However, I will assert that modern shoes are designed such that they do not need extensive breaking in.
I would tend to agree. Having run for a while now as I said I've gone though a lot of shoes and have observed that modern running shoes don't require that much breaking in.
That being said each shoe is different. I don't have any brand loyalty really so I'll buy whatever whenever I need a new pair. And then just wear them as my daily shoe until they 'feel' right.
I'm getting close to, gah!, 40 and as such are pretty comfortable with my current methodology. I just break in any new running shoes by using them as a daily shoe for a while.
Putting a bigger shoe on while running sounds pretty dangerous to me. The last thing I need to be worrying about while my old ass runs is my foot slipping around inside my shoe.
I've been a runner, someone who runs/jogs for the majority of my exercise, since I was a kid. I've always viewed shoes as a means of protection 1st and foremost.
Over the years I've had many different shoes that I've run in. And have always preferred running shoes that are light and broken in. The worst shoes that I ever run in are always the new ones that try to make my feet contort into ways that they aren't naturally.
Once a shoe gets to the point where they are more like my feet than like the way the shoe started as they work best.
...that people see them as an evil faceless corporation (see Slashdots view on Microsoft) and that makes it ok to take from them.
I think it's worth noting here that/.'s views on MS did not spring up out of nothing. Much the same way the RIAA and the MPAA's actions have dictated our views on them.
Is there sometimes some unjustified and over the top bashing of 'evil faceless corps'? Yeah sure. But are MS and other corps/groups evil? Without question.
At least in the US. High speed rail has little to do with our "obsession" with cars. It has to do with the fact that we jumped on the regional airport route back in the 60s.
Rail, unlike planes, has the ability to use electric power vs oil. Which then means the power can come from any number of, more green/less foreign oil type, ways.
You are correct that the infrastructure currently is hugely slanted towards air travel but it's clear you missed part of the point.
Slashdot's moderation system may have its faults, but it is the best damn system I've seen for a website with lots of traffic.
Indeed. I'm regularly surprised that/.'s moderation system has not been copied/implemented in more places. No system is going to be perfect but/.'s does work pretty damn well.
The problem with marketing Linux, or at least *Linux* people marketing Linux, is that they seem to think that your typical layperson will place value in the same things that a technical Linux user does.
So the end user wants a system that just works without getting bogged down in all the technical details. I got ya, we should tailor an ad to raise awareness of FOSS options, Linux in this case, without going heavy into the tech stuff.
What we have here is an overly-vague advert that places emphasis on it being "free and open" and "choices." A typical end-user does not care about these things. They want a complete, integrated product that works. Free and open means little if nothing to these people.
Er...ok...well... I guess we could get a little more technical but the whole message behind FOSS is it being free and open.
What I think your missing is that part of marketing, a big part in fact, is getting your name out there. Name recognition is so very important and making sure that name is associated with the right ideas. Having FOSS, Linux, associated with Free and Open seems like a good plan to me.
Once you get the name spread around then you can work on the technical points. However that is not going to happen in small ads.
At an ISP that I worked for in the 90's we would offer our customers, mind you this is in the hight of dial-up days, a few options for getting them connected. Over the phone support for free. They could bring their machine in and we would set it up in the office for free. Or we would send out a tech to their location for a fee.
The on-location setups fees went to the techs for their gas/time as kind of a bonus. So when one would come up we typically were OK with it. I took one at one point for an older man who I could just not get on-line. IIRC it was a Win3.1/Trumpet setup and just was not wanting to work not to mention I could tell that he just was not that computer savvy.
I get to his place and the poor old guy is in a wheelchair. So I think that well cool, I'm glad that he's embraced the internet. And then the stench wave of stale beer and cigars hits me. I step into the house and it's full on disarray. I mean I'm no stranger to living as a bachelor but I try to put my old beer cans in the trash, empty the ashtrays, and not leave my old pron lying around.
Yes pron. I get to the computer desk and there is even high concentration of Swank and Hustler there. The desktop was filled with links to various pron sites that I had to sift though to find Trumpet. I wanted to just fix it and get the hell out of there but Trumpet was hosed so I had to install the MS DUN upgrade which thankfully worked.
