Why charge at all for outdated content? Don't they remember the old journalistic saying that today's news is tomorrow's fishwrap?
You've got a good idea there, but you have to remember that these guys are scared shitless of losing their revenue streams. As the print subscriptions (and advertising revenue) inevitably decline, they want something familiar to be in control off. They already do web advertising, so the actual quantities they could increase their google juice and web revenue is a big scary question mark in their eyes.
I think there's definite wisdom they could take from your idea though... lose the stupid registration and bump free access to two weeks or a month to increase linkage. For older content they should continue to offer the $2.95 per article as well as several subscription choices. $50/yr for 100 articles or $20/month for unlimited access seem like the best choices. The $50/yr for access only to one year's worth of articles seems lame to me, but maybe some people need that kind of reasearching ability?
...Yet 90%+ of the OSS software out there is nothing more than a duplication of other OSS software.
Maybe 90% of OSS is a duplication of software (not just OSS), but 95% of proprietary software is duplicative (can't I make up stats too?). At least if an OS project gets it right, anyone can take it to the next level instead of the code rot that occurs when bad business happens to good software.
What would make a huge difference in the adoption of SVG would be if adobe post-acquisition makes the flash team incorporate native SVG support in flash
Yes, but that would be SVG is name only, and it wouldn't do anything that Flash can't already do... The whole point of SVG support is that it comes out of the bounding box and into the CSS/HTML/Javascript.
Fair point, however I'd say that no, Flash hasn't supplanted the role that SVG could perform, and there still is a huge void waiting to be filled.
I think his point was more along the lines that Flash lowered the incentive for anyone to rush to market with a really good SVG implementation.
Of course you are correct that full SVG support would be a really good thing for the web. I would go so far as to say it's the most significant advancement of design possibilities since the introduction of the TABLE element.
Its failure to take off prolly has nothing to do with the ubiquitious support for Flash...
Considering it was only made a standard in 2001, things are only going slightly slower than CSS and HTML. The real problem is that SVG is hard to implement. I don't disagree that the availability of Flash has lowered the priority, but as far as open-source implementations are concerned, I thnk it was destined to take a while.
Nice strawman regarding your *assumption* about my feelings about user interface design, but this has nothing to do with that.
Thanks, I thought so too.
I said that Spotlight's just an enhanced version of locate with strong integration with the OS. Call it an understatement if you like, but don't call it wrong.
I'll call it the understatement of the year then. I mean, it's totally legit to say "Spotlight doesn't interest me much", but you really make the backend sound like a hack which I admit is debatable, but far from a foregone conclusion. Consider:
Depth: If they are indexing from more sources than have ever been indexed before in an OS search (which seems like it might be true), doesn't that deserve some credit? It may be the extension of a old idea, but if it reaches farther then I still call it innovative.
Optimization: Again, I haven't used Tiger yet, but it seems like indexing from so many sources and instant search results would require quite a bit of optimization. I can't comment on how well Spotlight scales, but neither do you, but wouldn't you agree that if it scales well to a full 200GB HD it's pretty impressive?
Extensibility: An API for adding Spotlight support to your apps seems to go a little beyond the raw database idea. I know, I know, APIs are perhaps the most common thing in OSes, but I think it indicates a certain level of polish on the whole concept.
Interface: Okay, so you made brief mention that the interface is good. But look at how far reaching it is. I mean, it's in the menu bar, it highlights screen visually, it has CLI tools, it's in file dialogs, etc. That's not just a matter of building an application with a good interface, I suspect it takes serious engineering throughout the operating system.
I don't have any guarantees on any of those qualities, but the information I've gotten so far seems to indicate that they are quite likely. And if that's the case, the engineering aspect of it all is impressive. Maybe there's nothing jaw-dropping by itself, but plugging that into the OS doesn't seem trivial to me.
The technology just isn't amazing. The application of the technology and the UI they used to apply it deserves some credit
Here you've lost me. You seem to be taking an extremely narrow view of technology as a high-level, but generic concept like 'database'. Come on... what isn't a database? I mean you can apply this tactic to any user-level tech you want to discredit. Eg: what's so great about the Web? It's just stateless anonymous FTP with a document viewer attached. Or: What's the big deal with protected memory? It's just memory bounds checking, who hasn't done that before?
