One is motivation -- the average users aren't that unhappy with Windows that they want to try something like Linux. They do, however, want to source music and videos and they look for the quickest and cheapest way to do it.
Another is awareness -- no one in my brother's circle of friends (pro athletes) talks about installing Linux. They talk about which apps are best to copy DVDs or download music. You could tell them about Linux but they wouldn't bother remembering the details because they don't have a need for it.
The article is worth reading and, as you've indicated, makes solid points. My favourite was that you couldn't use the MP3s on the phone as your ringtone because these companies are all about avoiding undermining their existing profits -- hard to blame them, but it restricts their products and services.
Apple may have been better partnering with someone who wasn't scared of compromising their ringtone income so that people could buy a tune for 99c and use it as their tone.
The original article is yet another whinge without any realistic solutions. There's a great series of demonstrations by 37 Signals where they put their balls on the line by showing how they would make real improvements to an existing scenario. e.g.:
They took the Fedex shipping manager screen/process, and redesigned it to make more sense and increase usability.
Be sure to note their lack of weak jokes about aliens or Russians being able to design better GUIs, or the absence of Stevie Wonder mentions.
The parent post at least adds some realistic suggestions or obvious problems. My pet peeve is another window stealing focus when I'm typing elsewhere -- very, very annoying. Google is a bitch like this; if the page is still loading while you're entering a modified/new search, it will overwrite what you've entered with the old query when the page load completes. Ridiculous! How about having some JavaScript that detects existing focus on the field and cancels the other script if a user has already started typing?
I definitely agree with your first point. Some good examples of fear driving a game -- Shamblers in Quake, the Cyberdemon in original Doom, Hunters in Halo, a licker from Resident Evil 2, etc. Something that can beat you down without much warning if you're not keeping an eye out.
Some of those RE lickers were a bit much though. I think I was actually deterred from playing that game on PlayStation because I was so worried about encountering them!
But isn't XP already ahead of the Linux desktop options anyway? You have to surpass the previous iteration of MS offerings before you snatch an "opportunity" with their successor.
And since when did more than 0.5% of the PC-using population ever really pay much attention to the left-out features (filesystem changes, etc).
People who were considering Vista for their current underpowered machine would go with XP or 2000 before trying Linux, I suspect.
You know how some people always talk about having a preference for gaming on their Xbox/PS2/etc because it "just works"? One of the things that helps is having a fixed install base. One type of harddrive, one type of memory unit, one type of video card. As soon as they allow any old device to be used, they have to support a variety of options.
Plus they lose control.
If you want to have a gaming machine that allows you to tinker with every component, keep your PC.
A Bengal is a cross-bred (quite expensive I think) housecat which is larger than a normal cat. I think that they are illegal to have without a permit if their percentage of wild blood is beyond a certain point.
Otherwise, it might've been a feral cat that's just really big?
I once encountered a cat at a fish restaurant that was massive. It was actually difficult to pick the thing up it was so heavy.
Probably worth noting that the Louis Gray who submitted this story is BlueArc's Corporate Communications Manager.
I thought that the blurb seemed a bit too slick to have come from anywhere but the company themselves. I hope there's no dodgy reason that Louis used a mac.com email address to submit the story instead of their work account.
Even if RIAA could in theory set up networks to seed fakes, they don't seem to be doing it.
The key is that you only need to stay ahead of their game. While they're hitting the P2P networks, you use IRC. When they start paying IRC more attention, you shift to the next thing.
By the time the RIAA start seeding fakes via networks, someone will have come up with something else.
Re:you get nailed by volume, though.
on
Xbox 360 for $300
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· Score: 2, Insightful
You can't sell your movie ticket after you've watched the movie. You can sell or trade your unwanted Xbox games.
Much better cost of entertainment per hour.
But it's basic versioning -- you will pay more if you want it sooner. With the $10 movies at the cinema, that will be out on DVD, then in the bargain bin, then on TV, etc.
