A computer should more aptly be treated like a motor vehicle; yeah, you can go have some fun in it but you'd better drive defensively and know how to operate the thing properly. You don't just take it out of the box and start pressing buttons.
Right! This is exactly the analogy I had in mind. The difference is there's very little people can do to be malicious to a car in the same way as a virus wreaks havoc on your PC, short of letting the air out of the tires or other foolish stunts. Perhaps a better comparison would be if someone went around randomly dumping sugar in the gas tank of anyone whose car didn't have a security system installed.
From the article...
"Go out, get a book," suggests Zack Rubenstein, 28, who has for years provided free technical support for his extended social network. "You went to college and you got a degree, you obviously can learn something. Play around with it; it's not going to kill you."
Hmm...I wonder if he tinkers with his car? Me, I know the basics of how a car engine works, and sure, I understand electronics and wiring and so forth. But I have no clue what goes on in today's modern multi-processor-controlled engine -- it might as well be a black box to me. Actually, it is -- my car is a tool, a device to get me from point A to point B in reasonable comfort.
But I happen to know that there are certain rules of the road to be obeyed, and, if those are not obeyed, then the consequences could be rather painful and/or expensive. What are those rules? Why, I had a nice little booklet that laid the fundamentals out. Had to prove I understood it, too, by taking a test. Oh, and I also had to be passed by an examiner who observed me driving for half an hour before I was allowed on the roads by myself.
And I also know that, on a regular basis, that car needs certain maintenance -- oil changes, fan belt replacements, that sort of thing. If I can't or don't want to do it myself, I have to take it to someone and pay them to do it. Fine by me -- I can earn more by working for half an hour than it costs me to pay someone to have the oil changed, and I'd just as soon not get my hands dirty.
Make sense? After all, isn't a modern PC, with all the complexities of a modern OS and a modern suite of applications, just as internally nebulous to the casual user as is a car? The difference is we pay heaps for cars and are told repeatedly we have to take care of them on a regular basis or that money will be wasted. Oh, and we're carefully checked for basic skills and knowledge before being turned loose in a car.
Computers, though -- they're sold at a (relatively) cheap price and the vendors never advertise that, hey, guess what, you actually need to take care of the thing. (And geeks like Zack Rubenstein perpetuate the myth that anyone can fix a PC with little effort. Come on, a show of hands of all those whose learning-by-experience includes a few good late night sessions of try to fix, break, try to fix again, break even worse, before you finally figure it out. I sure wouldn't risk doing that with a car.)
The updates bring a whole new level of functionality Linksys couldn't be bothered to incorporate.
From the parent post:
There's a very important lesson hidden in here, which I hope the other hardware vendors will see and take note.
Why would they, when the story gets picked up by the open source community (represented here by Slashdot) and is immediately regurgitated using phrasing which insults a company that is actually doing something we like? Perhaps other people see it differently, but if I were a Linksys person reading this, I'd be pretty bugged by the "couldn't be bothered" cheap shot. Especially for a product that is apparently under a hundred bucks.
Sorry, but not true. Both Verdan and Tahoma are sans serif fonts, whereas Times New Roman is a serif font. A very common guideline for readability is that body text should use a serif font; sans serif fonts are better for titles.
Ah, so you're the/.er who reads the article and thinks when you post. By all appearances, most can't even manage one of those accomplishments particularly well, never mind both of them.
I'll put it this way: my cable modem has had more downtime than my satellite TV over the last two years, and every time I've checked, the cable TV feed has also been messed up whenever the cable modem has had trouble.
Based on my experience with Comcast, this makes almost perfect sense. They have horrible service, and are frequently down.
(Side-note: I have to laugh -- well, grimace, really -- at their local ads against the satellite crowd. They show a guy who contends he used to sell satellite TV, so he tried to install it himself and had no end of problems. Cue the shot of an installation literally held together by sticky tape. No kidding -- the chap's a salesman, he tries to install something himself on the cheap, can't even be bothered to use a screwdriver, and wonders why it keeps going out. Hell's bells.)
