So to make the comparison valid, both in terms of encoding speed an quality, some other tool should've been used.
No, for this to be considered as the "end all, be all" answer to the question "What is the best video encoder," some other tools should have been used.
But that wasn't what this was about. It was about consumer encoders -- they specifically say "free, or for a moderate cost" ($30 was paid for QT Pro).
I mean, if they were doing a "best of all worlds" roundup, they'd have to include things like Rad Game Tool's Bink, which if you have a few days to encode your video will find you the best goddamn motion video solution it can.
I dunno about that. You'll always need more than one pass, but the main reason encoders do more than 2 passes is that the detection algorithms aren't as aggressive as they could be (usually for speed reasons). The ideal situation would be 2 passes....one really, really good pass to figure out how the compression scheme should best approach each piece of video, and a second pass to follow the instructions.
You know, this isn't necessarily theft. Almost all newspapers and magazines resell their content for newsletters, "special sections," and the web, in exactly the same way that as clip art CDs. Many of them will allow you remove their byline if you're willing to pay them enough (and don't claim that you wrote it). No reason for PM not to do this...an article like "Improve your lawn" is considered filler. They'll probably never republish it, so it'll just sit in a library unless you offer them a few thou to buy the rights to the text.
When I worked in the online newspaper biz, I wrote a piece of software to help rip content from obscure formats on these CDs into XML. We had a stack of hundreds of them, bought cutrate from other content providers who went out of business buying these sorts of articles and trying to resell them. We would then load this content into "online special sections" and give them to our customers to sell local ads and add their own content. The ones who took the initiative and understood the internet saw really good returns and great interest despite the fact that it was all recycled content.
Remember: to most newspapers and magazines, articles are just there to take up space in between ads. Seriously. Ads are laid out first, and then content wraps around them. If content is too big, it gets pared down to fit around the ads. If content is too small, they buy something from AP/Reuters/UPI or take it from one of these CDs of stories...
Yes, I realize both of these points are true. I also realize that the top 5% makes over 60% of the money. They make 60% of the wealth, but only pay 50% of the taxes. That's pretty good.
Do you realize that neither one of them is a valid argument for making ANY tax cuts in the same year as expanding the deficit by unheard of levels? It's irrelevant. A few years ago I took a 10% pay cut (mind you, for a better job). I didn't celibrate by spending 50% more money. Oh sure, I spent a little on new clothes, books, new laptop, that sort of thing, as an investment in the new job. And it paid off in the end...after two years I have more money, adjusted for inflation, than I did before the cut.
Of course, if I'd spent what I spent those first few weeks consistantly over the past two years on frivolous one time expenses with no return, I'd be broke as hell right now. And that's exactly what the current administration is doing with this protracted war...$100 bil spent not on research and economic development, but on military contracts. You don't get much more one-time use than a sidewinder missile.
An executive that thinks this kind of practice is okay is an executive we can't afford to have for more than one term. 4 years of this won't be all that bad. 8 years of it, especially with the EU and Asia making such great strides, could break us.
I dunno...because some intelligent people are rich?
See, human rights and conservative values are all well and good, but what really affects all of us person in the short term is a president's economic position. And the top five percent of people are getting $2000 back in their pockets this year, thanks to Bush. Kerry has already promised to repeal those cuts.
So the picture looks something like this: vote Bush, get $2000. Vote Kerry, lose $2000 but gain a possible reduction in the deficit.
On a strictly short term economic basis, voting for Bush is a good idea. So if you're intelligent, selfish, and short sighted (and I think there are a lot of us who are), voting Bush is a no-brainer.
Of course, looking just past the next year, you might see that Kerry's drive to keep jobs in the states and fight inflation by fighting deficit spending will probably do more to help the country than giving the richest people more money. But this is a matter of interpretation -- and having a different interpretation is not a sure sign of a lack of intellect.
And that's the problem Kerry has to overcome if he wants to succeed. He has to explain why Bush's economic policies are sufficiently onerous in the longview to justify losing money out of pocket -- and it shouldn't be too hard, considering that Kerry himself stands to lose MILLIONS if his own tax hikes take effect.
You said it. To type out ".mobile" on my cell phone takes 16 keystrokes. And that's without the ever present fat fingering! You're look at 10-20 seconds just to tap out that extension.