Some time later I had been promoted to the OPs Manager which meant I lead all of the techs too and we got a call from someone who needed to get back on-line. It was me and one other tech sitting in our support office and I was shamelessly eavesdropping on him as he went though the numbers trying to fix the guy. And it dawned on me who he was talking to. He got to the point where he offered to have the computer brought in or send one of us out to which we were asked to come out.
The tech turned to me and asked me if I wanted to go out. We had always tried to make sure we spread the wealth such as it was from such calls. I remember looking at him with a straight face and saying, "No man it's ok, you take that one." He was like cool and went off to fix the guy.
When the tech got back to the office I was unable to keep my face straight when I saw how he was looking at me. He said something to the effect of, "You knew!"
But they will make the switch. Businesses were slow to adopt XP, and even said they wouldn't.
What a difference nearly 10 years makes thou eh? While Win98 was decent keep in mind MS had already laid a huge egg in the form of WinME which did not go over well. (Something they would like us to forget.) As such people were not really all that trusting of MS saying that XP was going to be good.
However XP actually was good. In fact it has been noted to be very good actually, better than Win98 ever was. And here we are again after MS has just laid another egg in the form of Vista. (Vista apologists can leave this post now.) And so now that MS is asking for money because Win7 is going to be so great there is once again a failed trust.
Furthermore WinXP as I mentioned, while having some faults, been very good. I'd go so far as to say it's set the standard as what a modern desktop should act and feel like. Much more than Win98 ever did.
Add into all this the fact that back during the Win98 -> WinXP upgrade cycle FOSS desktops were still not nearly ready for prime time. Whereas now they are. Yet another monkey wrench in keeping people on the MS upgrade treadmill.
MS will never implode in some spectacular fashion but rather it will be a slow decay. That businesses have an actual viable FOSS alternative that will work on the hardware that they already have is going to chew into the upgrade path. As well as those who will stick it out with WinXP even after MS has really left it behind.
You can keep 'grind' for getting rares without requiring it to level up. In fact, Guild Wars has done just that.
There are always different ways to do different things. I just gave one example of where the grind can be used. Others:
While grinding a pathing mob comes your way and your forced to fight 2 things at once. (Or more, you get the idea.)
While grinding on a PvP type server you run into hostile PCs. (And trust me I'm not a fan at all of griefing/ganking/whatever you want to call it. I believe that, and have implemented systems in my old NWN modules, there are ways to fix that problem but the point is more about grinding putting you 'out there' subject to PvP actions.)
And I think something important that I did not mention. Grinding itself is viewed by some as fun. The right kind of grinding really. Parts of the AQ40 gate opening event grind was...awful in WoW. I got as far as making 'the Bobber' when I called it quits. (TBC was about to hit.) However there were a number of fun parts of the grind that gave the whole questline itself a very epic feeling.
I'm not looking to defend all MMO grinds. Rather just pointing out that I think that 'grinding' has a bit more nuance than most people fully understand.
Grind is a way of content extension. Even if you have a lot of content like in most RPGs the tendency is to extend that content via grind.
And actually the grind itself does also serve a few other purposes. It allows for things to be rare. If while your grinding you find an BOE Epic, the WoW term for a very rare drop, it's fun because it almost never happens. But if you were finding BOP Epics every hour or so they would lose their meaning. (And yeah they devalued the hell out of Epics past 1.x but still.)
It also gives you a chance to get familiar with your classes abilities. Not everyone who plays MMOs are gaming savants. In fact most people are average gamers at best. They need that repetitive grind to teach them how to play.
The majority of the problem I see with the grind is making sure it is appropriate to the amount of content you have. When in WoW the level cap was 60 it was just about right. But when they expanded the level cap to 70 grinding up to 70 got very annoying in the 1-60 content. So they, eventually, made the 1-60 grind shorter and then people were ok with it again.
Eventually, we'll get through the current group of addictees and everyone will be looking for fun instead of addiction. At that point, there's going to be a HUGE market for fun MMOs. In fact, there's probably already a pretty nice market as it is.
Fun is a very relative term. While I do really understand why someone like you would prefer MMOs with less of a grind I hope you will understand that the grind does serve a purpose. And that to remove all grind in favor of non-stop fun would not be exactly the type of 'pure fun MMO' that you might think it would be.