About a year ago they used to advertise their cable modem service as having an advantage over dial-up of no dropped connections. I e-mailed them and pointed out that, when I was on-line and their service went down (which occurred two or three times a week on average), it sure as hell looked like a dropped connection to me. I'm sure they ignored me, but funnily enough they don't make that claim any more.
The only caveat I have on the parent poster's comment is that our cable TV doesn't always go out when the cable modem is out (but it's probably 95% of the time).
Hideously expensive compared to satellite, anecdotally worse, not better, reliability, and Comcast the ISP caps your bandwidth and refuses to tell you how much you're using and how much you're allowed to use -- just that you're using too much. Yeah, what's not to loathe about Comcast?
My university also had a lot of lecturers using their own books. Big difference -- the university published them, and deliberately did not make them ultra-high-quality in order to keep costs down. Oh, they were perfectly legible, the paper was reasonable stock -- but no hardback, no expensive colour illustration plates in my Stats and Comp. Sci. texts, that sort of thing.
So, for example, my Language Implementation text book for Stage III Comp. Sci. was, I think, $15. I know darn well it wasn't any more than that -- might even have been a little less, for all I can remember.
For the record, my third year was 1990 at the University of Auckland (and, for the U.S. audience reference, a standard Bachelor's degree in N.Z. is only three years long, so that was the equivalent of a fourth-year course at a U.S. university).
Here is what seems to bite a lot of my users (on W2K). Imagine this...you're going out to lunch or stepping away from your desk for some reason, so you have to lock your workstation. Easy -- press CTRL-ALT-DEL, the resultant dialog box has options such as Lock computer and Change password..., but you just need to press the ENTER key as the Lock computer button is the default. CTRL-ALT-DEL, ENTER. No worries.
Unless one of the most commonly used pieces of software in your organization is a stupid document management system that, when you press the DEL key with a document highlighted, asks you to confirm the deletion and, in stark contrast to good practice, has the Yes, I really DO want to delete this crucial document button as the default, rather than the somewhat safer NO NO NO NO NO, NOT THAT DOCUMENT, ANYTHING BUT THAT ONE!!! button.
Presto -- quick keypresses on automatic pilot, slip and mistakenly not press all three required keys (but they always manage to get the DEL key, oh yes, of course it's that one they never fail to press), still on automatic pilot to press the Enter key, and, oh look, document goes bye-bye.
Thanks for all the support calls I have to face right around lunchtime, stupid DMS manufacturer. Thanks a whole bunch. One of these days I'm going to forward my desk phone to your 1-800 support number, I swear I will.
No need for the shhh!, methinks -- the NYT article describes exactly the same thing and tells how people make a profit by doing this. So it's no longer a secret -- sorry.
By the way, note the following quote from the article:
Indeed, experts say the Internet -- with its discussion boards, blogs and self-published articles -- is a treasure trove of bad spelling.
The answer to this seems, to me, to be rather simple. Forget giving PJ Best Director. Instead, why not give him a special award for the overall achievement? Everyone seems to agree that, whatever your opinion on the individual films, he deserves some form of recognition for what he did in getting all three shot simultaneously and for making a huge success out of translating a much-loved epic to the screen. But not everyone agrees on a best director award being deserved for RotK.
So why not something analogous to a lifetime achievement award, but call it something else? The prevailing opinion seems to be that, should he win Best Director, it'll really be in recognition of all three films. So just make up some special one-off award and call it something appropriate, recognizing that PJ has achieved something never done before and unlikely to be repeated.
Yeah, well...don't just think it's Microsoft you need to worry about. In this story (which I submitted yesterday, incidentally, but got rejected), it states that IBM and Philips are also collaborating on a system. From the article:
IBM and Dutch electronics maker Philips also announced on Monday that they are working together on an RFID solution. Philips' semiconductor unit will make the radio chips that can be stuck on items, while IBM will provide the computer services and systems.
