"Feel free to disagree, but its not just hard-core geeks who panned this movie."
I'm not surprised. Very little of the movie took place inside the Matrix, and they spared us the philosophical bs. I guess people were really getting into those aspects of the movies, and Revolutions didn't provide.
I'm not a fan of the Matrix, but I found the third movie reasonably entertaining. I have a feeling that most of those who hated it were simply mad that their own expectations weren't fulfilled. Personally, I think if the third movie came out like the hard-core geeks wanted, it'd have been a 90 minute long kungfu wire scene with a big explosion in the end signalling the demise of the ever so evil machines.
"So what happens when people crack the game server and start modifying it?"
For some people, the game will crash, and they'll find themselves in the real world. Out of anger, they'll rise and try to bring the servers down, thus freeing everybody.
"It also would bring more power to the statement by the Merovingian that choice is an illusion between people with power and people without it. It would have been extremely dark and definitive but still would have left people scratching their heads."
That would have ruined the movie. The real hero of this movie wasnt Neo, it was the Oracle. She created both Neo and Agent Smith in order to put the Matrix in jeopardy and give both the Machines and the Humans a common problem to solve. Since the humans had the key ingredient (Neo) to fix it, they had a bargaining piece to demand peace with the machines. It was an interesting solution because it meant the Matrix could stay online, and those outside of it could live a peaceful existence, they wouldn't feel the need to try to destroy it.
I personally found this fascinating. I thought it was interesting that it was a machine/program who wanted piece and risked her own existence for it. It meant the machines weren't totally evil. By ending the movie by causing things to be like they planned, it'd destroy what made this ending exciting. And for what, proving the point that shit happens? It's easy to write movies that end on a bad note. It's hard to write movies where problems are solved in engaging ways.
I wrote that journal entry weell over a year ago. Since then I've recieved mod points and discovered that little problem heh. Discovered you have to totally log out, just hitting the AC button isn't enough. Saved my butt once, though. I went to mod somebody as insightful/infortmative, but rolled the wheel to scroll down and didn't realized it spun that box, so I accidently modded it as troll. Doh. So I posted in there to undo the moderation.
"What I would like to see is paired moderations: Insightful/Inane, Interesting/Boring, Informative/JUST-PLAIN-WRONG or even the obvious Funny/Unfunny."
Yeah I see what you mean. I'd like for the moderation system to be a little more involved byother usrs. Metamoderation's a good start, but it's used to weed out moderators. I have a feeling I've been booted out of the pool. I moderated somebody as troll once... I forget the specifics, they made an untrue/FUD comment about Windows and was modded up for it. In metamoderations, I was dinged as unfair once or twice. Since then, I've not recieved mod points. I don't know for sure if that's what got me but I haven't modded in a long time now. Meanwhile, that dude's post is still at +4.
Personally, I'd be happy to see each post with lists of how many times it was modded as fair or unfair. Heh I dunno.
There's problems any way you approach it, and I imagine that's the very reason it's a very limited system.
You asked about how Neo was able to control machines. An equally interesting question is how was Agent Smith able to replicate himself, and how was he able to take somebody out in the real world. If the Oracle did create Neo with the ability to manipulate machines, then it stands to reason she could also have created Smith with sort of the opposite ability.
By creating this situation, she put both man and machine into a position where they would have a common problem to solve, thus potentially sparking peace between them. She did allude to the Architect being arrogant and short-sighted. I have difficulty imagining that the Architect created Smith, especially considering the influence the Oracle still had on him after being infected by him.
I haven't ruled out the possibility that the Architect created Agent Smith, but I am more convinced that the Oracle did. She made references to not being able to see past a choice, and I think that's what she meant. She took a huge gamble to make that all work.
I kinda hope I'm right about that. It makes for a very interesting way to end the trilogy. Neo wasn't the hero, the Oracle was the whole time. A machine within the machines wanted to make the Matrix work by making it so the 'awake people' could enjoy life as well.
" they did not told us HOW EXACTLY can Neo stop machines in real world? They say something... "He is the one - so it's obvious" - but it is really not obvious."
It was obvious to me. He was created by the Oracle. She had the power to do it. She had the power to link him in to the machines. And, since he was born by the machines, it stands to reason he had the right implants needed to control them. (It even explains why his ability to mess with the machines was limited.)