As a very very basic example think of Loderunner. It's gameplay elements were pretty simple. And it's content was it's maps.
In such a game say if the original only came with a few maps, it did not but for the sake of argument, then offering something beyond that original could be as simple as adding new maps. The problem comes in with asking for more of someone's money just for adding some more maps. Simply adding more simple content is rarely enough to justify asking for more money.
So lets say that they changed the gameplay in addition to adding new maps. Ah ha! Now there is more to talk about. It's much easier to justify asking for money again for even what might be basically the same game. And of course the question becomes is the change to the gameplay's dynamic good or not.
These days games work with a much bigger scope. Gameplay elements are complex and even the content itself is not trivial to do. So often just adding some more content can be enough to asking for more money.
However everything after a while get's 'played' which then means changing up the gameplay to keep people interested. However in an industry where it's about getting that sale, because our right ownership of software is so fucked up, so important the idea is about keeping people interested has started to trump making sure that gameplay is actually good.
People like fast, informative, easily accessible tools. Who would have thought.
Craigslist works because one of the huge strengths of being an American is how flexible we are. We'll go down the road to Bestbuy if they have a good deal on item X. We'll go further down the road to Joe's Appliance Shack if he's got a better deal. But we'll even barter, trade, and pay cash money for goods if we can meet someone in person that has the best deal.
When dealing online we get detached from who we are dealing with often. And trust me I'm one who will order parts from Newegg without a 2nd thought. But that is because they have established a trust with me. (And part of that trust is that they have done the same with millions of others.) But it's still not the same thing as going to someones house and buying something. The whole idea of, "I know where you live," is very much the same way that we get trust by going to a brick and mortar store.
Craigslist is not only great because of it's interface. But because of the mentality behind it. And it draws up an old saw when I think of why it succeeds, "Form follows function."
He's just blinding throwing out a single buzzword, Linux!, when what he means is FOSS. You know the things that make 'Linux' work when those Linux Install Days happen. Why is that distinction important? Because he acts as if 'Linux' is some single OS that he will be able to speak of as if when you talk about RH it is as if your talking about Debian as well.
Or when you talk about why one desktop install does things one way under KDE you should be able to rant about it blithely and ignore that you should have been running Gnome all along. Unless your going to speak intelligently and specifically about FOSS then your not doing anything valid.
And, because you label it a rant, you don't have to pay attention to his criticism.
Once again you miss the point. It's a rant because it does not include any real criticism. If he had pointed at a distro and spoke about it then that would be criticism. No, what he's doing as I said is just giving his own existence as someone who can criticize 'Linux' as a whole with buzzwords but no substance some sort of meaning. Specifically a meaning that involves him being able to write about it with little knowledge but make money from that.
You realize that you clearly missed the point now of what I was saying, right?
What I am is a journalist and author. In other words, I'm an end-user. I'm a very good end user, as it happens. I might even be called a professional end-user. I wouldn't be able to write my books otherwise.
As I was reading his rant...er artical the scene from Mel Brooks 'History of the World Part I' came into my head of the 'birth of the critic.' This guy just wants to validate his own right to rant on something. Without having to get his hands too dirty mind you.
The world of Linux needs critics. Even more so nowadays as Linux slowly seeps into all kinds of industries (the Linux revolution is finally happening, but in slow motion). New people are coming into contact with Linux. Most of them will have high expectations--the same expectations they have of commercial software. If things ain't right, they're gonna say so. Linux people are going to have to get a thick skin. They have to learn to deal with criticism, and--even more important--they're going to have to use it to their advantage.
Slowly? Golly I guess someone better run and tell Google that they better get cracking. Just to name one rather large example of how behind the curve this guy is.
FOSS has plenty of critics. What this ass want's to do is make sure that the nitche of having just enough knowledge to sell his books will survive as FOSS takes a bigger hold.
It doesn't matter if the photo you received is a 50-year-old Valerie Bertinelli, a 16-year-old Miley Cyrus, or a 6-year-old Elle Fanning. The naked human body is not a crime. It is God's masterpiece. It is Natural, not sinful.
That is where you lost me.
You realise that religion is the key cause of nudity being illegal right?
You may turn them away if they appear first without any reasonable notice...
Your 1st paragraph was a bit on the FUDddy side but here you get a bit more rational.