'Technology' doesn't begin an end with a convenient conceptual unit. To make a fair judgement you have to consider the whole implementation. Of course we need to be able to slice 'technology' at some abstraction level to avoid talking about everything down to the circuits, but Spotlight extends conceptually much higher and lower than 'database', so judging it that way seems extremely shortsighted.
I think you read my posts and figured I was one of those 31337 kidz that pushed a CLI over a GUI at all costs
Actually I thought you were a competent programmer with a bad case of Apple-hate. Now I realize you don't hate Apple; I'm guessing you're just sick of the fanboys.
I for one respect good UI designers, because there sure aren't many of them (goddamn does KDE and GNOME look like butt. While they may have good graphic artists, that is NOT the same as good user interface designers).
Haven't used 'em a lot, but you gotta admit they are a lot better than the used to be. The problem is that it's hard to get past a certain point without some kind of singular vision.
I don't want to sound like Apple can do no wrong though. For years I kind of looked the other way about the OS X Finder because I liked some of the new features, but it finally hit me that the whole folder/window/browser metaphor has been mangled beyond recognition. Not only that, I don't really think OS X overall has an amazing UI, but what it lacks in greatness it makes up for in overall consistency plus some really nice details.
Anyway, to get that functionality on your windows network, turn indexing service on - it's off by default. Then define some usage guidelines and distribute them to your users. The reason they can't all work together in a coherent way is that they don't have a coherent plan. Solving the problem with an index is not solving the problem, it's working around the problem.:)
So according to you, it's easier and more correct to program your users rather than the operating system? I'm guessing you don't have much in the way of people skills...
Spotlight is just a simple UI on a commonly used programming idiom. Generate a database with some keys that correspond to words in a document, use a hashing algorithm to get about O(1) search times, repeat search on every key press.
Please stop pretending like you know what you're talking about when you are just pulling things out of your ass. This sort of misguided (and hypocritical) backlash against such well-known phenomena as Apple's marketing and fanboy zealotry makes you look not only ignorant, but also a tad envious. Why? Because you're just blindly assuming that Spotlight is some vanilla database that any programmer could have whipped up. You also make clear your distaste for user interface design, which is really just an extension of your distaste for anyone who isn't a hacker.
Instead of just spouting off the first generic abstraction that you think might approximate Spotlight, riddle me this: What operating system has an integrated, extensible index for every major type of file and database on the system? Sure, you threw something together that approximates the high-level idea in an extremely generic fashion with a no-doubt brilliantly intuitive web-based interface that rivals those produced by the slickest GUI dev kits, but there's a hell of a lot of room for innovation between an idea and the final implementation. If you're just trying to say that no single concept in Spotlight is innovative, then you are pointlessly correct. There are no original ideas in computer science any more, just combinations of old ideas with incremental improvements.
Saying that Spotlight is just like find + grep is like saying a car is an explosion, some gears, and a wheel (the automobile wasn't revolutionary, it's just a rehash of old technology!). I use find and egrep with the best of 'em, but let me be the first to say that memorizing enough of find's syntax to use it efficiently for all scenarios is a major mindshare investment. If you actually go and read the tech specs for Spotlight and gave an honest attempt to conceptualize what's involved, there's no way you could consider it trivial.
Remember, the goal of an operating system is not to be clever or earn hacker respect... the measure of innovation is its utility to its users. If Spotlight saves time in a way that other OSes don't, then its innovative. The fact that you can pick apart a high-level concept and tell a nice story about how a feature doesn't benefit CLI wizards has very little bearing on what makes a good OS feature. It says more about your opinion of Apple than it does about the technology.
Oh, and BTW, I really don't care much about the search feature of Spotlight, I'm looking forward to the quick application launching...
From the website: MM80 $149.00 MM160 $179.00 MM250 $249.00 MM400 $499.00
As much as I like the form factor I would have a real hard time buying one of these, but if I did it would have to be the 250. Can you stack 'em and get an extra 100GB + twice the ports for $500?
And note that I'm not defending this particular idea or patent, I'm commenting on the tendancy of this specific group of people to decry all things that come out of Redmond on the grounds that it came out of the Redmond, rather than on the merit of the idea.
Yes, but we've all heard this same counter argument ad-naseum. If anyone else had filed the patent we probably never would have even heard of it, but so what? Now that it's a Slashdot story, there's only one thing really worth discussing and that's the patent itself, which clearly doesn't have a shred of novelty to it. As usual I just ignore the anti-Microsoft noise.
