"Taxes only hurt the poor, regardless of who you think you're punishing."
That's utter bs.
What you are preaching is a good old fashion 'trickle down' theory.
Trickle down assumes that the rich will not hoard. It assumes that those rich owning businesses will always devote increased earnings into growing the business and expanding their employee pool.
It assumes that there is a linear relationship between a wealthy spender/business owner's income, and the money that is fed back into the economy, in a useful way.
How does Bill Gates buy the Mona Lisa help the enconomy? Once you amass a certain wealth, more and more of that is either not spent, or spent only on luxuries, which are NOT drivers of the economy (yachts, for instance).
*Some* taxation is good. Where you want to draw the line is tricky, but take a look at tax rates on the wealthy over the last 50 years, and overlay the gap between the wealthy and poor, and then note that major recessions occur when the rich get too rich.
You are correct in believing that any user interface requires the user to learn to some degree.
However, you are not correct in suggesting that there are 'no intuitive interfaces'.
100% intuitive? Probably not. However, it is a scale that can be scientifically measured. And it is very clear that some interface designs do approach the 100% intuitive mark.
I've been to several conferences where Jared Spool spoke, and if you are interested in learning more about the science of interface design, visit http://www.uie.com/
McCain wasn't saying anything new, he brought nothing newsworthy to the campaign (besides a ton of negative campaigning), and Colbert is basically correct.
It wasn't an ideological bias that caused the news to report on Obama more than they reported on McCain, rather, it was the simple fact that Obama made sense, and was the real 'straight talker' in this campaign.
I applaud the media for not recycling McCain's empty 'talking points', like they so generously did for George Bush.
The American people are fed up with 'slogans' and 'talking points'. We want numbers, facts, and actual plans.
Obama presented a tremendous amount of detailed information compared with McCain.
Your vote does have meaning, even in a non-swing state.
It gives the incoming President political capital. If he wins in a landslide, the house and senate will see that message and be more willing to endorse his ideas.
If he wins by a thin margin, the house and senate can feel justified in opposing some of his initiatives.
1. Know someone in the company 2. Gain experience through personal projects and showcase it. 3. Be extremely charismatic and up to date on the job's focus areas and especially the companies specific mission.
Right out of college, with a degree in Anthropology, my first job was as a system analyst for a health care corporation.
For years I had tinkered with computers, and kept somewhat up to date on modern programming techniques, enterprise systems, and had created several little programs that resided on public servers that I could show off.
The interview was successful because I: A) Knew exactly what they wanted for that position. B) Researched the relevant "buzzwords" and lingo beforehand. C) Was generally easy going and relaxed.
Despite having no formal education in computer science or programming, my obvious research into their business and corporate culture (thank you anthropology!) really showed well during the first encounter.
People with technical skills are a dime a dozen (unless you are striving to get into some very abstract programming job), and usually, a hardworking, motivated person should be able to convince a interviewer that they are up for the challenge.
Basically, apply for the job in front of you, do not apply for "a programming job". If you treat the job as something unique, do a little research on the company and their culture, and can "seem to be one of them", you are in.
The sooner cars start running on electricity the better. As newer batteries, newer/cleaner forms of energy generation (wind, solar, etc..) come into the market, electricity will just get better and better.
I do not know the specific situation in New Zealand, but we can expect the same here in the US very soon. For years we had an over abundance of hops, especially in the Yakima Valley and surrounding regions of central washington. The prices fell drastically, and many farmers either went out of business, or converted their fields to other crops.
Combine that with an increase in the demand for high alpha hops (for stronger flavored micro brews, ipa's, etc..), and the plight of powdery mildew that decimated nearly a 1/3rd of the high alpha hop fields around Yakima before it was brought under control (at a high cost), and you now see the price of hops increasing drastically.
You might ask the simple question: Well, why didn't more farmers start planting hops as the price inched up? The biggest reason is the startup cost. If you got out of the hop business, you tore down all the poles in the field, and likely sold or tore down your very expensive hop kilns and factories used to bale the hops. You are talking about million+ dollar startup costs for most moderate sized operations.
"Inspite of what you may believe, there is a politicaly motivated movement to ensure that scientists that do not agree with the Global Warming Consensus are not heard..."
That is your opinion of the situation, NOT Dr. Christopher Landsea's opinion. What I read in the open letter was 1 lead IPCC scientist go a little far, the media take it out of context, and then Dr. Christopher Landsea quits because people "dismissed" his distain over what happened.