I assume this is the same Philips that makes Philishave electric razors in most of the world, which are rebranded as Norelco shavers in the States. (Just in case you want to boycott them so they can't track your shaving and other personal hygiene habits.)
My wife got a Chevrolet Blazer (small SUV) in 1984. She drove that thing for 16 years. Four crashes, I think from memory (people failing to give way or sliding into her on icy roads). She drove it halfway across the States and back at least twice. The thing just kept on going, accidents and all, and she loved it.
So, when it finally gasped its last breath in 2000, she got another Blazer. She's driven it much more sedately now -- no cross-country trips, much less use, and it has about 25,000 miles on it now. She'd had it for a year when the 2WD/4WD switch failed and had to be replaced. It looks like the same problem has just cropped up again, and so we have to take it back to the dealer to be checked, but we know for sure she can't shift between 2WD and 4WD at the moment. The battery just died. She's so disappointed in how horrible it is compared to her old Blazer.
I have a Toyota Camry which I bought brand new when I moved to the States. I grew up in New Zealand, where Toyotas are legendary for their durability. My first Camry had so many problems, I talked the dealership into taking it back after 5,000 miles and giving me another one. That second Camry has now done 65,000 miles and still purrs along. But I can't stand driving it, because it just doesn't go around corners! The handling is dreadful -- it rolls and sways like you wouldn't believe. I talked to two dealers about it, they both took it out, and both said, "nothing wrong with it -- remember, it's built for the American market, and we like soft suspension".
One final anecdote: I saw mention of Peugeots in this story. My brother (in New Zealand) was trying to decide between a BMW and a Peugeot. He took them both for test drives and settled on the Peugeot, because the handling was so much better going around corners.
Yes, thank you so much for your kind comments. I actually knew it was called something else now, but couldn't remember what the new name was and was too lazy to look it up.
As to the rest of your fascinating retort, I might point out that, although I live in the U.S., I have another 26 years to go before I've lived here as long as any other country, so it's a tad premature to call me a yank. And, as I'm not a U.S. citizen, it's also rather a stretch to call them my government. But, then, it's not just the U.S. that doesn't accept the name change; everyone seems a touch up in the air about it at the moment.
Which, of course, doesn't excuse my laziness to look up the new name that I knew it had, but, on the flip side, it rather conveniently also does not excuse your arrogance in automatically assuming I'm an ignorant yank. Ergo, I feel justified in taunting you as a right git. Nyah.
There are many, many, many posts by now discussing/ranting about who uses metric and who uses imperial measurements (and who uses both). For the record, it is generally realized that there are three countries in the world who are still on the imperial system:
Also performed if you were too bored to wait for the traffic lights when the pedestrian crossing light was on. You would simply get out of the car, and all four would pick up the Mini and walk it across with the rest of the pedestrians. There's probably a moral in that you could usually get away with this in Auckland City (the largest city in New Zealand) even if the police were watching.
(We once went into Auckland City on a typical Saturday night, down to the bottom of Queen Street at QEII square, and timed the length of the pedestrian crossing signal. When we'd locked it down, we waited for the next occurrence, then raced into the middle of the intersection with a couch, two chairs, and a floor lamp, set them up in a living room type arrangement, took a couple of quick photographs for posterity, and raced back. Ah, memories.)
Getting back on topic, however, and somewhat more usefully, Minis were also short enough that it was often possible to park them on the side of the street but facing out without protruding onto the road. So you'd have a whole row of cars head to tail, and in the middle a Mini at 90 degrees to the rest of them, pointing out. (Always spotted at the University of Auckland when I was there.) This neatly solved the parallel parking problem -- just reverse in and forget all the silly problems.
Perhaps they were prescient and had horrifying visions of William Shatner hosting a U.S. version of Iron Chef. Way to give an oblique Star Trek tie-in, by the way!
This product will almost certainly flop, because it doesn't have any games designed for it, so there almost certaintly won't be any games that are more fun using it.