Ideally, mobile phones should get special dispensations -- numeric-only URLs, no document extensions, etc. I've written a few WML apps, and the biggest challenge was making them easy to get to via the keypad. Something like tiny url -- concentrating on numbers and the letters a,d,g,j,m,p,t and w -- worked best.
How does gramma get her warning? And how long does she have after being warned?
I mean, if you send her an email, and she only checks twice a week, you have to wait a week before cutting her off. And she might not even check her ISP's email account (I don't check mine...it got choked with spam at one point, and it tied me to my provider anyway).
Your best bet is to call her. And for that you'd probably need some executive to clear the budget for phone calls. Since you're looking at a massive call volume.
Which is why I bet Gramma didn't get warned. Instead, they cut her off and waited for her to call tech support. Make those "fifteen minutes or less" guys do all the work...and in the end, the effects of the virus just got a lot worse.
Ahhh, but all three companies -- A, B and C -- produce their products using cutrate labor and polluting practices in second wave Asian nations. Each company uses custom machinery for their processes, which all cost the same to build as the custom work is billed not on complexity but on the constant rate of time to completion. Each gets their research performed by graduate students. The only real costs are engineering and marketting, which are constant for all three.
Price of making each size hard drive? Exactly the same. Welcome to the neoliberal economy.
Hey, I get the paper. I don't read the classifieds or the sports section or lifestyles. I just recycle them. I'm not so vain that I think Gannett should make me my own paper with EXACTLY what I want in it.
Why do you feel your TV provider owes you something special? Is it just because it's "TV" and therefore more high-tech than a medium still delivered by bicycle?
Packaging is easier and cheaper and it's really the only way to SANELY run a service that bundles a number of satelite feeds and then rebroadcasts it on a number of other satelite feeds. You want control? Your TV has a V-chip. Use it.
The reason Viacomm packages things like this is that the marginal cost for piggybacking new channels on to their current satelite feed is practically nil compared to the cost of maintaining the feed in the first place.
In other words: if they sold you a license for the package for $100k, then selling you just Comedy Central alone would probably cost about $80k with the same margin.
Now, the overall cost might be fleecing, but it's not BECAUSE of the package deals. The package deals are keeping it cheaper than if EVERY station had to have its own feed and its own maintenance team.
Just remember when you complain about not being able to pick your cable channels that if you COULD, the price would probably be higher than it is today. I mean, shit, it costs practically nothing to have your V-chip block VH1.
Jesus christ people. This has been debunked so many times it's not even funny. Sing along with me: You will never have ala carte cable because you would not want to pay for it.
See, just because you pay, say, $35 per month for 70 channels does NOT mean each channel costs $.50. The company receives cable channels over a satelite feed and there's not really too much rhyme or reason as to which channels come down on which satelite. So really, to get ANY channels at all, they'd have to charge you a base cost for each satelite your channels were carried on. After that base cost, the cost for them to provide you with an additional channel is close to nil...basically, the cost of multiplexing hardware, the way content licenses are currently issued.
But the additional overhead of maintaining a custom channel delivery database, customer service training and so forth is not worth it. It's just easier to give you the whole block of programming and you can watch what you want. It actually costs them LESS to do it this way, which means it costs YOU less to do it this way.
In short: you're asking them to do a lot more work. That means it'll be more money. Ala Carte doesn't make sense for the business, so it won't happen...at least not until all programming is available on demand (something satelite will never be able to offer). On Demand makes sense for the business, because it sells digital boxes, which in turn sells PPV, etc...
But ultimately, it comes back to whoever wrote it. Or specced it. Or tested it.
Or used it. If you feed the software garbage values, it could very well go nuts. Add an extra decimal point on a chemo dosage, you could kill a man. Software's doing exactly what it's told to, that's all it ever does.
Of course, at the same time software helps SAVE people from such mistakes, and that's why it's used to control precise systems in the first place.
Don't forget the other features: it's HUGE and has pathetic battery life even without WiFi.
Considering the main strengths of the iPod -- size, decent battery life, and iTMS compatibility -- it makes sense that all Apple Legal asked for was a little rebranding. You represent an audience that is far removed from the one they target.
For some people, that's very true. Most portable audio player's interfaces have a lot of options on screen at the same time, and require a good deal of precise input. Most of the time, it's not hard to tap a 10 pixel area 3 mm accross with a stylus, but try hitting the same area with your thumb while running.