Show me proof of a "movement", because there is far too much 1 person said X, another person said Y, only Y didn't make it on the nightly news, so it must be a conspiracy to suppress Y.
1 scientist said something that was probably incorrect, so another scientist got ticked and left when the entire organization didn't back him in renouncing a single incorrect statement. And it was merely that global warming was increasing hurricanes. Its not like that wouldn't be shoot down by the scientific community quickly if it ever became a big story.
All Dr. Christopher Landsea had to say was just exactly what he said in his open letter, "by 2080 hurricanes will increase about 5%, maybe less". He's the expert. The IPCC asked him for his data and work in their next report, so obviously they would have published it, just like they did 2x before.
The problem is, with that lack of focus, individual game quirks make it largely unuseable. The whole point of transgaming is to hunt down and resolve those quirks. Without a commitment to maintain that focus on games, products like crossover office and wine are always behind, and always more buggy running games.
Unlike Transgaming, Codeweaver's doesn't run GAMES:)
Thats the entire point of getting Transgaming heh. My linux experiences with Transgaming have been spotty at best. So I really hope that they manage to make the Mac port function more consistently, as well as provide better older game support. Way too buggy for many of the games I play.
I suppose it depends on what your definition of success is, and from what perspective you are defining it from.
From Porsche's standpoint, their goal is probably to make money. They have succeeded. From an end users standpoint, the average joe, his goal is to get from point A to point B with a comfortable, affordable car. In that regards, Porsche has failed.
Linux/Windows is no different. The sacrifices that an average user would have to make to 'afford' Linux (less compatibility, drivers, time learning/installing, etc..) are not worth the effort. In this regard, no matter what you think of the tactics invovled, Windows has, and is, "winning".
While I agree that this theory sounds... a little off, there remains many unexplained myths that have tantalizing bits of truth to them.
For instance, see the Dogon's well documented belief in a binary system, that was later revealed to be true. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirius#The_Dogons The Dogon issue is of course, debatable. Regardless, it is interesting to speculate about.
We now know that solar system travels up and down through the galactic plane in a regular cycle, and some have speculated that this particular cycle brings with it increased chances of asteroid impact, as well as yet unforseen forces (for instance, gravitational).
Who knows what odd galactic cycles we'll discover in the future? I, for one, don't find the intense ancient interest in the sky and its movements, to be something that we can mearly attribute to some sort of primitive fascination with bright and shiny things alone.
Rather, I think there is probably some truth to the many, many myths concerning disasters, floods, and dramatic climate changes, and these were in some way linked to observable heavingly events. That probably greatly contributed to almost every known culture having an intense interest in the sky, with the greatest well known ancient cultures having such well known, and seeminly overly complex, obsessions with the movements of the stars and planets.
That things evolve is indeed a fact. You can watch it happen in any high school biology class room. We bred fruit flies and noted changes in the population based on different pressures we introduced over the course of one term (honors biology).
Now, the "Theory of Evolution" is a bit too broad a term to say that its fact or not. You can argue about the smaller pieces of evidence that support the theory as being facts or not (valid or invalid experimental data, for example). But Richard Dawkins was 100% correct if he said "evolution is FACT" (I didn't hear the exact words) because it is certainly a fact that things evolve.
Java products are fast if the person writing them is very knowledgeable about Java.
Unfortunately, it feels like 9 out of 10 times Java apps I use are slower than competing products/languages. That is both on the server and desktop side of things. Both true in windows, hpux, and our solaris machines.
I don't code in java, so I can't claim to know, but my gut tells me that it must be much more difficult to write 'brilliantly fast' java than it is to write 'brilliantly fast anything else'.
The sheer number of crappy Java apps is very evident to me.
I concur with your comments about MS SQL server handling large queries quickly. I've used Oracle since its inception, MySQL, Post, and more, and I have to hand it to MS: they build a very fine product in MSSQL.
I *can* get the same performance from MySQL, Oracle, and Post, but I have to be very careful about how I form queries and stored procedures. Each has their own little "gotchas" that can make even a simple query run for hours.
MSSQL seems to handle a much larger variety of query types at a performance level that is hard to beat. Now, I'm by no means a guru, and I'm sure there is someone out there that can point to some huge cluster of DB X, and say, MSSQL can't touch this... but for the lay person DB admin, MSSQL "just works" and seems to work much faster and with far fewer problems that any other database.
