You know, every time someone brings up _The_Prince_ I wonder if I read the same book everyone else did. While the book was designed by Machiavelli as an extended resume (he wrote it in hopes of getting a job from some recently promoted prince or another), his preference for a republican form of government show through almost every chapter. Maybe I got that out of the book because my copy of _The_Prince_ included the circumstances under which he had come to write it?
So far as I know, it was the first true laptop. Tiny LCD screen, not much RAM, but plenty battery life for anyone who wrote for a living. I wish I had bought one when they were available. Unfortunately, at the time I was scrambling to pay for tuition and food.:(
Hey, Thurott is a longtime MS fanboy. He rarely looks at other technology sources unless they somehow threaten Microsoft. Just take what he says with a large grain of salt. Just like you do with every MS/Apple/Linux/IBM/HP/Dell/Sun/Cisco/ad nauseum fanboy.
Oh, I know what it was originally designed for. That's not how it was sold to the company I worked for, though. We had a multi-site, multi-city network environment. You ever try to explain to a graphics artist sitting in St. Paul why she just can't see the printers in Chicago on her Chooser? "But I can see them when I'm there! Why can't I see them when I'm here?":(
"As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. Godwin's Law thus practically guarantees the existence of an upper bound on thread length in those groups. However there is also a widely recognised codicil that any intentional triggering of Godwin's Law in order to invoke its thread-ending effects will be unsuccessful.
Welllll, it's true that many users are drawn to OS X for the user experience. Frankly, I find the damn thing gets in my way.
Now, before you slag me off as someone who just hates Macs, Apple, and/or Steve Jobs, I'm not. I was pleased as punch with the introduction of the first Mac. Until I saw the lack of expandability. Later on, I worked for a printing company and supported bunches of them for our graphics artists. They loved them, and I certainly preferred setting them up to PCs. I rarely had to go back to them after the fact. Even then, though, I wasn't really thrilled with the Apple way of handling running apps, and selecting tasks. I always preferred a clean separation between the OS, UI, and the app. Apple always wanted to hide it.
I hated AppleTalk with a passion, though. At least Apple finally made it routable before it was eclipsed by TCP/IP.
Anyhow, years later, my Mac loving cousin and a friend of mine have both asked me for help getting them set up to do rather unusual things (for them, anyway). Again, I was struck by Apple's apparent insistence of blurring the lines between OS, UI, and the app(s). It drove me absolutely nuts.
So, when you say that some people flock to Macs for the UI, you are absolutely right. There are many of us who/don't/ like it, and will avoid it whenever possible. That doesn't make the Mac UI wrong, nor does it make the standard X display or Windows display right. We need multiple UIs to address the way that different people think and work.
30 years ago, I learned in my high school civics class that any Senator or Representative can insert anything he or she wants into it at any time. Examples that were pointed out to us were speeches on the floor of the Senate that were never made, modifications to committee meetings, etc. The CR is by no means an accurate measure of anything. Except maybe the size of their combined egos.
Heck, if you postulate Northern Minnesota I can show you plenty of mines that still have millions of metric tons of 95+ percent pure iron in them. One of the demonstrations that they used to do (back before safety regulations made them stop) was drawing an arc bead on the wall with an arc welder. The mining companies gave up on the tunnels and switched to open pit mining when taconite was invented. It made processing and transporting iron a lot easier. Trust me, there's still plenty of iron in Minnesota.:)
Actually, CivIV has run fine for me outside of the occasional crash in long games (that Windows players also complain about). However, you did forget the one issue that drives me crazy: The inability to play any Windows MP games that use Punkbuster because Even Balance sees Cedega/and/ Wine as evil code! Worse, Even Balance has refused to work with either Transgaming or the Wine people to find a solution.:( It's the only thing keeping me booting into Windows at this point.
For me, Patrick Stewart's most memorable role for the longest time was as Leondegrance in Excalibur. Take a look at that list of names. Damn near a who's who of British actors.:)
The interface is *not* that hard if you spend a little time with it...
I agree that the interface isn't that hard to learn. I just think it feels clunky. IOW, it gets in my way instead of letting the design work flow more naturally. Maybe it's just me, I don't know.