The point the OP was making is that the BSA are not some group of cops who can come into your building at a whim and search the place. They may indeed have an arrangement via EULAs that can allow them to do some things. But saying it's bad advice to not let them storm your place of business is kinda silly.
Unless things have changed since I last used either mod, which granted has been for a while now, neither nag was all that obtrusive. The QH one was iirc: on login (When you log in your toon the game does it's mod inload and there is a LUA hook to give a message at that point. So actually it also happens if/when you do a/reloadui.) and in the help menu. The Auctioneer was a donation page when you hit the download button.
I did notice them both but then again I'm someone who has looked at the LUA code in some mods just to double check on what they are doing. But never at any point did I think not to use the mods because of the small requests for a donation.
And just further while I actually only tried out QH for a bit it's quality was simply amazing. Had I not leveled so many damn toons to 70 such that I knew the game so well I would have been insane not to continue to use it. Auctioneer is also just a no brainer to use. Both far exceed what should be expected for free in terms of quality and utility.
Given the nature of WoW/MMOs I'm glad that they make it such that the addons can only ask for donations. However the two that you cite for being so obtrusive, which again is questionable at best, are two of the ones I'd say are most deserving of some form of compensation.
Unless your running SETI or some other setup then it's doubtful that your CPU is pegged at 200W 24x7. But lets for the sake of argument say that for whatever reason that some setup has it's CPU pegged at max/near-max all the time. What then is the value of the productivity?
Now that's a huge question and something I'm not even going to being to answer but just wanted to point out that putting out a lot of big numbers without context is pretty silly.
Many comments here miss the point. Energy systems besides oil are now actually in the discussion of the mainstream. If nothing else the slimy derivative traders did society a favor in jacking up the price of oil beyond what supply and demand dictated.
They forced a, mostly, lazy world to take a hard look at our current and future energy systems. Moved a lot of things that had been only very obscure topics of regular discussion to things that those 'normal' people talked about.
Of course now that the bubble burst most people are not having those discussions anymore. But they do remember them. They, for the most part I hope, understand that something(tm) needs to happen.
For some that something should happen now/have already happened/can't happen soon enough...whatever. I'm personally resigned to the idea that it could very well take a long time to sort it all out. But I know that now when I bring up a discussion about energy with 'normal' people they actually can have it rather than getting that deer in the headlights look.
Another great way of putting the same idea. And while I agree I think that there is a bit more to the idea than even the previous poster says.
Small % of people - Those in the know about a product and want all the 'nerd pron'. (Or to put it another way they know all about their needs.) To such people ads that show all the flash over substance are meh at best. However...that's kind of the whole point. The mass scale marketing can't be tailored for this very small set of people.
Slightly larger % of people - These people are not the techs who are in the above category but rather the managers of those techs. Or the 'enthusiast' part of the market. The kind of people, for example, who do dual-phase cooling on chips that were designed for simple HSF setups. Still however this is not the target that mass scale marketing has to aim for.
Nearly every other bit of the % of people - The masses who want that hole not the bit. This is the target audience that when thinking about mass marketing your looking at. For example when I think about a fan belt for my car I sure as hell don't fall into either of the above two categories. I'm just looking for a part that will get the job done and not cost me an arm and a leg.
And mind you there are those to whom fan belts are important things that they want to know all sorts of details about when they think about them. But much like when I think about my OSs don't fall into that 3rd category.
And therein lies the rub. Most of us who have been involved in FOSS fall directly into the 1st or 2nd category in my list. And as such we make very poor advocates for it at times. Because the majority of people don't really care about FEATURE X that to us is really really cool and important.
This is getting way too long winded so I'll just close in saying whenever any of the great FOSS conversion stores are shared, most of the best ones include users who just want something that works. Not the other 99% of the nerd pron that we like to go on about.
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However, I will assert that modern shoes are designed such that they do not need extensive breaking in.
I would tend to agree. Having run for a while now as I said I've gone though a lot of shoes and have observed that modern running shoes don't require that much breaking in.
That being said each shoe is different. I don't have any brand loyalty really so I'll buy whatever whenever I need a new pair. And then just wear them as my daily shoe until they 'feel' right.
I'm getting close to, gah!, 40 and as such are pretty comfortable with my current methodology. I just break in any new running shoes by using them as a daily shoe for a while.