Does that matter? As far as I can tell from the article, it's a replacement for the corresponding features on your controller. So I'd assume it acts like a standard PS2 (or whatever) controller, just bigger and funnier looking, and as such doesn't need specially designed games.
I agree. I can see this working your muscles somewhat, as you say, and possibly resulting in some minor weight loss. But (and I am speculating here, so correct me if I'm wrong) it seems to me it misses a fairly important component of general health, and that is cardiovascular fitness. I doubt it'd cause much of an elevation in heart rate or get you puffing.
Or they could license the technology from a company who's got some experience in doing this. I don't know how long Silanis has been doing this, but I first came across their digital signature software in 2000, so they ought to know something about the thing. Their web site claims:
Compliance with federal and state legislation and industry regulations, including the ESIGN Act, UCC, UETA and the FDA's 21 CFR Part 11
Nonsense. Photoshop is a tool for professionals. Professionals can afford it. If you're not a professional you don't need it and it's not being marketed to you anyway. Get Paintshop or become a graphic artist.
Exactly. This happens in every walk of life. I know I can go out and buy a $299 keyboard -- but it's going to have tinny sounds, a non-weighted keyboard, and very little functionality. A $4000 synthesizer might seem outrageous to the people who just want something for little Bobby to bash away on, but a professional musician simply can't do his work with a 4 octave Casiotone as his main axe.
And it's not as if all the/. geeks don't value the difference between a $20 video card and a $200 video card, now, is it? What does that order of magnitude price increase get you, after all? Nothing whatsoever -- unless you're a hard-core gamer or a graphical design professional. Me, I'm neither -- which is why I, personally, choke when I see the price of some of these peripherals. It's all a matter of perspective.
Never underestimate the power of stickability -- the catchiness of a particular name to stick in your brain.
Many moons ago, I took a language implementation course in University. About the only software packages I remember from those days are the tools I used in that course:
Short and succinct -- I still think YACC is one of the best all-time product names. Heck, if I can still remember it after mumble-mumble 13 or 14 years, it has to have something going for it.
If M$ had actually written decent code, encouraging bug-free and secure design (ie firing anyone responsible for a buffer overflow bug), Joe sixpack-type people would have no reason to upgrade to 2k or XP.
So why do SuSE/Mandrake/RedHat/et. al. keep coming out with new versions of their products, then? Oh, silly me, I forgot -- you want to have it both ways. MS bringing out new versions = proof of terrible code. Linux vendors doing exactly the same thing = proof they listen to the customer.
Let's ignore the fact that perhaps they should support all of their OS's regardless.
What, like RedHat?
Look, if you're going to make snide comments like this, why not provide comparisons? Now I think about it, I'm genuinely curious -- what level of support can I get from SuSE, Mandrake, or any other mainstream Linux provider for their older versions? Don't just say "there's a whole community of free support, blah blah blah" -- I want to know what Linux vendors are like in terms of supporting older versions.
This is not an attempt to troll or flame -- I work primarily with MS products and am simply not familiar with what support I can get from Linux vendors. So how about a comparison?
Although I'm not a literary critic, I am married to one, and she always disagreed with Derrida (the father of deconstruction theory, as I understand it). Interestingly enough, we had the chance to listen to him present a seminar a few years ago in Auckland, New Zealand, as he was participating in a conference sponsored by the Auckland University School of Philosophy.
So we went to listen to him speak (unfortunately not on deconstruction, but she was still very excited to have the chance to hear him). We left the Town Hall after the seminar and my wife said to me "Dammit, now I can't dislike him any more, he's so nice". A few seconds pause, then "But he's still wrong about deconstruction".
Slashdot Mirror
A computer should more aptly be treated like a motor vehicle; yeah, you can go have some fun in it but you'd better drive defensively and know how to operate the thing properly. You don't just take it out of the box and start pressing buttons.
Right! This is exactly the analogy I had in mind. The difference is there's very little people can do to be malicious to a car in the same way as a virus wreaks havoc on your PC, short of letting the air out of the tires or other foolish stunts. Perhaps a better comparison would be if someone went around randomly dumping sugar in the gas tank of anyone whose car didn't have a security system installed.
