Maybe they just don't think there's enough demand in your area to spend that kind of money? Comcast here has gone from ~5 Mbps connections 3 years ago to 20 Mbps connections, but honestly, I can't tell the difference.
There is demand. Maybe not enough demand... But there is certainly demand. I bug my ISP every couple of months to see when they're planning on rolling out something faster. We've got a couple clients who desperately need more bandwidth and routinely bug their ISPs.
But you're right. There may not be enough people asking for more bandwidth to justify the costs of rolling it out.
However, to a certain degree, increasing supply will create the demand for it.
Go back a few years and nobody would have bothered to build a site like YouTube or Flickr because there just wasn't enough bandwidth available. There was no way you could watch streaming video on most computers... And even flipping through pages of photos would have taken forever.
Now that we've got enough bandwidth for those services, however, there's plenty of photo galleries and video sites on the Internet.
What kind of goodies could you build if you could count on most of your visitors having 20+ Mbps bandwidth?
Put in an error code somewhere, along with a phone number for technical support, and no way to close the box. They'll call you and you can have them read off whatever you need. Then you can tell them whatever bizarre combination of keys will actually close the box.
Any one who actually implements this horrible idea deserves one of the deeper rings of hell.
If I was the end user, I would be livid if I was locked out of continuing to use my machine, and there would be one of 2 actions.
If you lock up the app, I'm just going to kill -9 or ctrl+alt+del.
If you lock up the machine, I'm just going to cut power and reboot
Neither one of these is desirable for a simple state error message, which is why it's a horrible idea. If your crappy program brings my entire computer to its knees because of an error message, don't be surprised when I start looking for alternatives real quick.
I never suggested locking your machine... I suggested preventing that error box from being closed.
One would assume that on a modern computer you'd be able to continue working with other applications.
And I'm personally assuming, perhaps incorrectly, that if you're going to put up an error message there's a good reason for it. Not some "do you really want to make your text bold" error message... But "server just burst into flames" error message... In which case you'd probably want to get a hold of technical support pretty quickly.
Users have been conditioned to simply click away message boxes as quickly as possible and get on with their lives.
A Windows computer is constantly popping up boxes that get in your way. Sometimes it's just to inform you that a wireless network was found... Other times it's asking for confirmation for something... Other times it's a warning... Sometimes it's an error...
Folks don't evaluate what the message says, they just make it go away.
You can put all the puppies and red numbers and blue squares as you want... They're still going to click it away just as quick as they can.
You could alleviate this to a certain degree by taking away their ability to clear the error message. Put in an error code somewhere, along with a phone number for technical support, and no way to close the box. They'll call you and you can have them read off whatever you need. Then you can tell them whatever bizarre combination of keys will actually close the box.
A better solution would be to simply write a log of the error message when the box is generated, then you don't need to rely on the user to do much of anything.
Maybe one day we'll need to transfer more data than that, but I don't see the point of mandating that everyone have access that fast when it's fairly obvious that we don't need it right now and there's no reason to think we will anytime soon.
There's a few problems with that...
The biggest one is that, apparently, US ISPs just aren't going to roll out upgrades unless they're forced to.
I keep seeing folks on here talking about their 20 Mbps connections... Other folks have 10 Mbps... The fastest I have available is 5 Mbps. That's it.
The problem is that the local ISPs have a virtual monopoly. I don't have any real options. I either make do with the 5 Mbps, or I don't have Internet.
If somebody doesn't mandate upgrades, I won't see anything more than 5 Mbps for years.
The other problem is that you don't seem to have a grasp of just how much bandwidth a house can use.
I've got three computers in my house... Plus a pile of consoles and set-top boxes... At any given point in time we might have a movie downloading on the DVR, a couple Pandora streams going, a couple on-line games going, maybe a movie streaming from Netflix, and possibly some vacation photos or movies downloading.
My kid virtually lives on FaceBook. My wife has a fancy digital camera that takes ginormous pictures. All three of us listen to Pandora. All three of us are gamers.
It is very easy for us to saturate our 5 Mbps connection.
100 Mbps seems like it would be more than enough for now... Overkill, perhaps...
But what if I actually owned an HD TV and wanted to download/stream HD movies? What if I had more than one TV/DVR/set-top box that wanted to download/stream that HD content at once? What if I was trying to use VOIP at the same time?
I can't see why a domestic user needs that speed. I've got virgin cable and the 20MB is plenty for me.
Perhaps this has something to do with their Tivo deal and on-demand content?
There was a time when you'd only see a single computer in a house. That time has passed. Most homes have more than one computer.
I have three genuine computers in our house (mine, the wife's, the kid's)... We also have a DVR that can download stuff from the Internet, a set-top box that can stream Netflix stuff, and a couple consoles with Internet connectivity.
Our needs are fairly low. While we may very well wind up with a few on-line games and a couple Pandora streams at one time, it isn't like we're trying to stream four different HD movies at once. But we manage to pretty much saturate our 5 Mbps connection (which is the fastest I can get here).