Putting a bigger shoe on while running sounds pretty dangerous to me. The last thing I need to be worrying about while my old ass runs is my foot slipping around inside my shoe.
I've been a runner, someone who runs/jogs for the majority of my exercise, since I was a kid. I've always viewed shoes as a means of protection 1st and foremost.
Over the years I've had many different shoes that I've run in. And have always preferred running shoes that are light and broken in. The worst shoes that I ever run in are always the new ones that try to make my feet contort into ways that they aren't naturally.
Once a shoe gets to the point where they are more like my feet than like the way the shoe started as they work best.
...that people see them as an evil faceless corporation (see Slashdots view on Microsoft) and that makes it ok to take from them.
I think it's worth noting here that /.'s views on MS did not spring up out of nothing. Much the same way the RIAA and the MPAA's actions have dictated our views on them.
Is there sometimes some unjustified and over the top bashing of 'evil faceless corps'? Yeah sure. But are MS and other corps/groups evil? Without question.
At least in the US. High speed rail has little to do with our "obsession" with cars. It has to do with the fact that we jumped on the regional airport route back in the 60s.
Rail, unlike planes, has the ability to use electric power vs oil. Which then means the power can come from any number of, more green/less foreign oil type, ways.
You are correct that the infrastructure currently is hugely slanted towards air travel but it's clear you missed part of the point.
Slashdot's moderation system may have its faults, but it is the best damn system I've seen for a website with lots of traffic.
Indeed. I'm regularly surprised that /.'s moderation system has not been copied/implemented in more places. No system is going to be perfect but /.'s does work pretty damn well.
The problem with marketing Linux, or at least *Linux* people marketing Linux, is that they seem to think that your typical layperson will place value in the same things that a technical Linux user does.
So the end user wants a system that just works without getting bogged down in all the technical details. I got ya, we should tailor an ad to raise awareness of FOSS options, Linux in this case, without going heavy into the tech stuff.
What we have here is an overly-vague advert that places emphasis on it being "free and open" and "choices." A typical end-user does not care about these things. They want a complete, integrated product that works. Free and open means little if nothing to these people.
Er...ok...well... I guess we could get a little more technical but the whole message behind FOSS is it being free and open.
What I think your missing is that part of marketing, a big part in fact, is getting your name out there. Name recognition is so very important and making sure that name is associated with the right ideas. Having FOSS, Linux, associated with Free and Open seems like a good plan to me.
Once you get the name spread around then you can work on the technical points. However that is not going to happen in small ads.
At an ISP that I worked for in the 90's we would offer our customers, mind you this is in the hight of dial-up days, a few options for getting them connected. Over the phone support for free. They could bring their machine in and we would set it up in the office for free. Or we would send out a tech to their location for a fee.
The on-location setups fees went to the techs for their gas/time as kind of a bonus. So when one would come up we typically were OK with it. I took one at one point for an older man who I could just not get on-line. IIRC it was a Win3.1/Trumpet setup and just was not wanting to work not to mention I could tell that he just was not that computer savvy.
I get to his place and the poor old guy is in a wheelchair. So I think that well cool, I'm glad that he's embraced the internet. And then the stench wave of stale beer and cigars hits me. I step into the house and it's full on disarray. I mean I'm no stranger to living as a bachelor but I try to put my old beer cans in the trash, empty the ashtrays, and not leave my old pron lying around.
Yes pron. I get to the computer desk and there is even high concentration of Swank and Hustler there. The desktop was filled with links to various pron sites that I had to sift though to find Trumpet. I wanted to just fix it and get the hell out of there but Trumpet was hosed so I had to install the MS DUN upgrade which thankfully worked.
Some time later I had been promoted to the OPs Manager which meant I lead all of the techs too and we got a call from someone who needed to get back on-line. It was me and one other tech sitting in our support office and I was shamelessly eavesdropping on him as he went though the numbers trying to fix the guy. And it dawned on me who he was talking to. He got to the point where he offered to have the computer brought in or send one of us out to which we were asked to come out.
The tech turned to me and asked me if I wanted to go out. We had always tried to make sure we spread the wealth such as it was from such calls. I remember looking at him with a straight face and saying, "No man it's ok, you take that one." He was like cool and went off to fix the guy.
