They are not square - from what I can tell of the screenshots, they are slightly rounded and have a sort of drop shadow, exactly how XP looks. Which is not to say it is such a bad thing. Why do people think that a desktop has to have an "innovative" color/widget scheme? I don't stare at my widgets all day to appreciate their aesthetics, I USE them. So I want them to be as nice as they can look while still being as functional as possible. And if it looks like another popular desktop environment SO WHAT, it means I can recapture some investment in spatial/shape/color recognition. Why is that such a damned bad thing. I swear, if Microsoft started selling air everybody on Slashdot would immediately declare they are going to hold their breaths forever.
...is when you donate 10 bucks to an organization and then they proceed to blow that ten bucks on sending you keychains, notepads, organizers and calendars every few weeks for the indefinate future. I wish there was a check box like "take this $10 and be grateful and please limit your correspondence with me to ONE time per year of your choosing".
Agreed. I am wearing a pair of New Balances right now. If I recall correctly, the last pair of New Balances I had were made in America, but since then that has changed and I cannot find ANY reasonably priced mainstream shoe that isn't made in China or thereabouts (the cheapo shoes are also all made in China so even though they are cheaper I object on principal as well as quality, grounds). The next shoe I get will probably be some hardcore boot-type thing that I can wear all year around, for a LONG time, so that I don't have to make such a choice again. I'm not suggesting you injure yourself to save money, that's not a good deal. I don't object on cost grounds alone, I only object on value/quality (for instance I have a pair of Lands End boots - I could certainly have found cheaper, but they are high quality and made in America). I would shop at the Army/Navy store, but there isn't one around:/
True, there are worse crimes than buying Windex;) that was just a silly example. And I suppose it is also possible that some name brands supply some extra ability that I am not aware of in the generic products, yet do not change because the generic products are good enough for me. The point is not really price, it's about responsibility and choice. Are you responsible for your consumption decisions or is advertising, that is the question.
Yes, point taken, somebody else also mentioned it. FWIW I believe vinegar was the traditional agent used, but I am not expert on cleaning agents, just knowledgable enough to realize that it's All The Same Stuff.
"late-20's geeks need a little more. "Cool" isn't enough."
Who are you kidding? Of course "cool" is enough. How many of you hosers have trinkets and shirts from ThinkGeek, raise your hands.
/me raises my hand
Of course it is a lot more innocent when ThinkGeek is doing it because it is relatively small and harmless and the "geek" crowd is (hopefully, but not always) better at discerning genuineness (probably due to the vagaries of online communication). On the other hand, Hollywood and big advertisers are bartering and trading your (20-somethings) culture day in an day out, telling you what is cool, who to be friends with, what lingo to use, etc. This has always been the case with culture, but more and more, these artifacts and memes of culture are produced and manipulated by large third parties, not the consumers themselves. It will be a sad day when artifacts and memes of culture are generated, and transactions of culture are managed, entirely by third parties. "If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought." eh? Mass culture is fine as long as it is decentralized. Centralized mass culture is... I don't even know what it is but it can't be good. Our future ideas will probably be manufactured in advertising brainstorming sessions. It's information pollution.
That may well be true. When I look at my (non-name-brand) "Windex" it does indeed have extra stuff in it. So I grant that that extra stuff might make it less likely to streak. My original point is that a lot of products are simply common things we have culturally forgotten how to use, that have just been sold back to us with a brand name and a label. Personally I have never found the "streaking-on-windows" a big problem (to tell the truth, supreme clarity of my windows is not a high priority). I do buy generic "Windex" and I'm sure it works just as well as brand name Windex. Even if it doesn't I don't really give a damn, and I sure as hell am not going to buy whatever ridiculous type they come out with next week (there have to be like 6 different types of Windex).
Sure, it's a pain to use raw chemicals, but my point is that most (not all) brands of cleaning products are indistinguishable because they all rely on the same fundamental chemistry. If you really have doubts I invite you to compare "generic" windex and real Windex. There are also plenty of sites on how to make your own household cleaning products that I'm sure would have suggestions/recipies.
Artificial choice erodes consumer power. Psychologically speaking, put the same thing in 5 differently colored bottles and you will make MORE sales than if it were in just one type of bottle, because the consumer feels like they had some personal control in their decision making process when in fact it is just a sham. People don't buy products, they buy lifestyles.