If we had DVRs on some of the other televisions... Or more set-top boxes... Or if we had HD televisions... I can't imagine trying to squeeze all that into our little 5 Mbps connection. Hell, 20 Mbps seems low for that...
Exactly how many steam games have OSX versions? Does anyone actually game with Macs?
Gaming has never been that huge on the Mac. A large part of this is limited retail shelf space... If a retailer knows the PC version of a game is more likely to sell than the Mac one, they're more likely to stock the PC one. Which means less shelf space for Macs... So less Mac users go into the store to buy stuff... So you put less Mac stuff on the shelves...
These days we're seeing the same trend with PC gaming. Consoles are taking over the market and you're seeing less and less shelf space devoted to PC games.
But that doesn't mean that folks have stopped playing games on the PC, nor does it mean that folks don't game on the Mac - just that the marketplace you use to buy your software isn't a retail store.
There are tons of games on Steam that you will never, ever see on a store shelf. And why not? It isn't like you're giving up physical shelf space... Storage is cheap. Throw another disk in the array and call it done!
So, why wouldn't Valve try to expand their market a bit? Plenty of publishers still release games for the Mac... And right now they're struggling to get the games out there and in front of people's eyes... They'd probably love something like Steam.
If you thought the user-friendliness and simplicity is what drove people to WoW, you should see how many more people are suddenly being driven into Mafia Wars, Castle Age, and Farmville on Facebook. No, my friends, I do not want to friggin' click your button to help you kill Sylvanus.
Well... But that's exactly what I'm talking about. Maybe "user friendly" was the wrong phrase to use...
It's simple. Doesn't require a whole lot of forethought or attention. Just click a button or two, maybe repeatedly mash some pattern. It's almost purely grinding. Kill mobs, get loot, repeat. Not much different from Mafia Wars or FarmVille or whatever. And you've got the social aspect, just like on those FaceBook games. And the all-important status symbols.
The old MMOGs that required some real time, effort, and forethought are pretty much gone.
WoW is the king of the hill, and all it really requires is hours upon hours upon hours of mindless grinding. Which is, apparently, what people want.
The simple fact is those gameplay elements that you liked in UO is what ultimately led to it being less popular than WoW.
Look at WoW - very simple gameplay, no character stats to worry about, just gear to collect. Automatic group finding for PvP and instances. It's basically a vaguely MMO-ish version of Diablo 2 at this point.
EVE Online has some gameplay aspects that require you to think ahead, and folks constantly show up on the forums complaining about them. Not the folks who actually enjoy and play EVE on a daily basis... But folks who showed up from WoW and are giving the free trial a spin. And they're not happy about the fact that they have to plan ahead, be cautious, think about their decisions, etc. They'd like something more user-friendly.
The rules of war have changed... the enemy isn't a state, it's a force of people loyal to a cult that believes a corrupted religion. There's no way to blockade them, there's no way to disable their tech because they don't use much. We have to change our response or else they'll find the weakness in the current way of doing things.
The whole problem with this current "war on terror" is that it isn't a war being waged against a sovereign nation. It's a war against a tactic... Or an ideology... Or maybe a specific brand of extremism... Or possibly a few fairly-well-organized criminal organizations...
That's like saying we're going to war against guerrilla warfare, or insurgency, or naval superiority.
And how do you identify the enemy? Anyone who engages in terrorism? Anywhere? And who gets to define what terrorism is?
Are we going to start using our drones and whatnot to take out domestic terrorists too? Lob a missile at some guy before he can rash his plane into an IRS building? Roll out the marines in Texas? Plant a couple aircraft carriers in the Gulf of Mexico to keep peace in our own state?
I need to go to their office and have my finger prints taken for the purposes of clocking in and out of work.
They aren't taking your finger prints. They're registering you in their timeclock machine. It's a relatively cheap, simple way to make sure real human beings are clocking in and out.
The simplest are just crappy fingerprint readers plugged into a PC running some software... The nicer ones are stand-alone devices.
Generally speaking, they'll get you set up ahead of time... But your name and employee number and whatever into the machine. Then they hit some button and have you put your thumb on the machine - this registers your thumbprint to your information. Generally it's just a thumbprint, not a full set of fingerprints. Generally speaking, there's no way to get that print information out of the machine. You might be able to load up the whole data file on another machine... But they aren't going to send your prints off to the FBI or anything.
This raises huge privacy concerns for me
Because you, evidently, don't understand what's going on.
They don't want to track your every movement. They aren't going to turn your prints over to the FBI. This isn't some invasive policy. They just want to make sure that it's you clocking in and out... And not some buddy you gave your timecard to so he could cover for you showing up late to work.
as it should for everybody else.
Yes, of course it should. Because unfounded fear and paranoia are very useful things.
The key difference for me, however, is that under Linux pretty much everything is a human-readable text file.
