Yes, and there's actually also the Physician's Oath to deal with, as you're not refusing care, only government-provided care, and at the time the Physician won't know who will ultimately need to pay. I brought it up more to make a rhetorical point, as I think hardly anyone would actually feel so strongly about their principles of keeping the government out of their business as to agree to this, making the practical aspects of implementing it a rather moot point.:)
Although to address the case you mention, what would probably happen in that case is that you'd get treated, but then the government would refuse payment and you'd get the whole bill yourself.
And for the sake of disclosure: ---I am anti-monopoly and pro-choice biased. People should have as many choices as possible; not be forced into making just one singular choice. Example: "Buy hospital insurance or... well there is no other choice."
As opposed to the current situation of "Buy hospital insurance or... don't, then wait until you get critically ill and require very expensive care, go to the emergency room, and let the American taxpayer foot the bill for your treatment"? This is the fallacy of the "choices" argument - it assumes, for things like health care, that you can make an informed decision about whether or not you need it and that your decisions affect no one but yourself. When you leave the realm of theory and hypotheticals and start looking at real-world scenarios, though, you realize those assumptions just don't hold. Letting people just die if they make poor health care choices isn't really a viable option for any society that wants to remain civilized and humane, and requiring people to get easy and affordable preventative care is actually much cheaper (and I suspect generally more effective) than just waiting for people to get really sick and doing emergency treatments. In other words, by paying in to health care, you reduce the potential burden on your fellow man to ensure you are cared for, which I see as simply being a responsible citizen.
Moreover, your ability to make an informed decisions about what health care you need relies quite heavily on your ability to predict the future, and if we were very good at that no one would even need health care because you could predict any oncoming illness, or even your own death, and prevent them.:) Needing health care is quite often a scenario you don't anticipate unless you've already had numerous health conditions in the past (or are genetically / hereditarily pre-disposed to certain illnesses), in which case, our current health care system will, well, avoid you like the plague.
In short, I don't have a problem with letting you make your own choices... until I have to foot the bill because you decided to avoid health care altogether and that whole "just don't get sick / seriously injured" strategy didn't pan out for you. Then it's not just an issue of liberty, but also one of fairness to your fellow man and personal responsibility. If you want unfettered liberty, go live in the woods somewhere where you get no benefits from society. Then no one will ask anything of you; but there also will be no one to help you when things go bad.
Or, you could just recognize that there's a balance between liberty and living together in a society. We agree to abide by certain behaviors when in society because they give us important benefits in return. It is important always to monitor and keep that balance in check so that the society does not unreasonably restrict your liberty, but it is just as important to understand that sometimes if you want the plentiful benefits a society provides you, you need to agree to work with others on some things proactively and not just take an "it's my way until I need the highway" approach. A lot of people who talk about liberty don't like the part where government / society asks of them, but they seem to have no problem asking things of government / society when things really go to pot, which I don't see as a truly principled stand. I think the choice should be thus: if you ask for the government to get out of your business, you should also in those areas sign a waver saying you forbid the government from providing you with any assistance. So, if you don't want to be mandated to get health care, you sign a waver explicitly forbidding the government from helping you in any way when you get critically ill. Then you are 100% reliant upon your own, personal, health care plans or lack thereof, and if something bad happens to you, the government can honestly say it was willing to help but it needed to respect your wishes as a citizen. I think that would be fair. How many people do you think would sign up for that?
In Japan, you can actually use cell phones to make purchases. Just swipe your phone over a surface, similar to how you swipe a credit card, and you've paid. Of course, people tend not to 'load' tons of money into the phone, in case it gets stolen, but it's used for many common purchases, like at convenience stores and such. Apple is probably already working on this, considering that it's one of the only things iPhone can't do that many other phones in Japan can. It's also a hardware feature, meaning it's something to get people to upgrade their phones rather than just their OS. I wouldn't be surprised if it showed up in iPhone 5. I kind of remember actually reading some rumors to that effect.
In fact, aside from the "psychological reaction analyzer" component, I don't think we're very far from implementing the 'missing' features of the Joymaker at all.
There can't be a grand unified HIG, but you're thinking about the problem backwards. Instead of trying to unify the HIGs, just have classes that abstract out the differences. For example, wxPython actually handles much of this already - the SizedControls library gives controls HIG-compliant borders and spacing on Win/Mac/GTK, while wxStdDialogButtonSizer (long name, I know;-) will take your OK and Cancel button and make sure they appear in the right order on each platform. The platform-specific code is all built into the library - you don't need to deal with it yourself.
The reason most cross-platform apps don't follow HIGs too well is that rather than use a library like this, they hand-code spacing, positioning, etc., usually doing the whole thing on one platform first. So then when they decide to make it cross-platform, going through and making a huge preferences window, for example, follow HIGs is a massive task.
The idea that you have to construct a totally separate UI for each platform is silly. It seems like a great idea until you start actually doing it - and then you start getting buried in UI code, not to mention the usual problem of having at least one port being done in a rather lackluster way.
To be honest, developing UIs seems to be one of the most common areas that I see NIH syndrome. Devs gripe about a mostly-working "out of the box" widget set (because you still have to do an extra 20% work to optimize and use platform-specific UI approaches in some areas, and to be fair, bugs too), then strike out on their own, but within years, they're abstracting the platform bits into a cross-platform API and voila, they end up with a cross-platform UI library. Adobe, OOo, etc. could all benefit from having a single, reliable, well-maintained library if even just for dialogs. As long as it's native under the hood, it's not much work at all to grab the window handle, write some (say) CoreAnimation code, and add some Mac slickness to your app.
People just raise the bar unreasonably high on a cross-platform widget set. It's not only supposed to get your port 80% of the way there, it's supposed to auto-optimize for every platform as well.:)
You can also use wxPython (http://www.wxpython.org), which seems to start a lot faster than LINA (look how many times the LINA app bounces in the dock before it starts), actually *comes with* Mac OS X Tiger, uses native OS controls whenever possible and as of 2.8.3 has a library called SizedControls which automatically applies OS HIG-compliant sizing and borders to your windows and controls on Windows, GTK/GNOME, and Mac (disclaimer: I'm the author of said library). Plus, unlike Qt and LINA, wxPython/wxWidgets is free for commercial development as well as open source.