From the article...
"Go out, get a book," suggests Zack Rubenstein, 28, who has for years provided free technical support for his extended social network. "You went to college and you got a degree, you obviously can learn something. Play around with it; it's not going to kill you."
Hmm...I wonder if he tinkers with his car? Me, I know the basics of how a car engine works, and sure, I understand electronics and wiring and so forth. But I have no clue what goes on in today's modern multi-processor-controlled engine -- it might as well be a black box to me. Actually, it is -- my car is a tool, a device to get me from point A to point B in reasonable comfort.
But I happen to know that there are certain rules of the road to be obeyed, and, if those are not obeyed, then the consequences could be rather painful and/or expensive. What are those rules? Why, I had a nice little booklet that laid the fundamentals out. Had to prove I understood it, too, by taking a test. Oh, and I also had to be passed by an examiner who observed me driving for half an hour before I was allowed on the roads by myself.
And I also know that, on a regular basis, that car needs certain maintenance -- oil changes, fan belt replacements, that sort of thing. If I can't or don't want to do it myself, I have to take it to someone and pay them to do it. Fine by me -- I can earn more by working for half an hour than it costs me to pay someone to have the oil changed, and I'd just as soon not get my hands dirty.
Make sense? After all, isn't a modern PC, with all the complexities of a modern OS and a modern suite of applications, just as internally nebulous to the casual user as is a car? The difference is we pay heaps for cars and are told repeatedly we have to take care of them on a regular basis or that money will be wasted. Oh, and we're carefully checked for basic skills and knowledge before being turned loose in a car.
Computers, though -- they're sold at a (relatively) cheap price and the vendors never advertise that, hey, guess what, you actually need to take care of the thing. (And geeks like Zack Rubenstein perpetuate the myth that anyone can fix a PC with little effort. Come on, a show of hands of all those whose learning-by-experience includes a few good late night sessions of try to fix, break, try to fix again, break even worse, before you finally figure it out. I sure wouldn't risk doing that with a car.)
From the posted story:
The updates bring a whole new level of functionality Linksys couldn't be bothered to incorporate.
From the parent post:
There's a very important lesson hidden in here, which I hope the other hardware vendors will see and take note.
Why would they, when the story gets picked up by the open source community (represented here by Slashdot) and is immediately regurgitated using phrasing which insults a company that is actually doing something we like? Perhaps other people see it differently, but if I were a Linksys person reading this, I'd be pretty bugged by the "couldn't be bothered" cheap shot. Especially for a product that is apparently under a hundred bucks.
a common fallicy propogated by Microsoft.
Sorry? From where on Microsoft's web site do you get this idea? Somehow, I think this is an indefensible allegation.
Sorry, but not true. Both Verdan and Tahoma are sans serif fonts, whereas Times New Roman is a serif font. A very common guideline for readability is that body text should use a serif font; sans serif fonts are better for titles.
Ah, so you're the /.er who reads the article and thinks when you post. By all appearances, most can't even manage one of those accomplishments particularly well, never mind both of them.
I'll put it this way: my cable modem has had more downtime than my satellite TV over the last two years, and every time I've checked, the cable TV feed has also been messed up whenever the cable modem has had trouble.
Based on my experience with Comcast, this makes almost perfect sense. They have horrible service, and are frequently down.
(Side-note: I have to laugh -- well, grimace, really -- at their local ads against the satellite crowd. They show a guy who contends he used to sell satellite TV, so he tried to install it himself and had no end of problems. Cue the shot of an installation literally held together by sticky tape. No kidding -- the chap's a salesman, he tries to install something himself on the cheap, can't even be bothered to use a screwdriver, and wonders why it keeps going out. Hell's bells.)