He was, in essence, a tool of the Oracle. In some respects, you could describe him as artificial. If I'm right, it explains how he could be 'the one' without having an real understanding of the Matrix like Neo and Trinity and all the other 250,000 people did.
"The typewriter interface has been with us for over a century. We've become accustomed to it."
I agree with you that the typewriter interface isn't going anywhere, but I don't agree with your reasoning.
These days, computer fear is dying. Go back to the 80's. How many people had computers? How many have computers today? Look at how kids use computers today, do you really think that they're suddenly not going to want to use them 30 years from now?
So why do I feel that the typewriter interface isn't going away? That answer is very simple: Tactile interface. Not only can keys be found without having to have your eyes right on the keyboard, but that click a key makes is a subtletey you are constantly aware of.
I think virtual keyboards will show some success in the marketplace, there are times where they'd be incredibly useful. But they wont replace tactile keyboards. I'm not really a betting man, but I would be willing to bet that successful virtual keyboards will emit a beep when a button is hit.
I think Final Fantasy had it right. They depicted use of holograms for computer interfaces. They weren't flat Star Trek LCARSesque screens, they were three dimensional buttons along with turny knobby spherey things. The user could feel the objects as though they were solid. Aki Ross even had one of those strapped to her arm. Pretty slick.
"For people who genuinely enjoy their work, games are just going to be distraction.."
That's a harsh over-simplification. I'm a 3D artist. Creativity is a large portion of my job. I enjoy it, seriously enjoy it. Sometimes, though, I just plain need a break. I need something to distract me, as it were.
Sometimes, there are problems that are just tough to solve. Additionally, sometimes the first path I go down to solve those problems simply isn't the right way to go, and it takes a mental reboot to discover that. I've had it happen a number of times where I stop chewing on the problem and go play a game. Often in the middle of that game inspiration on a new direction hits me. That 15 minutes I spent playing a game wasn't 15 minutes spent away from the problem, even though I wasn't thinking directly about it.
I'm not the only one with behaviour like this. There are software developers where I work too. I've talked to them about it, and they've told me they've had similar results. One guy plays mindsweeper for a while when he's stuck. Before long, he's back on the road again.
Listening to music while working is a related topic. I've had times where the music helped, particularly if I was doing something on auto-pilot. (You know what I mean by that, right? Ya start working, and your hands know what to do without needing to really concentrate on what you're doing, kinda like driving home everyday.) Sometimes the music is inspirational and gets me motivated to work fast. And, sometimes, there are situations where the music is a nasty distraction. I'm trying to solve a problem, but the song is kicking me out of concentration mode.
So, I hope what I said here answers this particular comment of yours:
"Besides they havent really mentioned how productivity was measured, the fact that people 'feel better' about their job, although important, doesnt corelate with productivity/bottom line stuff."
My boss has recognized this. She has come into my office before and seen me playing the game... oh.. I can't remember the name of it, it's the one where you cause a car to crash and make a dummy go flying out of it. Argh it was just on Slashdot a month or two ago. We had a discussion about it, and she explained to me her thoughts on it. She told me that she was okay with up to 20% of the day spent reading the web and doing little goofy things like that. It's always good to have your workers staying on top of what's happening, even if it's not directly work related. And it was also okay to do a mental reboot once in a while. The condition of that was that you were expected to avoid creating problems with coworkers and other managers. (We do have PHBs that, if they saw Solitaire on your screen at 4pm, that you had been playing it since 8 am.) Case in point, I had a coworker that threw a hissy fit because he saw me using Lightwave and thought it was Quake. Making sure your coworkers aren't bothered by you is a higher priority.
There are times and there are people where being allowed to occasionally play a game at work would indeed be a profitless distraction. However, don't discount the possibility that a great deal of people out there do benefit from it.
"Many original Playstation failures were due to people putting it directly on carpet."
Perhaps, but that wasn't the only problem. The CD motor lost its calibration over time. Eventually it'd be slower than the game would expect, causing FMV etc to skip. There's a little screw inside there that can be turned, thus changing the speed of the CD-ROM. Turn it the right way and it speeds up again, system works beautifully.