So I've been using this 'holy grail' for years, but maybe the VM slowdown and commercial licensing will appeal to some people.:-)
Re:Wx does NOT excel in matching OS X
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WxPython in Action
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· Score: 1
As I said before, it is a screenshot of what "can be done" on OS X - e.g. what UI elements are available, and what options there are for doing custom-drawn controls/UI elements (such as a whiteboard). It puts a lot into one screenshot, and it's not necessarily an example of how to win an Apple Design Award.
UI design has little to do with the wx toolkit and a lot to do with how an application designer understands, cares about and adopts interface design principles. Tools are tools; they don't do your UI design for you, they simply help you implement that design. For something with a more OS X-style UI, take a look at this:
However, they're still in the process of working on the application, and as a result there are still a couple minor bugs in their UI; overall, though, it looks quite solid and uses many modern UI conventions.
When you spend a few seconds looking into a toolkit, a lot of things can "seem" a certain way without really being true. wx is being used for modern app design, but that's mostly a result of projects like Firefox which have made a lot of developers start to re-think the importance of a good UI. As a result, there aren't a whole lot of totally finished modern UI apps to show off yet. (The commercial sector jumped on this quickly, of course, but they've got the resources for it.)
Are you saying you've used wxPython and had problems with it, or that you are not using it because it lacks documentation, or something else? I'm curious to know what parts you had problems with.
I went from "playing around" with wxPython to using it full-time to develop a real-world app over a matter of weeks, which really isn't all that bad. There were a few sticking points, but I never found the process all that difficult. You do have to bear with the C++ style arguments in the wxWidgets docs, but the wxPython demo is about the most effectively learning tool I've come across for learning a toolkit. I just wish I could have edited the demo in real time, like you can do now, to help learn the toolkit.:-)
There's also the wxPython Cookbook in the wiki, and the like, which cover a lot of specific topics for wxPython development. Maybe some of this stuff isn't visible enough on the wxPython site?
Re:Wx does NOT excel in matching OS X
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WxPython in Action
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Have you run the wxPython demo? Or are a couple random screenshots enough to get you to "strongly disagree" about something? There are still a couple controls that need work on the Mac port, but a vast majority of its controls are 100% native and match native behavior as closely as possible. (In the cases that the OS doesn't just 'give it to us' for free.)
wx, however, is like any other toolkit. It doesn't force you to adhere to HIGs, and unfortunately many Mac ports are from Win/Linux apps, and focus their resources on those ports because, sadly, that's where the users/customers are. A number of wx apps don't even support Mac, not because they can't, but because they simply don't have (enough) users that are interested in the Mac port. As Mac customers and support becomes more important, so too will the number of applications that optimize for Mac, and let me tell you, those that used wx will find they can probably polish their GUI in a matter of days.
And in fact, we're working on cutting the work needed for HIG-compliance on all platforms too. At the wxPython level, we're working on additions to wx controls that are automatically HIG-compliant for Win, OS X and GNOME/GTK. So long as you use this library, your controls will space themselves according to the HIGs. If you're really interested in cross-platform development, I'd strongly encourage you to look at what's out there and then determine if wx is really such a bad choice for getting native Mac LNF.
Hey, you don't need to be afraid to say it. It's the truth. Once you're married, she sure as hell is going to make sure you clean that bathroom until it's spotless!
If you think that's a joke, try getting married.:)
I havent read through the whole document, but in this case I don't need to.
Considering you've taken my statements, and Bill Gates', WAY out of context, I think you really do need to.
You are accusing some person of "Spinning around and around". You then claim that most people steal their M$ products! Either you are quoting a lie from Billy G or you yourself are lying.
Option 3: you mis-understand what I'm saying because you haven't read the source material that I'm paraphrasing.
Calm down. If you read carefully, you'll see I don't claim anything. This is what Bill Gates himself said in his letter, although I think it's pretty important for you to remember that he wrote this *30* years ago. 1976. He wasn't talking about Windows, MS Office, etc. because, well, they didn't exist yet. He was basically referring to members of "homebrew computer" clubs who would share his BASIC software without paying for it. Here's the most relevant bits from Bill Gates' letter:
The feedback we have gotten from the hundreds of people who say they are using BASIC has all been positive. Two surprising things are apparent, however, 1) Most of these "users" never bought BASIC (less than 10% of all Altair owners have bought BASIC), and 2) The amount of royalties we have received from sales to hobbyists makes the time spent on Altair BASIC worth less than $2 an hour. Why is this? As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software.
Make of it what you will, but this is what he said, and you totally took it out of context with your "I don't need to read and understand to know I'm right about this!" attitude.
What you're writing is classic spin. You're inferring things from the article, nothing more, then stating your interpretations as facts.
The quotes you offer are nowhere near "smoking guns". Does he dislike hobbyists? Well, I think it's fairly clear he strongly dislikes the 'hobbyists' who are stealing his software. But then you twist that and put words into his mouth, such as "hobbyists cannot write good software". Correction: what he SAID was that he doesn't see how programmers can spend 3 years on their 'hobby' without making any money from it and still put out a quality product, with quality assurance, documentation and all. It's worth noting, too, that this was from a long time ago. Free software models did not exist then, and there weren't people willing to fund/sponsor hobbyist projects.
"He says he's the best at doing it:"
Sorry, the quote you give does not support that conclusion at all. He's just saying he invested a lot of money into it, and then many hobbyists take the fruit of that labor without paying the piper, as they say. I don't believe it'd be fair to sell software someone gave away for free without their permission, and conversely, I don't believe it's fair to give away software someone sells without their permission. Those who stole his software were not fair and respectful to Bill Gates, and he is justifiably (in my opinion) upset about that.