The package you download with apt-get contains a text file somewhere in it that tells you exactly where everything is going to be installed. Under Windows, that's not necessarily the case.
And once the thing is installed, the configuration settings are again in a text file. You can search your drive for a string and have a good chance of locating all the config files, wherever they may be. Under windows, some of those config files are going to be binary and the best you can hope for is a filename match. Or settings might be stored in the registry... Which will require you to run REGEDIT and then search for a string.
Though to be honest, there's just as much fragmentation on the *nix side. System 7 style vs. BSD style structures./usr/local/ vs/opt/
True, but generally speaking things are stored in human-readable text files. So I could do a fulltext search for a string and be reasonably sure of finding what I'm looking for. Under Windows things are frequently stored in some odd binary file with a bizarre name that can be much harder to locate.
In terms of backing up your settings, you should be able to copy/backup your user folder.
This is true... But I'm not necessarily worried about my personal settings.
Under Linux pretty much everything, including driver settings and whatnot, is stored in a text config file somewhere. I can make a copy of that config file, tweak it, and see what happens. Under Windows, many driver and operating system settings are stored solely in the registry - which is more difficult (though not impossible) to backup/tweak/test/restore.
The problem is the number of developers who make/made assumptions in their software that should have been using standards that have been set for over 10 years now, at least the software that's less than 10 years old for windows (since NT4 in '96 and Win98 a couple years later).
I've seen more than a handful of apps meant to run on *nix platforms that make the same horrible assumptions as well.
Bad code and bad assumptions have nothing to do with the operating system. You can write crap software and cause problems on any platform.
Also, it's not much less confusing in *nix.
Again, generally speaking, Linux uses human-readable text config files.
You can frequently read a config file and make changes to it even if the software itself won't run.
You can usually locate that config file by searching for a string - even if that config file is stored in a completely wacky location.
I personally find these human-readable text files to be easier to locate, troubleshoot, and work with than some of the binary-only config files found under Windows.
As a software engineer with a very pronounced UNIX bias let me just say I don't like the way windows hides stuff.
I'm not a software engineer, and I use a Windows machine approximately 80% of the time... And I don't like the way Windows hides stuff.
Install a piece of software under Windows, and there's really no telling where it goes. Sure, most of the code will live somewhere in the Program Files directory... But you'll wind up with some DLLs scattered all over the drive, and all sorts of registry entries. Un-install the software and it'll likely leave bits behind. Try to re-install again and you may find yourself with all sorts of odd errors.
I don't know how many times I've had to manually comb through the registry to clean out left-behind bits of antivirus software that didn't get cleanly removed.
There's generally no good way to make a backup of your settings before messing with something. Under Linux everything is basically a text file... So I can make a backup of that text file and revert to it if I have to. Under Windows... Well, I suppose I could probably make a backup of the registry... Unless the setting is actually stored in a file somewhere else - like in Local Settings or Application Data or something like that.
And if I screw something up in Linux it's generally a matter of making a change to a config file that is more-or-less human-readable. Under Windows it's a matter of finding the right checkbox in the right window - which isn't necessarily going to be available if you've borked your machine badly enough that you've had to slave the drive.
Dragonfly? Well, guess the FreeBSD fork by Matt Dillon (not the actor) that was named Dragonfly will now have to be referred to as Dragonfly BSD to avoid confusion. That was one of the first live Linux distributions I played around with and what comes to mind when I hear the name "Dragonfly" in software.
It boggles my mind why people pick project names that are not more original. You're basically shooting yourself in the foot as far as domain registration, marketability and search rankings are concerned.
First thing I thought of was the CMS... Obviously this is a crowded namespace. Seems to me that they could have picked something a little more original.
It isn't like there's some "maturity lobe" that sprouts out of your brain on your 19th birthday.
Actually, there is kind of. The prefrontal cortex, responsible for "executive" thinking (e.g., self-control), doesn't finish developing until the early 20's.
So you're wrong there, but your general idea of maturity progression being dependent on the individual I agree with.
So...
Are you agreeing with me that the prefrontal cortex does not suddenly finish developing on your 20th birthday?
Or are you asserting that it suddenly and miraculously develops fully on your 20th birthday?
the problem is, the test is not likely to test emotional maturity. They might have the book learnin' but they won't have the lived experience. The teenaged brain is literally missing important parts that aren't fully developed until 19 or 20, mostly having to do with risk assessment and sociality. There's a reason why a 16 yr old is many times more likely to wreck a car than a 19 year old.
It is certainly true that various people mature at different rates... But those rates aren't directly tied to the number of years they've been alive.
It isn't like there's some "maturity lobe" that sprouts out of your brain on your 19th birthday.
I've seen plenty of mature 16-year-olds who are more than capable of handling themselves in a college environment. I've seen plenty of 30-year-olds who really aren't mature enough to be living independently.
Experience is key. The issue is that new applicants coming out school have more experience with.NET, Java and they key technologies that many industries are looking for today. The fact that you have 30 years of COBOL experience doesn't help you if you don't learn new technologies.
