Not in university, but I would assume it’s still the same old “if you use something other than windows or maybe mac, you are free to do so however you are on your own to figure it out and resolve any issues!” attitude. Which really I think is fair. At least now Novel is mostly dead so you don’t need to deal with that shit;p
I run Netware 5 on on my laptop, you insensitive clod! Hey, it has an X server....
Yeah, I think it is odd that you spend so much time digging and pinging. Sure, they're useful tools for network admin, but geez, how much time can you actually spend doing it? I mean, total time. For me it was just something I had to do if something was wrong or while logged into a remote server. And even now I still do all of my source management from the commandline, but running svn diffs or parsing log files whatnot doesn't take much of my time.
I wasn't suggesting you replace those tools with GUI versions. Certainly there is something you spend time doing on the desktop, yes? Reading mail? Apple Mail is really good. It is simple, fast, reliable, and easy to search. Also it is a good way to combine mail accounts into one program. Don't you ever have to compose documentation or anything like that? Don't you do anything outside of network admin? You don't play music? Chat with people? View PDFs? Build and maintain network diagrams? Don't you ever have to create/modify images for websites? What about at home? Don't you do anything with your computer outside of work? I'm baffled.
The problem of driving a car is having to get gas.
No, it is more like the problem with driving certain kinds of cars is that they are more problementic, on average, to own and maintain in order to allow more flexibility.
Bull. "ALL" of her apps are not launching on boot. Please stop lying or better inform yourself.
Lying? Why would I do that? The point is that there appears to be no particular pattern or any one set of apps that are launching spontaneously. WTF does it matter if it is at boot or not?
Learn to use your phone. In the settings, there is an option called "Applications". It will tell you everything that is running at that moment. Use common sense to figure out what app is causing a problem. App downloads lots of data from the 'net? Might be a problem.
FIrst of all, it isn't my phone. But you'd know that if you were actually listening to me rather than getting a defensive about a mobile phone operating system. Second, who the hell are you to accuse me of lying and trying trivialize technical problems you know almost nothing about other than the few details I've revealed here?
(with all due respect)
With all due respect, fuck off. You don't get to say "with all due respect" after accusing me of lying and talking down to me like I'm an idiot.
You are taking an anecdotal situation of a particular user's bad experience and using it as an indictment of the whole platform.
No, I took an anecdotal situation and said it reminded me of Windows. And you're getting all defensive. You haven't really dispelled my impression either. In fact, you're using the exact same excuses people use to defend Windows and its stupid problems. Yes, I get that those problems are a side effect of flexibility and choice, but dont' try to pretend the the problems aren't there.
Uninstalling multiple apps takes less than 5 minutes. Re imaging the phone and setting it all back up can take over an hour. How is that not a "whole lot better"?
Because it is ALL the apps that are launching. SHe's end up either uninstalling everything or doing it one by one, checking to see ifthe problem has gone away after each uninstall. Wow, the fact that we're even going down this road totally reinforces my impression of Android. This is shit that users shouldn't have to deal with.
It would be stupid of them to abandon existing MS Office users and lowly web developers like myself. I can see them pushing iOS in NEW markets where they might have used OS X and ditching their very low end Mac products, but what's the point in abandoning middle range users? Users who can't quite do what they need to do on an iPad and need to use their computer as a more tradtional office workstation.
I'd definitely go the Hackintosh route. Though I think it would pretty much kill the current software ecosystem for OS X so I'm not sure I'd last long on even a hackintosh.
If I need a full desktop/laptop computer, that's what I need. If Apple goes this route of ditching OS X,I don't think an Apple laptop would even be an option even if I wanted to buy Apple. So yeah, might be loyal in the sense that I like the products, but not so loyal that I'm going to quit my job as a web developer because I'm too loyal to to buy a PC to do my work.
There are people that would rather buy a new computer than defrag their hard drive. That, of course, is just as stupid as it sounds. Please don't insult your own intelligence by validating that level of user stupidity.
I'm not. She's really trying to solve the problem and she is tech savvy, but it is looking like it will be easier to just reinstall. The solution is not as obvious as defragging. When I had to use Windows, even I had to resort to reinstalling many times because trying to figure out what was really wrong was just driving me crazy. To this day, troubleshooting Windows drives me bonkers. But I can troubleshoot OS X or LInux without too much trouble.