"Free software is bad because he can't make money:"
Again, spinning around and around. He said he wants to sell a product, and hire developers to make his product much better. However, his plan is somewhat hindered by the fact that most people are stealing, rather than purchasing, his software.
You know, I don't think Bill Gates is some great guy or anything, in fact, I do consider he's more about making the sale than providing a quality product; but at the same time I don't like to see people putting words in someone's mouth, which you most certainly are doing. Criticize him for what he actually did, or actually said, but not for what you think he meant to say.
If you truly feel it's fair to do this, then that is because you're the one on the giving end, not receiving. When someone puts words in YOUR mouth, I can assure you, you will not think it is very fair to you for someone to do so.
I love how they claim this isn't a ripoff of the iPod video.
Its too bad the iPod's form factor has pretty much been the same since coming out in 2001.
You're right. They should have said it's a ripoff of the iPod form factor because, as you just said, it's been the same since 2001. And if you look at the Creative design, it's *obvious* they changed the form factor in small ways to keep from cloning the iPod. I don't have a hard time believing the feature sets were mostly coincidental, but I DO have a hard time believing that was the case with the interface.
Apple's target audience isn't a group of people who like modding their computer/console hardware. They're selling to people who don't particularly want to mod their stuff, or pay to have it modded.
Besides, the real value of Apple's solution isn't Front Row itself; the value in Apple's solution lies in their downloadable content. If they can offer affordable movies and TV programs, a new Mac mini would pay for itself in 1-2 years when I can buy the shows I want to watch ala carte rather than paying for cable. I'd be using the computer too, of course, so it would more than pay for itself. The sucky part about TiVo, the XBox MC, MythTV, etc. is that they require setup time and/or subscription fees to work, so unless you watch a LOT of TV (or enjoy the challenge) the boxes just aren't worth the money and/or effort involved. If Apple can bring a buy-as-you-go solution that anyone can use and bundle it with an affordable computer to boot, they'll bring the media center concept to a whole new market of casual buyers/watchers.
There is not much you, I, or Steve Jobs can do to prevent the RIAA bastards to start charging $2/song on all top 100 titles.
You know how contracts work, right? Both parties need to sign them. Jobs is perfectly free to say that he's going to stop selling [insert label here]'s songs on iTMS and refuse to renew the contract. I don't know if Steve Jobs WILL stand up to the recording industry, but it's silly to say that he CANNOT.
It's not fact until both parties agree to the terms. Anything before that is posturing. Posturing and threatening on both sides is not uncommon in contract negotiations.
The labels can pretty much dictate WHATEVER pricing they want, and Apple will not have any say over it (unless they want to lose revenue). It would be one thing if they had a marketshare of say, Walmart. But digital sale is still pretty small percentage of the overall revenue for the labels.
First of all, I don't think wholesale prices have anything to do with it here, because IIRC Apple has a contract with the music companies (which no doubt offers guarantees against price changes). Apple can say no to the new prices, and if they do, the record companies will counter, and so on until an agreement is negotiated.
Also, while it's true that the online market is small, it is, unlike CD sales, a growing market rather than a shrinking one, and it's growing much faster than I think anyone anticipated. The music companies have done this dance before, and know the writing is on the wall; that online sales will grow and CD sales will fall just as cassettes sales fell as CD sales grew. The record companies are thus under serious pressure to sign a new deal with Apple, and that does give Apple some significant leverage to keep terms favorable for them. I think neither side wants to walk here, so I wouldn't come to foregone conclusions about what will happen (like, say,/. does).
No, I don't play kids games because I spent my time with them and I'm bored with them. I'm not saying that some people don't enjoy these games, I'm saying that I don't really care for them any more. I didn't imply that others wouldn't find them enjoyable.
What I think a lot of people don't understand is, how do you determine that a type of game is "not for kids"? You say you're bored with kids games, right? So logically you're bored with any type of game that has game mechanics similar to the games kids play. Thing is, pretty much all games I've played have the player pressing buttons to destroy an enemy, or race a car, or play sports, or control an RPG/simulator, etc. And these games exist for all platforms. So I don't see the big difference between "kids" games and "adults" games. The presence of blood or boobies doesn't affect the gameplay any, it's just re-wrapping the game in a different package to make it 'look' mature. So, what is it about the gameplay of certain games that make them not for kids, and thus somehow funner?
Uhm, that's not what the parent poster was saying. He said that it targets children better than other consoles, which is absolutely true. Many kid-friendly games are Gamecube/GBA/DS exclusives. Some developers develop for, or port to, the PS2 but these days but for the most part the PS2 and XBox are filled with sports and FPS games. Nintendo's systems have a larger variety of games that don't need to be rated "M", and thus, I think it's fair to say that Nintendo is more careful to make games that are kid-friendly.
I do agree with you that sometimes people do call Nintendo games/systems "for kids", but parent poster did not say that.
The issue here is that literally translated they mean "fucking christ" and "shit".
Yes and no. The bottom line is that there is not one true 'literal' translation for these words. Crap is a literal and valid translation for kuso, as kuso = feces = crap.:) You'll find crap in many a dictionary if you look up kuso, along with shit and sometimes a couple other words. Also, your translation for chikushou is definitely not a literal one. All you're doing is substituting a roughly equivalent English phrase in terms of conveying a similar emotion. Lots of other similarly valid phrases exist, like "damn it" for example, and you can't prove they're any less 'literal' than your translation is. There is not, in many cases, One True Literal Translation for every word in the dictionary. It's just not that simple.
People are complaining that Homer isn't drinking beer anymore, and what's wrong with that? Well, in Arabic countries alcohol is a Sin, and very offensive.
Right, but I'm arguing the analogy (wrt 'censored' translations) doesn't fit because you can't just point to the translation and say 'they censored that because they used word Y instead of word X'. Translation just isn't that simple. When it comes to curse words, particularly, in some cases there IS no such thing as an accurate "literal" translation. So it makes no sense to say they're censoring just because they didn't translate it in a specific way.