Not saying you're wrong, but I am saying that wasn't the only problem.
"I don't understand this last sentence. You worry about being overly dependent on your configuration files for configuration? Huh? That's what they're there for."
Ugh I don't even remember what I was thinking when I wrote that. I did not get a lot of sleep last night, and as a result I've been writing vague sentences like that. I think what I meant was being overly dependent on editing the conf files manually, as opposed to having a nice clear UI for them. Let's compare Apache and IIS for a sec. With Apache, most configuration stuff means editing the conf file, hoping you get the syntax right, and restarting the service. In IIS, you get a tabbed UI with scroll bars, switches, and other fancy little widgets that tell me visually waht it's set to do. (Plus I can't, in theory, mess it up.) Then the UI's nice enough to go restart the service for me when the changes are applied.
For the life of me, though, I don't remember what that had to do with the registry. Not sure if it even did. Just to be clear, though, nothing I said there is dependent on having the registry.
" many VB apps I've downloaded as shareware or whatever tend to be worse than C/C++ based apps in terms of complexity of the UI and non-standardness of behavior. But then again, the Windows development community does not emphasize UI design and usability as much as it probably should."
I've had problems with shareware VB apps too, no denying that. I think the reason for that has to do with the users of it. Arguably, one has to be more disciplined to use C than VB. That'd explain your observation. Me personally, I'd be fairly unwilling to release a VB into the wild for the reason you just mentioned. I'm not strong enough yet to feel like I've debugged it.
"Anyway, that's my long-winded two cents."
I found it interesting, thank you.:) Just hope my fatigue hasn't made my post too hard to read.
I bookmarked your post here. One day in the not too distant future I'm gonna pick up Linux again and try it. When that happens, I'm gonona want to explore the apps you just mentioned for making UIs.
"Hrmm. If you only sold 4, I can see some problems making this sort've judgment..."
My post was written really badly.
Here's what I originally said:
" I'll never forget the first christmas those things were out. 1 in 4 of them were returned within 90 days. 1 in 4. We sold 4, one came back."
Given the chance to fix it, I'd say: " I'll never forget the first christmas those things were out. 1 of every 4 of them were returned within 90 days. 1 out of every 4. If we sold 4 in one day, we knew one wouldcame back."
I had the right idea in mind but I was in such a hurry I didn't realize the implication of what I had originally said. Sorry about that.
What it boiled down to was our store was shipped 100 PS's, almost 25 of them would end up in the back ready to be shipped back to HQ. They were defective. We offered a one year warranty on the machines, most people bought it, so we had a pretty good sampling of how many were defective.
It wasn't just our store, either. Whenever I visited other stores, I noticed there was always a stack of PS's in the corner waiting to go back.
Frankly, it was just not worth owning a PS without the warranty. It was to the point that I was more comfortable with the reconditioned units than the brand new ones. Those almost never came back as defective. Guess having a second chance to look it over was worthwhile.
"They have a high return rate, because they have a high sale rate."
If the original Playstation is any indication, that is simply not true in this case. I'll never forget the first christmas those things were out. 1 in 4 of them were returned within 90 days. 1 in 4. We sold 4, one came back. That's not "well it's only a problem because alot were sold", that's a 25% defect rate. Sony sold a crappy product, and lots of kids had disappointing christmases. (It is for this reason I have made a personal decision to not own a PS2.)
What I said has absolutely no bearing on what's happening with the PS2 here. However, I would caution you against simplifying it down to just high sales. Something is seriously defective if normal everyday use results in the same problem for many people.
Frankly, I'm shocked that people are so forgiving about it. Depending on when you hop into the cycle, you could lose anywhere from $150 to $300.
"Conf files, for instance -- arcane though they may often be to the uninitiated -- are easy to distribute, deploy, edit, debug, and so forth, as long as one's put forth the initial effort to gain the prerequisite knowledge."
Actually I prefer Conf files to the registry. The registry is cool in SOME respects, but it also has weaknesses that make it a vulnerability. Windows rot comes to mind. The older your install of Windows gets, the slower it gets. It's hard to imagine it working that way with.Conf files.