About a year ago they used to advertise their cable modem service as having an advantage over dial-up of no dropped connections. I e-mailed them and pointed out that, when I was on-line and their service went down (which occurred two or three times a week on average), it sure as hell looked like a dropped connection to me. I'm sure they ignored me, but funnily enough they don't make that claim any more.
The only caveat I have on the parent poster's comment is that our cable TV doesn't always go out when the cable modem is out (but it's probably 95% of the time).
Hideously expensive compared to satellite, anecdotally worse, not better, reliability, and Comcast the ISP caps your bandwidth and refuses to tell you how much you're using and how much you're allowed to use -- just that you're using too much. Yeah, what's not to loathe about Comcast?
Blimey...that really must be, err, vexing.
My university also had a lot of lecturers using their own books. Big difference -- the university published them, and deliberately did not make them ultra-high-quality in order to keep costs down. Oh, they were perfectly legible, the paper was reasonable stock -- but no hardback, no expensive colour illustration plates in my Stats and Comp. Sci. texts, that sort of thing.
So, for example, my Language Implementation text book for Stage III Comp. Sci. was, I think, $15. I know darn well it wasn't any more than that -- might even have been a little less, for all I can remember.
For the record, my third year was 1990 at the University of Auckland (and, for the U.S. audience reference, a standard Bachelor's degree in N.Z. is only three years long, so that was the equivalent of a fourth-year course at a U.S. university).
Here is what seems to bite a lot of my users (on W2K). Imagine this...you're going out to lunch or stepping away from your desk for some reason, so you have to lock your workstation. Easy -- press CTRL-ALT-DEL, the resultant dialog box has options such as Lock computer and Change password..., but you just need to press the ENTER key as the Lock computer button is the default. CTRL-ALT-DEL, ENTER. No worries.
Unless one of the most commonly used pieces of software in your organization is a stupid document management system that, when you press the DEL key with a document highlighted, asks you to confirm the deletion and, in stark contrast to good practice, has the Yes, I really DO want to delete this crucial document button as the default, rather than the somewhat safer NO NO NO NO NO, NOT THAT DOCUMENT, ANYTHING BUT THAT ONE!!! button.
Presto -- quick keypresses on automatic pilot, slip and mistakenly not press all three required keys (but they always manage to get the DEL key, oh yes, of course it's that one they never fail to press), still on automatic pilot to press the Enter key, and, oh look, document goes bye-bye.
Thanks for all the support calls I have to face right around lunchtime, stupid DMS manufacturer. Thanks a whole bunch. One of these days I'm going to forward my desk phone to your 1-800 support number, I swear I will.
No need for the shhh!, methinks -- the NYT article describes exactly the same thing and tells how people make a profit by doing this. So it's no longer a secret -- sorry.
By the way, note the following quote from the article:
Indeed, experts say the Internet -- with its discussion boards, blogs and self-published articles -- is a treasure trove of bad spelling.
Boy, do we know that here!
The answer to this seems, to me, to be rather simple. Forget giving PJ Best Director. Instead, why not give him a special award for the overall achievement? Everyone seems to agree that, whatever your opinion on the individual films, he deserves some form of recognition for what he did in getting all three shot simultaneously and for making a huge success out of translating a much-loved epic to the screen. But not everyone agrees on a best director award being deserved for RotK.
So why not something analogous to a lifetime achievement award, but call it something else? The prevailing opinion seems to be that, should he win Best Director, it'll really be in recognition of all three films. So just make up some special one-off award and call it something appropriate, recognizing that PJ has achieved something never done before and unlikely to be repeated.
Yeah, well...don't just think it's Microsoft you need to worry about. In this story (which I submitted yesterday, incidentally, but got rejected), it states that IBM and Philips are also collaborating on a system. From the article:
IBM and Dutch electronics maker Philips also announced on Monday that they are working together on an RFID solution. Philips' semiconductor unit will make the radio chips that can be stuck on items, while IBM will provide the computer services and systems.
I assume this is the same Philips that makes Philishave electric razors in most of the world, which are rebranded as Norelco shavers in the States. (Just in case you want to boycott them so they can't track your shaving and other personal hygiene habits.)