It is true that my stepdaughter didn't have any experience with anything more sophisticated than MS Paint before she found the GIMP on her KDE menu. That meant that she had fewer expectations and less to unlearn. Still, IMNSHO any interface which deviates so far from expected UI norms definitely makes the learning curve a lot steeper than it needs to be.
Yes, because in those massive ammounts of concrete is anything you could want. Overpriced is a relative term; it ignores all the convience around.
Oh? So you have deer, pheasants, foxes, hawks and other assorted wildlife for neighbors? Fishing on a lake with no one else in sight? Woods to ramble in? Hunting within walking distance? Neighborhoods where you know everyone personally, and their back door is always open for visitors?
Don't automatically assume that what/you/ want is what everyone wants.
Except that you really,/really/ don't want to learn the ugliness that is the default Gimp UI. It is one of the clumsiest UIs that I have ever used. I say this as a die hard Linux user who does use Gimp semi-regularly. Gimp looks like nothing else. It acts like nothing else. It is/not/ an easy tool to just pick up and use. (And yet my 12 year old stepdaughter, who hadn't even seen a Linux box until a year ago, can do things with it that I didn't know were possible. Go figure.);)
Seriously, though. While I'm not qualified to do professional usability tests, many who are have said repeatedly that Gimp requires more mouse clicks and more keystrokes to get things done than Photoshop. These same people also have pointed out that Gimp's continued insistence on independendent windows for things like menus are a definite stumbling block to overall ease of use and efficiency.
Personally, I'd have to agree. It seems like every time I want to do something with an image, I have to
* Find the menu box associated with it (right click does minimize this particular pain point to some degree) * Drill down through at least two layers of the menu box to find the option that I want * select the right option without choosing the wrong one * go back to the image * perform the action * go to top step and repeat for next action
It feels much clunkier than doing the same sort of image modification in say, dia or Visio (not really analogs of Gimp/Photoshop, but I don't know Photoshop).
If the Gimp guys would really listen carefully to the constructive criticism that they've received over the years, they would have cleaned up more of this. Unfortunately, they seem to have assumed that all complaints about the UI are only coming from flamers, so there's no need to listen at all.:(
No, he said members of the OSS community with a clue are not asking for Nvidia to release their driver as OSS, only to open the specs.
Did you ever think that Nvidia doesn't want their hardware run by homebrew drivers, because they'll catch the flack when those drivers act whacky? Joe Blow buys some Lindows machine with some OSS Nvidia driver written by who-the-hell-knows, and when that driver acts up, Nvidia gets the blame. I understand Nvidia perfectly on this issue.
red herring. That's exactly the situation for anyone who buys gear shipped with Ubuntu, Suse SLED 10, or any of a half dozen other big distros. They ship with the nv driver only. No one blames Nvidia, they contact their vendor and ask for help.
Sigh. Here's a handful of games that are NOT 10 years old. They are either new or upcoming releases with the exception of X2:The Threat. Even that's only a couple of years old.
All of these are games that intrigue me as possibilities for playing. All are commercial. With the exception of UT2007, none are simple FPS shooters. Well, OK. You can/play/ all of them except for X2:The Threat as an FPS, but you won't have much fun if you don't have players who understand team play. Oh, and a commander who knows what s/he's doing.
The point is, I didn't even have to look hard to find these games that fit my particular interests. Take a look around. When it comes to gaming, things are far better than they used to be.
So, yes, gaming under Linux is getting better. Just not as well as we'd like, quite yet.
Translation: I miss the days when I could actually get all the information that I needed to modify my car any way that I chose.
Oh, wait.
Re:I'm a "Plan 9 from Bell Labs" user
on
Driving Plan 9
·
· Score: 1
I think you just proved my point for me: If Theo and company would have been more willing to accept contributions gracefully at the beginning of the OpenBSD project, I contend that many (most? all?) of those problems would have been dealt with a long time ago. Instead, Theo seems driven to make sure that only his vision will prevail, and he doesn't hesitate to slag someone who he disagrees with. He doesn't seem to have learned much about how to play nice with others after being booted from the NetBSD group for his abrasive attitude.
Too bad, because I do respect his ability to code. He's a far better programmer than I could ever hope to be.
Re:I'm a "Plan 9 from Bell Labs" user
on
Driving Plan 9
·
· Score: 1
Worse is better worked out for Linux & HTTP/HTML
Market share is for marketing people.
Not everyone is trying to dominate the desktop.