I recently moved from a health care corp that ran huge MSSQL servers, to a college that runs MySQL and Post and Oracle.. gah, I'm pulling my hair out trying to work with them hehe. Eventually, I do make things work, but it seems like I have to look up every single thing I try and find the "quirk" for that database. With MSSQL, it does what you expect it to do. Type a query, get results, and fast.
99% of anything any user will need to do is GUI driven. Due to focus groups, market testing, etc.. on a whole, windows does have some coherent plan to how things are layed out and accessed.
Of course, if you've never used it, you'll have learn how. But once you understand the basics, it is FAR easier to "guess" correctly on a windows system.
The strength of Linux: "thousands of minds working together to make it better" is also part of the problem. Namely, there is little coherency across applications and system configurations.
If folks want Linux distro's on a greater percentage of desktops, then linux software makers (distro, apps, server apps, etc..) simply have to agree to basic standards.
And I am not talking about just UI issues. I'm talking about the basic philosophies of design.
For instance:
"How does an installation process work for an application?"
That one single issue is probably one of the least coherent across all the linux apps I've used and installed. Each acts different, has config files in different places, may or may not have this, may or may not that, etc.. Parts may be gui driven, parts may be command line driven, some things are only in the config file, some things might be under 'options' somewhere in a menu, but options might be under 'edit' for this app and under 'tools' in this app, etc.
And every time I see this issue raised in these Linux debates, someone responds, "Linux is great because of the great diversity, and none of this 'one size fits' all crap that windows forces you into!".
Well that is all well and good, but just don't cry when most folks refuses to use it, or get frustrated trying to learn it.
I've heard this argument in every mmorpg since time began hehe.
The bottom line is this:
Loot from large raids MUST be better than single group loot or there is zero incentive to raid.
Not only that, but the realism takes a major hit if single group loot is the same as some uber god's loot.
Why do I say that?
Raiding isn't fun. Ok, some aspects are. The pace, intensity, tons of folks making wise cracks, the big community feel of a guild, etc.. However, the planning, occasional in-fighting, loot disputes, back flagging, etc. are all negative aspects.
Grouping is easier to setup, takes less time to get going, less time to organize, typically is a group of close friends or people you know, etc.. You have the same fun playing in a group as in a raid, so those things cancel out.
Positive raid aspects = Positive group aspects = team feel, lots of social stuff going on Negative raid aspects = organization, numbers determining what you can do, loot systems, etc.. Group loot = 1/2 of raid loot usually. or 1/3 of raid loot. Raid loot = 2-3x group loot.
All in all, I'd say this equation is what balances a game:
Positive raid aspects + Negative raid aspects + greater raid loot = group loot + positive group aspects
Sorry, but at some point in a game, there must be some semblance of reality. Reality in the sense that 50 people taking down a god must yield some reward that is greater than 5 people taking down some orc chief.
The work involved in running, organizing, and maintaining a guild necessitates that the rewards must be higher, otherwise, why the F would I want to be part of a guild, and have my nightly activities decided for me?
It really baffles me that designers/coders actually feel like it is some sort of huge challenge to make a site work with all browsers.
If you do a bit of homework (or google it) you'll see a pretty stable set of common code that works with all browsers.
The next step is designing a site only using that code. It really isn't rocket science.
Do you sacrifice some cutting edge features? Of course. But unless your purpose is to wow your audience with cutting edge stuff, there should never be a reason to use those cutting edge features.
One of the sites I'm working with now has over 12,000 pages, and is controlled by 3 style sheets. It is clean, compliant code, that has only THREE browser based changes to the stylesheet (in order to make IE work on a couple newer featurs).
The site has forms, online bill pay, dynamic content, flash, rollovers, and is comprised entirely of divs and css.
Sites that say "IE Only", or "Requires standards compliant browser", or any other variation of saying, in essence,
"Please be inconvienced because of my limitations as a designer"
Need to hire a new web team.
It is quite literally zero extra work to make a complex site work with all browsers if you know what you are doing.
And before someone posts 32 specific code examples showing how its impossible, ask yourself, How could I have done that differently? Why did I need to use that code? I will guarantee that there is another way that will work with both browsers, and if not, that you didn't need to implement that in your site.