My biggest beef with conf files isn't the files themselves, it's that the apps I've played with don't come with a handy little UI to help you make choices. Seems like that'd be the polite thing to do. Wouldn't it be slick if programmers were in the habit of providing a little UI (Graphic or otherwise) to muck with the.conf file, then offer to restart a service if necessary?
In any case, I prefer conf files to the registry. I just worry about being overly dependent on them for configuration.
"Of course, what we all want is a win/win -- an interface that lets end-users click together every piece of their system's configuration easily, and simultaniously gives the seasoned guru all the benefits of more traditional configuration interfaces."
From what I've heard Mac OSX is on the right track there. I know I'm curious about it, but I don't want to move away from AMD/Intel.
"I'm not about to put a GUI configuration interface into the box; I'm too busy getting all the functionality to work right, the bugs out, and then going on to my next project)."
I think this pattern is fairly consistent in the OSS community. I've used a few apps that had really really bizarre interfaces. They tend to work, but man it takes some deciphering. I can understand the UI is a problem, but it'd be nice to see more guys out there just taking apps and creating new interfaces for them. I've seen that happen in the Windows world. Somebody wrote a command line tool for talking to a Replay and pulling shows off it. Somebody else took Visual Basic and wrote a UI for that app. Damn cool.
A little off topic, but I wish Slashdot had a higher opinion of VB. I don't think it's commonly understood just how easy it is to write little apps like I just described. I hope something like it appears on Linux if it hasn't already. Imagine a simple scriping evironment with a visual interface and not having to worry about variable types or semi colons.
Slashdot Mirror
"Feel free to disagree, but its not just hard-core geeks who panned this movie."
I'm not surprised. Very little of the movie took place inside the Matrix, and they spared us the philosophical bs. I guess people were really getting into those aspects of the movies, and Revolutions didn't provide.
I'm not a fan of the Matrix, but I found the third movie reasonably entertaining. I have a feeling that most of those who hated it were simply mad that their own expectations weren't fulfilled. Personally, I think if the third movie came out like the hard-core geeks wanted, it'd have been a 90 minute long kungfu wire scene with a big explosion in the end signalling the demise of the ever so evil machines.
yawn.
"So what happens when people crack the game server and start modifying it?"
For some people, the game will crash, and they'll find themselves in the real world. Out of anger, they'll rise and try to bring the servers down, thus freeing everybody.
"Hey, thanks for hinting to possible endings to the movie right on the damn front page."
Nothing was given away. Go see the damn movie.
"No definitions found for "incentivised
Maybe you wanted "motivated"?"
$ dict ass
"It also would bring more power to the statement by the Merovingian that choice is an illusion between people with power and people without it. It would have been extremely dark and definitive but still would have left people scratching their heads."
That would have ruined the movie. The real hero of this movie wasnt Neo, it was the Oracle. She created both Neo and Agent Smith in order to put the Matrix in jeopardy and give both the Machines and the Humans a common problem to solve. Since the humans had the key ingredient (Neo) to fix it, they had a bargaining piece to demand peace with the machines. It was an interesting solution because it meant the Matrix could stay online, and those outside of it could live a peaceful existence, they wouldn't feel the need to try to destroy it.
I personally found this fascinating. I thought it was interesting that it was a machine/program who wanted piece and risked her own existence for it. It meant the machines weren't totally evil. By ending the movie by causing things to be like they planned, it'd destroy what made this ending exciting. And for what, proving the point that shit happens? It's easy to write movies that end on a bad note. It's hard to write movies where problems are solved in engaging ways.
Hi Vlad,
... I forget the specifics, they made an untrue/FUD comment about Windows and was modded up for it. In metamoderations, I was dinged as unfair once or twice. Since then, I've not recieved mod points. I don't know for sure if that's what got me but I haven't modded in a long time now. Meanwhile, that dude's post is still at +4.
I wrote that journal entry weell over a year ago. Since then I've recieved mod points and discovered that little problem heh. Discovered you have to totally log out, just hitting the AC button isn't enough. Saved my butt once, though. I went to mod somebody as insightful/infortmative, but rolled the wheel to scroll down and didn't realized it spun that box, so I accidently modded it as troll. Doh. So I posted in there to undo the moderation.
"What I would like to see is paired moderations: Insightful/Inane, Interesting/Boring, Informative/JUST-PLAIN-WRONG or even the obvious Funny/Unfunny."