You can't do it. You hit the wrong thing. It sucks. In fact, I sold my PocketPC for precisely this reason (since all i used the PPC for was reading books and listening to music).
If this had been available...I might have reconsidered my iPod purchase.
Naw. I'd have still bought it. Or at least, I hope I would have...the iPod is SWEET.
But for that $200, you get a warranty. By stripping the CF drive out of a muvo, you void the warranty on the Muvo, and you get no warranty on the card.
AAC is not obscure. It is not a non-standard format. It's standardized as part of MPEG-4...I'm sure you've heard of MPEG, right? The standards group responsible for the multimedia compression behind MP3 and DVDs? And most players are working their tails off to get support for it, because it's smaller and more ubiquitous than even MP3.
The only think you got right is that, no, it won't play 8-track tapes.
A newbie will open his mail program and have the mail arrive in the background while he's typing a letter, because the program's only minimized, not closed. Then suddenly the anti-virus pops up to say something's wrong...Modern GUIs are too complex by design, for newbies. They're just not new user friendly.
In this case, it's COMPUTING that isn't user friendly. And the CLI wouldn't make it any easier. If you're making the command decision to inform people when they have mail and viruses while providing them with an interface to do something about it, you are much better off using windows. In the CLI, you'd have to deal with each of these things in turn as they come up. In the GUI, you can ignore them and continue what you're working on...and the taskbar is a constant VISUAL reminder that there are other things which require your attention. If people get confused by this, they won't be once you explain the concept of windowing. Which you should be doing.
How do you move an icon, do you left click and drag, or do you right click and drag, then choose from a menu option that magically pops up? How obvious is it to a newbie that you can drag with the right mouse button and it does something else?
Easy: you tell them. You have to tell them things with the CLI, too. People don't automatically know that MV will move or rename something. People don't automatically know what . means, or that a / separates directories in a hierarchy, or whatever/var is for. Shit, even typing "man" to get help is wierd.
The difference is, since the left click is such an intuitive interface, people immediately think they've "got it," when they don't, and they can just "go to town," when they can't. It's lazy teaching, not inherent complexity. I've used Windows for about ten years and I'm still discovering useful shortcuts...the kind of thing that you'd learn the first day running *NIX.
A simple cheat sheet, of the type you'll see posted near the monitor of any new CLI user, would be infinitely helpful to a new Windows user. But because the stigma is that "clicking is easy," they don't get it. THIS IS NOT THE FAULT OF THE WINDOWS, it is the fault of instructors.
As for the rest...well, there's no accounting for bad design. Sure, there are some crummy interfaces. There are some crummy command line tools, too, a good example is vi (put a new user in there and see if they can even quit the program without help). It's hard to make a program as ambitious as Outlook work in a simple fashion. Which is why I suggest Thunderbird for email...it's the first GUI mail tool that is snappy enough, and powerful enough, to get me away from using PINE and Squirrelmail.
PINE, by the way, is somewhere between a GUI and a CLI tool in terms of complexity and easy of use. It also has the WORST setup I've ever seen. A list of completely items a mile long, most of which are completely useless. And you'd better not forget the right way to set up your maildir (shudder)!
Your argument is that GUIs are harder to use because they enable us to do more things?
Dude, if you want the single-app friendliness of the CLI, just don't open another program. My mom does that because she can't concentrate on more than one task at a time.
2. Exploration.
The point is, you have a place to look. Everything is within the program. In the CLI, functions are based on the environment, not on the task. You have about thirty thousand to try, as opposed to the maybe 20 or 30 functions in the average program menu. You can click the first menu, and just drag the mouse along until you find the one you want. Whole process takes about 20 seconds.
And they have useful names...if I want to search text on this page, I use "Edit -> Find on this page." If I want to do that from the command line, I have to type egrep? What the heck is a grep? "Find" will find a file, but if I type "find apache" it tells me "no such file." So I have to page through 22 pages of MAN for options with no examples.
But you're right. If all I did was copy, rename, and concatenate files all day, the CLI would be much easier.
"Did the drag and drop copy the file or move the file?"
Did the file disappear from place a? Or did the mouse have a PLUS SIGN or ARROW underneath, indicating a COPY and LINK command, respectively? Either way, if you're not sure what it did, undo the command.