The differences between languages are largely syntactic. If you're a good COBOL programmer, it's only a matter of spending the weekend with a decent.NET book to learn the language-specific syntax.
No, you might not know all the clever things that.NET does... But that's a very small part of writing good code.
That's pretty much how I felt about Sunshine. I was getting into it, right up until it turned out to be another Event Horizon.
Yup. Loved that movie up until the burned guy shows up and starts killing people.
Seriously... The sun is failing, the ship is damaged, your crew is falling apart, you're the last hope for humanity... Plenty of tension... And then they throw in some crazy burned guy to start murdering people.
That's pretty much how I felt about Event Horizon. Sci-Fi turned thriller. I was getting into it, right up to the end.
Event Horizon could have been great. The truly spooky horror elements, the sci-fi elements, and one of the coolest spacecraft engines in the history of cinema. Yet they fumbled it so badly, it's one of the most disappointing letdowns around.
Yup. I was really enjoying Event Horizon... Very cool, very creepy, very suspenseful. Then that doctor guy turned into some kind of axe murderer and it may as well have been another installment of Halloween.
That said, it's not surprising that those that first saw "Pitch Black" and then went to see "The Chronicles of Riddick" as a sequel were disapointed: to put it simply "Pitch Black" was a finelly tuned Horror-Action movie while The Chronicles was more of a Rambo style action movie (chewing gum for the brain) Sci-Fi/Fantasy movie with an anti-Hero as the main character (although Riddick as a character was much more developed in the second movie).
Added emphasis on what my big problem was...
The first movie was generally believable sci-fi. You had some kind of relatively slow ship transporting an awful lot of people in some kind of suspended animation... You've got a barely-habitable planet with some really weird day/night cycles... You've got a completely subterranean and photo-phobic ecosystem... You've got an assortment of dirty, gritty, realistic-looking gadgets and devices... You've got a criminal from a fairly hostile planet who may be physically superior to your average human, but he's still purely human...
Chronicles of Riddick gave us a fleet of undead warriors... Led by some kind of half-ghost guy with his soul trailing behind him... And they were all taking advice from an invisible lady who can float on thin air... You've got people hopping from one planet to another with very little time lapse... You've got some kind of human bloodhounds that can follow a scent across the stars... You've got Riddick channeling the psychic anger of a dead race...
It felt more like I was watching some swords & sorcery fantasy movie than a sequel to Pitch Black.
Yeah I liked the film too; guess that means we have bad taste in movies
Some of the action was fun. Some of the visuals were impressive. I did, in general, enjoy myself.
But I went to the theater to see a sequel to Pitch Black. I wanted to see a badass criminal in a science fiction setting. I wanted to see aliens, maybe some more monsters... I wanted to see more struggles with morality and trust and personal demons.
Instead... I got a fleet of undead warriors being led by some kind of half-ghost taking the advice of a floating, invisible woman. Instead of being a badass, Riddick is channeling the psychic anger of all the dead people on his homeworld.
Yeah I liked the film too; guess that means we have bad taste in movies:) On a more serious note, I think that the problem most people had with the film was due to the theatrical release of Chronicles of Riddick as it had a few scenes cut out that a lot of people felt left the plot incomplete.
The reason I disliked Chronicles of Riddick was the transition from a sci-fi story to basically magic.
It felt more like a new Conan movie than a sequel to Pitch Black.
It was rushed. Terrible organization of scenes, none of it made sense.
My big problem with Chronicles of Riddick wasn't any of the cinematography or plot or anything like that... It was the jump from a sci-fi setting to a fantasy setting.
Check the Directors Cut. Enjoyed it a lot. Not confusing at all like the theater release was.
The director's cut is actually worse, in my opinion, than the theatrical release.
During the big brawl on the prison planet there's a kind of explosion that kills a pile of badguys and knocks Riddick out. In the theatrical release this is some kind of energy pistol exploding for some reason. In the director's cut this is Riddick channeling the anger of all the dead people from his home planet.
Riddick being a badass was fine. Riddick being a Magic badass fighting other magic badasses with magic magic magic....
Agreed.
In Pitch Black he was a convict from a rather inhospitable planet. Reminded me a bit of the Fremen from Dune. Physically superior to your average human being, maybe... But still a normal human being. No magical powers or anything.
In Chronicles of Riddick he turned into some kind of magical superman... And he was fighting the undead... And there were transparent, floating elementals... Just plain ridiculous.
I could enjoy some of the action and set pieces... But it was a lousy sequel to Pitch Black
Exactly. Does anybody remember seeing a movie called the Cube?
Wow. Just wow. What a cool concept. Not going to spoil it for those that haven't seen it, but who would have imagined that a single set. Yes. A single set could be used to produce a compelling, edge of your seat movie plot, and on the budget of an oily rag and a used stick of gum.
