applications, and any consumer level app is or can be considered a "practical application"--it's something you would pay money to do, use, or have. Or, well, not any, I guess, but I think the size of the market supposes pretty clearly, if only by sheer virtue of statistics, that there are in fact practical applications for it.
2. People can't handle choices. If you give them a device with only a few buttons, then it's like a microwave and they're happy.
I disagree with your oversimplification. A platform like Windows or Linux allows anyone who develops applications to say, "You need to be this geeky to install and use this application." This is by far one of the most straightforward, and yet it is somehow one of the most hotly debated, reversals of the iOS: they do not allow you to jump through hoops in order to get extra functionality, which means that the programmers either have to begrudgingly improve their GUI skills or limit functionality altogether.
The reason is simple--the people they're marketing to will go cross-eyed if you talk to them about a topic they would need to study for months or years to understand at the same level you would, and believe it or not, computers and programming are such a topic. If your life is already computer-centric, understanding computers is no big deal. If your life is centered around construction work, business deals, hair salons, clothing design, or any of the other (completely fucking legitimate) career paths out there, saying "You have to spend months learning computers before this $500 tablet and this particular $2 application become useful to you" is going to lose you customers.
If instead you tell those same customers, "We promise we won't let the programmers do anything that's going to confuse the crap out of you, for instance, try this $2 app that you can start using right away! And there are more that are just as easy!" you now have a customer, and probably more on the way
I mean, in some ways I feel you. I've been a computer user literally longer than I can remember, and the idea of having a tablet that can also have cron jobs and shell scripts running in the background is delicious. But no, dude, don't yell at the Norms for being Normal. Give it a year or two and there will be some kind of really excellent Linux tablet that does everything a geek could ever want. You don't have to try to turn this one into that miracle product. Just let it be.
We also tried to send him to Mars, but the people he appointed to lead NASA didn't do all that well, and their budget stunk. We have to assume this wasn't prescience on his part.
I actually prefer to say "good morning" at any hour of the day, rather than "good evening." If they look at you like you're insane, you can at least make the argument you just woke up. Thinking it's evening all the time strikes me as more of a drunk's behavior instead of a slacker's.
I have no idea whether or not you were joking, but I did actually have the habit of saying "good morning" all day long until a while ago.
Print is dying, my friend. Soon (if not already) everything important will come in a digital format as well as a printed one, and the application doing the printing will be expected to resize and adjust so things look good once printed.
This strikes me as the same printing clusterfuck we've had since the mid '90s. If you were trying to say that there is some brand new problem now, I don't know what it is.
I forget where I heard or read it, but I remember someone telling me that they (like the complete jackass they were) opened game boxes while standing in a store, and without taking the physical media, stole the CD keys. The store now has merchandise that was just stolen still sitting on their shelves--if someone tries to activate the copy they just purchased, they (not the thieves) are seen by the copy protection as the ones trying to get away with something, unless they can prove otherwise. This is an excellent proof that it counts as DRM in the same way shittier mechanisms do.
Of course, some stores are probably savvy enough to notice this and not sell those broken copies, or even to report them to the manufacturer, but I imagine that especially a few years ago, many people got useless copies.
it is a well known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
Slashdot Mirror
No, I think GGP was onto something. Take World of Goo for instance. Assuming you aren't already trained in structural engineering--or even if you are--how quickly you pick up on concepts, and how well you integrate them into your long- and short-term planning, and how well you remember those skills again later, these are all easily tested with what amounts to a physics sandbox.
Granted, in the game they actually give you the things you need to succeed at the tasks they assign, which is so completely different from public education that you can no longer even draw the analogy, but still--the interactivity and short turnaround, and the need to clear the previous task before you move on make it clear whether or not you're learning.
Suppose your system is some sort of order-taking system. And one of the things it must do is print your name on a mailing label. How do you handle that if the name doesn't _fit_ on the mailing label? Or if there is no name at all? Or if the mailing label printer doesn't handle the name's character set? Or if the postal service for the countries in question have standards for names which are not met?
Actually, I was just thinking about a related problem--TFA says not everyone has a family name, but if you work in an office, for example, you may need to specify for the office workers involved, "What do you call this person? Mr/Mrs/Sir/Madam !%@#!@%$ ?"
The answer is, of course, to delegate that to the person about whom the form is being filled. They've sent themselves mail before, and they know what they want to be called. Let them enter any string they could possibly want in the actual name field, as long as they have a proper ID to back it up, and then have a field below that which has to be readable for the people doing paperwork--possibly only latin characters within a certain character limit, for example, though that's obviously US/Euro-centric.
In the end, having a backup "This has to be formatted a certain way for logistical reasons" bonus field that only gets used in edge cases and pseudo-edge cases isn't really all that hard; the hard thing is knowing that it needs to be done, under what circumstances, and what sorts of values you might possibly be expecting. An article like TFA helps a little bit, but like you said, what about mailing addresses? Or other strange things?