I didn't, and don't, argue with your point about American censorship, as blood and nudity, and sometimes references to things like killing, are indeed censored out of American releases. But the example of translating curse words in a certain way is NOT a clear and simple example of censorship. A lot of fans somehow get the idea that translators are trying to censor the translations due to word choice, but really in many cases it has nothing to do with censorship - it's more about creating an accurate translation that fits the character's personality and makes sure to properly convey that personality through the language they use.
I agree with your main point and the nudity issue, but you're not quite right when it comes to the cursing, and I see lots of people in the anime community making this point so I felt the urge to speak up. Chikushou or kuso are not as strong as you make them out to be. They convey strong emotions, but they are not offensive words as your English translations are. Kuso can be shit, but it also could be crap. Chikusho could be damn it, shit, aw man, you bastard, etc. (Rarely ever would it be so strong as to match the English "f'in christ" though.) It depends a lot on who is saying it and how they are saying it. You can't really just say "darn" or "damn" are incorrect translations. On the face of it, they're not at all if those are the types of words the character were to use in English.
Here's the problem - the people who buy games - lots of games, not just once every few months, are teenaged boys.
I bet you'd be surprised at how many gamers are BEYOND their teenage years. We've now entered the first generation of people who grew up playing video games, and thus don't have the stigma that games are 'kids stuff'.
They're insecure, hormonal, and rather stupid. So, games must market to them.
Okay, well this applies to both groups.:) But you're wrong about the marketing part. It's a Catch-22. Games market to them because they are the market. But, they are the market because they're the only ones games market to. See the problem?
You make the illogical jump from "XYZ people don't buy games" to "XYZ people don't like games". The reality is that "XYZ people don't like games that are targetted to insecure gamers who need games to massage their ego and assure their manliness." I know women who like playing games quite a bit, but they're not really into FPS and sports titles, though they do like like action/adventure, platformers, sim, and puzzle games, and so practically nothing that comes out on PS2 or XBox targets them; Gamecube, however, has many games in these genres. Because Nintendo markets to a more diverse target audience, and will continue to do so.
Sony and MS (both on consoles and PC) are battling almost completely over one specific target market - teen and adult males who are insecure and have loads of money to burn. It's a fairly nice market, as you don't have to make particularly good games, and people in this market will have "competitions" to see who has the most consoles, games, etc. So it's a status symbol for them to own all the MS/Sony products. It's the market to look at if you're looking to be lazy and still make some good money. But I think they're going to have lower sales with the current gen of consoles than they did with past ones, due to the high price tag and even stronger focus on FPS/sports titles. (Don't get me wrong, sales will be more than decent, but they're going to, more and more, get their money from a small group of people who religiously buy all their stuff rather than casual gamers.)
Nintendo, both with Gamecube and now Revolution, are not targetting (specifically, anyway) the audience you say that "games must market to". And they're doing quite well; in fact, they're the only ones making a profit IIRC. I even saw in EGM recently that Super Mario Sunshine was in the top game sales for the money across consoles! What, 2 years after release? So while I agree with your assessment of what's going on in the market, particularly concerning Sony and MS, I think you fail to see that it doesn't have to be this way. You're confusing "the market" with "one market" that two consoles are agressively targetting. Just because a market is being (largely) ignored doesn't mean it doesn't exist. In fact, often it means that's the market you ought to be targetting - you'll have no competition and all the profits. I think this is Nintendo's plan, actually - let Sony and MS battle over hardcore adult insecure gamers while they get their consoles into living rooms across America (and Japan:).
Far be it for me to engage in Apple speculation, but...:-)
If you look at AppleInsider's next article, with the actual invitation card, the background looks like a theater curtain. I think they're going to beat TiVo, etc. to the punch and introduce an online movie store. Burn to DVD, or stream using a new AirPort Express Base Station with video out. (Rumors about vPods have been rampant for months, perhaps years, but this AirPort Express Base Station w/video out rumor just popped out of nowhere a week before release. And who is really going to buy one of those to play music videos or short clips? Hmmm...)
Of course, there maybe a video iPod or somethig like it that you can download the movies to as well. IMHO, a video iPod that just plays music videos and short cliips is really not the kind of thing that's going to cause a bunch of people to rush out and buy one, and I think Jobs knows that. Well, one week to go...:)
Sorry, but that is simply wrong. It takes little training to clear debris, cut trees and limbs, rip out sheetrock, etc. Yes, you could get hurt, probably just minor cuts and bruises, but it's not much different then cleaning your yard, just on a larger scale. Just don't crawl under downed trees or get near power lines.
Sorry, but this is simply oversimplifying the situation to the extreme.;-) First off, you have no idea what the situation is like there. Second, did you know, for example, the utter chaos that can occur when bunches of people all over a country (as big as the US no less) just spontaneously decide to "roll up their sleeves" and go help or bring supplies? When you have hundreds, or thousands, of people just walking around looking for things to do or all bringing truckloads of supplies, which happen not to be needed? Do you have any firsthand experience with this, that guides your advice here?
You'd be surprised at how many people, for example, would donate time or resources that aren't even wanted/needed at the scene of the disaster. Taking resources as one example, in some disasters, they've literally FILLED large warehouses with ultimately useless donations. That is why everyone says to give money, because there's usually no shortage of needs, it's just that what's needed, and how much of it, is in constant flux.
As for "time" donations, inexperienced people with good intentions can do as much harm as good. It is not uncommon that people who were trying to help suddenly are needing help, instead. People can end up exposed to toxic materials without realizing it, etc., etc. They only have emergency medical services from what I hear right now, and they really need to keep those places open for the official relief efforts and the first citizens returning to the city.
If people want to help, great, but don't just fill a truck with random stuff and show up at the disaster scene saying "hi, we're here to help!". Either have a plan first and get clearance with the authorities, or just donate. Or, help out displaced persons locally. There's lots of ways to help.