It's like smashing the lightbulb rather than turning off the switch. If your Android device doesn't work well with a particular collection of apps, uninstall the apps.
It is an option, but it isn't isn't a whole lot better than reinstalling the whole system and starting from scratch. Especially since most data is synced outside of the phone.
Of course, what you are really arguing against is choice and flexibility.
I'm not arguing against anyting. I'm pointing out the downside to all that "choice" and in particular that it appears to resemble the mess found on Windows. I never had such problem on Linux, where flexibility is a mantra.
The parallel to Windows is that it's popular and can run on a multitude of hardware, that seems about it.
When I start to hear people talking about reinstalling the Android OS to fix problems arising from applications they've instsalled, it reminds me a lot of working with Windows. Reinstalling when things get crazy used to be a very "Windows" thing to do. My girlfriend recently had to install some software to monitor apps because they were just spontaneously launching and wasting battery despite trying to configure the apps to not launch. The whole thing reminds me so much of my Window Hell days. Anyway, it makes *me* chuckle a bit. I don't put up with that kind of shit anymore.
I think you may be glossing over some of the other obvious benefits of Android over the iPhone that are just as important. Things like choice of form factor for example. Some people like devices with slide out keyboards like the Samsung Epic 4G or blackberry-esque business phones like the Droid Pro.
But that's not really a Droid vs. iOS thing. It is hardware.
People, at least in the US, like to have a choice of carrier.
For sure. I refused to get an iPhone because I don't want AT&T, but now there's Verizon, so at least there's some choice. But I was really referring to applications. THere's hardly a shortage of iPhone apps.
And don't discount the widget loving contingent of Android users. Many people like those giant clock and weather report boxes on their home screens rather than just a static icon list. There are obviously many reasons people choose Android as evidenced by the meteoric rise in market share and it is a bit arrogant for you to presume what people "need to worry about" when it comes to their choice of phone.
I'm just saying Android is the "Windows" of phones. I find the parallels that are arising to be rather amusing. There are definitly drawbacks ot all that "choice" and people should be aware of that. And I don't think it is fair to suggest that dumb people choose iPhone.
Disclaimer: I'm not actually a smartphone user of any sort, though I will probably get an iPhone because I don't have any preconcieved notions about how it should function. I just want something that works and isn't going to be a hassle to maintain should I choose to install lots of stuff.
It is a well known issue, battery life on Android. And I'm not blaming Android directly. Certainly there are many reasons. Bad apps, dumb users, etc. But you can say that much about Windows. For some reason it takes a lot of extra effort/caution to maintain a healthy Windows/Android system than other systems. Just because someone might choose not to have to worry abotu that kind of shit and go iPhone, doesn't mean they're dumb. I, for one, don't think users shoudl have to worry about shit like that. These devices shoudl just work. Does it mean my options for installing apps are somewhat limited? Maybe, but in practice it really doesn't matter that much.
Nah, had they copied Android they'd have problems with apps randomly starting and draining the battery. I actually talked to an Android user the other day who was talking about reinstalling the OS because of app/battery problems. Between that a recent malware problems, I wonder if Android is the Windows of mobile phones. (yes, I know there is literally a WIndows for mobile phones already)
A simple example: I've never seen a replacement tool for all the features I need which 'dig' has.
Why would you even expect a GUI replacement for such a simple tool? The great thing about OS X is that I can have both, great GUI apps and a full LInux commandline. Besides the GNU (and BSD) utilities that come out of the box, there's macports. Best of both worlds. You can get the latest GNU tools if you need them. Most things are ported.
Well, to me it seems more that they are trying to change how people use their computers.
Clearly, but to nobody's benefit but their own.
Sure, some of this is possible with some combination of trusted Grub and SELinux. However, again no distro I'm aware of does this and most linux software would need heavy patching/repackaging to work in a heavily managed environment (say where it can't read/write arbitrary files in $HOME or whatever). Package manager signatures only ensure that known-good copies of software gets installed by the package manager. They don't keep users from inadvertently installing/running arbitrary code. They usually don't detect modifications to files after installation either.