Who knows.
Good (and accurate) counter-points, and I do appreciate the defense.
Your comment will go over the heads of many
If you compensate for the refraction, you can still hit them.
Trust me, if I considered my education complete, or competently done, I wouldn't have written the previous post. I would like to think, in spite of your anger, that I'm aware of that. But somehow, it doesn't strike my intuition as something that I have a way to look research, or to change.
And THAT is what keeps America behind in science. It's not that people don't tacitly acknowledge that we need to find out how to control malaria or land on mars; but who understands it at the time in their life when they're choosing their direction?
I didn't, and now I'm a ways down a different path, and it would be hard to turn back. That's all I'm sayin'.
in tact
I'm pretty sure nobody from the publishers have ever been within 100 miles of tact of any kind.
You're looking at the wrong fields, then.
You make one mistake--I'm talking about the environment I grew up in. Sure, I can look for new fields now, but it's the role of teachers and parents to find the things that interest their kids, and make it accessible. They didn't. So I don't have the background in biochemistry, biology, neurology, etc, that would be needed to go into those fields, because I had no reason as a child to go looking.
Sadly misinformed? Yeah, I know. That was pretty much the whole point of my post.
It's not just whether or not it pays. I would call myself a decently intelligent (and pretty well educated) person; at 25, I can honestly say I never even though of a career in science, not because science itself wasn't interesting, but because:
* School made it seem like anything interesting was already known, and in particular, there didn't seem to be anything that both needed research and was in reach (as opposed to, say, QM or string theory, which might take multiple doctorates to understand fully)
* I don't think I ever heard of any research fields that interested me
* I have only a vague concept of what it would be like to be a researcher, but it seems unpleasant
* There were no engineering challenges, except maybe AI, that I would be interested in sinking my teeth into
* There were no companies or organizations doing anything really tasty that I'd want to be a part of
So now I'm hoping to get into game design, which actually addresses all of these concerns, even if it doesn't produce anything of note (by which I mean, in contrast to anything of scientific or engineering import).
I could totally believe, however, that people in third worlds see what we (first-world countries in particular) already know, even get the same textbooks as us, but they don't see their world as being "complete" in the same way I (and other first-worlders, I'm sure) do. They could easily be really motivated to jump on engineering challenges, and they probably have lots of companies doing lots of tasty things that give them an opportunity to do something interesting.
You think you're irreplaceable?
I think every time I post a new position I get 100 candidates more qualified than your dumbass.
I'm going to take a stab in the dark and say either this is an exaggeration by 50-100x, or you really have no way to tell who's qualified for the position. No, he isn't irreplaceable. However, HR managers who believe that good employees (as opposed to line workers) are, in fact, replaceable, are going to send their business into the gutter. Because, frankly, the existence of replacements doesn't mean that YOU will find one.
Because I get the feeling you aren't working for a company everyone wants to work at--not Google or some amazing game studio or anything else really fun. So they won't be coming to you. That means that pretty much every resume you'll get is just someone looking for "a job, any job." Those applicants are not going to be the five-star workers. Probably not even three-star. However, what you're asking for is someone who's at least 3-4 stars, like the submitter claims to be--hard working, competent, learns fast, trying to be professional, actually getting things done, has proven himself, and who has clearly become the go-to guy for these sorts of things.
You don't want a prima donna. Got it. And GP's grandstanding is pretty assholeish. However, if it was you who was in charge of his living or dying, he would be justified in his assholishness (if not in his method), because I'm pretty sure you wouldn't pay him what he was worth. And guess what? Between the two of you, you'll probably be the one who's wrong. Now, maybe the GP is really just trolling businesses and doesn't know Jack Schitt. On the other hand, what he suggested could easily come naturally--because in the big push before a launch, people can get burned out and actually need that kind of incentive to stay instead of being reamed up the ass. And all you just did was screw him out of both fair pay for his current work, and future employment. Thanks.
See, now, this is what I don't get: Google published this, probably after their own lawyers got a look at it, and knowing full well that people were chumming the waters for legal cases. They didn't try to hide anything, and they aren't trying to deceive anyone.
And yet, the vibe I get from their opposition isn't, "we're going to slap you on the wrist for this little unintentional crime you're completely honest about." It's more like, "This prove you're a criminal of the worst kind and deserves to have the book thrown at you."
It's isn't just that it's illogical. They sound like they're panicked about something. If you were to ask me, I'd say that they were getting terrified thinking that there really were honest people out there--not just naive people who only tell the truth "because they don't know better" or because they're suckers--which would shatter certain politicians' world views wholesale. Now they're trying to slander and debase a company that proves that their worldview is a lie, by trying to turn a little truth into a mountain of lies.