Try Photoshop -- you use the right-mouse button to select layers which have something visible at that position of the image. Much more convenient that having to scour a layer palette with 100+ layers.
Couldn't agree more. My issue with eBay is not so much trouble with people breaking the law, but people selling second-hand goods as though they are new. I bought something touted as new a few weeks ago but it arrived looking like it'd been stolen, rolled in mud, slept on by a dog, and then scratched a bit for good measure. Returned it and suffered a bit more bait-and-switch.
Of course, when I left neutral feedback, the seller hit me with negative feedback accusing me of all sorts of things.
As you've suggested, I've told a lot more people about that experience than I would have if it were a good one.
Read your employment contracts. If the non-compete clauses and similar restrictions are not worth the pay, then negotiate, put up with it, or work somewhere else. Some companies will have default first-try contracts that they may alter if you make a fuss about it.
Also, the penalty is tiny given that the label was using "a more formalized, more corporatized structure" to bribe DJs and "employees sought to conceal some payments by using fictitious contest winners to document the transactions" -- they were really going out of their way to achieve this. It wasn't just one renegade, it appears to be more of a company policy to break the law. Sony are interested in "defining a new, higher standard in radio promotion" -- why would anyone trust them?
Our leaders aren't trying to make the world a better place, they trying to gain more power and control for themselves and their countries at the expense of others.
You're using a mouse. I was questioning the awesome-mouseless-nerds who pop up whenever someone comes up with a new way for the masses to deal with their computer to tell us about how awesome they are and forget to consider that others out there don't operate in the same awesome way.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't get me wrong, this is a great discussion, but I'm pretty sure that we're meant to be posting links to deviant porn, right?
A few issues:
One is motivation -- the average users aren't that unhappy with Windows that they want to try something like Linux. They do, however, want to source music and videos and they look for the quickest and cheapest way to do it.
Another is awareness -- no one in my brother's circle of friends (pro athletes) talks about installing Linux. They talk about which apps are best to copy DVDs or download music. You could tell them about Linux but they wouldn't bother remembering the details because they don't have a need for it.
Most slashdotters rely on their general appearance being enough to safely blind any nearby cameras.
Shame about the smell though...
The article is worth reading and, as you've indicated, makes solid points. My favourite was that you couldn't use the MP3s on the phone as your ringtone because these companies are all about avoiding undermining their existing profits -- hard to blame them, but it restricts their products and services.
Apple may have been better partnering with someone who wasn't scared of compromising their ringtone income so that people could buy a tune for 99c and use it as their tone.
It's not about continuous music, but about hoarding. How many people that you know back up their downloads in case they might ever need them again?
The original article is yet another whinge without any realistic solutions. There's a great series of demonstrations by 37 Signals where they put their balls on the line by showing how they would make real improvements to an existing scenario. e.g.:
http://37signals.com/better_fedex.php
They took the Fedex shipping manager screen/process, and redesigned it to make more sense and increase usability.
Be sure to note their lack of weak jokes about aliens or Russians being able to design better GUIs, or the absence of Stevie Wonder mentions.
The parent post at least adds some realistic suggestions or obvious problems. My pet peeve is another window stealing focus when I'm typing elsewhere -- very, very annoying. Google is a bitch like this; if the page is still loading while you're entering a modified/new search, it will overwrite what you've entered with the old query when the page load completes. Ridiculous! How about having some JavaScript that detects existing focus on the field and cancels the other script if a user has already started typing?
I definitely agree with your first point. Some good examples of fear driving a game -- Shamblers in Quake, the Cyberdemon in original Doom, Hunters in Halo, a licker from Resident Evil 2, etc. Something that can beat you down without much warning if you're not keeping an eye out.
Some of those RE lickers were a bit much though. I think I was actually deterred from playing that game on PlayStation because I was so worried about encountering them!
But isn't XP already ahead of the Linux desktop options anyway? You have to surpass the previous iteration of MS offerings before you snatch an "opportunity" with their successor.