But none of that has proven to be a real problem in Linux. It is certainly not worth scrapping the whole idea of a desktop OS and crippling people's user experience by forcing them to do everything inside a browser. Nobody is going to buy that argument, at least. Try telling the average user that they can't use their favorite desktop app because there some remote chance that installing it they might get malware on their system
I'll agree that cloud solutions right now are weak compared to professional-level desktop solutions. I suspect that we'll see that improve if the concept takes off. I think that the issue here is that Google is dabbling with the concept but hasn't gone all-in.
Not just professional level desktop solutions. I would say that we apps are not even up to consumer level standards. What it comes down to is that the web is just not designed to support that kind of applications that people are trying to build. HTML5 will help, but I think it will still be quite limited. For one thing, the browser is a big sandbox for security reasons. You cannot utilize local hardware and applications can't talk to each other like they can on desktops.
The issue you bring up about the power user dictating the requirements is a cultural one. A solution is to simply use Google Docs for the 95% of things it works for, and just upload.xls files and edit them in Excel for the other 5% or whatever. Obviously a key driver here is whether we're talking 5% or 25%, and so on. A typical corporation may own tractor trailers, but I doubt they issue them to their sales force as company cars.
The difference between Office suites and tractors is that there's not a whole lot of extra expense in just getting site license fo MS Office. It becomes a question of why NOT just get everyone using MS Office and then nobody has to worry about having certain features when they need it. MS Office might seem like overkill in many cases, but it isn't like there's any harm in not using those extra features.It is still going to run well enough on modern systems. It isn't like a tractor which would be incredibly awkward for the sales force to drive around in.
At some point you need to avoid tailoring solutions to the 1%.
Oh, so now it is down to 1%? I think you'd be surprised how many office users require more than what Google Docs can offer. Even if they dont' actually have to compose the complex documents, just viewing them often requires more advanced desktop software.
Chrome on Windows doesn't work out-of-the-box - you need to install it first,
WEll.. duh. WTF does that matter?
and install antivirus, configure your printers
And how are you printing from Chrome OS? From what I understand that's actually a pretty significant problem.
and periodically deal with issues that crop up.
So?
Much of the driver behind Chrome is ditching the overhead of general purpose computing.
You ever hear of the term "throwing out the baby with the bath water?" That pretty much describes Chrome OS. The only "dri
Part of "not caring" though is that you get to bypass a lot of the corporate politics. Remember Office Space? They brought in The Bobs. The Bobs didn't give a shit. They were there to cut the fat. Didn't matter who they fired. Nobody was safe except the very highest of execs. That's what being an IT consultant was like. I go into an office, setup their firewall or whatever, and get the fuck out. I have X number of hours to complete the job because that's what was sold to the client and I was in trouble if I couldn't deliver in that time. There was no pretending to be busy. No sucking up to the boss. I was way more productive than any employee.
That's not to say anyone should replace employees with consultants, of course. It just isn't cost effective in the long run. But I do think consultants get a bad rap. Sometimes you have a one-time project that employees just can't handle on their own.
Nah, I guess I was like that when I was running linux on my desktop. Before GNOME and KDE were really big and most people just used simple window managers. Then it was basically just a browser and a terminal because most GUI apps were kinda half-ass. Though even with the commandline, there was still a lot of stuff I did locally. Tinkering with programming and other odd things. Stuff that could be put on a server somewhere, but was easier just to work on locally. Since switching to OS X several years ago, I've gotten into relying more on desktop programs because, you know, they're actually good and they integrate better with the desktop rather than just being a mishmash of random applications, each using a different UI toolkit.
It does seem like it is mostly either Windows or Linux users driving to make everything web based. Windows users because of security concerns (for the sake of ignorant users who could manage to install malware in 15 minutes) and Linux users because they don't really have a lot of great apps anyway. So moving to the web isn't so much of step down. Coming from OS X, it baffles me that anyone would actually WANT all applications too move to the browser. I like Cocoa (OS X) apps. Please don't stop making them!;-)
Huh? What's wrong with the rewrite capabilities of standard hard drives? I've never had a problem with it. I thought the enterprise drives just spun faster and had more cache/better interfaces.