Contrast this with its sequel. Cube 2 - hypercube! High budget, and loads of crap.
Cube Zero was actually halfway decent - check it out if you haven't.
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Maybe they just don't think there's enough demand in your area to spend that kind of money? Comcast here has gone from ~5 Mbps connections 3 years ago to 20 Mbps connections, but honestly, I can't tell the difference.
There is demand. Maybe not enough demand... But there is certainly demand. I bug my ISP every couple of months to see when they're planning on rolling out something faster. We've got a couple clients who desperately need more bandwidth and routinely bug their ISPs.
But you're right. There may not be enough people asking for more bandwidth to justify the costs of rolling it out.
However, to a certain degree, increasing supply will create the demand for it.
Go back a few years and nobody would have bothered to build a site like YouTube or Flickr because there just wasn't enough bandwidth available. There was no way you could watch streaming video on most computers... And even flipping through pages of photos would have taken forever.
Now that we've got enough bandwidth for those services, however, there's plenty of photo galleries and video sites on the Internet.
What kind of goodies could you build if you could count on most of your visitors having 20+ Mbps bandwidth?
Any one who actually implements this horrible idea deserves one of the deeper rings of hell.
If I was the end user, I would be livid if I was locked out of continuing to use my machine, and there would be one of 2 actions.
Neither one of these is desirable for a simple state error message, which is why it's a horrible idea. If your crappy program brings my entire computer to its knees because of an error message, don't be surprised when I start looking for alternatives real quick.
I never suggested locking your machine... I suggested preventing that error box from being closed.
One would assume that on a modern computer you'd be able to continue working with other applications.
And I'm personally assuming, perhaps incorrectly, that if you're going to put up an error message there's a good reason for it. Not some "do you really want to make your text bold" error message... But "server just burst into flames" error message... In which case you'd probably want to get a hold of technical support pretty quickly.
Users have been conditioned to simply click away message boxes as quickly as possible and get on with their lives.
A Windows computer is constantly popping up boxes that get in your way. Sometimes it's just to inform you that a wireless network was found... Other times it's asking for confirmation for something... Other times it's a warning... Sometimes it's an error...
Folks don't evaluate what the message says, they just make it go away.
You can put all the puppies and red numbers and blue squares as you want... They're still going to click it away just as quick as they can.
You could alleviate this to a certain degree by taking away their ability to clear the error message. Put in an error code somewhere, along with a phone number for technical support, and no way to close the box. They'll call you and you can have them read off whatever you need. Then you can tell them whatever bizarre combination of keys will actually close the box.
A better solution would be to simply write a log of the error message when the box is generated, then you don't need to rely on the user to do much of anything.
Maybe one day we'll need to transfer more data than that, but I don't see the point of mandating that everyone have access that fast when it's fairly obvious that we don't need it right now and there's no reason to think we will anytime soon.
There's a few problems with that...
The biggest one is that, apparently, US ISPs just aren't going to roll out upgrades unless they're forced to.
I keep seeing folks on here talking about their 20 Mbps connections... Other folks have 10 Mbps... The fastest I have available is 5 Mbps. That's it.
The problem is that the local ISPs have a virtual monopoly. I don't have any real options. I either make do with the 5 Mbps, or I don't have Internet.
If somebody doesn't mandate upgrades, I won't see anything more than 5 Mbps for years.
The other problem is that you don't seem to have a grasp of just how much bandwidth a house can use.
I've got three computers in my house... Plus a pile of consoles and set-top boxes... At any given point in time we might have a movie downloading on the DVR, a couple Pandora streams going, a couple on-line games going, maybe a movie streaming from Netflix, and possibly some vacation photos or movies downloading.
My kid virtually lives on FaceBook. My wife has a fancy digital camera that takes ginormous pictures. All three of us listen to Pandora. All three of us are gamers.
It is very easy for us to saturate our 5 Mbps connection.
100 Mbps seems like it would be more than enough for now... Overkill, perhaps...
But what if I actually owned an HD TV and wanted to download/stream HD movies? What if I had more than one TV/DVR/set-top box that wanted to download/stream that HD content at once? What if I was trying to use VOIP at the same time?
I can't see why a domestic user needs that speed. I've got virgin cable and the 20MB is plenty for me.
Perhaps this has something to do with their Tivo deal and on-demand content?
There was a time when you'd only see a single computer in a house. That time has passed. Most homes have more than one computer.
I have three genuine computers in our house (mine, the wife's, the kid's)... We also have a DVR that can download stuff from the Internet, a set-top box that can stream Netflix stuff, and a couple consoles with Internet connectivity.
Our needs are fairly low. While we may very well wind up with a few on-line games and a couple Pandora streams at one time, it isn't like we're trying to stream four different HD movies at once. But we manage to pretty much saturate our 5 Mbps connection (which is the fastest I can get here).
If we had DVRs on some of the other televisions... Or more set-top boxes... Or if we had HD televisions... I can't imagine trying to squeeze all that into our little 5 Mbps connection. Hell, 20 Mbps seems low for that...