Hmmm. Interesting. And yet, you care enough to poke everyone in the eye with how lousy you think Linux is that you have to post this for a sig:
GNU/Linux - a printer driver gone horribly wrong
You know, for someone who claims not to care about what the rest of us do or think (i.e. who has the bigger marketshare), you sure seem to have spent a lot of energy thinking about how horrible GNU and Linux are. You sure you aren't just the teensy bit jealous? lol
As the GP suggested that graphic intensive games would not perform well, might I suggest doing a side by side comparison between Quake2 and Jake2? There's even a benchmarks page.:)
I think that should help quell the fears of Java vs. C, anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
He was quoting FDR. :)
You know, every time someone brings up _The_Prince_ I wonder if I read the same book everyone else did. While the book was designed by Machiavelli as an extended resume (he wrote it in hopes of getting a job from some recently promoted prince or another), his preference for a republican form of government show through almost every chapter. Maybe I got that out of the book because my copy of _The_Prince_ included the circumstances under which he had come to write it?
So far as I know, it was the first true laptop. Tiny LCD screen, not much RAM, but plenty battery life for anyone who wrote for a living. I wish I had bought one when they were available. Unfortunately, at the time I was scrambling to pay for tuition and food. :(
Looking Glass. :)
Hey, Thurott is a longtime MS fanboy. He rarely looks at other technology sources unless they somehow threaten Microsoft. Just take what he says with a large grain of salt. Just like you do with every MS/Apple/Linux/IBM/HP/Dell/Sun/Cisco/ad nauseum fanboy.
How many of those ran on IBM mainframes? Seriously, outside of Fortran I can't think of one that I would expect to see there.
At a time when the only programming was done using assembler??? Nope COBOL was a major step forward. :)
Oh, I know what it was originally designed for. That's not how it was sold to the company I worked for, though. We had a multi-site, multi-city network environment. You ever try to explain to a graphics artist sitting in St. Paul why she just can't see the printers in Chicago on her Chooser? "But I can see them when I'm there! Why can't I see them when I'm here?" :(
Welllll, it's true that many users are drawn to OS X for the user experience. Frankly, I find the damn thing gets in my way.
/don't/ like it, and will avoid it whenever possible. That doesn't make the Mac UI wrong, nor does it make the standard X display or Windows display right. We need multiple UIs to address the way that different people think and work.
Now, before you slag me off as someone who just hates Macs, Apple, and/or Steve Jobs, I'm not. I was pleased as punch with the introduction of the first Mac. Until I saw the lack of expandability. Later on, I worked for a printing company and supported bunches of them for our graphics artists. They loved them, and I certainly preferred setting them up to PCs. I rarely had to go back to them after the fact. Even then, though, I wasn't really thrilled with the Apple way of handling running apps, and selecting tasks. I always preferred a clean separation between the OS, UI, and the app. Apple always wanted to hide it.
I hated AppleTalk with a passion, though. At least Apple finally made it routable before it was eclipsed by TCP/IP.
Anyhow, years later, my Mac loving cousin and a friend of mine have both asked me for help getting them set up to do rather unusual things (for them, anyway). Again, I was struck by Apple's apparent insistence of blurring the lines between OS, UI, and the app(s). It drove me absolutely nuts.
So, when you say that some people flock to Macs for the UI, you are absolutely right. There are many of us who
Yeah, the Internet passed its 21st b-day quite some time ago. :)
30 years ago, I learned in my high school civics class that any Senator or Representative can insert anything he or she wants into it at any time. Examples that were pointed out to us were speeches on the floor of the Senate that were never made, modifications to committee meetings, etc. The CR is by no means an accurate measure of anything. Except maybe the size of their combined egos.
Let's hear it for lots of gratuitous nudity and sex! Especially when the woman is as good looking as Mathilda May! :lol:
:)
Sorry. Way, WAY off topic now.
Heck, if you postulate Northern Minnesota I can show you plenty of mines that still have millions of metric tons of 95+ percent pure iron in them. One of the demonstrations that they used to do (back before safety regulations made them stop) was drawing an arc bead on the wall with an arc welder. The mining companies gave up on the tunnels and switched to open pit mining when taconite was invented. It made processing and transporting iron a lot easier. Trust me, there's still plenty of iron in Minnesota. :)
Actually, CivIV has run fine for me outside of the occasional crash in long games (that Windows players also complain about). However, you did forget the one issue that drives me crazy: The inability to play any Windows MP games that use Punkbuster because Even Balance sees Cedega /and/ Wine as evil code! Worse, Even Balance has refused to work with either Transgaming or the Wine people to find a solution. :( It's the only thing keeping me booting into Windows at this point.