No actually I understand perfectly. I've written my own content management system from scratch that is controlled using nothing more than plain meta tags and directory structure of your site. I've developed a PHP class that generates persistent error corrected forms from a minimal spec parsed using lexx and yacc and creates and maintains a database table based strictly on the spec. I single-handedly proposed, designed and implemented the student group database for the University of Minnesota saving my department tens of thousands of dollars.
The difference between me and you is that I understand that intelligence comes in many forms, not just understanding bits. When I go into a meeting with marketing people they respect my opinion because I don't try to invalidate their premise with technical reasons. Instead I just work with the facts and offer up the best solution as I see it... they usually take it.
No it doesn't - the internet does that. PDF allows your bank to send you a file which requires your browser to clunk about on the hard drive locating and executing proprietary code which wouldn't be required if the information was stored in something sensible like HTML in the first place.
Oh please. You elitist geeks think that all processing should be offloaded into our brains and information should be stored in some minimal format that gives you complete control so can satisfy your fetishistic automation desires.
Well despite what your huge brain has convinced itself of, there is a legitimate need for technologies such as Flash and PDF. Not everything is a tech spec or a tutorial on doing minor meaningless tweaks to your hardware so you can avoid human contact for one more weekend.
Sorry to get personal, but as someone who has to create documents that need to be printed, I can tell you unequivocably that PDF is the only viable option for printable documents that must be distributed to the general public. Furthermore, it's a reality that I may have to put 50 page documents on a website at the drop of a hat. Sure I could save as HTML from Word, but if you know anything about that you'd realize it's actually much worse than a PDF.
And while I'm on a rant, I should say every geek complaining about the uselessness of Flash needs to understand that they don't have the first fucking clue about design and why it's important. You think marketing is useless, you hate designers, and you probably have yourself convinced advertising doesn't affect you. The irony is that as you roll your eyes at the television you are being manipulated by the very people who you consider worthless. Just like PDF, there are certain things that can only be done with Flash. Just because you misunderstand and disregard those things does not make them invalid.
There are two points where Thurrot isn't particularly convincing. One is his endless comparision between Mac OS X and what Microsoft offers, that ranges from "It's some kind of imitation of Windows" to "They're the first to implement it but MS had certainly already thought about this feature before and their version will be better".
The most incredible was his claim that XP-SP2 is arguably a more major upgrade than Tiger. I'm not intimately familiar with XP, but as far as I know SP2 was mostly security features. I'm sure that makes a huge improvement in usability, bringing back your Win box from the brink of death, but Tiger offers actual features that apply to actually using the computer.
It's funny how many Mac haters there are out there. If you like Windows so much, why would you give Mac zealots the time of day? Instead these guys get so incensed that people like Macs even though they are barely on the marketshare radar. There's some kind of Mac-envy going on. Not sure if they're jealous of the computer itself, or just the satisfaction that Mac users enjoy, but it certainly is telling.
By including this type of thing in the list it threatens to swallow all of the real new features like Dashboard and Spotlight.
If you read the overview page or read any of the thousands of reviews around the net you'll get the major features. Of course, everyone here already knows them...
This is exactly the kind of detailed list that geeks should appreciate. All the Apple haters want to spin it as propaganda, but those of us seriously considering the upgrade might like to know these things. For instance, I don't consider OpenEXR support in Preview to be a major feature by any stretch, but it's something I'll use every day.
Now if they said 200+ new features and didn't list them then there would be a problem. Let the people judge for themselves I say.
If you've got more insight that makes the argument valid I'm listening - I have used it myself but felt I was just a scamming myself to get me to buy myself something expensive.
See my response above. If I only worked 40 hours a week then I probably would enjoy monkeying around with software solutions, but it's still questionable. For me it's not so much financial as it is physical... In my spare time I want to be doing something that puts my body in a non-sitting, non-staring, non-typing position. Ironically running network cable is suitable, but setting up software is not.
That doesn't mean you should insult those that are willing to learn with the 'more power to you' nonsense.
I thought it was a reasonable response to an AC who claims that such a device is useless. The implication was that someone would have to be an idiot to pay for something that you can set up yourself for free.
Comparing the time taken to how much is earned is such a daft argument its funny as this is obviously aimed at leisure time. I doubt many would take timeoff from their work for a few hours to set up something like this so they aren't losing anything in earnings.