Yeah I see what you mean. I'd like for the moderation system to be a little more involved byother usrs. Metamoderation's a good start, but it's used to weed out moderators. I have a feeling I've been booted out of the pool. I moderated somebody as troll once
Personally, I'd be happy to see each post with lists of how many times it was modded as fair or unfair. Heh I dunno.
There's problems any way you approach it, and I imagine that's the very reason it's a very limited system.
Don't stop there. Viruses don't just appear for the fun of it.
You asked about how Neo was able to control machines. An equally interesting question is how was Agent Smith able to replicate himself, and how was he able to take somebody out in the real world. If the Oracle did create Neo with the ability to manipulate machines, then it stands to reason she could also have created Smith with sort of the opposite ability.
By creating this situation, she put both man and machine into a position where they would have a common problem to solve, thus potentially sparking peace between them. She did allude to the Architect being arrogant and short-sighted. I have difficulty imagining that the Architect created Smith, especially considering the influence the Oracle still had on him after being infected by him.
I haven't ruled out the possibility that the Architect created Agent Smith, but I am more convinced that the Oracle did. She made references to not being able to see past a choice, and I think that's what she meant. She took a huge gamble to make that all work.
I kinda hope I'm right about that. It makes for a very interesting way to end the trilogy. Neo wasn't the hero, the Oracle was the whole time. A machine within the machines wanted to make the Matrix work by making it so the 'awake people' could enjoy life as well.
Have a good weekend.
" they did not told us HOW EXACTLY can Neo stop machines in real world? They say something... "He is the one - so it's obvious" - but it is really not obvious."
It was obvious to me. He was created by the Oracle. She had the power to do it. She had the power to link him in to the machines. And, since he was born by the machines, it stands to reason he had the right implants needed to control them. (It even explains why his ability to mess with the machines was limited.)
He was, in essence, a tool of the Oracle. In some respects, you could describe him as artificial. If I'm right, it explains how he could be 'the one' without having an real understanding of the Matrix like Neo and Trinity and all the other 250,000 people did.
"The typewriter interface has been with us for over a century. We've become accustomed to it."
I agree with you that the typewriter interface isn't going anywhere, but I don't agree with your reasoning.
These days, computer fear is dying. Go back to the 80's. How many people had computers? How many have computers today? Look at how kids use computers today, do you really think that they're suddenly not going to want to use them 30 years from now?
So why do I feel that the typewriter interface isn't going away? That answer is very simple: Tactile interface. Not only can keys be found without having to have your eyes right on the keyboard, but that click a key makes is a subtletey you are constantly aware of.
I think virtual keyboards will show some success in the marketplace, there are times where they'd be incredibly useful. But they wont replace tactile keyboards. I'm not really a betting man, but I would be willing to bet that successful virtual keyboards will emit a beep when a button is hit.
I think Final Fantasy had it right. They depicted use of holograms for computer interfaces. They weren't flat Star Trek LCARSesque screens, they were three dimensional buttons along with turny knobby spherey things. The user could feel the objects as though they were solid. Aki Ross even had one of those strapped to her arm. Pretty slick.
"For people who genuinely enjoy their work, games are just going to be distraction.."
... oh.. I can't remember the name of it, it's the one where you cause a car to crash and make a dummy go flying out of it. Argh it was just on Slashdot a month or two ago. We had a discussion about it, and she explained to me her thoughts on it. She told me that she was okay with up to 20% of the day spent reading the web and doing little goofy things like that. It's always good to have your workers staying on top of what's happening, even if it's not directly work related. And it was also okay to do a mental reboot once in a while. The condition of that was that you were expected to avoid creating problems with coworkers and other managers. (We do have PHBs that, if they saw Solitaire on your screen at 4pm, that you had been playing it since 8 am.) Case in point, I had a coworker that threw a hissy fit because he saw me using Lightwave and thought it was Quake. Making sure your coworkers aren't bothered by you is a higher priority.
That's a harsh over-simplification. I'm a 3D artist. Creativity is a large portion of my job. I enjoy it, seriously enjoy it. Sometimes, though, I just plain need a break. I need something to distract me, as it were.