When the tech got back to the office I was unable to keep my face straight when I saw how he was looking at me. He said something to the effect of, "You knew!"
But they will make the switch. Businesses were slow to adopt XP, and even said they wouldn't.
What a difference nearly 10 years makes thou eh? While Win98 was decent keep in mind MS had already laid a huge egg in the form of WinME which did not go over well. (Something they would like us to forget.) As such people were not really all that trusting of MS saying that XP was going to be good.
However XP actually was good. In fact it has been noted to be very good actually, better than Win98 ever was. And here we are again after MS has just laid another egg in the form of Vista. (Vista apologists can leave this post now.) And so now that MS is asking for money because Win7 is going to be so great there is once again a failed trust.
Furthermore WinXP as I mentioned, while having some faults, been very good. I'd go so far as to say it's set the standard as what a modern desktop should act and feel like. Much more than Win98 ever did.
Add into all this the fact that back during the Win98 -> WinXP upgrade cycle FOSS desktops were still not nearly ready for prime time. Whereas now they are. Yet another monkey wrench in keeping people on the MS upgrade treadmill.
MS will never implode in some spectacular fashion but rather it will be a slow decay. That businesses have an actual viable FOSS alternative that will work on the hardware that they already have is going to chew into the upgrade path. As well as those who will stick it out with WinXP even after MS has really left it behind.
You can keep 'grind' for getting rares without requiring it to level up. In fact, Guild Wars has done just that.
There are always different ways to do different things. I just gave one example of where the grind can be used. Others:
While grinding a pathing mob comes your way and your forced to fight 2 things at once. (Or more, you get the idea.)
While grinding on a PvP type server you run into hostile PCs. (And trust me I'm not a fan at all of griefing/ganking/whatever you want to call it. I believe that, and have implemented systems in my old NWN modules, there are ways to fix that problem but the point is more about grinding putting you 'out there' subject to PvP actions.)
And I think something important that I did not mention. Grinding itself is viewed by some as fun. The right kind of grinding really. Parts of the AQ40 gate opening event grind was...awful in WoW. I got as far as making 'the Bobber' when I called it quits. (TBC was about to hit.) However there were a number of fun parts of the grind that gave the whole questline itself a very epic feeling.
I'm not looking to defend all MMO grinds. Rather just pointing out that I think that 'grinding' has a bit more nuance than most people fully understand.
Grind is a way of content extension. Even if you have a lot of content like in most RPGs the tendency is to extend that content via grind.
And actually the grind itself does also serve a few other purposes. It allows for things to be rare. If while your grinding you find an BOE Epic, the WoW term for a very rare drop, it's fun because it almost never happens. But if you were finding BOP Epics every hour or so they would lose their meaning. (And yeah they devalued the hell out of Epics past 1.x but still.)
It also gives you a chance to get familiar with your classes abilities. Not everyone who plays MMOs are gaming savants. In fact most people are average gamers at best. They need that repetitive grind to teach them how to play.
The majority of the problem I see with the grind is making sure it is appropriate to the amount of content you have. When in WoW the level cap was 60 it was just about right. But when they expanded the level cap to 70 grinding up to 70 got very annoying in the 1-60 content. So they, eventually, made the 1-60 grind shorter and then people were ok with it again.
Eventually, we'll get through the current group of addictees and everyone will be looking for fun instead of addiction. At that point, there's going to be a HUGE market for fun MMOs. In fact, there's probably already a pretty nice market as it is.
Fun is a very relative term. While I do really understand why someone like you would prefer MMOs with less of a grind I hope you will understand that the grind does serve a purpose. And that to remove all grind in favor of non-stop fun would not be exactly the type of 'pure fun MMO' that you might think it would be.
As a very very basic example think of Loderunner. It's gameplay elements were pretty simple. And it's content was it's maps.
In such a game say if the original only came with a few maps, it did not but for the sake of argument, then offering something beyond that original could be as simple as adding new maps. The problem comes in with asking for more of someone's money just for adding some more maps. Simply adding more simple content is rarely enough to justify asking for more money.
So lets say that they changed the gameplay in addition to adding new maps. Ah ha! Now there is more to talk about. It's much easier to justify asking for money again for even what might be basically the same game. And of course the question becomes is the change to the gameplay's dynamic good or not.