And since when did more than 0.5% of the PC-using population ever really pay much attention to the left-out features (filesystem changes, etc).
People who were considering Vista for their current underpowered machine would go with XP or 2000 before trying Linux, I suspect.
What percentage of people do you think do that?
You know how some people always talk about having a preference for gaming on their Xbox/PS2/etc because it "just works"? One of the things that helps is having a fixed install base. One type of harddrive, one type of memory unit, one type of video card. As soon as they allow any old device to be used, they have to support a variety of options.
Plus they lose control.
If you want to have a gaming machine that allows you to tinker with every component, keep your PC.
Next up, permission to watch you and your wife in bed to make sure you're not doing anything too exciting.
They won't stop until we are all drones.
A Bengal is a cross-bred (quite expensive I think) housecat which is larger than a normal cat. I think that they are illegal to have without a permit if their percentage of wild blood is beyond a certain point.
Otherwise, it might've been a feral cat that's just really big?
I once encountered a cat at a fish restaurant that was massive. It was actually difficult to pick the thing up it was so heavy.
This explains my random moderating -- I get so worked up by some posts that I can't see what moderation I'm enacting!
Probably worth noting that the Louis Gray who submitted this story is BlueArc's Corporate Communications Manager.
I thought that the blurb seemed a bit too slick to have come from anywhere but the company themselves. I hope there's no dodgy reason that Louis used a mac.com email address to submit the story instead of their work account.
Q3A was still a great game IMO. Fast action made it what it was. No story, no real care for characters. Just instant multiplayer action.
I played a lot of Q3A with the bots to clear my head between work sessions and so on. Always seemed much faster and more stable than Quake II.
The key is that you only need to stay ahead of their game. While they're hitting the P2P networks, you use IRC. When they start paying IRC more attention, you shift to the next thing.
By the time the RIAA start seeding fakes via networks, someone will have come up with something else.
You can't sell your movie ticket after you've watched the movie. You can sell or trade your unwanted Xbox games.
Much better cost of entertainment per hour.
But it's basic versioning -- you will pay more if you want it sooner. With the $10 movies at the cinema, that will be out on DVD, then in the bargain bin, then on TV, etc.
Try Photoshop -- you use the right-mouse button to select layers which have something visible at that position of the image. Much more convenient that having to scour a layer palette with 100+ layers.
Couldn't agree more. My issue with eBay is not so much trouble with people breaking the law, but people selling second-hand goods as though they are new. I bought something touted as new a few weeks ago but it arrived looking like it'd been stolen, rolled in mud, slept on by a dog, and then scratched a bit for good measure. Returned it and suffered a bit more bait-and-switch.
Of course, when I left neutral feedback, the seller hit me with negative feedback accusing me of all sorts of things.
As you've suggested, I've told a lot more people about that experience than I would have if it were a good one.
Read your employment contracts. If the non-compete clauses and similar restrictions are not worth the pay, then negotiate, put up with it, or work somewhere else. Some companies will have default first-try contracts that they may alter if you make a fuss about it.
Also, the penalty is tiny given that the label was using "a more formalized, more corporatized structure" to bribe DJs and "employees sought to conceal some payments by using fictitious contest winners to document the transactions" -- they were really going out of their way to achieve this. It wasn't just one renegade, it appears to be more of a company policy to break the law. Sony are interested in "defining a new, higher standard in radio promotion" -- why would anyone trust them?
There are not 6.4 billion people in China. How the hell did you get modded "Insightful"!?
Our leaders aren't trying to make the world a better place, they trying to gain more power and control for themselves and their countries at the expense of others.
You're using a mouse. I was questioning the awesome-mouseless-nerds who pop up whenever someone comes up with a new way for the masses to deal with their computer to tell us about how awesome they are and forget to consider that others out there don't operate in the same awesome way.
FWIW, one of my sites running AdSense makes US$50/week. For about 10 minutes/week effort, I need more sites like it!