Sometimes, there are problems that are just tough to solve. Additionally, sometimes the first path I go down to solve those problems simply isn't the right way to go, and it takes a mental reboot to discover that. I've had it happen a number of times where I stop chewing on the problem and go play a game. Often in the middle of that game inspiration on a new direction hits me. That 15 minutes I spent playing a game wasn't 15 minutes spent away from the problem, even though I wasn't thinking directly about it.
I'm not the only one with behaviour like this. There are software developers where I work too. I've talked to them about it, and they've told me they've had similar results. One guy plays mindsweeper for a while when he's stuck. Before long, he's back on the road again.
Listening to music while working is a related topic. I've had times where the music helped, particularly if I was doing something on auto-pilot. (You know what I mean by that, right? Ya start working, and your hands know what to do without needing to really concentrate on what you're doing, kinda like driving home everyday.) Sometimes the music is inspirational and gets me motivated to work fast. And, sometimes, there are situations where the music is a nasty distraction. I'm trying to solve a problem, but the song is kicking me out of concentration mode.
So, I hope what I said here answers this particular comment of yours:
"Besides they havent really mentioned how productivity was measured, the fact that people 'feel better' about their job, although important, doesnt corelate with productivity/bottom line stuff."
My boss has recognized this. She has come into my office before and seen me playing the game
There are times and there are people where being allowed to occasionally play a game at work would indeed be a profitless distraction. However, don't discount the possibility that a great deal of people out there do benefit from it.
"Many original Playstation failures were due to people putting it directly on carpet."
Perhaps, but that wasn't the only problem. The CD motor lost its calibration over time. Eventually it'd be slower than the game would expect, causing FMV etc to skip. There's a little screw inside there that can be turned, thus changing the speed of the CD-ROM. Turn it the right way and it speeds up again, system works beautifully.
Not saying you're wrong, but I am saying that wasn't the only problem.
"I don't understand this last sentence. You worry about being overly dependent on your configuration files for configuration? Huh? That's what they're there for."
:) Just hope my fatigue hasn't made my post too hard to read.
Ugh I don't even remember what I was thinking when I wrote that. I did not get a lot of sleep last night, and as a result I've been writing vague sentences like that. I think what I meant was being overly dependent on editing the conf files manually, as opposed to having a nice clear UI for them. Let's compare Apache and IIS for a sec. With Apache, most configuration stuff means editing the conf file, hoping you get the syntax right, and restarting the service. In IIS, you get a tabbed UI with scroll bars, switches, and other fancy little widgets that tell me visually waht it's set to do. (Plus I can't, in theory, mess it up.) Then the UI's nice enough to go restart the service for me when the changes are applied.
For the life of me, though, I don't remember what that had to do with the registry. Not sure if it even did. Just to be clear, though, nothing I said there is dependent on having the registry.
" many VB apps I've downloaded as shareware or whatever tend to be worse than C/C++ based apps in terms of complexity of the UI and non-standardness of behavior. But then again, the Windows development community does not emphasize UI design and usability as much as it probably should."
I've had problems with shareware VB apps too, no denying that. I think the reason for that has to do with the users of it. Arguably, one has to be more disciplined to use C than VB. That'd explain your observation. Me personally, I'd be fairly unwilling to release a VB into the wild for the reason you just mentioned. I'm not strong enough yet to feel like I've debugged it.
"Anyway, that's my long-winded two cents."
I found it interesting, thank you.
Thanks for the info. :)
I bookmarked your post here. One day in the not too distant future I'm gonna pick up Linux again and try it. When that happens, I'm gonona want to explore the apps you just mentioned for making UIs.
Thanks dude!
Cheers.
"Microsoft-funded initiative from SCO?"
Let us know how your interview with Scully goes.
"There is no 'I'-word in COMPUTER GRAPHICS or COMPUTER GRAPHICS ANIMATION!"
Can somebody pls explain to me how this was modded as +5? Since when is the usage of acronymns controversial?
"Hrmm. If you only sold 4, I can see some problems making this sort've judgment..."
My post was written really badly.
Here's what I originally said:
" I'll never forget the first christmas those things were out. 1 in 4 of them were returned within 90 days. 1 in 4. We sold 4, one came back."