[quote]well, grab yourself a nice mandated controlled system like OS X, because Linux probably isn't what you're looking for.[/quote]
What are we talking about here? I thought it was why Linux isn't popular on the desktop, and things that need to change to fix that?
The above quoted statement is far too typical a response to very legitimate concerns.
As a relatively new user to Linux, I downloaded and installed several major apps. Not one created an icon or executable in my 'start menu', nor correctly placed themselves in my bin (not that I would know what to type anyways).
You might argue that it is the applications job to tell you, or to create that icon, but I'm sure the original poster is correct in that, the wide variety found is distributions makes developing user friendly linux applications a major pain.
Without apps, an OS is nothing. Continuing to shrug off pursuit of some sort of standardized library base and directory layout is a sure way to guarantee that Linux-based distributions will never be a popular on the desktop.
Nope, they are just users, get used to that concept.
Buy full armor or another third party lockdown software (or learn how to do it via the registry yourself).
No not allow installation of ANYTHING. Problem solved. User's shouldn't have the option of installing a new screen saver at work.
As soon as YOU, as the Admin, start setting up computers to be as narrowly focused in use as other office supplies (staplers, printers, etc..), the sooner you'll realize that the stupidity isn't on the computer user's end of the equation, but rather on the SysAdmin's end of the equation.
"The last time I installed Windows, it took me roughly a day and a half to have everything ready to roll "
I would suggest you don't know much about windows then. I've never had a windows installation take longer than 2 hours.
Whereas, knowing less about linux, my current installation of gentoo (which I'm typing this message from), took me over a week to iron out all the kinks.
Comes down to what you are familiar with. If the small business in question has someone in house who is familiar with linux, sure, it might go fast. If they don't, its going to be a long process.
Slashdot Mirror
"Taxes only hurt the poor, regardless of who you think you're punishing."
That's utter bs.
What you are preaching is a good old fashion 'trickle down' theory.
Trickle down assumes that the rich will not hoard. It assumes that those rich owning businesses will always devote increased earnings into growing the business and expanding their employee pool.
It assumes that there is a linear relationship between a wealthy spender/business owner's income, and the money that is fed back into the economy, in a useful way.
How does Bill Gates buy the Mona Lisa help the enconomy? Once you amass a certain wealth, more and more of that is either not spent, or spent only on luxuries, which are NOT drivers of the economy (yachts, for instance).
*Some* taxation is good. Where you want to draw the line is tricky, but take a look at tax rates on the wealthy over the last 50 years, and overlay the gap between the wealthy and poor, and then note that major recessions occur when the rich get too rich.
You are correct in believing that any user interface requires the user to learn to some degree.
However, you are not correct in suggesting that there are 'no intuitive interfaces'.
100% intuitive? Probably not. However, it is a scale that can be scientifically measured. And it is very clear that some interface designs do approach the 100% intuitive mark.
I've been to several conferences where Jared Spool spoke, and if you are interested in learning more about the science of interface design, visit http://www.uie.com/
Great use of the intelligent design vs evolution "debate". Hopefully that will resonate stronger with the slashdot crowd.
Obama made sense, and was consistent, and provided more details, plans, facts, and numbers to actually talk about.
McCain just spouted 'talking points' and emotional themes.
I agree.
McCain wasn't saying anything new, he brought nothing newsworthy to the campaign (besides a ton of negative campaigning), and Colbert is basically correct.
It wasn't an ideological bias that caused the news to report on Obama more than they reported on McCain, rather, it was the simple fact that Obama made sense, and was the real 'straight talker' in this campaign.
I applaud the media for not recycling McCain's empty 'talking points', like they so generously did for George Bush.
The American people are fed up with 'slogans' and 'talking points'. We want numbers, facts, and actual plans.
Obama presented a tremendous amount of detailed information compared with McCain.
Your vote does have meaning, even in a non-swing state.
It gives the incoming President political capital. If he wins in a landslide, the house and senate will see that message and be more willing to endorse his ideas.
If he wins by a thin margin, the house and senate can feel justified in opposing some of his initiatives.
There are 3 ways to get that first job:
1. Know someone in the company
2. Gain experience through personal projects and showcase it.
3. Be extremely charismatic and up to date on the job's focus areas and especially the companies specific mission.
Right out of college, with a degree in Anthropology, my first job was as a system analyst for a health care corporation.
For years I had tinkered with computers, and kept somewhat up to date on modern programming techniques, enterprise systems, and had created several little programs that resided on public servers that I could show off.