Ah, part of the TCO equation! But, heck, you should be able to buy this system for $3000 a year from now. Funny how this pricing reminds me of what it cost to have 1 PC XT with MS-DOS on it back in the mid-eighties.
I can't see anyone truly concerned about money buying this box. I like games as much as the next guy (or gal), but I don't have $5000 to drop just to get a 'more hardcore rig', and I don't even see why I would need one. I mean, think about it - does a game really need to push your hardware to the very limit in order to be fun? Of course not. Game developers try to push the hardware just to see what they can do, and gamers buy these systems just to show off what their 'hardcore rig' can do. This is like a Porche for geeks. Well, actually, probably more like a heavily modded monster truck.;) You don't buy it so much because you need what it does, you buy it because you want to show everyone else what it can do.
I bet the Revolution is going to blow these boxes away in terms of fun-factor anyways, and it's probably going to be under $300. How's that for ROI?:)
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Yes, and there's actually also the Physician's Oath to deal with, as you're not refusing care, only government-provided care, and at the time the Physician won't know who will ultimately need to pay. I brought it up more to make a rhetorical point, as I think hardly anyone would actually feel so strongly about their principles of keeping the government out of their business as to agree to this, making the practical aspects of implementing it a rather moot point. :)
Although to address the case you mention, what would probably happen in that case is that you'd get treated, but then the government would refuse payment and you'd get the whole bill yourself.
And for the sake of disclosure:
---I am anti-monopoly and pro-choice biased. People should have as many choices as possible; not be forced into making just one singular choice. Example: "Buy hospital insurance or... well there is no other choice."
As opposed to the current situation of "Buy hospital insurance or... don't, then wait until you get critically ill and require very expensive care, go to the emergency room, and let the American taxpayer foot the bill for your treatment"? This is the fallacy of the "choices" argument - it assumes, for things like health care, that you can make an informed decision about whether or not you need it and that your decisions affect no one but yourself. When you leave the realm of theory and hypotheticals and start looking at real-world scenarios, though, you realize those assumptions just don't hold. Letting people just die if they make poor health care choices isn't really a viable option for any society that wants to remain civilized and humane, and requiring people to get easy and affordable preventative care is actually much cheaper (and I suspect generally more effective) than just waiting for people to get really sick and doing emergency treatments. In other words, by paying in to health care, you reduce the potential burden on your fellow man to ensure you are cared for, which I see as simply being a responsible citizen.
Moreover, your ability to make an informed decisions about what health care you need relies quite heavily on your ability to predict the future, and if we were very good at that no one would even need health care because you could predict any oncoming illness, or even your own death, and prevent them. :) Needing health care is quite often a scenario you don't anticipate unless you've already had numerous health conditions in the past (or are genetically / hereditarily pre-disposed to certain illnesses), in which case, our current health care system will, well, avoid you like the plague.
In short, I don't have a problem with letting you make your own choices... until I have to foot the bill because you decided to avoid health care altogether and that whole "just don't get sick / seriously injured" strategy didn't pan out for you. Then it's not just an issue of liberty, but also one of fairness to your fellow man and personal responsibility. If you want unfettered liberty, go live in the woods somewhere where you get no benefits from society. Then no one will ask anything of you; but there also will be no one to help you when things go bad.
Or, you could just recognize that there's a balance between liberty and living together in a society. We agree to abide by certain behaviors when in society because they give us important benefits in return. It is important always to monitor and keep that balance in check so that the society does not unreasonably restrict your liberty, but it is just as important to understand that sometimes if you want the plentiful benefits a society provides you, you need to agree to work with others on some things proactively and not just take an "it's my way until I need the highway" approach. A lot of people who talk about liberty don't like the part where government / society asks of them, but they seem to have no problem asking things of government / society when things really go to pot, which I don't see as a truly principled stand. I think the choice should be thus: if you ask for the government to get out of your business, you should also in those areas sign a waver saying you forbid the government from providing you with any assistance. So, if you don't want to be mandated to get health care, you sign a waver explicitly forbidding the government from helping you in any way when you get critically ill. Then you are 100% reliant upon your own, personal, health care plans or lack thereof, and if something bad happens to you, the government can honestly say it was willing to help but it needed to respect your wishes as a citizen. I think that would be fair. How many people do you think would sign up for that?
In Japan, you can actually use cell phones to make purchases. Just swipe your phone over a surface, similar to how you swipe a credit card, and you've paid. Of course, people tend not to 'load' tons of money into the phone, in case it gets stolen, but it's used for many common purchases, like at convenience stores and such. Apple is probably already working on this, considering that it's one of the only things iPhone can't do that many other phones in Japan can. It's also a hardware feature, meaning it's something to get people to upgrade their phones rather than just their OS. I wouldn't be surprised if it showed up in iPhone 5. I kind of remember actually reading some rumors to that effect.
In fact, aside from the "psychological reaction analyzer" component, I don't think we're very far from implementing the 'missing' features of the Joymaker at all.
There can't be a grand unified HIG, but you're thinking about the problem backwards. Instead of trying to unify the HIGs, just have classes that abstract out the differences. For example, wxPython actually handles much of this already - the SizedControls library gives controls HIG-compliant borders and spacing on Win/Mac/GTK, while wxStdDialogButtonSizer (long name, I know ;-) will take your OK and Cancel button and make sure they appear in the right order on each platform. The platform-specific code is all built into the library - you don't need to deal with it yourself.
The reason most cross-platform apps don't follow HIGs too well is that rather than use a library like this, they hand-code spacing, positioning, etc., usually doing the whole thing on one platform first. So then when they decide to make it cross-platform, going through and making a huge preferences window, for example, follow HIGs is a massive task.
The idea that you have to construct a totally separate UI for each platform is silly. It seems like a great idea until you start actually doing it - and then you start getting buried in UI code, not to mention the usual problem of having at least one port being done in a rather lackluster way.