My wife got a Chevrolet Blazer (small SUV) in 1984. She drove that thing for 16 years. Four crashes, I think from memory (people failing to give way or sliding into her on icy roads). She drove it halfway across the States and back at least twice. The thing just kept on going, accidents and all, and she loved it.
So, when it finally gasped its last breath in 2000, she got another Blazer. She's driven it much more sedately now -- no cross-country trips, much less use, and it has about 25,000 miles on it now. She'd had it for a year when the 2WD/4WD switch failed and had to be replaced. It looks like the same problem has just cropped up again, and so we have to take it back to the dealer to be checked, but we know for sure she can't shift between 2WD and 4WD at the moment. The battery just died. She's so disappointed in how horrible it is compared to her old Blazer.
I have a Toyota Camry which I bought brand new when I moved to the States. I grew up in New Zealand, where Toyotas are legendary for their durability. My first Camry had so many problems, I talked the dealership into taking it back after 5,000 miles and giving me another one. That second Camry has now done 65,000 miles and still purrs along. But I can't stand driving it, because it just doesn't go around corners! The handling is dreadful -- it rolls and sways like you wouldn't believe. I talked to two dealers about it, they both took it out, and both said, "nothing wrong with it -- remember, it's built for the American market, and we like soft suspension".
One final anecdote: I saw mention of Peugeots in this story. My brother (in New Zealand) was trying to decide between a BMW and a Peugeot. He took them both for test drives and settled on the Peugeot, because the handling was so much better going around corners.
Another Lada joke...
A man walks into a dealership and says to the salesman "I'd like a two-tone Lada, please".
The salesman replies "Certainly, sir. Would you also like the eight speaker stereo, sunroof, leather seats, six disc CD changer, and V6 engine?"
"Oh, come on, you're being silly", scoffs the customer.
The salesman retorts "Well you started it".
Yes, thank you so much for your kind comments. I actually knew it was called something else now, but couldn't remember what the new name was and was too lazy to look it up.
As to the rest of your fascinating retort, I might point out that, although I live in the U.S., I have another 26 years to go before I've lived here as long as any other country, so it's a tad premature to call me a yank. And, as I'm not a U.S. citizen, it's also rather a stretch to call them my government. But, then, it's not just the U.S. that doesn't accept the name change; everyone seems a touch up in the air about it at the moment.
Which, of course, doesn't excuse my laziness to look up the new name that I knew it had, but, on the flip side, it rather conveniently also does not excuse your arrogance in automatically assuming I'm an ignorant yank. Ergo, I feel justified in taunting you as a right git. Nyah.
There are many, many, many posts by now discussing/ranting about who uses metric and who uses imperial measurements (and who uses both). For the record, it is generally realized that there are three countries in the world who are still on the imperial system:
* U.S.A.
* Liberia
* Burma
Also performed if you were too bored to wait for the traffic lights when the pedestrian crossing light was on. You would simply get out of the car, and all four would pick up the Mini and walk it across with the rest of the pedestrians. There's probably a moral in that you could usually get away with this in Auckland City (the largest city in New Zealand) even if the police were watching.
(We once went into Auckland City on a typical Saturday night, down to the bottom of Queen Street at QEII square, and timed the length of the pedestrian crossing signal. When we'd locked it down, we waited for the next occurrence, then raced into the middle of the intersection with a couch, two chairs, and a floor lamp, set them up in a living room type arrangement, took a couple of quick photographs for posterity, and raced back. Ah, memories.)
Getting back on topic, however, and somewhat more usefully, Minis were also short enough that it was often possible to park them on the side of the street but facing out without protruding onto the road. So you'd have a whole row of cars head to tail, and in the middle a Mini at 90 degrees to the rest of them, pointing out. (Always spotted at the University of Auckland when I was there.) This neatly solved the parallel parking problem -- just reverse in and forget all the silly problems.