The interview was successful because I:
A) Knew exactly what they wanted for that position.
B) Researched the relevant "buzzwords" and lingo beforehand.
C) Was generally easy going and relaxed.
Despite having no formal education in computer science or programming, my obvious research into their business and corporate culture (thank you anthropology!) really showed well during the first encounter.
People with technical skills are a dime a dozen (unless you are striving to get into some very abstract programming job), and usually, a hardworking, motivated person should be able to convince a interviewer that they are up for the challenge.
Basically, apply for the job in front of you, do not apply for "a programming job". If you treat the job as something unique, do a little research on the company and their culture, and can "seem to be one of them", you are in.
"and it does not yet support advanced windows graphics libraries"
I was under the impression that no virtual servers support advanced/3d graphics.
Please tell me I'm wrong, and I'll uninstall my copy of windows today:)
The sooner cars start running on electricity the better. As newer batteries, newer/cleaner forms of energy generation (wind, solar, etc..) come into the market, electricity will just get better and better.
I do not know the specific situation in New Zealand, but we can expect the same here in the US very soon. For years we had an over abundance of hops, especially in the Yakima Valley and surrounding regions of central washington. The prices fell drastically, and many farmers either went out of business, or converted their fields to other crops.
Combine that with an increase in the demand for high alpha hops (for stronger flavored micro brews, ipa's, etc..), and the plight of powdery mildew that decimated nearly a 1/3rd of the high alpha hop fields around Yakima before it was brought under control (at a high cost), and you now see the price of hops increasing drastically.
You might ask the simple question: Well, why didn't more farmers start planting hops as the price inched up? The biggest reason is the startup cost. If you got out of the hop business, you tore down all the poles in the field, and likely sold or tore down your very expensive hop kilns and factories used to bale the hops. You are talking about million+ dollar startup costs for most moderate sized operations.
Oh come on, read the open letter to the community by the researcher who quit:e a.html
..."
http://www.lavoisier.com.au/papers/articles/lands
"Inspite of what you may believe, there is a politicaly motivated movement to ensure that scientists that do not agree with the Global Warming Consensus are not heard
That is your opinion of the situation, NOT Dr. Christopher Landsea's opinion. What I read in the open letter was 1 lead IPCC scientist go a little far, the media take it out of context, and then Dr. Christopher Landsea quits because people "dismissed" his distain over what happened.
Show me proof of a "movement", because there is far too much 1 person said X, another person said Y, only Y didn't make it on the nightly news, so it must be a conspiracy to suppress Y.
1 scientist said something that was probably incorrect, so another scientist got ticked and left when the entire organization didn't back him in renouncing a single incorrect statement. And it was merely that global warming was increasing hurricanes. Its not like that wouldn't be shoot down by the scientific community quickly if it ever became a big story.
All Dr. Christopher Landsea had to say was just exactly what he said in his open letter, "by 2080 hurricanes will increase about 5%, maybe less". He's the expert. The IPCC asked him for his data and work in their next report, so obviously they would have published it, just like they did 2x before.
You cut off your quote of realclimate.org just one small sentence early....
4 /12/co2-in-ice-cores/
"The correct interpretation of this is well known: that there is a T-CO2 feedback:"
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/200
How did this person get modded +5 for taking a partial quote and ignoring the explanation that was a mere one sentence below his inaccurate tirade?
Why should a scientist be reduced to 'leaking' his results as a means of publication?
The problem is, with that lack of focus, individual game quirks make it largely unuseable. The whole point of transgaming is to hunt down and resolve those quirks. Without a commitment to maintain that focus on games, products like crossover office and wine are always behind, and always more buggy running games.
Unlike Transgaming, Codeweaver's doesn't run GAMES:)
Thats the entire point of getting Transgaming heh. My linux experiences with Transgaming have been spotty at best. So I really hope that they manage to make the Mac port function more consistently, as well as provide better older game support. Way too buggy for many of the games I play.
I suppose it depends on what your definition of success is, and from what perspective you are defining it from.
From Porsche's standpoint, their goal is probably to make money. They have succeeded.
From an end users standpoint, the average joe, his goal is to get from point A to point B with a comfortable, affordable car. In that regards, Porsche has failed.
Linux/Windows is no different. The sacrifices that an average user would have to make to 'afford' Linux (less compatibility, drivers, time learning/installing, etc..) are not worth the effort. In this regard, no matter what you think of the tactics invovled, Windows has, and is, "winning".