You have a point... However, I work with computers 60 hours a week, and I have enough freelance work queued up that I would easily push it to 80 hours a week for the foreseeable future. Whether I'm taking time off work or not, time spent staring at screens has a physical cost that I choose to quantify with a monetary figure. I'm sure there are many intelligent people who work full time with computers that feel leisure time should be spent away from computers.
The amount of time spent to set something up obviously is a factor regardless. Think if the router cost $1000, then someone like me would have to look at lot more seriously at the $50+software route.
No one needs gigabit ports for gaming over DSL/Cable
But any LAN can benefit from gigabit... especially ones where people are downloading large files from the Internet. Chances are they may want to move them between computers.
packet prioritization can be done in software
Not that I've had any experience with this, but where does this software go? Seems like this might increase latency. And besides, if it takes more than 2 hours to set up then I haven't saved any money.
$120 is not an unreasonable amount to pay for this router... if hacking on your network is your idea of a good time then more power to you, but if you want the most efficient solution then take a look at your hourly wage and make the hard decision.
Re:Defined a generation
on
Planet Simpson
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· Score: 2, Interesting
The 4th and 5th seasons seem to be a high point (I'll have to check on the 6th), but personally I think it's only the narrative quality that really went downhill hard. Things just got too outlandish. I don't think the jokes suffered all that much though. The current negative opinions of the Simpsons have more to do with nostalgia than true suckage. Yes the characters are all typecast, yes things have been rehashed, but on the whole the Simpsons is still in my top 3 shows.
I'm with you, but I think wireless Internet currently goes a little bit beyond basic services. 20 years from now I hope things are different, but the number of people with a wireless laptop are still probably in the minority, and hence taxing the general public wouldn't really be fair since you are benefitting those who could probably afford to pay for it themselves.
I guess for me the bottom line would really be the cost factor.
One thing that bothers me about the article is that it's all predicated on the assumption that Gnome developers' primary goal is to have everyone and their mother use Gnome. Even if that were true it only half makes sense to go and implement every feature users want... the fact is that small features do not make a big difference on what software people choose. and extra features may complicate a software product.
I agree that developers of general purpose software should listen to user feedback and combine that with usability testing and time-tested principles of UI design, but that's a no-brainer. Frankly if there's problems in this area, it goes much deeper than not listening to a few feature requests.
This situation just looks like open source groupies demanding that they get everything they want for free. Well I have news for people with this attitude: contributors to open source are still doing a public service even if they aren't your personal code-whore. If you want a feature in an open source product you have two guaranteed options of getting the feature: learn how to do it yourself or pay someone to do it. That's exactly two more options than you get with proprietary software where all you can do is request a feature and hope for the best.
Slashdot Mirror
Mac ownership is still at less than 2% and Linux can't really be considered to be a more secure and desktop-ready alternative to XP or 2000.
According to Gartner Mac market share is at 3.7% for Q1 2005. Not to mention that Macs tend to be used longer (still using a 400mhz G4 from 2000 as my primary computer when my PC from the same time has long been recycled).
As for Linux, maybe not desktop-ready, but clearly more secure than Windows? Oops, I fed the troll.
Why charge at all for outdated content? Don't they remember the old journalistic saying that today's news is tomorrow's fishwrap?
You've got a good idea there, but you have to remember that these guys are scared shitless of losing their revenue streams. As the print subscriptions (and advertising revenue) inevitably decline, they want something familiar to be in control off. They already do web advertising, so the actual quantities they could increase their google juice and web revenue is a big scary question mark in their eyes.
I think there's definite wisdom they could take from your idea though... lose the stupid registration and bump free access to two weeks or a month to increase linkage. For older content they should continue to offer the $2.95 per article as well as several subscription choices. $50/yr for 100 articles or $20/month for unlimited access seem like the best choices. The $50/yr for access only to one year's worth of articles seems lame to me, but maybe some people need that kind of reasearching ability?
That 90% might as well BE proprietary software. The source code may be available, but how many people actually contribute to each project?
I fail to see the point. Of course most software is irrelevant. If it turns out not to be, it's to everyone's benefit if the code is available.
...Yet 90%+ of the OSS software out there is nothing more than a duplication of other OSS software.
Maybe 90% of OSS is a duplication of software (not just OSS), but 95% of proprietary software is duplicative (can't I make up stats too?). At least if an OS project gets it right, anyone can take it to the next level instead of the code rot that occurs when bad business happens to good software.