For me, Patrick Stewart's most memorable role for the longest time was as Leondegrance in Excalibur. Take a look at that list of names. Damn near a who's who of British actors. :)
I agree that the interface isn't that hard to learn. I just think it feels clunky. IOW, it gets in my way instead of letting the design work flow more naturally. Maybe it's just me, I don't know.
It is true that my stepdaughter didn't have any experience with anything more sophisticated than MS Paint before she found the GIMP on her KDE menu. That meant that she had fewer expectations and less to unlearn. Still, IMNSHO any interface which deviates so far from expected UI norms definitely makes the learning curve a lot steeper than it needs to be.
Oh? So you have deer, pheasants, foxes, hawks and other assorted wildlife for neighbors? Fishing on a lake with no one else in sight? Woods to ramble in? Hunting within walking distance? Neighborhoods where you know everyone personally, and their back door is always open for visitors?
Don't automatically assume that what
Except that you really, /really/ don't want to learn the ugliness that is the default Gimp UI. It is one of the clumsiest UIs that I have ever used. I say this as a die hard Linux user who does use Gimp semi-regularly. Gimp looks like nothing else. It acts like nothing else. It is /not/ an easy tool to just pick up and use. (And yet my 12 year old stepdaughter, who hadn't even seen a Linux box until a year ago, can do things with it that I didn't know were possible. Go figure.) ;)
:(
Seriously, though. While I'm not qualified to do professional usability tests, many who are have said repeatedly that Gimp requires more mouse clicks and more keystrokes to get things done than Photoshop. These same people also have pointed out that Gimp's continued insistence on independendent windows for things like menus are a definite stumbling block to overall ease of use and efficiency.
Personally, I'd have to agree. It seems like every time I want to do something with an image, I have to
* Find the menu box associated with it (right click does minimize this particular pain point to some degree)
* Drill down through at least two layers of the menu box to find the option that I want
* select the right option without choosing the wrong one
* go back to the image
* perform the action
* go to top step and repeat for next action
It feels much clunkier than doing the same sort of image modification in say, dia or Visio (not really analogs of Gimp/Photoshop, but I don't know Photoshop).
If the Gimp guys would really listen carefully to the constructive criticism that they've received over the years, they would have cleaned up more of this. Unfortunately, they seem to have assumed that all complaints about the UI are only coming from flamers, so there's no need to listen at all.
red herring. That's exactly the situation for anyone who buys gear shipped with Ubuntu, Suse SLED 10, or any of a half dozen other big distros. They ship with the nv driver only. No one blames Nvidia, they contact their vendor and ask for help.
All of these are games that intrigue me as possibilities for playing. All are commercial. With the exception of UT2007, none are simple FPS shooters. Well, OK. You can
blah.
Translation: I miss the days when I could actually get all the information that I needed to modify my car any way that I chose.
Oh, wait.
I think you just proved my point for me: If Theo and company would have been more willing to accept contributions gracefully at the beginning of the OpenBSD project, I contend that many (most? all?) of those problems would have been dealt with a long time ago. Instead, Theo seems driven to make sure that only his vision will prevail, and he doesn't hesitate to slag someone who he disagrees with. He doesn't seem to have learned much about how to play nice with others after being booted from the NetBSD group for his abrasive attitude.
Too bad, because I do respect his ability to code. He's a far better programmer than I could ever hope to be.
Hmmm. Interesting. And yet, you care enough to poke everyone in the eye with how lousy you think Linux is that you have to post this for a sig:
You know, for someone who claims not to care about what the rest of us do or think (i.e. who has the bigger marketshare), you sure seem to have spent a lot of energy thinking about how horrible GNU and Linux are. You sure you aren't just the teensy bit jealous? lol
As the GP suggested that graphic intensive games would not perform well, might I suggest doing a side by side comparison between Quake2 and Jake2? There's even a benchmarks page. :)
I think that should help quell the fears of Java vs. C, anyway.