Then I simply must be over-sensitive to ad-placement (god knows it's everywhere these days). As for beer, it is a luxury I indulge in once in a while, and as an admitted luxury I buy what I like best (it would be rather pointless to buy something specifically intended as a luxury that I didn't like), most often local or regional beer which is better for the local and regional economies anyway. Then again, I'm picky in my beers, and I don't like even the "best" brands of beer (which beer aficionados woulnd't place Heineken in the begin with, unless your talking about the import version...but then again, what do I know, I'm not a beer aficionado).
The only ads that don't extremely bother me (only mildly bother me because they are after all, ads), are those that have some innovative form of cinematography or ambiance (those vacuous Levi ads come to mind, as well as a few other whose products I have completely forgotten;), or those which are funny in a completely non-sequiter way (i.e. the commercial has nothing to do with the product, it is just there as amusement to get you to associate with the product - which in the end are the most devious, but I'd like to think I'm not that shallow).
As for other themes, here are a few:
* Ever popular man-gets-chick angle * Females should buy our product so they can bond with other females (you go girlfriend!) * Females should buy our product because it makes you better than other females * Females should buy our product because you are stereotypically soft and sensitive and our bottle is pink and you get furry slippers with it * Prey on men's sense of strength and power * Blatent appeal to greed and privelege, getting too numerous these days: buy a bigger car, not because you need to but just because you CAN; buy this car because wealth makes you so special that you should be able to walk around with a 10' clearance completely ambivalent to the world around you; you are a strong western man, and indigenous people will defer to you if you buy this car * Blatent appeal to insecurity: Testimonial: "I like product X because it makes me feel alright" "Choosy Moms choose our product and get a free certificate for being such a great mother that you can show your kids after your divorce" * Mix some politically-acceptable but unrelated social message into your product: "Indiginous peoples of who the fuck knows where have been using this product for centuries" <insert image of tai chi> I swear, Tai Chi can sell anything!
In all, I'm not all that bothered with the "Men are stupid" angle, because, well, men are stupid, and at least it's something we already know and is fairly innocent...appeal to fear and insecurity is much more insidious I think.
Then your experience varies GREATLY from mine. Brand names are a premium. Do you know who created the original "oreo" style cookie? It wasn't "Oreo" brand. It was Hydrox. They are the same damn thing. Oreo had better marketing.
The VAST majority of commodities almost by definition, have zero distinguishment in quality due to brand. You know what "Windex" is? It's fucking vinegar. But sure, consumers will buy the anti-bacteria this, and orange-fairy-spirits that, because consumers are stupid and like to feel comfortable that they are buying a socially acceptable product (there is even a product on the market that kills "germs in the air"! GERMS IN THE AIR OH MY FUCKING GOD). Do your Nikes make you a better athlete? Probably not. Is your Abercrombie and Fitch wardrobe any more functional than "generic" clothes you could buy at a store like Target or KMart? The trend is actually reverse - now you pay extra for PREWORN clothing! What a deal! Can you really notice any difference whatsoever between butter and milk brands? Are you sure what you think a product tastes like is really what it "should" taste like, or just what you've grown up to accept as correct? (e.g. How did they know that the cereal tastes correct in the Matrix?).
Feel free to scale your purchases based on quality. That is something to encourage - regardless of brand name. In my experience the case is the opposite - for the vast majority of products the brand name provides NOTHING more than better marketing and more social acceptance among consumer peers. Sure there are some premium brands that are better and get my money, but they are few and far between, and usually not worth the premium even IF they are better (value is the point).
Unfortunately less and less of America knows how to make a meal from commodity ingredients or make/use commodity cleaning agents (vinegar, laundry bar soap, borax, washing soda, etc.) so they will gladly buy a product marked up %500 if it has a pretty label and includes the fashion ingredient of the day ("orange oil" seems to be popular these days). As a corollary, more and more "generic" products are getting nominal "brand names" just to make the consumer feel more comfortable with them - KMart, Target, and many stores now "brand" their generic clothes with some random name even though they are more or less generic...but they know if there is a "brand" name on it people will be more inclined to buy it (oooh, it's not KMart clothes, it's Route 66 - I feel special now).
I caught a bit of Austin Powers 2 on TV the other day, and I swear they are cutting in new shots for product placement. In one of the early scenes where he is at a disco, he asks a woman to take her hand of his "heine", and she pulls out a "heineken", then it cuts away again. This shot is a total non-sequiter and doesn't fit the scene at all. I own the tape, and am going to replay it sometime to see if my mind is playing tricks on me, or if the shot is really not there on the tape.