To be honest, developing UIs seems to be one of the most common areas that I see NIH syndrome. Devs gripe about a mostly-working "out of the box" widget set (because you still have to do an extra 20% work to optimize and use platform-specific UI approaches in some areas, and to be fair, bugs too), then strike out on their own, but within years, they're abstracting the platform bits into a cross-platform API and voila, they end up with a cross-platform UI library. Adobe, OOo, etc. could all benefit from having a single, reliable, well-maintained library if even just for dialogs. As long as it's native under the hood, it's not much work at all to grab the window handle, write some (say) CoreAnimation code, and add some Mac slickness to your app.
People just raise the bar unreasonably high on a cross-platform widget set. It's not only supposed to get your port 80% of the way there, it's supposed to auto-optimize for every platform as well. :)
You can also use wxPython (http://www.wxpython.org), which seems to start a lot faster than LINA (look how many times the LINA app bounces in the dock before it starts), actually *comes with* Mac OS X Tiger, uses native OS controls whenever possible and as of 2.8.3 has a library called SizedControls which automatically applies OS HIG-compliant sizing and borders to your windows and controls on Windows, GTK/GNOME, and Mac (disclaimer: I'm the author of said library). Plus, unlike Qt and LINA, wxPython/wxWidgets is free for commercial development as well as open source.
:-)
So I've been using this 'holy grail' for years, but maybe the VM slowdown and commercial licensing will appeal to some people.
As I said before, it is a screenshot of what "can be done" on OS X - e.g. what UI elements are available, and what options there are for doing custom-drawn controls/UI elements (such as a whiteboard). It puts a lot into one screenshot, and it's not necessarily an example of how to win an Apple Design Award.
UI design has little to do with the wx toolkit and a lot to do with how an application designer understands, cares about and adopts interface design principles. Tools are tools; they don't do your UI design for you, they simply help you implement that design. For something with a more OS X-style UI, take a look at this:
http://chandler.osafoundation.org/screenshot.php
However, they're still in the process of working on the application, and as a result there are still a couple minor bugs in their UI; overall, though, it looks quite solid and uses many modern UI conventions.
When you spend a few seconds looking into a toolkit, a lot of things can "seem" a certain way without really being true. wx is being used for modern app design, but that's mostly a result of projects like Firefox which have made a lot of developers start to re-think the importance of a good UI. As a result, there aren't a whole lot of totally finished modern UI apps to show off yet. (The commercial sector jumped on this quickly, of course, but they've got the resources for it.)
Are you saying you've used wxPython and had problems with it, or that you are not using it because it lacks documentation, or something else? I'm curious to know what parts you had problems with.
:-)
I went from "playing around" with wxPython to using it full-time to develop a real-world app over a matter of weeks, which really isn't all that bad. There were a few sticking points, but I never found the process all that difficult. You do have to bear with the C++ style arguments in the wxWidgets docs, but the wxPython demo is about the most effectively learning tool I've come across for learning a toolkit. I just wish I could have edited the demo in real time, like you can do now, to help learn the toolkit.
There's also the wxPython Cookbook in the wiki, and the like, which cover a lot of specific topics for wxPython development. Maybe some of this stuff isn't visible enough on the wxPython site?
Have you run the wxPython demo? Or are a couple random screenshots enough to get you to "strongly disagree" about something? There are still a couple controls that need work on the Mac port, but a vast majority of its controls are 100% native and match native behavior as closely as possible. (In the cases that the OS doesn't just 'give it to us' for free.)
wx, however, is like any other toolkit. It doesn't force you to adhere to HIGs, and unfortunately many Mac ports are from Win/Linux apps, and focus their resources on those ports because, sadly, that's where the users/customers are. A number of wx apps don't even support Mac, not because they can't, but because they simply don't have (enough) users that are interested in the Mac port. As Mac customers and support becomes more important, so too will the number of applications that optimize for Mac, and let me tell you, those that used wx will find they can probably polish their GUI in a matter of days.
And in fact, we're working on cutting the work needed for HIG-compliance on all platforms too. At the wxPython level, we're working on additions to wx controls that are automatically HIG-compliant for Win, OS X and GNOME/GTK. So long as you use this library, your controls will space themselves according to the HIGs. If you're really interested in cross-platform development, I'd strongly encourage you to look at what's out there and then determine if wx is really such a bad choice for getting native Mac LNF.
Hey, you don't need to be afraid to say it. It's the truth. Once you're married, she sure as hell is going to make sure you clean that bathroom until it's spotless!
:)
If you think that's a joke, try getting married.
Considering you've taken my statements, and Bill Gates', WAY out of context, I think you really do need to.
You are accusing some person of "Spinning around and around". You then claim that most people steal their M$ products! Either you are quoting a lie from Billy G or you yourself are lying.Option 3: you mis-understand what I'm saying because you haven't read the source material that I'm paraphrasing.
Calm down. If you read carefully, you'll see I don't claim anything. This is what Bill Gates himself said in his letter, although I think it's pretty important for you to remember that he wrote this *30* years ago. 1976. He wasn't talking about Windows, MS Office, etc. because, well, they didn't exist yet. He was basically referring to members of "homebrew computer" clubs who would share his BASIC software without paying for it. Here's the most relevant bits from Bill Gates' letter:
Make of it what you will, but this is what he said, and you totally took it out of context with your "I don't need to read and understand to know I'm right about this!" attitude.
What you're writing is classic spin. You're inferring things from the article, nothing more, then stating your interpretations as facts.
The quotes you offer are nowhere near "smoking guns". Does he dislike hobbyists? Well, I think it's fairly clear he strongly dislikes the 'hobbyists' who are stealing his software. But then you twist that and put words into his mouth, such as "hobbyists cannot write good software". Correction: what he SAID was that he doesn't see how programmers can spend 3 years on their 'hobby' without making any money from it and still put out a quality product, with quality assurance, documentation and all. It's worth noting, too, that this was from a long time ago. Free software models did not exist then, and there weren't people willing to fund/sponsor hobbyist projects.
