re: a mindset that inclines them to take more extreme conservative and religious positions
If I may offer an alternate explanation: the mind of an engineer cannot tolerate things that are broken. He (or she) is driven by the notion of improvement, efficiency, and Things Working Correctly.
Terrorists come from badly damaged societies, which have constraints which make "normal" solutions (usually political) impossible -- thus they resort to extreme and usually reprehensible solutions. Nothing, to this sort of person, is worse than living with a broken system.
There was a whole chapter about these dolphins in Douglas Adams' "Last Chance to See," back in 1992. Everyone he interviewed seemed to think that it was just a matter of time.
(It was his best and funniest book, imho, and also nonfiction.)
My understanding is that thiis partially due to ACPI and BIOS being generally "sucky" and long due for replacement. PowerPCs used Open Firmware, and Intel Macs use EFI -- both of which are far superior to BIOS.
Vista's lack of EFI support is a real sign of MS's misplaced priorities, imho.
I think there's also something to the physiological difference between the chord range used for singing and speaking. It's been my experience that when I have a really bad flu and "lose my voice," I can still sing (and badger my family/friends for more chicken soup to the tune of "Oklahoma!")
What about the promises of backward-compatibility? Or did they forget about that again?
(yes I'm aware that they didn't specify how much of the library would be backward compatible... but 75% is reasonable, right? or whatever we have now + Psychonauts)
Since it has that sort of stink of knee jerk "anti-corporate subversion" advertising (see David Foster Wallace's E Plurabus Unam), it fails to astroturf. The graphic mentally reinforce "ipod ipod ipod ipod" in the viewers subconscious. In the end, it just makes you feel sorry for all of Apple's competitors.
I'm thrilled to hear that Kelly Link did so well, maybe this will translate into some new readers.
For the uninitiated, I like to describe her as a sort of "female Neil Gaiman" for her similar fairy-tale sensibilities. But really I find her writing much more mature and abstract.
Her first short story collection, Stranger Things Happen, is now available as a free download under the Creative Commons.
I've been waiting for better Powerbook screens for years, and was initially pretty relieved too. But wait -- Dell still pwns them with 1680x1050 15" screens... oh well.
word to those with poor eyesight: stop whining. Tiger shipped with support for resolution-independent UIs, Apple is just waiting for application developers to update their apps to support it before "turning it on" in 10.5.
re: The name BitTorrent is alone worth that. This is a name millions and millions of people know - it would take more than $8.75 million dollars to achieve that through advertising.
sure, after all, look at what all that name recognition did for Napster 2.0
Apparently Blizzard sent out a newsletter asking fans if they'd be interested in ports of Starcraft and Diablo. Sounds good to me, although I'd prefer the PSP.
I was sorry to see that this list didn't include Kelly Link's Stranger Things Happen, which was released under the Creative Commons last week to coincide with her new novel, Magic for Beginners.
I like to tell people that she's the female Neil Gaiman -- she's writes with a similar adult fairytale sense -- but she's a much deeper and more mature writer. Check her out, tell a friend.
Can anyone who's gotten their hands on one of these tell us a bit about the BIOS?
I know that we're losing some of the Open Firmware features, but nobody has mentioned if we're losing Firewire Target Mode. Hope not, I use it all the time.
And I know this is silly, but what is the boot like? Is it "mac-like," or are we treated to flashing screens, memory counts and hardware charts?
The writer seemed unclear as to what this software is for. It is not, as he says, "Microsoft's answer to Photoshop." It's more like Microsoft's answer to Illustrator.
Except it's not that either. It's a repackaging of some software they bought a couple years ago called Expression, which is to Illustrator as Corel/FractalDesign Painter is to Photoshop. That is, not really a competitor, more like a companion that specializes in natural media.
Granted, MS might be confusing the situation by trying to make the software do too much (red eye removal in a vector software? er, OK), but this isn't meant to be a Photoshop competitor at all.
re: Nowadays keyboards come with an extra row of buttons along the top
But have you noticed that those are usually "buttons," not keys? There's a reason keys are designed the way they are -- to facilitate typing. The different tactile design of those "buttons" makes them useless imho.
am I the only person who thinks that TigerDirect wasn't hoping or caring about an injunction or settlement at all?