Exactly how many steam games have OSX versions? Does anyone actually game with Macs?
Gaming has never been that huge on the Mac. A large part of this is limited retail shelf space... If a retailer knows the PC version of a game is more likely to sell than the Mac one, they're more likely to stock the PC one. Which means less shelf space for Macs... So less Mac users go into the store to buy stuff... So you put less Mac stuff on the shelves...
These days we're seeing the same trend with PC gaming. Consoles are taking over the market and you're seeing less and less shelf space devoted to PC games.
But that doesn't mean that folks have stopped playing games on the PC, nor does it mean that folks don't game on the Mac - just that the marketplace you use to buy your software isn't a retail store.
There are tons of games on Steam that you will never, ever see on a store shelf. And why not? It isn't like you're giving up physical shelf space... Storage is cheap. Throw another disk in the array and call it done!
So, why wouldn't Valve try to expand their market a bit? Plenty of publishers still release games for the Mac... And right now they're struggling to get the games out there and in front of people's eyes... They'd probably love something like Steam.
If you thought the user-friendliness and simplicity is what drove people to WoW, you should see how many more people are suddenly being driven into Mafia Wars, Castle Age, and Farmville on Facebook. No, my friends, I do not want to friggin' click your button to help you kill Sylvanus.
Well... But that's exactly what I'm talking about. Maybe "user friendly" was the wrong phrase to use...
It's simple. Doesn't require a whole lot of forethought or attention. Just click a button or two, maybe repeatedly mash some pattern. It's almost purely grinding. Kill mobs, get loot, repeat. Not much different from Mafia Wars or FarmVille or whatever. And you've got the social aspect, just like on those FaceBook games. And the all-important status symbols.
The old MMOGs that required some real time, effort, and forethought are pretty much gone.
WoW is the king of the hill, and all it really requires is hours upon hours upon hours of mindless grinding. Which is, apparently, what people want.
The simple fact is those gameplay elements that you liked in UO is what ultimately led to it being less popular than WoW.
Look at WoW - very simple gameplay, no character stats to worry about, just gear to collect. Automatic group finding for PvP and instances. It's basically a vaguely MMO-ish version of Diablo 2 at this point.
EVE Online has some gameplay aspects that require you to think ahead, and folks constantly show up on the forums complaining about them. Not the folks who actually enjoy and play EVE on a daily basis... But folks who showed up from WoW and are giving the free trial a spin. And they're not happy about the fact that they have to plan ahead, be cautious, think about their decisions, etc. They'd like something more user-friendly.
The rules of war have changed... the enemy isn't a state, it's a force of people loyal to a cult that believes a corrupted religion. There's no way to blockade them, there's no way to disable their tech because they don't use much. We have to change our response or else they'll find the weakness in the current way of doing things.
The whole problem with this current "war on terror" is that it isn't a war being waged against a sovereign nation. It's a war against a tactic... Or an ideology... Or maybe a specific brand of extremism... Or possibly a few fairly-well-organized criminal organizations...
That's like saying we're going to war against guerrilla warfare, or insurgency, or naval superiority.
And how do you identify the enemy? Anyone who engages in terrorism? Anywhere? And who gets to define what terrorism is?
Are we going to start using our drones and whatnot to take out domestic terrorists too? Lob a missile at some guy before he can rash his plane into an IRS building? Roll out the marines in Texas? Plant a couple aircraft carriers in the Gulf of Mexico to keep peace in our own state?
I need to go to their office and have my finger prints taken for the purposes of clocking in and out of work.
They aren't taking your finger prints. They're registering you in their timeclock machine. It's a relatively cheap, simple way to make sure real human beings are clocking in and out.
The simplest are just crappy fingerprint readers plugged into a PC running some software... The nicer ones are stand-alone devices.
Generally speaking, they'll get you set up ahead of time... But your name and employee number and whatever into the machine. Then they hit some button and have you put your thumb on the machine - this registers your thumbprint to your information. Generally it's just a thumbprint, not a full set of fingerprints. Generally speaking, there's no way to get that print information out of the machine. You might be able to load up the whole data file on another machine... But they aren't going to send your prints off to the FBI or anything.
This raises huge privacy concerns for me
Because you, evidently, don't understand what's going on.
They don't want to track your every movement. They aren't going to turn your prints over to the FBI. This isn't some invasive policy. They just want to make sure that it's you clocking in and out... And not some buddy you gave your timecard to so he could cover for you showing up late to work.
as it should for everybody else.
Yes, of course it should. Because unfounded fear and paranoia are very useful things.
Fair enough.
The key difference for me, however, is that under Linux pretty much everything is a human-readable text file.
The package you download with apt-get contains a text file somewhere in it that tells you exactly where everything is going to be installed. Under Windows, that's not necessarily the case.