Frankly everywhere you see this kind of overreaction to an honest mistake, you should be looking very closely for corruption. Mistakes happen all the time, so the only thing they could really be objecting to is the "honest" part.
Why must decisions always be placed in someone else's hands?
I've been thinking about government lately. Basically what I figure is this: government was in place in order to force at least one person to actually find out the truth and act on it, one person for whom that was their job. However, in the process of finding out and doing, you learn a lot of other things, which actually makes you halfway objective. Prior to the internet age, it was literally impossible for mundanes to both know enough to be objective and still hold down the day jobs required to feed and maintain society.
I figure--and this isn't a rallying speech--that the penultimate or ultimate form of government would be one where the facts are put in place, publicly, with the mechanisms to verify claims, tie them to people, and keep track of reputations, and everyone has access to them. At that point, people are allowed to make choice on their own, and issues of law are determined by an (actual, honest-to-god) educated democracy.
It's not like we're ready for that sort of thing yet, but the internet shows that for once that sort of thing might actually be possible. And frankly, it's a better idea than just being listened to because you were able to get a job in politics. Become known as corrupt, and have evidence showing that, and you're out of the voting pool. Become known as wise, and have corroboration--not merely people fawning over you, but data showing you've been right--and hey, you might actually be able to change something.
It's only a thought for now, though.
In firefox on windows, in an IE tab, running chrome tab opened to a page running SUSE TestDrive (or any other version of Linux in a web browser), which is itself running Lynx.
Now THAT is a browsing experience.
the problem is often that hollywood wants to take a HUGE hit that has little to no story, and convert it into something it is not (such as doom) or worse, they don't add anything at all to it.. and leave it as a special effects set piece..
Actually, I think the problem is that when the video game is a hit, licensing is huge, and since licensing is huge, the company that gets the licensing has to be huge, and if the company that does the movie is huge and just bought a huge license, they're probably going to try to crank something out that will sell, not one that is going to be a cult classic or--in any other way--a good movie.
If someone came to the writers of a really good video game with a really good movie script, and they just ran with that and said to hell with licensing, and to hell with any studio exec who wants to turn it into some kind of sales piece or show piece or whatever else, they'd do fine. But the situation changes in the minds of profit-mongers when they think they have a sure-fire super-profit machine on their hands, and they seem to screw things up whenever they jump on things like that. So I guess what I'm saying is, don't let them. That's all.
No, I'm pretty sure it would happen in lots of places where otherwise intelligent people are sick and fucking tired of being "sold" a bad situation--and lies.
PR and Marketing are most useful when you don't have good news--for "hard sells". It's not their only use, but it's a big one. The problem is that the easiest way to do hard sells is to lie, cheat, and evade.
For instance, if BP had jumped on this situation and fixed everything in a week or two, PR and Marketing could have run an ad campaign that said, "Hey, when something threatened to become a crisis, we jumped on it, because we're not a shitty company that would just let things fall to shit around us." It would only have run a couple weeks or something though, because nobody would know about it or care. The few people that did might be impressed, though.
However, they DID let things fall to shit around them. Now they have to explain why BP itself should not be seen forever after as the Gulf Oil Spill Disaster Company. But they should be seen as the Gulf Oil Spill Disaster Company--until such time as every single part of the company that was responsible for the disaster (where the disaster is the poor effort, not the actual well breakage) is purged from it and run outta town, and then they can be allowed back at the dinner table. They shouldn't even be trying to sell themselves as responsible (in the good sense of the word) right now, but that's what PR/M is for. And it IS gonna be a Hard Sell.
Again, I know you're trolling, but ffs. There are different levels of geekery needed at different levels of technical requirement, and sometimes, you may not even know you're moving up to the next bracket where things are going to get geekier.
Not every program developed for windows comes with a fully packaged installer, and programs from previous versions have problems like missing dlls, compatibility requirements, or just out-of-the-box, unfixable failure.
Linux takes this steps upon steps further when you come across programs that need to be built--and luckily most come with sane build scripts, but I've run across a "program" that was "distributed" as a flat source file before.
In both cases these are supposed to be things you can do with your computer. You go looking for a program that does what you want, and if you come across this kind of trouble, you either get geeky or get frustrated. They tend to be niche things, but that's why I said, "programmers are allowed to require a certain level of geekiness to get increased functionality". Of course, and obviously, most standard functions will work, barring technical faults or viruses.
And viruses do come up on Windows, and could easily come up more often on Linux. Knowing not to open install packages from shady sources is another "geeky" thing, as is knowing how to operate your antivirus, as are almost all other security concerns--including file backup. Trying to salvage files for someone who didn't know they needed to backup is the family geek's nightmare.