By the way, pressing the CTRL key ensures a copy. Pressing ALT ensures a link.
Selecting some items? Pressing SHIFT allows you to add new items to a selection. Pressing CTRL allows you to INVERT an item's selected state (in case you selected too much and want to leave somethint out of the selection).
I can write these down for you. It'll take about as much time, and as much paper, as writing down the syntax for CD, MV, RM, LS, CP, etc.
How many time have you clicked on the X to close a windows when it doesn't close right away?
Quite often, and I'm glad for that. Closing a program forcefully can FUCK UP current operations. If I want a computer that isn't missing data, I can wait. I think this is better design than closing the window while operations are still in action -- don't you?
With a command line you type move or copy and then the computer does it.
Right. And you have to type out everything you want to do. Want to move 23 files out of 41 in a directory to a different directory? Start typing. And if you make a mistake, you have to type it all again. And if you accidentally do something wrong...you're done. No undelete, no unmove. If you mv something to somewhere that doesn't exist, congratulations...you just renamed the file. "I know you *SAID* to move it, but I've just renamed it. Good luck finding it, mate."
Whoa. The guy said he doesn't want to know how his computer works. He didn't say he didn't want to know how to prevent it from breaking. These are two completely separate things. Ignorance of the mechanical engineering of combustion engines does not preclude following a maintenance schedule, in fact my wife (who knows NOTHING about cars) is far better at maintaining her car than I am at mine, because she knows when to defer to authority.
You see, this is the problem most everyday people have. They want to run a computer, perform tasks, and prevent themselves from running into problems. And when they ask how, the average "computer guy" starts running down lists of commands and protocols and the history of DOS. These things are excellent trivia, but they're not analogous to what you're saying here. The end result is this: the computer looks more complex than it is. And complex things are hard to use, right? So why bother?
You can show somebody how to use Uninstaller and Windows Update without showing them the command line, and in far less time. In fact, I can't imagine where either of these functions, essential to the use of a GUI based machine, has any real bearing in the command line. Certainly I've never Run->CMD to get rid of that stuff...
Using the command line doesn't make you any more knowledgable about how to secure a computer or choose an internet provider than knowing how a carburetor works tells you how many miles you can drive on that loose bearing before it seizes. People who know their shit about cars still have engine problems and get into accidents. They still pay the same blue book value to get the car fixed. They're just better at explaining the problem.
No, the whole idea of GUIs was to make computers more VISUAL -- to make the experience of using one better reflect real life. Instead of moving a file to a folder, you could DRAG it to a folder. Instead of reading a tag at the beginning of a word that says it was bold, you could SEE it was bold. If you completed a command, you knew you completed it. In short, the GUI was a way for man to tell his computer what he wanted to do without needing a small dictionary of terms to do it.
GUIs are infinitely more complex than the command line. They're also infinitely better at complex commands. Complex, meaning composed of difficult relationships, not meaning composed of MANY commands (for batch operations, you can't beat a good CLI). Such things as WYSIWYG document editing, pixel and area level graphical manipulations and any abstracted data manipulation (graphs, waveform editing, many-to-many relationships) are impossible without SOME form of GUI -- even if it's done in ASCII.
So, yeah, it is easier for newbies to perform the three or four functions they need to use with the CLI. They only have to learn three or four things. But these people don't really need to computer for what they're doing, anyway.
EV1 makes servers for people...therefore, they're one step removed from a vendor. They offer you a box they own with an OS of your choice...so in a way, they're leasing you "apartment space."
Anyhow, they've chosen a market space with a very narrow margin. People looking to get a box AND hosting for under $100 per month have a lot of options and they're all about the same. I'm fairly sure they signed this agreement so that they could entice possible customers...saying "our boxes will never have any license concerns" is certainly appealing to Vice President Jon Q. Knownothing of Bandwagon Co, who reads in one magazine how Linux is cheaper and in another how Linux is illegal.
In short: it's more snakeoil to sell in a market that can't really afford to sell substance. What else are you gonna do for $100 a month, offer world class support, free backups and free hands-on cases? Fat chance!
Slashdot Mirror
So to make the comparison valid, both in terms of encoding speed an quality, some other tool should've been used.
No, for this to be considered as the "end all, be all" answer to the question "What is the best video encoder," some other tools should have been used.