While I agree that this theory sounds... a little off, there remains many unexplained myths that have tantalizing bits of truth to them.
For instance, see the Dogon's well documented belief in a binary system, that was later revealed to be true. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirius#The_Dogons
The Dogon issue is of course, debatable. Regardless, it is interesting to speculate about.
We now know that solar system travels up and down through the galactic plane in a regular cycle, and some have speculated that this particular cycle brings with it increased chances of asteroid impact, as well as yet unforseen forces (for instance, gravitational).
Who knows what odd galactic cycles we'll discover in the future? I, for one, don't find the intense ancient interest in the sky and its movements, to be something that we can mearly attribute to some sort of primitive fascination with bright and shiny things alone.
Rather, I think there is probably some truth to the many, many myths concerning disasters, floods, and dramatic climate changes, and these were in some way linked to observable heavingly events. That probably greatly contributed to almost every known culture having an intense interest in the sky, with the greatest well known ancient cultures having such well known, and seeminly overly complex, obsessions with the movements of the stars and planets.
That things evolve is indeed a fact. You can watch it happen in any high school biology class room. We bred fruit flies and noted changes in the population based on different pressures we introduced over the course of one term (honors biology).
Now, the "Theory of Evolution" is a bit too broad a term to say that its fact or not. You can argue about the smaller pieces of evidence that support the theory as being facts or not (valid or invalid experimental data, for example). But Richard Dawkins was 100% correct if he said "evolution is FACT" (I didn't hear the exact words) because it is certainly a fact that things evolve.
Java products are fast if the person writing them is very knowledgeable about Java.
Unfortunately, it feels like 9 out of 10 times Java apps I use are slower than competing products/languages. That is both on the server and desktop side of things. Both true in windows, hpux, and our solaris machines.
I don't code in java, so I can't claim to know, but my gut tells me that it must be much more difficult to write 'brilliantly fast' java than it is to write 'brilliantly fast anything else'.
The sheer number of crappy Java apps is very evident to me.
I concur with your comments about MS SQL server handling large queries quickly. I've used Oracle since its inception, MySQL, Post, and more, and I have to hand it to MS: they build a very fine product in MSSQL.
I *can* get the same performance from MySQL, Oracle, and Post, but I have to be very careful about how I form queries and stored procedures. Each has their own little "gotchas" that can make even a simple query run for hours.
MSSQL seems to handle a much larger variety of query types at a performance level that is hard to beat. Now, I'm by no means a guru, and I'm sure there is someone out there that can point to some huge cluster of DB X, and say, MSSQL can't touch this... but for the lay person DB admin, MSSQL "just works" and seems to work much faster and with far fewer problems that any other database.
I recently moved from a health care corp that ran huge MSSQL servers, to a college that runs MySQL and Post and Oracle.. gah, I'm pulling my hair out trying to work with them hehe. Eventually, I do make things work, but it seems like I have to look up every single thing I try and find the "quirk" for that database. With MSSQL, it does what you expect it to do. Type a query, get results, and fast.
Here's the interesting thing about windows:
99% of anything any user will need to do is GUI driven. Due to focus groups, market testing, etc.. on a whole, windows does have some coherent plan to how things are layed out and accessed.
Of course, if you've never used it, you'll have learn how. But once you understand the basics, it is FAR easier to "guess" correctly on a windows system.
The strength of Linux: "thousands of minds working together to make it better" is also part of the problem. Namely, there is little coherency across applications and system configurations.
If folks want Linux distro's on a greater percentage of desktops, then linux software makers (distro, apps, server apps, etc..) simply have to agree to basic standards.
And I am not talking about just UI issues. I'm talking about the basic philosophies of design.
For instance:
"How does an installation process work for an application?"
That one single issue is probably one of the least coherent across all the linux apps I've used and installed. Each acts different, has config files in different places, may or may not have this, may or may not that, etc.. Parts may be gui driven, parts may be command line driven, some things are only in the config file, some things might be under 'options' somewhere in a menu, but options might be under 'edit' for this app and under 'tools' in this app, etc.
And every time I see this issue raised in these Linux debates, someone responds, "Linux is great because of the great diversity, and none of this 'one size fits' all crap that windows forces you into!".
Well that is all well and good, but just don't cry when most folks refuses to use it, or get frustrated trying to learn it.