But if something goes seriously wrong with your iOS device, such that it isn't working right anymore, you have pretty much three options: wipe the disk and restore from backup with iTunes (done during syncing every day), take it to the store and have them give you a brand new one under warranty (then restore your files automatically with iTunes), or just buy a new one (then restore your files automatically with iTunes). There is no, and will never be any, "call the local geek and feel like a complete moron while he says how simple the problem is and does a million complex things" option.
Further, to your 'cult-following FUD' declaration: in my entire life I've owned one apple product, and it's neither an iPad nor an iPhone, but the iTouch, which has the lesser qualities of both--small screen and no phone or GPS. It's a decent device and I like it, but I'd need something substantially cooler before I was willing to join ANY tech cult. And, frankly, I'm hoping for that to be an Android device anyway; seems cooler to me.
Unfortunately for you, that doesn't stop me from thinking, or from being able to clearly state what is wrong with stupid arguments like yours.
Wow, a blatant troll at +3 insightful. Well, I suppose it only takes a handful of mods.
1. There is nothing sexy about a crippled CPU with no connectivity.
There is something intriguing, and perhaps sexy from the right viewpoint, about a device that responds instantly and smoothly to your input, and which has consumer-level (finished) applications that look gorgeous. A device that was nothing but "shiny" would have no, or few, practical applications, and any consumer level app is or can be considered a "practical application"--it's something you would pay money to do, use, or have. Or, well, not any, I guess, but I think the size of the market supposes pretty clearly, if only by sheer virtue of statistics, that there are in fact practical applications for it.
2. People can't handle choices. If you give them a device with only a few buttons, then it's like a microwave and they're happy.
I disagree with your oversimplification. A platform like Windows or Linux allows anyone who develops applications to say, "You need to be this geeky to install and use this application." This is by far one of the most straightforward, and yet it is somehow one of the most hotly debated, reversals of the iOS: they do not allow you to jump through hoops in order to get extra functionality, which means that the programmers either have to begrudgingly improve their GUI skills or limit functionality altogether.
The reason is simple--the people they're marketing to will go cross-eyed if you talk to them about a topic they would need to study for months or years to understand at the same level you would, and believe it or not, computers and programming are such a topic. If your life is already computer-centric, understanding computers is no big deal. If your life is centered around construction work, business deals, hair salons, clothing design, or any of the other (completely fucking legitimate) career paths out there, saying "You have to spend months learning computers before this $500 tablet and this particular $2 application become useful to you" is going to lose you customers.
If instead you tell those same customers, "We promise we won't let the programmers do anything that's going to confuse the crap out of you, for instance, try this $2 app that you can start using right away! And there are more that are just as easy!" you now have a customer, and probably more on the way
I mean, in some ways I feel you. I've been a computer user literally longer than I can remember, and the idea of having a tablet that can also have cron jobs and shell scripts running in the background is delicious. But no, dude, don't yell at the Norms for being Normal. Give it a year or two and there will be some kind of really excellent Linux tablet that does everything a geek could ever want. You don't have to try to turn this one into that miracle product. Just let it be.
We also tried to send him to Mars, but the people he appointed to lead NASA didn't do all that well, and their budget stunk. We have to assume this wasn't prescience on his part.
I actually prefer to say "good morning" at any hour of the day, rather than "good evening." If they look at you like you're insane, you can at least make the argument you just woke up. Thinking it's evening all the time strikes me as more of a drunk's behavior instead of a slacker's.
I have no idea whether or not you were joking, but I did actually have the habit of saying "good morning" all day long until a while ago.
Print is dying, my friend. Soon (if not already) everything important will come in a digital format as well as a printed one, and the application doing the printing will be expected to resize and adjust so things look good once printed.
This strikes me as the same printing clusterfuck we've had since the mid '90s. If you were trying to say that there is some brand new problem now, I don't know what it is.
That defense needs to win more often.
I forget where I heard or read it, but I remember someone telling me that they (like the complete jackass they were) opened game boxes while standing in a store, and without taking the physical media, stole the CD keys. The store now has merchandise that was just stolen still sitting on their shelves--if someone tries to activate the copy they just purchased, they (not the thieves) are seen by the copy protection as the ones trying to get away with something, unless they can prove otherwise. This is an excellent proof that it counts as DRM in the same way shittier mechanisms do.
Of course, some stores are probably savvy enough to notice this and not sell those broken copies, or even to report them to the manufacturer, but I imagine that especially a few years ago, many people got useless copies.
That's amazing, I have the same combination on my luggage!
Actually, what I was looking for was:
-- The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Well look, if I only have a teaspoon on hand then that's what I measure with.
Honestly, your elitism is quite off-putting. You should be ashamed.
My brains now are leaking out at a rate of 1 teaspoon per quarter fortnight.