"He says he's the best at doing it:"
Sorry, the quote you give does not support that conclusion at all. He's just saying he invested a lot of money into it, and then many hobbyists take the fruit of that labor without paying the piper, as they say. I don't believe it'd be fair to sell software someone gave away for free without their permission, and conversely, I don't believe it's fair to give away software someone sells without their permission. Those who stole his software were not fair and respectful to Bill Gates, and he is justifiably (in my opinion) upset about that.
"Free software is bad because he can't make money:"
Again, spinning around and around. He said he wants to sell a product, and hire developers to make his product much better. However, his plan is somewhat hindered by the fact that most people are stealing, rather than purchasing, his software.
You know, I don't think Bill Gates is some great guy or anything, in fact, I do consider he's more about making the sale than providing a quality product; but at the same time I don't like to see people putting words in someone's mouth, which you most certainly are doing. Criticize him for what he actually did, or actually said, but not for what you think he meant to say.
If you truly feel it's fair to do this, then that is because you're the one on the giving end, not receiving. When someone puts words in YOUR mouth, I can assure you, you will not think it is very fair to you for someone to do so.
Its too bad the iPod's form factor has pretty much been the same since coming out in 2001.
You're right. They should have said it's a ripoff of the iPod form factor because, as you just said, it's been the same since 2001. And if you look at the Creative design, it's *obvious* they changed the form factor in small ways to keep from cloning the iPod. I don't have a hard time believing the feature sets were mostly coincidental, but I DO have a hard time believing that was the case with the interface.
Apple's target audience isn't a group of people who like modding their computer/console hardware. They're selling to people who don't particularly want to mod their stuff, or pay to have it modded.
Besides, the real value of Apple's solution isn't Front Row itself; the value in Apple's solution lies in their downloadable content. If they can offer affordable movies and TV programs, a new Mac mini would pay for itself in 1-2 years when I can buy the shows I want to watch ala carte rather than paying for cable. I'd be using the computer too, of course, so it would more than pay for itself. The sucky part about TiVo, the XBox MC, MythTV, etc. is that they require setup time and/or subscription fees to work, so unless you watch a LOT of TV (or enjoy the challenge) the boxes just aren't worth the money and/or effort involved. If Apple can bring a buy-as-you-go solution that anyone can use and bundle it with an affordable computer to boot, they'll bring the media center concept to a whole new market of casual buyers/watchers.
You know how contracts work, right? Both parties need to sign them. Jobs is perfectly free to say that he's going to stop selling [insert label here]'s songs on iTMS and refuse to renew the contract. I don't know if Steve Jobs WILL stand up to the recording industry, but it's silly to say that he CANNOT.
It's not fact until both parties agree to the terms. Anything before that is posturing. Posturing and threatening on both sides is not uncommon in contract negotiations.
First of all, I don't think wholesale prices have anything to do with it here, because IIRC Apple has a contract with the music companies (which no doubt offers guarantees against price changes). Apple can say no to the new prices, and if they do, the record companies will counter, and so on until an agreement is negotiated.
Also, while it's true that the online market is small, it is, unlike CD sales, a growing market rather than a shrinking one, and it's growing much faster than I think anyone anticipated. The music companies have done this dance before, and know the writing is on the wall; that online sales will grow and CD sales will fall just as cassettes sales fell as CD sales grew. The record companies are thus under serious pressure to sign a new deal with Apple, and that does give Apple some significant leverage to keep terms favorable for them. I think neither side wants to walk here, so I wouldn't come to foregone conclusions about what will happen (like, say, /. does).
What I think a lot of people don't understand is, how do you determine that a type of game is "not for kids"? You say you're bored with kids games, right? So logically you're bored with any type of game that has game mechanics similar to the games kids play. Thing is, pretty much all games I've played have the player pressing buttons to destroy an enemy, or race a car, or play sports, or control an RPG/simulator, etc. And these games exist for all platforms. So I don't see the big difference between "kids" games and "adults" games. The presence of blood or boobies doesn't affect the gameplay any, it's just re-wrapping the game in a different package to make it 'look' mature. So, what is it about the gameplay of certain games that make them not for kids, and thus somehow funner?
Uhm, that's not what the parent poster was saying. He said that it targets children better than other consoles, which is absolutely true. Many kid-friendly games are Gamecube/GBA/DS exclusives. Some developers develop for, or port to, the PS2 but these days but for the most part the PS2 and XBox are filled with sports and FPS games. Nintendo's systems have a larger variety of games that don't need to be rated "M", and thus, I think it's fair to say that Nintendo is more careful to make games that are kid-friendly.
I do agree with you that sometimes people do call Nintendo games/systems "for kids", but parent poster did not say that.
Yes and no. The bottom line is that there is not one true 'literal' translation for these words. Crap is a literal and valid translation for kuso, as kuso = feces = crap. :) You'll find crap in many a dictionary if you look up kuso, along with shit and sometimes a couple other words. Also, your translation for chikushou is definitely not a literal one. All you're doing is substituting a roughly equivalent English phrase in terms of conveying a similar emotion. Lots of other similarly valid phrases exist, like "damn it" for example, and you can't prove they're any less 'literal' than your translation is. There is not, in many cases, One True Literal Translation for every word in the dictionary. It's just not that simple.
People are complaining that Homer isn't drinking beer anymore, and what's wrong with that? Well, in Arabic countries alcohol is a Sin, and very offensive.Right, but I'm arguing the analogy (wrt 'censored' translations) doesn't fit because you can't just point to the translation and say 'they censored that because they used word Y instead of word X'. Translation just isn't that simple. When it comes to curse words, particularly, in some cases there IS no such thing as an accurate "literal" translation. So it makes no sense to say they're censoring just because they didn't translate it in a specific way.
I didn't, and don't, argue with your point about American censorship, as blood and nudity, and sometimes references to things like killing, are indeed censored out of American releases. But the example of translating curse words in a certain way is NOT a clear and simple example of censorship. A lot of fans somehow get the idea that translators are trying to censor the translations due to word choice, but really in many cases it has nothing to do with censorship - it's more about creating an accurate translation that fits the character's personality and makes sure to properly convey that personality through the language they use.