My standard rule of thumb however is: if I notice advertising in any manner, make a mental note TO NEVER EVER BUY THE PRODUCT AT ALL IN THE FUTURE. This saves me a bit of time when shopping because I can easily narrow down my choices ("nope, I saw an annoying commercial of theirs; nope, they shoved an insulting product placement in a movie down my throat; ah, that leaves generic brand, check").
Unfortunately I hear that I am highly atypical of my age group.
Or, the public can say "Fuck you, you've been screwing us so long we don't CARE to help you do your job better and are completey OK with you going down the tubes entirely, because we can just connect directly with artists. To hell with your business plan."
Yeah, it's more like "Obstacle Course". That's a nice litany of alphabet soup, but what I care about as a consumer is what your goals are and maybe the smallest inkling that you have a plan that is based on some sort of principles (user experience, compatibility, new languages and technologies, etc.). As a user, and as so many fan boys have proclaimed, I don't use X directly, so I want X to work more closely with stuff I DO use like KDE/Gnome desktop environments, applications, etc. The X/Window-Manager/Widget-Toolkit/Font-Server/Audio- Server/Chiquita-Banana-Fruit-Basket distinctions are completely irrelevant to me.
So what you are saying is, that instead of using a tax to deter spam, just legally sanction shooting spam employees. Hmm...I might get on board with that.
Yeah, just the other day I wanted to file something, so I walked over to my file cabinet and wrote 'mkdir new_folder' and damned if it didn't work! I actually had to use some complicated counter-intuitive physical process like: 1) get new folder 2) label folder 3) place in cabinet. Completely bewildering.
Who cares about the Grandma test? Grandma will use whatever is put in front of her to play Solitaire and visit AreYouKnittingOrNot.com. The more stringent test is not the "Grandma Test" it's the "Power User" test. It's not whether the proverbial "newbie" can use the desktop environment/OS, because "newbies" come fresh and clean and will take whatever garbage is handed to them because they are clueless. Power Users on the other hand already are savvy, and have strict expectations and skills they have developed over the years that they will not give up. We can stop fooling ourselves with the "Grandma Test" right now. DOS would pass the Grandma Test (probably would be even BETTER: slap up a text menu to frequently used programs END OF STORY).
I read the whole article and they completely miss the point. They go on and on about all the apps that are available for Linux. WE KNOW. Nobody (at least not I!) is arguing that there isn't sufficient office application alternatives on Linux. It is condescending to the Power User to say that the only reason they don't use Linux is because of the apps. The real truth that the "community" has to suck down is that good UI is not made by committee, and "choice" is NOT always necessarily better. The greatest challenge the open source community needs to face when tackling the desktop problem is of FOCUS and COHESION. It is better to present a uniform and predictable but mediocre interface, than an alternately sucks-balls, and great interface, that is all over the map. Along with that are the "naughty pieces" of conceptual bleed-over/impedence mismatch that bleed through the interface. Things like how the file system is organized, why there are hundreds of config files all in a different format, why there are tons of apps, all with subsets of each others functionality that are not 100% complete. Why there are 10 different ways to do the same thing, 5 of which are obsolete, and 3 of which require you to run on the upgrade-libraries treadmill for a couple of days. Sure you can slap layer and layer of abstraction and UI over this, but clueful users will eventually start realizing these things, when they start to tear and crack.
Open Office is fucking great, but if you don't give them a cohesive desktop environment that meets expectations they will just run Open Office on Windows.
I have to give credit to KDE for making this sort of integration more seemless than other environments I've used. It feels more than others that you are using a "desktop environment" than just a motley crew of random dissident programs picked out of the ghetto and chained together.
Then again I had to wake up too fucking early this morning and I might be a tad bitter.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, "investment banking", what's that?
They are not square - from what I can tell of the screenshots, they are slightly rounded and have a sort of drop shadow, exactly how XP looks. Which is not to say it is such a bad thing. Why do people think that a desktop has to have an "innovative" color/widget scheme? I don't stare at my widgets all day to appreciate their aesthetics, I USE them. So I want them to be as nice as they can look while still being as functional as possible. And if it looks like another popular desktop environment SO WHAT, it means I can recapture some investment in spatial/shape/color recognition. Why is that such a damned bad thing. I swear, if Microsoft started selling air everybody on Slashdot would immediately declare they are going to hold their breaths forever.