But that wasn't what this was about. It was about consumer encoders -- they specifically say "free, or for a moderate cost" ($30 was paid for QT Pro).
I mean, if they were doing a "best of all worlds" roundup, they'd have to include things like Rad Game Tool's Bink, which if you have a few days to encode your video will find you the best goddamn motion video solution it can.
I dunno about that. You'll always need more than one pass, but the main reason encoders do more than 2 passes is that the detection algorithms aren't as aggressive as they could be (usually for speed reasons). The ideal situation would be 2 passes....one really, really good pass to figure out how the compression scheme should best approach each piece of video, and a second pass to follow the instructions.
You know, this isn't necessarily theft. Almost all newspapers and magazines resell their content for newsletters, "special sections," and the web, in exactly the same way that as clip art CDs. Many of them will allow you remove their byline if you're willing to pay them enough (and don't claim that you wrote it). No reason for PM not to do this...an article like "Improve your lawn" is considered filler. They'll probably never republish it, so it'll just sit in a library unless you offer them a few thou to buy the rights to the text.
When I worked in the online newspaper biz, I wrote a piece of software to help rip content from obscure formats on these CDs into XML. We had a stack of hundreds of them, bought cutrate from other content providers who went out of business buying these sorts of articles and trying to resell them. We would then load this content into "online special sections" and give them to our customers to sell local ads and add their own content. The ones who took the initiative and understood the internet saw really good returns and great interest despite the fact that it was all recycled content.
Remember: to most newspapers and magazines, articles are just there to take up space in between ads. Seriously. Ads are laid out first, and then content wraps around them. If content is too big, it gets pared down to fit around the ads. If content is too small, they buy something from AP/Reuters/UPI or take it from one of these CDs of stories...
Yes, I realize both of these points are true. I also realize that the top 5% makes over 60% of the money. They make 60% of the wealth, but only pay 50% of the taxes. That's pretty good.
Do you realize that neither one of them is a valid argument for making ANY tax cuts in the same year as expanding the deficit by unheard of levels? It's irrelevant. A few years ago I took a 10% pay cut (mind you, for a better job). I didn't celibrate by spending 50% more money. Oh sure, I spent a little on new clothes, books, new laptop, that sort of thing, as an investment in the new job. And it paid off in the end...after two years I have more money, adjusted for inflation, than I did before the cut.
Of course, if I'd spent what I spent those first few weeks consistantly over the past two years on frivolous one time expenses with no return, I'd be broke as hell right now. And that's exactly what the current administration is doing with this protracted war...$100 bil spent not on research and economic development, but on military contracts. You don't get much more one-time use than a sidewinder missile.
An executive that thinks this kind of practice is okay is an executive we can't afford to have for more than one term. 4 years of this won't be all that bad. 8 years of it, especially with the EU and Asia making such great strides, could break us.
I dunno...because some intelligent people are rich?
See, human rights and conservative values are all well and good, but what really affects all of us person in the short term is a president's economic position. And the top five percent of people are getting $2000 back in their pockets this year, thanks to Bush. Kerry has already promised to repeal those cuts.
So the picture looks something like this: vote Bush, get $2000. Vote Kerry, lose $2000 but gain a possible reduction in the deficit.
On a strictly short term economic basis, voting for Bush is a good idea. So if you're intelligent, selfish, and short sighted (and I think there are a lot of us who are), voting Bush is a no-brainer.
Of course, looking just past the next year, you might see that Kerry's drive to keep jobs in the states and fight inflation by fighting deficit spending will probably do more to help the country than giving the richest people more money. But this is a matter of interpretation -- and having a different interpretation is not a sure sign of a lack of intellect.
And that's the problem Kerry has to overcome if he wants to succeed. He has to explain why Bush's economic policies are sufficiently onerous in the longview to justify losing money out of pocket -- and it shouldn't be too hard, considering that Kerry himself stands to lose MILLIONS if his own tax hikes take effect.
You said it. To type out ".mobile" on my cell phone takes 16 keystrokes. And that's without the ever present fat fingering! You're look at 10-20 seconds just to tap out that extension.
Ideally, mobile phones should get special dispensations -- numeric-only URLs, no document extensions, etc. I've written a few WML apps, and the biggest challenge was making them easy to get to via the keypad. Something like tiny url -- concentrating on numbers and the letters a,d,g,j,m,p,t and w -- worked best.