Perhaps they were prescient and had horrifying visions of William Shatner hosting a U.S. version of Iron Chef. Way to give an oblique Star Trek tie-in, by the way!
This product will almost certainly flop, because it doesn't have any games designed for it, so there almost certaintly won't be any games that are more fun using it.
Does that matter? As far as I can tell from the article, it's a replacement for the corresponding features on your controller. So I'd assume it acts like a standard PS2 (or whatever) controller, just bigger and funnier looking, and as such doesn't need specially designed games.
I agree. I can see this working your muscles somewhat, as you say, and possibly resulting in some minor weight loss. But (and I am speculating here, so correct me if I'm wrong) it seems to me it misses a fairly important component of general health, and that is cardiovascular fitness. I doubt it'd cause much of an elevation in heart rate or get you puffing.
Or they could license the technology from a company who's got some experience in doing this. I don't know how long Silanis has been doing this, but I first came across their digital signature software in 2000, so they ought to know something about the thing. Their web site claims:
Compliance with federal and state legislation and industry regulations, including the ESIGN Act, UCC, UETA and the FDA's 21 CFR Part 11
Nonsense. Photoshop is a tool for professionals. Professionals can afford it. If you're not a professional you don't need it and it's not being marketed to you anyway. Get Paintshop or become a graphic artist.
/. geeks don't value the difference between a $20 video card and a $200 video card, now, is it? What does that order of magnitude price increase get you, after all? Nothing whatsoever -- unless you're a hard-core gamer or a graphical design professional. Me, I'm neither -- which is why I, personally, choke when I see the price of some of these peripherals. It's all a matter of perspective.
Exactly. This happens in every walk of life. I know I can go out and buy a $299 keyboard -- but it's going to have tinny sounds, a non-weighted keyboard, and very little functionality. A $4000 synthesizer might seem outrageous to the people who just want something for little Bobby to bash away on, but a professional musician simply can't do his work with a 4 octave Casiotone as his main axe.
And it's not as if all the
Never underestimate the power of stickability -- the catchiness of a particular name to stick in your brain.
Many moons ago, I took a language implementation course in University. About the only software packages I remember from those days are the tools I used in that course:
YACC -- Yet Another Compiler Compiler
LEX -- Lexical Analysis, naturally.
Short and succinct -- I still think YACC is one of the best all-time product names. Heck, if I can still remember it after mumble-mumble 13 or 14 years, it has to have something going for it.
If M$ had actually written decent code, encouraging bug-free and secure design (ie firing anyone responsible for a buffer overflow bug), Joe sixpack-type people would have no reason to upgrade to 2k or XP.
So why do SuSE/Mandrake/RedHat/et. al. keep coming out with new versions of their products, then? Oh, silly me, I forgot -- you want to have it both ways. MS bringing out new versions = proof of terrible code. Linux vendors doing exactly the same thing = proof they listen to the customer.
Let's ignore the fact that perhaps they should support all of their OS's regardless.
What, like RedHat?
Look, if you're going to make snide comments like this, why not provide comparisons? Now I think about it, I'm genuinely curious -- what level of support can I get from SuSE, Mandrake, or any other mainstream Linux provider for their older versions? Don't just say "there's a whole community of free support, blah blah blah" -- I want to know what Linux vendors are like in terms of supporting older versions.
This is not an attempt to troll or flame -- I work primarily with MS products and am simply not familiar with what support I can get from Linux vendors. So how about a comparison?
Although I'm not a literary critic, I am married to one, and she always disagreed with Derrida (the father of deconstruction theory, as I understand it). Interestingly enough, we had the chance to listen to him present a seminar a few years ago in Auckland, New Zealand, as he was participating in a conference sponsored by the Auckland University School of Philosophy.
So we went to listen to him speak (unfortunately not on deconstruction, but she was still very excited to have the chance to hear him). We left the Town Hall after the seminar and my wife said to me "Dammit, now I can't dislike him any more, he's so nice". A few seconds pause, then "But he's still wrong about deconstruction".