I even get tired of the digging with the keyboard. In my latest game I just gave myself infinite TNT with a mod that makes TNT leave 100% material. Suddenly my motivation to build underground has skyrocketed. Used to be the thought of diigging out a large area made me groan.
It seems like a very large portion of Wii owners never bought a single game after Wii Sports which came with the console.
Really? That odd. It was my impression that Wii sports was just sort of a demo. I mean, I had Wii Golf mastered in an hour. It is only 9 holes that never change!
Here's a thought, if you don't like games with elaborate stories, don't play them. Obviously their not your thing. Other people, on the other hand, enjoy the "interactive movie" type game. It isn't like there aren't plenty of pure action/strategy/whatever games out there.
Either that or you're just getting older. Generally it is safe to assume it is yourself changing and becoming bored with games rather than games becoming boring. Same with music or movies. Not sure how old you are but when I was younger, I could become engrossed by the stupidest, most trivial of video games. Some (most) of those Atari/Coleco/etc games were really pretty shitty if you think about it, and they're even worse if you try to go back and play them now. And how about that Atari joystick? Terrible controller with a single button. But damn if I didn't sit in front of them for hours at a time, trying to jump the pixilated stick figure of an avatar over chasms and shit. Hell, just how many 2D side scrolling action games WERE there back in the day?
Also, there's the fact that we tend to forget all the shitty stuff from the past and just remember the highlights. Take any five year stretch and you could pick out a dozen really cool games and that's all you'll remember. 10 years from now you (or your kids) wll be able to do the same thing about the games now. GTAIV is just one of your picks.
What's odd is that you would even expect to like a majority of games out there. I mean, on one hand you claim that developers pander to focus groups for mass appeal but then you expect a game that "takes risks" to be good. You obviously have very specific tastes so you should expect the majority of games to not appeal to you. But you know what? Those blockbuster games make money because other peopel like them. If the games were the problem, they wouldn't be selling.
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Not in university, but I would assume it’s still the same old “if you use something other than windows or maybe mac, you are free to do so however you are on your own to figure it out and resolve any issues!” attitude. Which really I think is fair. At least now Novel is mostly dead so you don’t need to deal with that shit ;p
I run Netware 5 on on my laptop, you insensitive clod! Hey, it has an X server....
Experience with Virus Creation Lab is a must. They still use that, right?
Yeah, I think it is odd that you spend so much time digging and pinging. Sure, they're useful tools for network admin, but geez, how much time can you actually spend doing it? I mean, total time. For me it was just something I had to do if something was wrong or while logged into a remote server. And even now I still do all of my source management from the commandline, but running svn diffs or parsing log files whatnot doesn't take much of my time.
I wasn't suggesting you replace those tools with GUI versions. Certainly there is something you spend time doing on the desktop, yes? Reading mail? Apple Mail is really good. It is simple, fast, reliable, and easy to search. Also it is a good way to combine mail accounts into one program. Don't you ever have to compose documentation or anything like that? Don't you do anything outside of network admin? You don't play music? Chat with people? View PDFs? Build and maintain network diagrams? Don't you ever have to create/modify images for websites? What about at home? Don't you do anything with your computer outside of work? I'm baffled.
The problem of driving a car is having to get gas.
No, it is more like the problem with driving certain kinds of cars is that they are more problementic, on average, to own and maintain in order to allow more flexibility.
Bull. "ALL" of her apps are not launching on boot. Please stop lying or better inform yourself.
Lying? Why would I do that? The point is that there appears to be no particular pattern or any one set of apps that are launching spontaneously. WTF does it matter if it is at boot or not?
Learn to use your phone. In the settings, there is an option called "Applications". It will tell you everything that is running at that moment. Use common sense to figure out what app is causing a problem. App downloads lots of data from the 'net? Might be a problem.
FIrst of all, it isn't my phone. But you'd know that if you were actually listening to me rather than getting a defensive about a mobile phone operating system. Second, who the hell are you to accuse me of lying and trying trivialize technical problems you know almost nothing about other than the few details I've revealed here?
(with all due respect)
With all due respect, fuck off. You don't get to say "with all due respect" after accusing me of lying and talking down to me like I'm an idiot.