What would make a huge difference in the adoption of SVG would be if adobe post-acquisition makes the flash team incorporate native SVG support in flash
Yes, but that would be SVG is name only, and it wouldn't do anything that Flash can't already do... The whole point of SVG support is that it comes out of the bounding box and into the CSS/HTML/Javascript.
Fair point, however I'd say that no, Flash hasn't supplanted the role that SVG could perform, and there still is a huge void waiting to be filled.
I think his point was more along the lines that Flash lowered the incentive for anyone to rush to market with a really good SVG implementation.
Of course you are correct that full SVG support would be a really good thing for the web. I would go so far as to say it's the most significant advancement of design possibilities since the introduction of the TABLE element.
Its failure to take off prolly has nothing to do with the ubiquitious support for Flash...
Considering it was only made a standard in 2001, things are only going slightly slower than CSS and HTML. The real problem is that SVG is hard to implement. I don't disagree that the availability of Flash has lowered the priority, but as far as open-source implementations are concerned, I thnk it was destined to take a while.
Thanks, I thought so too.
I'll call it the understatement of the year then. I mean, it's totally legit to say "Spotlight doesn't interest me much", but you really make the backend sound like a hack which I admit is debatable, but far from a foregone conclusion. Consider:
I don't have any guarantees on any of those qualities, but the information I've gotten so far seems to indicate that they are quite likely. And if that's the case, the engineering aspect of it all is impressive. Maybe there's nothing jaw-dropping by itself, but plugging that into the OS doesn't seem trivial to me.
Here you've lost me. You seem to be taking an extremely narrow view of technology as a high-level, but generic concept like 'database'. Come on... what isn't a database? I mean you can apply this tactic to any user-level tech you want to discredit. Eg: what's so great about the Web? It's just stateless anonymous FTP with a document viewer attached. Or: What's the big deal with protected memory? It's just memory bounds checking, who hasn't done that before?
'Technology' doesn't begin an end with a convenient conceptual unit. To make a fair judgement you have to consider the whole implementation. Of course we need to be able to slice 'technology' at some abstraction level to avoid talking about everything down to the circuits, but Spotlight extends conceptually much higher and lower than 'database', so judging it that way seems extremely shortsighted.
Actually I thought you were a competent programmer with a bad case of Apple-hate. Now I realize you don't hate Apple; I'm guessing you're just sick of the fanboys.
I for one respect good UI designers, because there sure aren't many of them (goddamn does KDE and GNOME look like butt. While they may have good graphic artists, that is NOT the same as good user interface designers).
Haven't used 'em a lot, but you gotta admit they are a lot better than the used to be. The problem is that it's hard to get past a certain point without some kind of singular vision.
I don't want to sound like Apple can do no wrong though. For years I kind of looked the other way about the OS X Finder because I liked some of the new features, but it finally hit me that the whole folder/window/browser metaphor has been mangled beyond recognition. Not only that, I don't really think OS X overall has an amazing UI, but what it lacks in greatness it makes up for in overall consistency plus some really nice details.
Anyway, to get that functionality on your windows network, turn indexing service on - it's off by default. Then define some usage guidelines and distribute them to your users. The reason they can't all work together in a coherent way is that they don't have a coherent plan. Solving the problem with an index is not solving the problem, it's working around the problem. :)
So according to you, it's easier and more correct to program your users rather than the operating system? I'm guessing you don't have much in the way of people skills...
Please stop pretending like you know what you're talking about when you are just pulling things out of your ass. This sort of misguided (and hypocritical) backlash against such well-known phenomena as Apple's marketing and fanboy zealotry makes you look not only ignorant, but also a tad envious. Why? Because you're just blindly assuming that Spotlight is some vanilla database that any programmer could have whipped up. You also make clear your distaste for user interface design, which is really just an extension of your distaste for anyone who isn't a hacker.
Instead of just spouting off the first generic abstraction that you think might approximate Spotlight, riddle me this: What operating system has an integrated, extensible index for every major type of file and database on the system? Sure, you threw something together that approximates the high-level idea in an extremely generic fashion with a no-doubt brilliantly intuitive web-based interface that rivals those produced by the slickest GUI dev kits, but there's a hell of a lot of room for innovation between an idea and the final implementation. If you're just trying to say that no single concept in Spotlight is innovative, then you are pointlessly correct. There are no original ideas in computer science any more, just combinations of old ideas with incremental improvements.