How does gramma get her warning? And how long does she have after being warned?
I mean, if you send her an email, and she only checks twice a week, you have to wait a week before cutting her off. And she might not even check her ISP's email account (I don't check mine...it got choked with spam at one point, and it tied me to my provider anyway).
Your best bet is to call her. And for that you'd probably need some executive to clear the budget for phone calls. Since you're looking at a massive call volume.
Which is why I bet Gramma didn't get warned. Instead, they cut her off and waited for her to call tech support. Make those "fifteen minutes or less" guys do all the work...and in the end, the effects of the virus just got a lot worse.
Ahhh, but all three companies -- A, B and C -- produce their products using cutrate labor and polluting practices in second wave Asian nations. Each company uses custom machinery for their processes, which all cost the same to build as the custom work is billed not on complexity but on the constant rate of time to completion. Each gets their research performed by graduate students. The only real costs are engineering and marketting, which are constant for all three.
Price of making each size hard drive? Exactly the same. Welcome to the neoliberal economy.
Hey, I get the paper. I don't read the classifieds or the sports section or lifestyles. I just recycle them. I'm not so vain that I think Gannett should make me my own paper with EXACTLY what I want in it.
Why do you feel your TV provider owes you something special? Is it just because it's "TV" and therefore more high-tech than a medium still delivered by bicycle?
Packaging is easier and cheaper and it's really the only way to SANELY run a service that bundles a number of satelite feeds and then rebroadcasts it on a number of other satelite feeds. You want control? Your TV has a V-chip. Use it.
The reason Viacomm packages things like this is that the marginal cost for piggybacking new channels on to their current satelite feed is practically nil compared to the cost of maintaining the feed in the first place.
In other words: if they sold you a license for the package for $100k, then selling you just Comedy Central alone would probably cost about $80k with the same margin.
Now, the overall cost might be fleecing, but it's not BECAUSE of the package deals. The package deals are keeping it cheaper than if EVERY station had to have its own feed and its own maintenance team.
Just remember when you complain about not being able to pick your cable channels that if you COULD, the price would probably be higher than it is today. I mean, shit, it costs practically nothing to have your V-chip block VH1.
Jesus christ people. This has been debunked so many times it's not even funny. Sing along with me: You will never have ala carte cable because you would not want to pay for it.
See, just because you pay, say, $35 per month for 70 channels does NOT mean each channel costs $.50. The company receives cable channels over a satelite feed and there's not really too much rhyme or reason as to which channels come down on which satelite. So really, to get ANY channels at all, they'd have to charge you a base cost for each satelite your channels were carried on. After that base cost, the cost for them to provide you with an additional channel is close to nil...basically, the cost of multiplexing hardware, the way content licenses are currently issued.
But the additional overhead of maintaining a custom channel delivery database, customer service training and so forth is not worth it. It's just easier to give you the whole block of programming and you can watch what you want. It actually costs them LESS to do it this way, which means it costs YOU less to do it this way.
In short: you're asking them to do a lot more work. That means it'll be more money. Ala Carte doesn't make sense for the business, so it won't happen...at least not until all programming is available on demand (something satelite will never be able to offer). On Demand makes sense for the business, because it sells digital boxes, which in turn sells PPV, etc...
But ultimately, it comes back to whoever wrote it. Or specced it. Or tested it.
Or used it. If you feed the software garbage values, it could very well go nuts. Add an extra decimal point on a chemo dosage, you could kill a man. Software's doing exactly what it's told to, that's all it ever does.
Of course, at the same time software helps SAVE people from such mistakes, and that's why it's used to control precise systems in the first place.
Linux on an iPod...
Seems to me that's something like installing a fartcan exhaust and two level spoiler on a NASCAR.
Don't forget the other features: it's HUGE and has pathetic battery life even without WiFi.
Considering the main strengths of the iPod -- size, decent battery life, and iTMS compatibility -- it makes sense that all Apple Legal asked for was a little rebranding. You represent an audience that is far removed from the one they target.
You've heard the term "less is more," right?
For some people, that's very true. Most portable audio player's interfaces have a lot of options on screen at the same time, and require a good deal of precise input. Most of the time, it's not hard to tap a 10 pixel area 3 mm accross with a stylus, but try hitting the same area with your thumb while running.