You are taking an anecdotal situation of a particular user's bad experience and using it as an indictment of the whole platform.
No, I took an anecdotal situation and said it reminded me of Windows. And you're getting all defensive. You haven't really dispelled my impression either. In fact, you're using the exact same excuses people use to defend Windows and its stupid problems. Yes, I get that those problems are a side effect of flexibility and choice, but dont' try to pretend the the problems aren't there.
Uninstalling multiple apps takes less than 5 minutes. Re imaging the phone and setting it all back up can take over an hour. How is that not a "whole lot better"?
Because it is ALL the apps that are launching. SHe's end up either uninstalling everything or doing it one by one, checking to see ifthe problem has gone away after each uninstall. Wow, the fact that we're even going down this road totally reinforces my impression of Android. This is shit that users shouldn't have to deal with.
It would be stupid of them to abandon existing MS Office users and lowly web developers like myself. I can see them pushing iOS in NEW markets where they might have used OS X and ditching their very low end Mac products, but what's the point in abandoning middle range users? Users who can't quite do what they need to do on an iPad and need to use their computer as a more tradtional office workstation.
I'd definitely go the Hackintosh route. Though I think it would pretty much kill the current software ecosystem for OS X so I'm not sure I'd last long on even a hackintosh.
If I need a full desktop/laptop computer, that's what I need. If Apple goes this route of ditching OS X,I don't think an Apple laptop would even be an option even if I wanted to buy Apple. So yeah, might be loyal in the sense that I like the products, but not so loyal that I'm going to quit my job as a web developer because I'm too loyal to to buy a PC to do my work.
There are people that would rather buy a new computer than defrag their hard drive. That, of course, is just as stupid as it sounds. Please don't insult your own intelligence by validating that level of user stupidity.
I'm not. She's really trying to solve the problem and she is tech savvy, but it is looking like it will be easier to just reinstall. The solution is not as obvious as defragging. When I had to use Windows, even I had to resort to reinstalling many times because trying to figure out what was really wrong was just driving me crazy. To this day, troubleshooting Windows drives me bonkers. But I can troubleshoot OS X or LInux without too much trouble.
It's like smashing the lightbulb rather than turning off the switch. If your Android device doesn't work well with a particular collection of apps, uninstall the apps.
It is an option, but it isn't isn't a whole lot better than reinstalling the whole system and starting from scratch. Especially since most data is synced outside of the phone.
Of course, what you are really arguing against is choice and flexibility.
I'm not arguing against anyting. I'm pointing out the downside to all that "choice" and in particular that it appears to resemble the mess found on Windows. I never had such problem on Linux, where flexibility is a mantra.
The parallel to Windows is that it's popular and can run on a multitude of hardware, that seems about it.
When I start to hear people talking about reinstalling the Android OS to fix problems arising from applications they've instsalled, it reminds me a lot of working with Windows. Reinstalling when things get crazy used to be a very "Windows" thing to do. My girlfriend recently had to install some software to monitor apps because they were just spontaneously launching and wasting battery despite trying to configure the apps to not launch. The whole thing reminds me so much of my Window Hell days. Anyway, it makes *me* chuckle a bit. I don't put up with that kind of shit anymore.
I think you may be glossing over some of the other obvious benefits of Android over the iPhone that are just as important. Things like choice of form factor for example. Some people like devices with slide out keyboards like the Samsung Epic 4G or blackberry-esque business phones like the Droid Pro.
But that's not really a Droid vs. iOS thing. It is hardware.
People, at least in the US, like to have a choice of carrier.
For sure. I refused to get an iPhone because I don't want AT&T, but now there's Verizon, so at least there's some choice. But I was really referring to applications. THere's hardly a shortage of iPhone apps.
And don't discount the widget loving contingent of Android users. Many people like those giant clock and weather report boxes on their home screens rather than just a static icon list. There are obviously many reasons people choose Android as evidenced by the meteoric rise in market share and it is a bit arrogant for you to presume what people "need to worry about" when it comes to their choice of phone.