And once the thing is installed, the configuration settings are again in a text file. You can search your drive for a string and have a good chance of locating all the config files, wherever they may be. Under windows, some of those config files are going to be binary and the best you can hope for is a filename match. Or settings might be stored in the registry... Which will require you to run REGEDIT and then search for a string.
but it's much more unix-like today.
Yes it is.
Though to be honest, there's just as much fragmentation on the *nix side. System 7 style vs. BSD style structures. /usr/local/ vs /opt/
True, but generally speaking things are stored in human-readable text files. So I could do a fulltext search for a string and be reasonably sure of finding what I'm looking for. Under Windows things are frequently stored in some odd binary file with a bizarre name that can be much harder to locate.
In terms of backing up your settings, you should be able to copy/backup your user folder.
This is true... But I'm not necessarily worried about my personal settings.
Under Linux pretty much everything, including driver settings and whatnot, is stored in a text config file somewhere. I can make a copy of that config file, tweak it, and see what happens. Under Windows, many driver and operating system settings are stored solely in the registry - which is more difficult (though not impossible) to backup/tweak/test/restore.
The problem is the number of developers who make/made assumptions in their software that should have been using standards that have been set for over 10 years now, at least the software that's less than 10 years old for windows (since NT4 in '96 and Win98 a couple years later).
I've seen more than a handful of apps meant to run on *nix platforms that make the same horrible assumptions as well.
Bad code and bad assumptions have nothing to do with the operating system. You can write crap software and cause problems on any platform.
Also, it's not much less confusing in *nix.
Again, generally speaking, Linux uses human-readable text config files.
You can frequently read a config file and make changes to it even if the software itself won't run.
You can usually locate that config file by searching for a string - even if that config file is stored in a completely wacky location.
I personally find these human-readable text files to be easier to locate, troubleshoot, and work with than some of the binary-only config files found under Windows.
As a software engineer with a very pronounced UNIX bias let me just say I don't like the way windows hides stuff.
I'm not a software engineer, and I use a Windows machine approximately 80% of the time... And I don't like the way Windows hides stuff.
Install a piece of software under Windows, and there's really no telling where it goes. Sure, most of the code will live somewhere in the Program Files directory... But you'll wind up with some DLLs scattered all over the drive, and all sorts of registry entries. Un-install the software and it'll likely leave bits behind. Try to re-install again and you may find yourself with all sorts of odd errors.
I don't know how many times I've had to manually comb through the registry to clean out left-behind bits of antivirus software that didn't get cleanly removed.
There's generally no good way to make a backup of your settings before messing with something. Under Linux everything is basically a text file... So I can make a backup of that text file and revert to it if I have to. Under Windows... Well, I suppose I could probably make a backup of the registry... Unless the setting is actually stored in a file somewhere else - like in Local Settings or Application Data or something like that.
And if I screw something up in Linux it's generally a matter of making a change to a config file that is more-or-less human-readable. Under Windows it's a matter of finding the right checkbox in the right window - which isn't necessarily going to be available if you've borked your machine badly enough that you've had to slave the drive.
Dragonfly? Well, guess the FreeBSD fork by Matt Dillon (not the actor) that was named Dragonfly will now have to be referred to as Dragonfly BSD to avoid confusion. That was one of the first live Linux distributions I played around with and what comes to mind when I hear the name "Dragonfly" in software.
It boggles my mind why people pick project names that are not more original. You're basically shooting yourself in the foot as far as domain registration, marketability and search rankings are concerned.
First thing I thought of was the CMS... Obviously this is a crowded namespace. Seems to me that they could have picked something a little more original.
It isn't like there's some "maturity lobe" that sprouts out of your brain on your 19th birthday.
Actually, there is kind of. The prefrontal cortex, responsible for "executive" thinking (e.g., self-control), doesn't finish developing until the early 20's.
So you're wrong there, but your general idea of maturity progression being dependent on the individual I agree with.
So...
Are you agreeing with me that the prefrontal cortex does not suddenly finish developing on your 20th birthday?
Or are you asserting that it suddenly and miraculously develops fully on your 20th birthday?
the problem is, the test is not likely to test emotional maturity. They might have the book learnin' but they won't have the lived experience. The teenaged brain is literally missing important parts that aren't fully developed until 19 or 20, mostly having to do with risk assessment and sociality. There's a reason why a 16 yr old is many times more likely to wreck a car than a 19 year old.
It is certainly true that various people mature at different rates... But those rates aren't directly tied to the number of years they've been alive.
It isn't like there's some "maturity lobe" that sprouts out of your brain on your 19th birthday.
I've seen plenty of mature 16-year-olds who are more than capable of handling themselves in a college environment. I've seen plenty of 30-year-olds who really aren't mature enough to be living independently.
Experience is key. The issue is that new applicants coming out school have more experience with .NET, Java and they key technologies that many industries are looking for today. The fact that you have 30 years of COBOL experience doesn't help you if you don't learn new technologies.