Given the chance to fix it, I'd say: " I'll never forget the first christmas those things were out. 1 of every 4 of them were returned within 90 days. 1 out of every 4. If we sold 4 in one day, we knew one wouldcame back."
I had the right idea in mind but I was in such a hurry I didn't realize the implication of what I had originally said. Sorry about that.
What it boiled down to was our store was shipped 100 PS's, almost 25 of them would end up in the back ready to be shipped back to HQ. They were defective. We offered a one year warranty on the machines, most people bought it, so we had a pretty good sampling of how many were defective.
It wasn't just our store, either. Whenever I visited other stores, I noticed there was always a stack of PS's in the corner waiting to go back.
Frankly, it was just not worth owning a PS without the warranty. It was to the point that I was more comfortable with the reconditioned units than the brand new ones. Those almost never came back as defective. Guess having a second chance to look it over was worthwhile.
"Sony does have a sketchy history with consoles though."
After having a peek inside both the PS2 and the GameCube, it's not so surprising the PS2 occasionally has problems.
"They have a high return rate, because they have a high sale rate."
If the original Playstation is any indication, that is simply not true in this case. I'll never forget the first christmas those things were out. 1 in 4 of them were returned within 90 days. 1 in 4. We sold 4, one came back. That's not "well it's only a problem because alot were sold", that's a 25% defect rate. Sony sold a crappy product, and lots of kids had disappointing christmases. (It is for this reason I have made a personal decision to not own a PS2.)
What I said has absolutely no bearing on what's happening with the PS2 here. However, I would caution you against simplifying it down to just high sales. Something is seriously defective if normal everyday use results in the same problem for many people.
Frankly, I'm shocked that people are so forgiving about it. Depending on when you hop into the cycle, you could lose anywhere from $150 to $300.
"Conf files, for instance -- arcane though they may often be to the uninitiated -- are easy to distribute, deploy, edit, debug, and so forth, as long as one's put forth the initial effort to gain the prerequisite knowledge."
.Conf files.
.conf file, then offer to restart a service if necessary?
Actually I prefer Conf files to the registry. The registry is cool in SOME respects, but it also has weaknesses that make it a vulnerability. Windows rot comes to mind. The older your install of Windows gets, the slower it gets. It's hard to imagine it working that way with
My biggest beef with conf files isn't the files themselves, it's that the apps I've played with don't come with a handy little UI to help you make choices. Seems like that'd be the polite thing to do. Wouldn't it be slick if programmers were in the habit of providing a little UI (Graphic or otherwise) to muck with the
In any case, I prefer conf files to the registry. I just worry about being overly dependent on them for configuration.
"Of course, what we all want is a win/win -- an interface that lets end-users click together every piece of their system's configuration easily, and simultaniously gives the seasoned guru all the benefits of more traditional configuration interfaces."
From what I've heard Mac OSX is on the right track there. I know I'm curious about it, but I don't want to move away from AMD/Intel.
"I'm not about to put a GUI configuration interface into the box; I'm too busy getting all the functionality to work right, the bugs out, and then going on to my next project)."
I think this pattern is fairly consistent in the OSS community. I've used a few apps that had really really bizarre interfaces. They tend to work, but man it takes some deciphering. I can understand the UI is a problem, but it'd be nice to see more guys out there just taking apps and creating new interfaces for them. I've seen that happen in the Windows world. Somebody wrote a command line tool for talking to a Replay and pulling shows off it. Somebody else took Visual Basic and wrote a UI for that app. Damn cool.
A little off topic, but I wish Slashdot had a higher opinion of VB. I don't think it's commonly understood just how easy it is to write little apps like I just described. I hope something like it appears on Linux if it hasn't already. Imagine a simple scriping evironment with a visual interface and not having to worry about variable types or semi colons.
Cheers and have a good weekend
"WMA is crap ... DRM and such sucks ..."
pee pee! Ca ca!! heehehehehehe
I got news for ya: ppl read $2.49 as $2.50.
"The N-Gage is just everyone's favourite whipping boy."
So everybody was just making up the $300 price tag and the need to remove the battery to insert new games?
"Could we have a SCO post please?"
Yeah, let's drive around the block a few more times.
I agree with you, I don't think it's cruel.