I'm just saying Android is the "Windows" of phones. I find the parallels that are arising to be rather amusing. There are definitly drawbacks ot all that "choice" and people should be aware of that. And I don't think it is fair to suggest that dumb people choose iPhone.
Disclaimer: I'm not actually a smartphone user of any sort, though I will probably get an iPhone because I don't have any preconcieved notions about how it should function. I just want something that works and isn't going to be a hassle to maintain should I choose to install lots of stuff.
It is a well known issue, battery life on Android. And I'm not blaming Android directly. Certainly there are many reasons. Bad apps, dumb users, etc. But you can say that much about Windows. For some reason it takes a lot of extra effort/caution to maintain a healthy Windows/Android system than other systems. Just because someone might choose not to have to worry abotu that kind of shit and go iPhone, doesn't mean they're dumb. I, for one, don't think users shoudl have to worry about shit like that. These devices shoudl just work. Does it mean my options for installing apps are somewhat limited? Maybe, but in practice it really doesn't matter that much.
Nah, had they copied Android they'd have problems with apps randomly starting and draining the battery. I actually talked to an Android user the other day who was talking about reinstalling the OS because of app/battery problems. Between that a recent malware problems, I wonder if Android is the Windows of mobile phones. (yes, I know there is literally a WIndows for mobile phones already)
A simple example: I've never seen a replacement tool for all the features I need which 'dig' has.
Why would you even expect a GUI replacement for such a simple tool? The great thing about OS X is that I can have both, great GUI apps and a full LInux commandline. Besides the GNU (and BSD) utilities that come out of the box, there's macports. Best of both worlds. You can get the latest GNU tools if you need them. Most things are ported.
Riiiight... Steve is so controlling my life /rollseyes
Well, to me it seems more that they are trying to change how people use their computers.
Clearly, but to nobody's benefit but their own.
Sure, some of this is possible with some combination of trusted Grub and SELinux. However, again no distro I'm aware of does this and most linux software would need heavy patching/repackaging to work in a heavily managed environment (say where it can't read/write arbitrary files in $HOME or whatever). Package manager signatures only ensure that known-good copies of software gets installed by the package manager. They don't keep users from inadvertently installing/running arbitrary code. They usually don't detect modifications to files after installation either.
But none of that has proven to be a real problem in Linux. It is certainly not worth scrapping the whole idea of a desktop OS and crippling people's user experience by forcing them to do everything inside a browser. Nobody is going to buy that argument, at least. Try telling the average user that they can't use their favorite desktop app because there some remote chance that installing it they might get malware on their system
I'll agree that cloud solutions right now are weak compared to professional-level desktop solutions. I suspect that we'll see that improve if the concept takes off. I think that the issue here is that Google is dabbling with the concept but hasn't gone all-in.
Not just professional level desktop solutions. I would say that we apps are not even up to consumer level standards. What it comes down to is that the web is just not designed to support that kind of applications that people are trying to build. HTML5 will help, but I think it will still be quite limited. For one thing, the browser is a big sandbox for security reasons. You cannot utilize local hardware and applications can't talk to each other like they can on desktops.
The issue you bring up about the power user dictating the requirements is a cultural one. A solution is to simply use Google Docs for the 95% of things it works for, and just upload .xls files and edit them in Excel for the other 5% or whatever. Obviously a key driver here is whether we're talking 5% or 25%, and so on. A typical corporation may own tractor trailers, but I doubt they issue them to their sales force as company cars.
The difference between Office suites and tractors is that there's not a whole lot of extra expense in just getting site license fo MS Office. It becomes a question of why NOT just get everyone using MS Office and then nobody has to worry about having certain features when they need it. MS Office might seem like overkill in many cases, but it isn't like there's any harm in not using those extra features.It is still going to run well enough on modern systems. It isn't like a tractor which would be incredibly awkward for the sales force to drive around in.
At some point you need to avoid tailoring solutions to the 1%.
Oh, so now it is down to 1%? I think you'd be surprised how many office users require more than what Google Docs can offer. Even if they dont' actually have to compose the complex documents, just viewing them often requires more advanced desktop software.
Chrome on Windows doesn't work out-of-the-box - you need to install it first,
WEll.. duh. WTF does that matter?
and install antivirus, configure your printers
And how are you printing from Chrome OS? From what I understand that's actually a pretty significant problem.
and periodically deal with issues that crop up.