These days games work with a much bigger scope. Gameplay elements are complex and even the content itself is not trivial to do. So often just adding some more content can be enough to asking for more money.
However everything after a while get's 'played' which then means changing up the gameplay to keep people interested. However in an industry where it's about getting that sale, because our right ownership of software is so fucked up, so important the idea is about keeping people interested has started to trump making sure that gameplay is actually good.
Not to mention...
...and directly without resorting to base profanities.
That and their predisposition to lie their asses off continues. The idea that the 'suits' don't get profane as sailors is laughable at best.
People like fast, informative, easily accessible tools. Who would have thought.
Craigslist works because one of the huge strengths of being an American is how flexible we are. We'll go down the road to Bestbuy if they have a good deal on item X. We'll go further down the road to Joe's Appliance Shack if he's got a better deal. But we'll even barter, trade, and pay cash money for goods if we can meet someone in person that has the best deal.
When dealing online we get detached from who we are dealing with often. And trust me I'm one who will order parts from Newegg without a 2nd thought. But that is because they have established a trust with me. (And part of that trust is that they have done the same with millions of others.) But it's still not the same thing as going to someones house and buying something. The whole idea of, "I know where you live," is very much the same way that we get trust by going to a brick and mortar store.
Craigslist is not only great because of it's interface. But because of the mentality behind it. And it draws up an old saw when I think of why it succeeds, "Form follows function."
Now which religion was that? Your religion? My religion? Their religion?
Atheist here.
However you are correct that I left that pretty open. I'll amend my statement by heaping the bulk of my scorn on Western religions. That better?
Your misunderstanding is the same as TFA.
He's just blinding throwing out a single buzzword, Linux!, when what he means is FOSS. You know the things that make 'Linux' work when those Linux Install Days happen. Why is that distinction important? Because he acts as if 'Linux' is some single OS that he will be able to speak of as if when you talk about RH it is as if your talking about Debian as well.
Or when you talk about why one desktop install does things one way under KDE you should be able to rant about it blithely and ignore that you should have been running Gnome all along. Unless your going to speak intelligently and specifically about FOSS then your not doing anything valid.
And, because you label it a rant, you don't have to pay attention to his criticism.
Once again you miss the point. It's a rant because it does not include any real criticism. If he had pointed at a distro and spoke about it then that would be criticism. No, what he's doing as I said is just giving his own existence as someone who can criticize 'Linux' as a whole with buzzwords but no substance some sort of meaning. Specifically a meaning that involves him being able to write about it with little knowledge but make money from that.
You realize that you clearly missed the point now of what I was saying, right?
In a word, bullshit.
This guy is just...well hell he says it himself:
What I am is a journalist and author. In other words, I'm an end-user. I'm a very good end user, as it happens. I might even be called a professional end-user. I wouldn't be able to write my books otherwise.
As I was reading his rant...er artical the scene from Mel Brooks 'History of the World Part I' came into my head of the 'birth of the critic.' This guy just wants to validate his own right to rant on something. Without having to get his hands too dirty mind you.
The world of Linux needs critics. Even more so nowadays as Linux slowly seeps into all kinds of industries (the Linux revolution is finally happening, but in slow motion). New people are coming into contact with Linux. Most of them will have high expectations--the same expectations they have of commercial software. If things ain't right, they're gonna say so. Linux people are going to have to get a thick skin. They have to learn to deal with criticism, and--even more important--they're going to have to use it to their advantage.
Slowly? Golly I guess someone better run and tell Google that they better get cracking. Just to name one rather large example of how behind the curve this guy is.
FOSS has plenty of critics. What this ass want's to do is make sure that the nitche of having just enough knowledge to sell his books will survive as FOSS takes a bigger hold.
-1 Troll for TFA.
I'll toss you one freebie: you can register your wow main for points if you're that kind of person.
I broke free of WoW during the last x-pack! As a result I came back and started reading Slashdot more. And now you want me to go back?!
Damn you! Damn you to hell!
It doesn't matter if the photo you received is a 50-year-old Valerie Bertinelli, a 16-year-old Miley Cyrus, or a 6-year-old Elle Fanning. The naked human body is not a crime. It is God's masterpiece. It is Natural, not sinful.