Saying that Spotlight is just like find + grep is like saying a car is an explosion, some gears, and a wheel (the automobile wasn't revolutionary, it's just a rehash of old technology!). I use find and egrep with the best of 'em, but let me be the first to say that memorizing enough of find's syntax to use it efficiently for all scenarios is a major mindshare investment. If you actually go and read the tech specs for Spotlight and gave an honest attempt to conceptualize what's involved, there's no way you could consider it trivial.
Remember, the goal of an operating system is not to be clever or earn hacker respect... the measure of innovation is its utility to its users. If Spotlight saves time in a way that other OSes don't, then its innovative. The fact that you can pick apart a high-level concept and tell a nice story about how a feature doesn't benefit CLI wizards has very little bearing on what makes a good OS feature. It says more about your opinion of Apple than it does about the technology.
Oh, and BTW, I really don't care much about the search feature of Spotlight, I'm looking forward to the quick application launching...
After all, there may be some poor schmuck who hasn't seen it yet.
Yeah, some guy who hasn't spent every waking hour for the last 20 years glued to a computer screen. Oh, the poor soul.
From the website:
MM80 $149.00
MM160 $179.00
MM250 $249.00
MM400 $499.00
As much as I like the form factor I would have a real hard time buying one of these, but if I did it would have to be the 250. Can you stack 'em and get an extra 100GB + twice the ports for $500?
And note that I'm not defending this particular idea or patent, I'm commenting on the tendancy of this specific group of people to decry all things that come out of Redmond on the grounds that it came out of the Redmond, rather than on the merit of the idea.
Yes, but we've all heard this same counter argument ad-naseum. If anyone else had filed the patent we probably never would have even heard of it, but so what? Now that it's a Slashdot story, there's only one thing really worth discussing and that's the patent itself, which clearly doesn't have a shred of novelty to it. As usual I just ignore the anti-Microsoft noise.
No actually I understand perfectly. I've written my own content management system from scratch that is controlled using nothing more than plain meta tags and directory structure of your site. I've developed a PHP class that generates persistent error corrected forms from a minimal spec parsed using lexx and yacc and creates and maintains a database table based strictly on the spec. I single-handedly proposed, designed and implemented the student group database for the University of Minnesota saving my department tens of thousands of dollars.
The difference between me and you is that I understand that intelligence comes in many forms, not just understanding bits. When I go into a meeting with marketing people they respect my opinion because I don't try to invalidate their premise with technical reasons. Instead I just work with the facts and offer up the best solution as I see it... they usually take it.
No it doesn't - the internet does that. PDF allows your bank to send you a file which requires your browser to clunk about on the hard drive locating and executing proprietary code which wouldn't be required if the information was stored in something sensible like HTML in the first place.
Oh please. You elitist geeks think that all processing should be offloaded into our brains and information should be stored in some minimal format that gives you complete control so can satisfy your fetishistic automation desires.
Well despite what your huge brain has convinced itself of, there is a legitimate need for technologies such as Flash and PDF. Not everything is a tech spec or a tutorial on doing minor meaningless tweaks to your hardware so you can avoid human contact for one more weekend.
Sorry to get personal, but as someone who has to create documents that need to be printed, I can tell you unequivocably that PDF is the only viable option for printable documents that must be distributed to the general public. Furthermore, it's a reality that I may have to put 50 page documents on a website at the drop of a hat. Sure I could save as HTML from Word, but if you know anything about that you'd realize it's actually much worse than a PDF.
And while I'm on a rant, I should say every geek complaining about the uselessness of Flash needs to understand that they don't have the first fucking clue about design and why it's important. You think marketing is useless, you hate designers, and you probably have yourself convinced advertising doesn't affect you. The irony is that as you roll your eyes at the television you are being manipulated by the very people who you consider worthless. Just like PDF, there are certain things that can only be done with Flash. Just because you misunderstand and disregard those things does not make them invalid.
Well if you wanna jump on the Slashdot hating bandwagon, count me in :)
There are two points where Thurrot isn't particularly convincing. One is his endless comparision between Mac OS X and what Microsoft offers, that ranges from "It's some kind of imitation of Windows" to "They're the first to implement it but MS had certainly already thought about this feature before and their version will be better".
The most incredible was his claim that XP-SP2 is arguably a more major upgrade than Tiger. I'm not intimately familiar with XP, but as far as I know SP2 was mostly security features. I'm sure that makes a huge improvement in usability, bringing back your Win box from the brink of death, but Tiger offers actual features that apply to actually using the computer.