That always reminds me of this.
Wow, great, I think I'll start becoming a Breatharian right now!
...is when you donate 10 bucks to an organization and then they proceed to blow that ten bucks on sending you keychains, notepads, organizers and calendars every few weeks for the indefinate future. I wish there was a check box like "take this $10 and be grateful and please limit your correspondence with me to ONE time per year of your choosing".
Agreed. I am wearing a pair of New Balances right now. If I recall correctly, the last pair of New Balances I had were made in America, but since then that has changed and I cannot find ANY reasonably priced mainstream shoe that isn't made in China or thereabouts (the cheapo shoes are also all made in China so even though they are cheaper I object on principal as well as quality, grounds). The next shoe I get will probably be some hardcore boot-type thing that I can wear all year around, for a LONG time, so that I don't have to make such a choice again. I'm not suggesting you injure yourself to save money, that's not a good deal. I don't object on cost grounds alone, I only object on value/quality (for instance I have a pair of Lands End boots - I could certainly have found cheaper, but they are high quality and made in America). I would shop at the Army/Navy store, but there isn't one around :/
True, there are worse crimes than buying Windex ;) that was just a silly example. And I suppose it is also possible that some name brands supply some extra ability that I am not aware of in the generic products, yet do not change because the generic products are good enough for me. The point is not really price, it's about responsibility and choice. Are you responsible for your consumption decisions or is advertising, that is the question.
Yes, point taken, somebody else also mentioned it. FWIW I believe vinegar was the traditional agent used, but I am not expert on cleaning agents, just knowledgable enough to realize that it's All The Same Stuff.
"late-20's geeks need a little more. "Cool" isn't enough."
/me raises my hand
Who are you kidding? Of course "cool" is enough. How many of you hosers have trinkets and shirts from ThinkGeek, raise your hands.
Of course it is a lot more innocent when ThinkGeek is doing it because it is relatively small and harmless and the "geek" crowd is (hopefully, but not always) better at discerning genuineness (probably due to the vagaries of online communication). On the other hand, Hollywood and big advertisers are bartering and trading your (20-somethings) culture day in an day out, telling you what is cool, who to be friends with, what lingo to use, etc. This has always been the case with culture, but more and more, these artifacts and memes of culture are produced and manipulated by large third parties, not the consumers themselves. It will be a sad day when artifacts and memes of culture are generated, and transactions of culture are managed, entirely by third parties. "If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought." eh? Mass culture is fine as long as it is decentralized. Centralized mass culture is... I don't even know what it is but it can't be good. Our future ideas will probably be manufactured in advertising brainstorming sessions. It's information pollution.
That may well be true. When I look at my (non-name-brand) "Windex" it does indeed have extra stuff in it. So I grant that that extra stuff might make it less likely to streak. My original point is that a lot of products are simply common things we have culturally forgotten how to use, that have just been sold back to us with a brand name and a label. Personally I have never found the "streaking-on-windows" a big problem (to tell the truth, supreme clarity of my windows is not a high priority). I do buy generic "Windex" and I'm sure it works just as well as brand name Windex. Even if it doesn't I don't really give a damn, and I sure as hell am not going to buy whatever ridiculous type they come out with next week (there have to be like 6 different types of Windex).
Sure, it's a pain to use raw chemicals, but my point is that most (not all) brands of cleaning products are indistinguishable because they all rely on the same fundamental chemistry. If you really have doubts I invite you to compare "generic" windex and real Windex. There are also plenty of sites on how to make your own household cleaning products that I'm sure would have suggestions/recipies.
Artificial choice erodes consumer power. Psychologically speaking, put the same thing in 5 differently colored bottles and you will make MORE sales than if it were in just one type of bottle, because the consumer feels like they had some personal control in their decision making process when in fact it is just a sham. People don't buy products, they buy lifestyles.
Then I simply must be over-sensitive to ad-placement (god knows it's everywhere these days). As for beer, it is a luxury I indulge in once in a while, and as an admitted luxury I buy what I like best (it would be rather pointless to buy something specifically intended as a luxury that I didn't like), most often local or regional beer which is better for the local and regional economies anyway. Then again, I'm picky in my beers, and I don't like even the "best" brands of beer (which beer aficionados woulnd't place Heineken in the begin with, unless your talking about the import version...but then again, what do I know, I'm not a beer aficionado).