I think they are just trying to pull more eyeballs toward their site, get the interest of people who had never heard of them, and decided not to Switch.
re: can you say that you can use a 6-year old PC without any siginificant upgrades and still run the latest OS and software and be productive with it?
Well, yes. I just upgraded a 6-year-old Celeron 333mhz laptop (only significant upgrade is a boost from 64 to 192mb RAM) to XP, and it runs great. Boots as fast as 98, as stable as Win2k. Oh, I did turn off the shadows, animated menus, etc. But basically it runs superbly.
A lot of non-Windows users seem to be under the impression that XP is somehow nearly-equivalent to OS X -- i.e. a new operating system with new-computer requirements. It's not, it's just a splash of paint on Windows 2000, which in turn is just WinNT with plug-n-play, which is basically a 1998-era OS.
Which isn't to say it's a particularly good OS, or that I would recommend it to anyone (I don't), but XP does what it does just great on old hardware.
...but it wasn't an iPod that convinced me, it was having a cheap 400mhz iMac to use as a server/living room stereo for a couple years.
Not only was it great for some simple hosting, utter silence and low power consumption, but I found that I even preferred to do casual browsing on it -- despite being so remarkably slow (OS X - Quartz Extreme = Windows on a 486). It's just so comfortable.
As others have pointed out in this thread, there won't be as many Slashdot "switchers" as there will be "adders," and that probably counts for the larger population as well (why throw out the old computer when you can keep it for the dog to use?). But I bet many will follow the cheap Mac they bought on a lark to a shiny new Powerbook, just like I did.
Slashdot Mirror
re: a mindset that inclines them to take more extreme conservative and religious positions
If I may offer an alternate explanation: the mind of an engineer cannot tolerate things that are broken. He (or she) is driven by the notion of improvement, efficiency, and Things Working Correctly.
Terrorists come from badly damaged societies, which have constraints which make "normal" solutions (usually political) impossible -- thus they resort to extreme and usually reprehensible solutions. Nothing, to this sort of person, is worse than living with a broken system.
There was a whole chapter about these dolphins in Douglas Adams' "Last Chance to See," back in 1992. Everyone he interviewed seemed to think that it was just a matter of time.
(It was his best and funniest book, imho, and also nonfiction.)
My understanding is that thiis partially due to ACPI and BIOS being generally "sucky" and long due for replacement. PowerPCs used Open Firmware, and Intel Macs use EFI -- both of which are far superior to BIOS.
Vista's lack of EFI support is a real sign of MS's misplaced priorities, imho.
Has anyone figured out if Quartz 2D Extreme is enabled by default on the Leopard edition? Does it work any better than the Tiger version?
I think there's also something to the physiological difference between the chord range used for singing and speaking. It's been my experience that when I have a really bad flu and "lose my voice," I can still sing (and badger my family/friends for more chicken soup to the tune of "Oklahoma!")
What about the promises of backward-compatibility? Or did they forget about that again?
(yes I'm aware that they didn't specify how much of the library would be backward compatible... but 75% is reasonable, right? or whatever we have now + Psychonauts)
Since it has that sort of stink of knee jerk "anti-corporate subversion" advertising (see David Foster Wallace's E Plurabus Unam), it fails to astroturf. The graphic mentally reinforce "ipod ipod ipod ipod" in the viewers subconscious. In the end, it just makes you feel sorry for all of Apple's competitors.
I'm thrilled to hear that Kelly Link did so well, maybe this will translate into some new readers.
For the uninitiated, I like to describe her as a sort of "female Neil Gaiman" for her similar fairy-tale sensibilities. But really I find her writing much more mature and abstract.
Her first short story collection, Stranger Things Happen, is now available as a free download under the Creative Commons.
I've been waiting for better Powerbook screens for years, and was initially pretty relieved too. But wait -- Dell still pwns them with 1680x1050 15" screens... oh well.
word to those with poor eyesight: stop whining. Tiger shipped with support for resolution-independent UIs, Apple is just waiting for application developers to update their apps to support it before "turning it on" in 10.5.
sure, after all, look at what all that name recognition did for Napster 2.0
I'd like to take a second to address everyone who's pointed out that "the iPod does one thing really well."