That is where you lost me.
You realise that religion is the key cause of nudity being illegal right?
You may turn them away if they appear first without any reasonable notice...
Your 1st paragraph was a bit on the FUDddy side but here you get a bit more rational.
The point the OP was making is that the BSA are not some group of cops who can come into your building at a whim and search the place. They may indeed have an arrangement via EULAs that can allow them to do some things. But saying it's bad advice to not let them storm your place of business is kinda silly.
Unless things have changed since I last used either mod, which granted has been for a while now, neither nag was all that obtrusive. The QH one was iirc: on login (When you log in your toon the game does it's mod inload and there is a LUA hook to give a message at that point. So actually it also happens if/when you do a /reloadui.) and in the help menu. The Auctioneer was a donation page when you hit the download button.
I did notice them both but then again I'm someone who has looked at the LUA code in some mods just to double check on what they are doing. But never at any point did I think not to use the mods because of the small requests for a donation.
And just further while I actually only tried out QH for a bit it's quality was simply amazing. Had I not leveled so many damn toons to 70 such that I knew the game so well I would have been insane not to continue to use it. Auctioneer is also just a no brainer to use. Both far exceed what should be expected for free in terms of quality and utility.
Given the nature of WoW/MMOs I'm glad that they make it such that the addons can only ask for donations. However the two that you cite for being so obtrusive, which again is questionable at best, are two of the ones I'd say are most deserving of some form of compensation.
Or worse yet acting like your unbiased even thou everything you do has a clear slant to it.
Much like, and I know I know low hanging fruit here, Fox News's slogan "Fair and Balanced".
...running at 200 watts 24x7...
Unless your running SETI or some other setup then it's doubtful that your CPU is pegged at 200W 24x7. But lets for the sake of argument say that for whatever reason that some setup has it's CPU pegged at max/near-max all the time. What then is the value of the productivity?
Now that's a huge question and something I'm not even going to being to answer but just wanted to point out that putting out a lot of big numbers without context is pretty silly.
Many comments here miss the point. Energy systems besides oil are now actually in the discussion of the mainstream. If nothing else the slimy derivative traders did society a favor in jacking up the price of oil beyond what supply and demand dictated.
They forced a, mostly, lazy world to take a hard look at our current and future energy systems. Moved a lot of things that had been only very obscure topics of regular discussion to things that those 'normal' people talked about.
Of course now that the bubble burst most people are not having those discussions anymore. But they do remember them. They, for the most part I hope, understand that something(tm) needs to happen.
For some that something should happen now/have already happened/can't happen soon enough...whatever. I'm personally resigned to the idea that it could very well take a long time to sort it all out. But I know that now when I bring up a discussion about energy with 'normal' people they actually can have it rather than getting that deer in the headlights look.
Another great way of putting the same idea. And while I agree I think that there is a bit more to the idea than even the previous poster says.
Small % of people - Those in the know about a product and want all the 'nerd pron'. (Or to put it another way they know all about their needs.) To such people ads that show all the flash over substance are meh at best. However...that's kind of the whole point. The mass scale marketing can't be tailored for this very small set of people.
Slightly larger % of people - These people are not the techs who are in the above category but rather the managers of those techs. Or the 'enthusiast' part of the market. The kind of people, for example, who do dual-phase cooling on chips that were designed for simple HSF setups. Still however this is not the target that mass scale marketing has to aim for.
Nearly every other bit of the % of people - The masses who want that hole not the bit. This is the target audience that when thinking about mass marketing your looking at. For example when I think about a fan belt for my car I sure as hell don't fall into either of the above two categories. I'm just looking for a part that will get the job done and not cost me an arm and a leg.
And mind you there are those to whom fan belts are important things that they want to know all sorts of details about when they think about them. But much like when I think about my OSs don't fall into that 3rd category.
And therein lies the rub. Most of us who have been involved in FOSS fall directly into the 1st or 2nd category in my list. And as such we make very poor advocates for it at times. Because the majority of people don't really care about FEATURE X that to us is really really cool and important.
This is getting way too long winded so I'll just close in saying whenever any of the great FOSS conversion stores are shared, most of the best ones include users who just want something that works. Not the other 99% of the nerd pron that we like to go on about.