The differences between languages are largely syntactic. If you're a good COBOL programmer, it's only a matter of spending the weekend with a decent .NET book to learn the language-specific syntax.
No, you might not know all the clever things that .NET does... But that's a very small part of writing good code.
That's pretty much how I felt about Sunshine. I was getting into it, right up until it turned out to be another Event Horizon.
Yup. Loved that movie up until the burned guy shows up and starts killing people.
Seriously... The sun is failing, the ship is damaged, your crew is falling apart, you're the last hope for humanity... Plenty of tension... And then they throw in some crazy burned guy to start murdering people.
Bleh.
That's pretty much how I felt about Event Horizon. Sci-Fi turned thriller. I was getting into it, right up to the end.
Event Horizon could have been great. The truly spooky horror elements, the sci-fi elements, and one of the coolest spacecraft engines in the history of cinema. Yet they fumbled it so badly, it's one of the most disappointing letdowns around.
Yup. I was really enjoying Event Horizon... Very cool, very creepy, very suspenseful. Then that doctor guy turned into some kind of axe murderer and it may as well have been another installment of Halloween.
That said, it's not surprising that those that first saw "Pitch Black" and then went to see "The Chronicles of Riddick" as a sequel were disapointed: to put it simply "Pitch Black" was a finelly tuned Horror-Action movie while The Chronicles was more of a Rambo style action movie (chewing gum for the brain) Sci-Fi/Fantasy movie with an anti-Hero as the main character (although Riddick as a character was much more developed in the second movie).
Added emphasis on what my big problem was...
The first movie was generally believable sci-fi. You had some kind of relatively slow ship transporting an awful lot of people in some kind of suspended animation... You've got a barely-habitable planet with some really weird day/night cycles... You've got a completely subterranean and photo-phobic ecosystem... You've got an assortment of dirty, gritty, realistic-looking gadgets and devices... You've got a criminal from a fairly hostile planet who may be physically superior to your average human, but he's still purely human...
Chronicles of Riddick gave us a fleet of undead warriors... Led by some kind of half-ghost guy with his soul trailing behind him... And they were all taking advice from an invisible lady who can float on thin air... You've got people hopping from one planet to another with very little time lapse... You've got some kind of human bloodhounds that can follow a scent across the stars... You've got Riddick channeling the psychic anger of a dead race...
It felt more like I was watching some swords & sorcery fantasy movie than a sequel to Pitch Black.
Yeah I liked the film too; guess that means we have bad taste in movies
Some of the action was fun. Some of the visuals were impressive. I did, in general, enjoy myself.
But I went to the theater to see a sequel to Pitch Black. I wanted to see a badass criminal in a science fiction setting. I wanted to see aliens, maybe some more monsters... I wanted to see more struggles with morality and trust and personal demons.
Instead... I got a fleet of undead warriors being led by some kind of half-ghost taking the advice of a floating, invisible woman. Instead of being a badass, Riddick is channeling the psychic anger of all the dead people on his homeworld.
I was not impressed.
Yeah I liked the film too; guess that means we have bad taste in movies :) On a more serious note, I think that the problem most people had with the film was due to the theatrical release of Chronicles of Riddick as it had a few scenes cut out that a lot of people felt left the plot incomplete.
The reason I disliked Chronicles of Riddick was the transition from a sci-fi story to basically magic.
It felt more like a new Conan movie than a sequel to Pitch Black.
It was rushed. Terrible organization of scenes, none of it made sense.
My big problem with Chronicles of Riddick wasn't any of the cinematography or plot or anything like that... It was the jump from a sci-fi setting to a fantasy setting.
Check the Directors Cut. Enjoyed it a lot. Not confusing at all like the theater release was.
The director's cut is actually worse, in my opinion, than the theatrical release.
During the big brawl on the prison planet there's a kind of explosion that kills a pile of badguys and knocks Riddick out. In the theatrical release this is some kind of energy pistol exploding for some reason. In the director's cut this is Riddick channeling the anger of all the dead people from his home planet.
Riddick being a badass was fine. Riddick being a Magic badass fighting other magic badasses with magic magic magic....
Agreed.
In Pitch Black he was a convict from a rather inhospitable planet. Reminded me a bit of the Fremen from Dune. Physically superior to your average human being, maybe... But still a normal human being. No magical powers or anything.
In Chronicles of Riddick he turned into some kind of magical superman... And he was fighting the undead... And there were transparent, floating elementals... Just plain ridiculous.
I could enjoy some of the action and set pieces... But it was a lousy sequel to Pitch Black
Exactly. Does anybody remember seeing a movie called the Cube?
Wow. Just wow. What a cool concept. Not going to spoil it for those that haven't seen it, but who would have imagined that a single set. Yes. A single set could be used to produce a compelling, edge of your seat movie plot, and on the budget of an oily rag and a used stick of gum.
Contrast this with its sequel. Cube 2 - hypercube! High budget, and loads of crap.
Cube Zero was actually halfway decent - check it out if you haven't.