Granted, most "divergent" devices try to do everything and fail at all things. But they never even had one thing perfect in the first place.
Why do people conclude that by asking the iPod to do more, it would cease to do its one thing less well?
That said, a video iPod would be totally stupid, and I have no idea what the folks clamoring for one are thinking.
Apparently Blizzard sent out a newsletter asking fans if they'd be interested in ports of Starcraft and Diablo. Sounds good to me, although I'd prefer the PSP.
cute, but isn't this guy now stealing bandwidth from slaughterhouses?
Thank you Cpt Obvious. Of course everyone knows that. What we've been wanting to know is, how?
I like to tell people that she's the female Neil Gaiman -- she's writes with a similar adult fairytale sense -- but she's a much deeper and more mature writer. Check her out, tell a friend.
why is this marked "funny"? Inkjet printer manufacturers employ all sorts of dirty tricks to bilk customers, I'm sure this is what HP is planning.
(everything is better with lasers!)
well, I suppose you could always find someone willing to trade you those tickets for a vinyl ipod carrying case or something :D
Can anyone who's gotten their hands on one of these tell us a bit about the BIOS?
I know that we're losing some of the Open Firmware features, but nobody has mentioned if we're losing Firewire Target Mode. Hope not, I use it all the time.
And I know this is silly, but what is the boot like? Is it "mac-like," or are we treated to flashing screens, memory counts and hardware charts?
The writer seemed unclear as to what this software is for. It is not, as he says, "Microsoft's answer to Photoshop." It's more like Microsoft's answer to Illustrator.
Except it's not that either. It's a repackaging of some software they bought a couple years ago called Expression, which is to Illustrator as Corel/FractalDesign Painter is to Photoshop. That is, not really a competitor, more like a companion that specializes in natural media.
Granted, MS might be confusing the situation by trying to make the software do too much (red eye removal in a vector software? er, OK), but this isn't meant to be a Photoshop competitor at all.
But have you noticed that those are usually "buttons," not keys? There's a reason keys are designed the way they are -- to facilitate typing. The different tactile design of those "buttons" makes them useless imho.
(scissorkeys 4 LYF btw)
am I the only person who thinks that TigerDirect wasn't hoping or caring about an injunction or settlement at all?
I think they are just trying to pull more eyeballs toward their site, get the interest of people who had never heard of them, and decided not to Switch.
re: And I don't think I need to specify which player ... looks more stylish.
The Sony? Cause after a few months of handling that iPod shuffle is gonna look like a 12-year-old beige keyboard.
(don't get me wrong, I'm totally sold on iPod line, but the Sony gumsticks don't look bad at all and that OLED is slick)
Well, yes. I just upgraded a 6-year-old Celeron 333mhz laptop (only significant upgrade is a boost from 64 to 192mb RAM) to XP, and it runs great. Boots as fast as 98, as stable as Win2k. Oh, I did turn off the shadows, animated menus, etc. But basically it runs superbly.
A lot of non-Windows users seem to be under the impression that XP is somehow nearly-equivalent to OS X -- i.e. a new operating system with new-computer requirements. It's not, it's just a splash of paint on Windows 2000, which in turn is just WinNT with plug-n-play, which is basically a 1998-era OS.
Which isn't to say it's a particularly good OS, or that I would recommend it to anyone (I don't), but XP does what it does just great on old hardware.
given Kim Il Sung's connection with reality, Pink seems more likely
...but it wasn't an iPod that convinced me, it was having a cheap 400mhz iMac to use as a server/living room stereo for a couple years.
Not only was it great for some simple hosting, utter silence and low power consumption, but I found that I even preferred to do casual browsing on it -- despite being so remarkably slow (OS X - Quartz Extreme = Windows on a 486). It's just so comfortable.
As others have pointed out in this thread, there won't be as many Slashdot "switchers" as there will be "adders," and that probably counts for the larger population as well (why throw out the old computer when you can keep it for the dog to use?). But I bet many will follow the cheap Mac they bought on a lark to a shiny new Powerbook, just like I did.