You can't do it. You hit the wrong thing. It sucks. In fact, I sold my PocketPC for precisely this reason (since all i used the PPC for was reading books and listening to music).
If this had been available...I might have reconsidered my iPod purchase.
Naw. I'd have still bought it. Or at least, I hope I would have...the iPod is SWEET.
$200 is much cheaper than $400.
But for that $200, you get a warranty. By stripping the CF drive out of a muvo, you void the warranty on the Muvo, and you get no warranty on the card.
Try and keep a steady hand.
Almost entirely untrue.
AAC is not obscure. It is not a non-standard format. It's standardized as part of MPEG-4...I'm sure you've heard of MPEG, right? The standards group responsible for the multimedia compression behind MP3 and DVDs? And most players are working their tails off to get support for it, because it's smaller and more ubiquitous than even MP3.
The only think you got right is that, no, it won't play 8-track tapes.
More TRUE info here.
Here is an obligatory link to remind the moderators why this isn't +1, Funny.
He's listening to this. And he needs the other hand free to steady the headboard.
A newbie will open his mail program and have the mail arrive in the background while he's typing a letter, because the program's only minimized, not closed. Then suddenly the anti-virus pops up to say something's wrong...Modern GUIs are too complex by design, for newbies. They're just not new user friendly.
/var is for. Shit, even typing "man" to get help is wierd.
In this case, it's COMPUTING that isn't user friendly. And the CLI wouldn't make it any easier. If you're making the command decision to inform people when they have mail and viruses while providing them with an interface to do something about it, you are much better off using windows. In the CLI, you'd have to deal with each of these things in turn as they come up. In the GUI, you can ignore them and continue what you're working on...and the taskbar is a constant VISUAL reminder that there are other things which require your attention. If people get confused by this, they won't be once you explain the concept of windowing. Which you should be doing.
How do you move an icon, do you left click and drag, or do you right click and drag, then choose from a menu option that magically pops up? How obvious is it to a newbie that you can drag with the right mouse button and it does something else?
Easy: you tell them. You have to tell them things with the CLI, too. People don't automatically know that MV will move or rename something. People don't automatically know what . means, or that a / separates directories in a hierarchy, or whatever
The difference is, since the left click is such an intuitive interface, people immediately think they've "got it," when they don't, and they can just "go to town," when they can't. It's lazy teaching, not inherent complexity. I've used Windows for about ten years and I'm still discovering useful shortcuts...the kind of thing that you'd learn the first day running *NIX.
A simple cheat sheet, of the type you'll see posted near the monitor of any new CLI user, would be infinitely helpful to a new Windows user. But because the stigma is that "clicking is easy," they don't get it. THIS IS NOT THE FAULT OF THE WINDOWS, it is the fault of instructors.
As for the rest...well, there's no accounting for bad design. Sure, there are some crummy interfaces. There are some crummy command line tools, too, a good example is vi (put a new user in there and see if they can even quit the program without help). It's hard to make a program as ambitious as Outlook work in a simple fashion. Which is why I suggest Thunderbird for email...it's the first GUI mail tool that is snappy enough, and powerful enough, to get me away from using PINE and Squirrelmail.
PINE, by the way, is somewhere between a GUI and a CLI tool in terms of complexity and easy of use. It also has the WORST setup I've ever seen. A list of completely items a mile long, most of which are completely useless. And you'd better not forget the right way to set up your maildir (shudder)!
1. State.
Your argument is that GUIs are harder to use because they enable us to do more things?
Dude, if you want the single-app friendliness of the CLI, just don't open another program. My mom does that because she can't concentrate on more than one task at a time.
2. Exploration.
The point is, you have a place to look. Everything is within the program. In the CLI, functions are based on the environment, not on the task. You have about thirty thousand to try, as opposed to the maybe 20 or 30 functions in the average program menu. You can click the first menu, and just drag the mouse along until you find the one you want. Whole process takes about 20 seconds.
And they have useful names...if I want to search text on this page, I use "Edit -> Find on this page." If I want to do that from the command line, I have to type egrep? What the heck is a grep? "Find" will find a file, but if I type "find apache" it tells me "no such file." So I have to page through 22 pages of MAN for options with no examples.
But you're right. If all I did was copy, rename, and concatenate files all day, the CLI would be much easier.
"Did the drag and drop copy the file or move the file?"