I've heard this argument in every mmorpg since time began hehe.
The bottom line is this:
Loot from large raids MUST be better than single group loot or there is zero incentive to raid.
Not only that, but the realism takes a major hit if single group loot is the same as some uber god's loot.
Why do I say that?
Raiding isn't fun. Ok, some aspects are. The pace, intensity, tons of folks making wise cracks, the big community feel of a guild, etc.. However, the planning, occasional in-fighting, loot disputes, back flagging, etc. are all negative aspects.
Grouping is easier to setup, takes less time to get going, less time to organize, typically is a group of close friends or people you know, etc.. You have the same fun playing in a group as in a raid, so those things cancel out.
Positive raid aspects = Positive group aspects = team feel, lots of social stuff going on
Negative raid aspects = organization, numbers determining what you can do, loot systems, etc..
Group loot = 1/2 of raid loot usually. or 1/3 of raid loot.
Raid loot = 2-3x group loot.
All in all, I'd say this equation is what balances a game:
Positive raid aspects + Negative raid aspects + greater raid loot = group loot + positive group aspects
Sorry, but at some point in a game, there must be some semblance of reality. Reality in the sense that 50 people taking down a god must yield some reward that is greater than 5 people taking down some orc chief.
The work involved in running, organizing, and maintaining a guild necessitates that the rewards must be higher, otherwise, why the F would I want to be part of a guild, and have my nightly activities decided for me?
It really baffles me that designers/coders actually feel like it is some sort of huge challenge to make a site work with all browsers.
If you do a bit of homework (or google it) you'll see a pretty stable set of common code that works with all browsers.
The next step is designing a site only using that code. It really isn't rocket science.
Do you sacrifice some cutting edge features? Of course. But unless your purpose is to wow your audience with cutting edge stuff, there should never be a reason to use those cutting edge features.
One of the sites I'm working with now has over 12,000 pages, and is controlled by 3 style sheets. It is clean, compliant code, that has only THREE browser based changes to the stylesheet (in order to make IE work on a couple newer featurs).
The site has forms, online bill pay, dynamic content, flash, rollovers, and is comprised entirely of divs and css.
Sites that say "IE Only", or "Requires standards compliant browser", or any other variation of saying, in essence,
"Please be inconvienced because of my limitations as a designer"
Need to hire a new web team.
It is quite literally zero extra work to make a complex site work with all browsers if you know what you are doing.
And before someone posts 32 specific code examples showing how its impossible, ask yourself, How could I have done that differently? Why did I need to use that code? I will guarantee that there is another way that will work with both browsers, and if not, that you didn't need to implement that in your site.
[quote]well, grab yourself a nice mandated controlled system like OS X, because Linux probably isn't what you're looking for.[/quote]
What are we talking about here? I thought it was why Linux isn't popular on the desktop, and things that need to change to fix that?
The above quoted statement is far too typical a response to very legitimate concerns.
As a relatively new user to Linux, I downloaded and installed several major apps. Not one created an icon or executable in my 'start menu', nor correctly placed themselves in my bin (not that I would know what to type anyways).
You might argue that it is the applications job to tell you, or to create that icon, but I'm sure the original poster is correct in that, the wide variety found is distributions makes developing user friendly linux applications a major pain.
Without apps, an OS is nothing. Continuing to shrug off pursuit of some sort of standardized library base and directory layout is a sure way to guarantee that Linux-based distributions will never be a popular on the desktop.
"The first is stupid users"
Nope, they are just users, get used to that concept.
Buy full armor or another third party lockdown software (or learn how to do it via the registry yourself).
No not allow installation of ANYTHING. Problem solved. User's shouldn't have the option of installing a new screen saver at work.
As soon as YOU, as the Admin, start setting up computers to be as narrowly focused in use as other office supplies (staplers, printers, etc..), the sooner you'll realize that the stupidity isn't on the computer user's end of the equation, but rather on the SysAdmin's end of the equation.
"The last time I installed Windows, it took me roughly a day and a half to have everything ready to roll "
I would suggest you don't know much about windows then. I've never had a windows installation take longer than 2 hours.
Whereas, knowing less about linux, my current installation of gentoo (which I'm typing this message from), took me over a week to iron out all the kinks.
Comes down to what you are familiar with. If the small business in question has someone in house who is familiar with linux, sure, it might go fast. If they don't, its going to be a long process.