I agree with your main point and the nudity issue, but you're not quite right when it comes to the cursing, and I see lots of people in the anime community making this point so I felt the urge to speak up. Chikushou or kuso are not as strong as you make them out to be. They convey strong emotions, but they are not offensive words as your English translations are. Kuso can be shit, but it also could be crap. Chikusho could be damn it, shit, aw man, you bastard, etc. (Rarely ever would it be so strong as to match the English "f'in christ" though.) It depends a lot on who is saying it and how they are saying it. You can't really just say "darn" or "damn" are incorrect translations. On the face of it, they're not at all if those are the types of words the character were to use in English.
Ugh, "for the money" in the last paragraph should be "for the month". Don't know how I missed that. :)
I bet you'd be surprised at how many gamers are BEYOND their teenage years. We've now entered the first generation of people who grew up playing video games, and thus don't have the stigma that games are 'kids stuff'.
They're insecure, hormonal, and rather stupid. So, games must market to them.Okay, well this applies to both groups. :) But you're wrong about the marketing part. It's a Catch-22. Games market to them because they are the market. But, they are the market because they're the only ones games market to. See the problem?
You make the illogical jump from "XYZ people don't buy games" to "XYZ people don't like games". The reality is that "XYZ people don't like games that are targetted to insecure gamers who need games to massage their ego and assure their manliness." I know women who like playing games quite a bit, but they're not really into FPS and sports titles, though they do like like action/adventure, platformers, sim, and puzzle games, and so practically nothing that comes out on PS2 or XBox targets them; Gamecube, however, has many games in these genres. Because Nintendo markets to a more diverse target audience, and will continue to do so.
Sony and MS (both on consoles and PC) are battling almost completely over one specific target market - teen and adult males who are insecure and have loads of money to burn. It's a fairly nice market, as you don't have to make particularly good games, and people in this market will have "competitions" to see who has the most consoles, games, etc. So it's a status symbol for them to own all the MS/Sony products. It's the market to look at if you're looking to be lazy and still make some good money. But I think they're going to have lower sales with the current gen of consoles than they did with past ones, due to the high price tag and even stronger focus on FPS/sports titles. (Don't get me wrong, sales will be more than decent, but they're going to, more and more, get their money from a small group of people who religiously buy all their stuff rather than casual gamers.)
Nintendo, both with Gamecube and now Revolution, are not targetting (specifically, anyway) the audience you say that "games must market to". And they're doing quite well; in fact, they're the only ones making a profit IIRC. I even saw in EGM recently that Super Mario Sunshine was in the top game sales for the money across consoles! What, 2 years after release? So while I agree with your assessment of what's going on in the market, particularly concerning Sony and MS, I think you fail to see that it doesn't have to be this way. You're confusing "the market" with "one market" that two consoles are agressively targetting. Just because a market is being (largely) ignored doesn't mean it doesn't exist. In fact, often it means that's the market you ought to be targetting - you'll have no competition and all the profits. I think this is Nintendo's plan, actually - let Sony and MS battle over hardcore adult insecure gamers while they get their consoles into living rooms across America (and Japan :).
Far be it for me to engage in Apple speculation, but... :-)
:)
If you look at AppleInsider's next article, with the actual invitation card, the background looks like a theater curtain. I think they're going to beat TiVo, etc. to the punch and introduce an online movie store. Burn to DVD, or stream using a new AirPort Express Base Station with video out. (Rumors about vPods have been rampant for months, perhaps years, but this AirPort Express Base Station w/video out rumor just popped out of nowhere a week before release. And who is really going to buy one of those to play music videos or short clips? Hmmm...)
Of course, there maybe a video iPod or somethig like it that you can download the movies to as well. IMHO, a video iPod that just plays music videos and short cliips is really not the kind of thing that's going to cause a bunch of people to rush out and buy one, and I think Jobs knows that. Well, one week to go...
Sorry, but this is simply oversimplifying the situation to the extreme. ;-) First off, you have no idea what the situation is like there. Second, did you know, for example, the utter chaos that can occur when bunches of people all over a country (as big as the US no less) just spontaneously decide to "roll up their sleeves" and go help or bring supplies? When you have hundreds, or thousands, of people just walking around looking for things to do or all bringing truckloads of supplies, which happen not to be needed? Do you have any firsthand experience with this, that guides your advice here?
You'd be surprised at how many people, for example, would donate time or resources that aren't even wanted/needed at the scene of the disaster. Taking resources as one example, in some disasters, they've literally FILLED large warehouses with ultimately useless donations. That is why everyone says to give money, because there's usually no shortage of needs, it's just that what's needed, and how much of it, is in constant flux.
As for "time" donations, inexperienced people with good intentions can do as much harm as good. It is not uncommon that people who were trying to help suddenly are needing help, instead. People can end up exposed to toxic materials without realizing it, etc., etc. They only have emergency medical services from what I hear right now, and they really need to keep those places open for the official relief efforts and the first citizens returning to the city.
If people want to help, great, but don't just fill a truck with random stuff and show up at the disaster scene saying "hi, we're here to help!". Either have a plan first and get clearance with the authorities, or just donate. Or, help out displaced persons locally. There's lots of ways to help.
I can't see anyone truly concerned about money buying this box. I like games as much as the next guy (or gal), but I don't have $5000 to drop just to get a 'more hardcore rig', and I don't even see why I would need one. I mean, think about it - does a game really need to push your hardware to the very limit in order to be fun? Of course not. Game developers try to push the hardware just to see what they can do, and gamers buy these systems just to show off what their 'hardcore rig' can do. This is like a Porche for geeks. Well, actually, probably more like a heavily modded monster truck. ;) You don't buy it so much because you need what it does, you buy it because you want to show everyone else what it can do.
I bet the Revolution is going to blow these boxes away in terms of fun-factor anyways, and it's probably going to be under $300. How's that for ROI? :)