It's funny how many Mac haters there are out there. If you like Windows so much, why would you give Mac zealots the time of day? Instead these guys get so incensed that people like Macs even though they are barely on the marketshare radar. There's some kind of Mac-envy going on. Not sure if they're jealous of the computer itself, or just the satisfaction that Mac users enjoy, but it certainly is telling.
By including this type of thing in the list it threatens to swallow all of the real new features like Dashboard and Spotlight.
If you read the overview page or read any of the thousands of reviews around the net you'll get the major features. Of course, everyone here already knows them...
This is exactly the kind of detailed list that geeks should appreciate. All the Apple haters want to spin it as propaganda, but those of us seriously considering the upgrade might like to know these things. For instance, I don't consider OpenEXR support in Preview to be a major feature by any stretch, but it's something I'll use every day.
Now if they said 200+ new features and didn't list them then there would be a problem. Let the people judge for themselves I say.
If you've got more insight that makes the argument valid I'm listening - I have used it myself but felt I was just a scamming myself to get me to buy myself something expensive.
See my response above. If I only worked 40 hours a week then I probably would enjoy monkeying around with software solutions, but it's still questionable. For me it's not so much financial as it is physical... In my spare time I want to be doing something that puts my body in a non-sitting, non-staring, non-typing position. Ironically running network cable is suitable, but setting up software is not.
That doesn't mean you should insult those that are willing to learn with the 'more power to you' nonsense.
I thought it was a reasonable response to an AC who claims that such a device is useless. The implication was that someone would have to be an idiot to pay for something that you can set up yourself for free.
Comparing the time taken to how much is earned is such a daft argument its funny as this is obviously aimed at leisure time. I doubt many would take timeoff from their work for a few hours to set up something like this so they aren't losing anything in earnings.
You have a point... However, I work with computers 60 hours a week, and I have enough freelance work queued up that I would easily push it to 80 hours a week for the foreseeable future. Whether I'm taking time off work or not, time spent staring at screens has a physical cost that I choose to quantify with a monetary figure. I'm sure there are many intelligent people who work full time with computers that feel leisure time should be spent away from computers.
The amount of time spent to set something up obviously is a factor regardless. Think if the router cost $1000, then someone like me would have to look at lot more seriously at the $50+software route.
No one needs gigabit ports for gaming over DSL/Cable
But any LAN can benefit from gigabit... especially ones where people are downloading large files from the Internet. Chances are they may want to move them between computers.
packet prioritization can be done in software
Not that I've had any experience with this, but where does this software go? Seems like this might increase latency. And besides, if it takes more than 2 hours to set up then I haven't saved any money.
$120 is not an unreasonable amount to pay for this router... if hacking on your network is your idea of a good time then more power to you, but if you want the most efficient solution then take a look at your hourly wage and make the hard decision.
The 4th and 5th seasons seem to be a high point (I'll have to check on the 6th), but personally I think it's only the narrative quality that really went downhill hard. Things just got too outlandish. I don't think the jokes suffered all that much though. The current negative opinions of the Simpsons have more to do with nostalgia than true suckage. Yes the characters are all typecast, yes things have been rehashed, but on the whole the Simpsons is still in my top 3 shows.
I'm with you, but I think wireless Internet currently goes a little bit beyond basic services. 20 years from now I hope things are different, but the number of people with a wireless laptop are still probably in the minority, and hence taxing the general public wouldn't really be fair since you are benefitting those who could probably afford to pay for it themselves.
I guess for me the bottom line would really be the cost factor.
One thing that bothers me about the article is that it's all predicated on the assumption that Gnome developers' primary goal is to have everyone and their mother use Gnome. Even if that were true it only half makes sense to go and implement every feature users want... the fact is that small features do not make a big difference on what software people choose. and extra features may complicate a software product.
I agree that developers of general purpose software should listen to user feedback and combine that with usability testing and time-tested principles of UI design, but that's a no-brainer. Frankly if there's problems in this area, it goes much deeper than not listening to a few feature requests.
This situation just looks like open source groupies demanding that they get everything they want for free. Well I have news for people with this attitude: contributors to open source are still doing a public service even if they aren't your personal code-whore. If you want a feature in an open source product you have two guaranteed options of getting the feature: learn how to do it yourself or pay someone to do it. That's exactly two more options than you get with proprietary software where all you can do is request a feature and hope for the best.