;), or those which are funny in a completely non-sequiter way (i.e. the commercial has nothing to do with the product, it is just there as amusement to get you to associate with the product - which in the end are the most devious, but I'd like to think I'm not that shallow).
The only ads that don't extremely bother me (only mildly bother me because they are after all, ads), are those that have some innovative form of cinematography or ambiance (those vacuous Levi ads come to mind, as well as a few other whose products I have completely forgotten
As for other themes, here are a few:
* Ever popular man-gets-chick angle
* Females should buy our product so they can bond with other females (you go girlfriend!)
* Females should buy our product because it makes you better than other females
* Females should buy our product because you are stereotypically soft and sensitive and our bottle is pink and you get furry slippers with it
* Prey on men's sense of strength and power
* Blatent appeal to greed and privelege, getting too numerous these days: buy a bigger car, not because you need to but just because you CAN; buy this car because wealth makes you so special that you should be able to walk around with a 10' clearance completely ambivalent to the world around you; you are a strong western man, and indigenous people will defer to you if you buy this car
* Blatent appeal to insecurity: Testimonial: "I like product X because it makes me feel alright" "Choosy Moms choose our product and get a free certificate for being such a great mother that you can show your kids after your divorce"
* Mix some politically-acceptable but unrelated social message into your product: "Indiginous peoples of who the fuck knows where have been using this product for centuries" <insert image of tai chi> I swear, Tai Chi can sell anything!
In all, I'm not all that bothered with the "Men are stupid" angle, because, well, men are stupid, and at least it's something we already know and is fairly innocent...appeal to fear and insecurity is much more insidious I think.
Then your experience varies GREATLY from mine. Brand names are a premium. Do you know who created the original "oreo" style cookie? It wasn't "Oreo" brand. It was Hydrox. They are the same damn thing. Oreo had better marketing.
The VAST majority of commodities almost by definition, have zero distinguishment in quality due to brand. You know what "Windex" is? It's fucking vinegar. But sure, consumers will buy the anti-bacteria this, and orange-fairy-spirits that, because consumers are stupid and like to feel comfortable that they are buying a socially acceptable product (there is even a product on the market that kills "germs in the air"! GERMS IN THE AIR OH MY FUCKING GOD). Do your Nikes make you a better athlete? Probably not. Is your Abercrombie and Fitch wardrobe any more functional than "generic" clothes you could buy at a store like Target or KMart? The trend is actually reverse - now you pay extra for PREWORN clothing! What a deal! Can you really notice any difference whatsoever between butter and milk brands? Are you sure what you think a product tastes like is really what it "should" taste like, or just what you've grown up to accept as correct? (e.g. How did they know that the cereal tastes correct in the Matrix?).
Feel free to scale your purchases based on quality. That is something to encourage - regardless of brand name. In my experience the case is the opposite - for the vast majority of products the brand name provides NOTHING more than better marketing and more social acceptance among consumer peers. Sure there are some premium brands that are better and get my money, but they are few and far between, and usually not worth the premium even IF they are better (value is the point).
Unfortunately less and less of America knows how to make a meal from commodity ingredients or make/use commodity cleaning agents (vinegar, laundry bar soap, borax, washing soda, etc.) so they will gladly buy a product marked up %500 if it has a pretty label and includes the fashion ingredient of the day ("orange oil" seems to be popular these days). As a corollary, more and more "generic" products are getting nominal "brand names" just to make the consumer feel more comfortable with them - KMart, Target, and many stores now "brand" their generic clothes with some random name even though they are more or less generic...but they know if there is a "brand" name on it people will be more inclined to buy it (oooh, it's not KMart clothes, it's Route 66 - I feel special now).
I caught a bit of Austin Powers 2 on TV the other day, and I swear they are cutting in new shots for product placement. In one of the early scenes where he is at a disco, he asks a woman to take her hand of his "heine", and she pulls out a "heineken", then it cuts away again. This shot is a total non-sequiter and doesn't fit the scene at all. I own the tape, and am going to replay it sometime to see if my mind is playing tricks on me, or if the shot is really not there on the tape.