Did the file disappear from place a? Or did the mouse have a PLUS SIGN or ARROW underneath, indicating a COPY and LINK command, respectively? Either way, if you're not sure what it did, undo the command.
By the way, pressing the CTRL key ensures a copy. Pressing ALT ensures a link.
Selecting some items? Pressing SHIFT allows you to add new items to a selection. Pressing CTRL allows you to INVERT an item's selected state (in case you selected too much and want to leave somethint out of the selection).
I can write these down for you. It'll take about as much time, and as much paper, as writing down the syntax for CD, MV, RM, LS, CP, etc.
How many time have you clicked on the X to close a windows when it doesn't close right away?
Quite often, and I'm glad for that. Closing a program forcefully can FUCK UP current operations. If I want a computer that isn't missing data, I can wait. I think this is better design than closing the window while operations are still in action -- don't you?
With a command line you type move or copy and then the computer does it.
Right. And you have to type out everything you want to do. Want to move 23 files out of 41 in a directory to a different directory? Start typing. And if you make a mistake, you have to type it all again. And if you accidentally do something wrong...you're done. No undelete, no unmove. If you mv something to somewhere that doesn't exist, congratulations...you just renamed the file. "I know you *SAID* to move it, but I've just renamed it. Good luck finding it, mate."
I prefer the safety razor of the GUI, thanks.
Whoa. The guy said he doesn't want to know how his computer works. He didn't say he didn't want to know how to prevent it from breaking. These are two completely separate things. Ignorance of the mechanical engineering of combustion engines does not preclude following a maintenance schedule, in fact my wife (who knows NOTHING about cars) is far better at maintaining her car than I am at mine, because she knows when to defer to authority.
You see, this is the problem most everyday people have. They want to run a computer, perform tasks, and prevent themselves from running into problems. And when they ask how, the average "computer guy" starts running down lists of commands and protocols and the history of DOS. These things are excellent trivia, but they're not analogous to what you're saying here. The end result is this: the computer looks more complex than it is. And complex things are hard to use, right? So why bother?
You can show somebody how to use Uninstaller and Windows Update without showing them the command line, and in far less time. In fact, I can't imagine where either of these functions, essential to the use of a GUI based machine, has any real bearing in the command line. Certainly I've never Run->CMD to get rid of that stuff...
Using the command line doesn't make you any more knowledgable about how to secure a computer or choose an internet provider than knowing how a carburetor works tells you how many miles you can drive on that loose bearing before it seizes. People who know their shit about cars still have engine problems and get into accidents. They still pay the same blue book value to get the car fixed. They're just better at explaining the problem.
No, the whole idea of GUIs was to make computers more VISUAL -- to make the experience of using one better reflect real life. Instead of moving a file to a folder, you could DRAG it to a folder. Instead of reading a tag at the beginning of a word that says it was bold, you could SEE it was bold. If you completed a command, you knew you completed it. In short, the GUI was a way for man to tell his computer what he wanted to do without needing a small dictionary of terms to do it.
GUIs are infinitely more complex than the command line. They're also infinitely better at complex commands. Complex, meaning composed of difficult relationships, not meaning composed of MANY commands (for batch operations, you can't beat a good CLI). Such things as WYSIWYG document editing, pixel and area level graphical manipulations and any abstracted data manipulation (graphs, waveform editing, many-to-many relationships) are impossible without SOME form of GUI -- even if it's done in ASCII.
So, yeah, it is easier for newbies to perform the three or four functions they need to use with the CLI. They only have to learn three or four things. But these people don't really need to computer for what they're doing, anyway.
EV1 makes servers for people...therefore, they're one step removed from a vendor. They offer you a box they own with an OS of your choice...so in a way, they're leasing you "apartment space."
Anyhow, they've chosen a market space with a very narrow margin. People looking to get a box AND hosting for under $100 per month have a lot of options and they're all about the same. I'm fairly sure they signed this agreement so that they could entice possible customers...saying "our boxes will never have any license concerns" is certainly appealing to Vice President Jon Q. Knownothing of Bandwagon Co, who reads in one magazine how Linux is cheaper and in another how Linux is illegal.
In short: it's more snakeoil to sell in a market that can't really afford to sell substance. What else are you gonna do for $100 a month, offer world class support, free backups and free hands-on cases? Fat chance!
(ahem. 'Doon, if you read this, that's a joke)