So?
Much of the driver behind Chrome is ditching the overhead of general purpose computing.
You ever hear of the term "throwing out the baby with the bath water?" That pretty much describes Chrome OS. The only "dri
Same kind of people who play with legos, I guess.
Part of "not caring" though is that you get to bypass a lot of the corporate politics. Remember Office Space? They brought in The Bobs. The Bobs didn't give a shit. They were there to cut the fat. Didn't matter who they fired. Nobody was safe except the very highest of execs. That's what being an IT consultant was like. I go into an office, setup their firewall or whatever, and get the fuck out. I have X number of hours to complete the job because that's what was sold to the client and I was in trouble if I couldn't deliver in that time. There was no pretending to be busy. No sucking up to the boss. I was way more productive than any employee.
That's not to say anyone should replace employees with consultants, of course. It just isn't cost effective in the long run. But I do think consultants get a bad rap. Sometimes you have a one-time project that employees just can't handle on their own.
Nah, I guess I was like that when I was running linux on my desktop. Before GNOME and KDE were really big and most people just used simple window managers. Then it was basically just a browser and a terminal because most GUI apps were kinda half-ass. Though even with the commandline, there was still a lot of stuff I did locally. Tinkering with programming and other odd things. Stuff that could be put on a server somewhere, but was easier just to work on locally. Since switching to OS X several years ago, I've gotten into relying more on desktop programs because, you know, they're actually good and they integrate better with the desktop rather than just being a mishmash of random applications, each using a different UI toolkit.
It does seem like it is mostly either Windows or Linux users driving to make everything web based. Windows users because of security concerns (for the sake of ignorant users who could manage to install malware in 15 minutes) and Linux users because they don't really have a lot of great apps anyway. So moving to the web isn't so much of step down. Coming from OS X, it baffles me that anyone would actually WANT all applications too move to the browser. I like Cocoa (OS X) apps. Please don't stop making them! ;-)
Huh? What's wrong with the rewrite capabilities of standard hard drives? I've never had a problem with it. I thought the enterprise drives just spun faster and had more cache/better interfaces.
I even get tired of the digging with the keyboard. In my latest game I just gave myself infinite TNT with a mod that makes TNT leave 100% material. Suddenly my motivation to build underground has skyrocketed. Used to be the thought of diigging out a large area made me groan.
It seems like a very large portion of Wii owners never bought a single game after Wii Sports which came with the console.
Really? That odd. It was my impression that Wii sports was just sort of a demo. I mean, I had Wii Golf mastered in an hour. It is only 9 holes that never change!
Here's a thought, if you don't like games with elaborate stories, don't play them. Obviously their not your thing. Other people, on the other hand, enjoy the "interactive movie" type game. It isn't like there aren't plenty of pure action/strategy/whatever games out there.
Wow, doesn't sound like you actually *do* much with your computer. :-P
Either that or you're just getting older. Generally it is safe to assume it is yourself changing and becoming bored with games rather than games becoming boring. Same with music or movies. Not sure how old you are but when I was younger, I could become engrossed by the stupidest, most trivial of video games. Some (most) of those Atari/Coleco/etc games were really pretty shitty if you think about it, and they're even worse if you try to go back and play them now. And how about that Atari joystick? Terrible controller with a single button. But damn if I didn't sit in front of them for hours at a time, trying to jump the pixilated stick figure of an avatar over chasms and shit. Hell, just how many 2D side scrolling action games WERE there back in the day?
Also, there's the fact that we tend to forget all the shitty stuff from the past and just remember the highlights. Take any five year stretch and you could pick out a dozen really cool games and that's all you'll remember. 10 years from now you (or your kids) wll be able to do the same thing about the games now. GTAIV is just one of your picks.
What's odd is that you would even expect to like a majority of games out there. I mean, on one hand you claim that developers pander to focus groups for mass appeal but then you expect a game that "takes risks" to be good. You obviously have very specific tastes so you should expect the majority of games to not appeal to you. But you know what? Those blockbuster games make money because other peopel like them. If the games were the problem, they wouldn't be selling.