My standard rule of thumb however is: if I notice advertising in any manner, make a mental note TO NEVER EVER BUY THE PRODUCT AT ALL IN THE FUTURE. This saves me a bit of time when shopping because I can easily narrow down my choices ("nope, I saw an annoying commercial of theirs; nope, they shoved an insulting product placement in a movie down my throat; ah, that leaves generic brand, check").
Unfortunately I hear that I am highly atypical of my age group.
Or, the public can say "Fuck you, you've been screwing us so long we don't CARE to help you do your job better and are completey OK with you going down the tubes entirely, because we can just connect directly with artists. To hell with your business plan."
Um, GET is the HTTP command. GET-style parameters are placed on the URL. The one you want is probably either:
&mode=thread
or
&mode=nested
Yes, I believe there is a special pink form that has to be completed to get one of these "wall-less" cubicles...
Yeah, it's more like "Obstacle Course". That's a nice litany of alphabet soup, but what I care about as a consumer is what your goals are and maybe the smallest inkling that you have a plan that is based on some sort of principles (user experience, compatibility, new languages and technologies, etc.). As a user, and as so many fan boys have proclaimed, I don't use X directly, so I want X to work more closely with stuff I DO use like KDE/Gnome desktop environments, applications, etc. The X/Window-Manager/Widget-Toolkit/Font-Server/Audio- Server/Chiquita-Banana-Fruit-Basket distinctions are completely irrelevant to me.
So what you are saying is, that instead of using a tax to deter spam, just legally sanction shooting spam employees. Hmm...I might get on board with that.
Uh, all you have to do is add the appropriate GET param on to the URL to make it threaded.
"Hi, it looks like you are trying to cheat..."
Seems like there's always some guy in the back that yells "IT'S NOT A BUG, IT'S A FEATURE", too.
And you beat the shit out of him right? Because, seriously, that joke gets old.
Yeah, just the other day I wanted to file something, so I walked over to my file cabinet and wrote 'mkdir new_folder' and damned if it didn't work! I actually had to use some complicated counter-intuitive physical process like: 1) get new folder 2) label folder 3) place in cabinet. Completely bewildering.
Who cares about the Grandma test? Grandma will use whatever is put in front of her to play Solitaire and visit AreYouKnittingOrNot.com. The more stringent test is not the "Grandma Test" it's the "Power User" test. It's not whether the proverbial "newbie" can use the desktop environment/OS, because "newbies" come fresh and clean and will take whatever garbage is handed to them because they are clueless. Power Users on the other hand already are savvy, and have strict expectations and skills they have developed over the years that they will not give up. We can stop fooling ourselves with the "Grandma Test" right now. DOS would pass the Grandma Test (probably would be even BETTER: slap up a text menu to frequently used programs END OF STORY).
I read the whole article and they completely miss the point. They go on and on about all the apps that are available for Linux. WE KNOW. Nobody (at least not I!) is arguing that there isn't sufficient office application alternatives on Linux. It is condescending to the Power User to say that the only reason they don't use Linux is because of the apps. The real truth that the "community" has to suck down is that good UI is not made by committee, and "choice" is NOT always necessarily better. The greatest challenge the open source community needs to face when tackling the desktop problem is of FOCUS and COHESION. It is better to present a uniform and predictable but mediocre interface, than an alternately sucks-balls, and great interface, that is all over the map. Along with that are the "naughty pieces" of conceptual bleed-over/impedence mismatch that bleed through the interface. Things like how the file system is organized, why there are hundreds of config files all in a different format, why there are tons of apps, all with subsets of each others functionality that are not 100% complete. Why there are 10 different ways to do the same thing, 5 of which are obsolete, and 3 of which require you to run on the upgrade-libraries treadmill for a couple of days. Sure you can slap layer and layer of abstraction and UI over this, but clueful users will eventually start realizing these things, when they start to tear and crack.
Open Office is fucking great, but if you don't give them a cohesive desktop environment that meets expectations they will just run Open Office on Windows.
I have to give credit to KDE for making this sort of integration more seemless than other environments I've used. It feels more than others that you are using a "desktop environment" than just a motley crew of random dissident programs picked out of the ghetto and chained together.
Then again I had to wake up too fucking early this morning and I might be a tad bitter.
Don't worry, if you live in the Northeast USA and go down to Louisiana or Southern Texas you'll be pretty confused also.
Pretty attractive if the first best solution takes longer than the age of the universe to compute, I'd say.