"Most the games at the store that are made for Windows are (mostly) also made for Mac."
Bullshit. I recently went game shopping with my cousin for his Mac. We went to a Mac store in L.A.. A big Mac store. It barely had half an aisle of games, a lot of them 2 years old. Despite the fact that he had only a handful of games to begin with, he still left the store disappointed. This is in stark contrast to going somewhere like Best Buy and having 2 or 3 aisles of 6 months old or newer games. I think what you really mean to say is "a few of PC's most popular titles have made it to Mac. Occasionally they even happen within a year of the original release date."
"Besdies, computers are meant for work."
Wrong. Computers are meant to do whatever you want them to do. It would be a waste of money to spend $2k on a machine and not have any fun on it. (Conversely, it'd be a waste of money to spend 2K on it and do nothing but play games.)
"You want to play games than I'd suggest a PS2."
Correction: If you want to play a certain selection of genres, get a PS2. If you want to play FPS multiplayer or MMORPG, a PS2 isn't going to do you a lot of good.
Indisputably, PCs are far more general purpose machines than Macs. Some of this claim is based on technical specs, some of it is based on the way the market works, and some if it is based on the wide variety of people with varied needs. (including the desire to have a huge game library.)
Note to Mods: Just to be clear, this is not intended as an insult to Macs. Think about what I've actually stated before knee-jerk modding my comment as flamebait.
"I've had flying cars in my 20 year plan for about 50 years. I think TIME Magazine and National Geographic have as well. So, we'll see this Japanese stuff in 2057 is what they're saying, right?"
Uh. Heh. The problem with flying cars isn't so much the technology, it's the pilots. Higher class people can afford their own planes, but they're not exactly selling like hotcakes. Why? Because it takes a lot of hours to get your pilot's license. In order to make flying cars practical for mass-audiences (like they promise in PopSci), cars have to basically fly on their own. That sort of automation isn't all that practical today. GPS is helping, though...
Heh. Macs actually handle MB's 2 and 3 just fine. What does bug me about OSX is that Windows has some features that I've learned how to be productive with, and I can't find them in OSX. Right clicking and dragging a folder to bring up a context menu... argh I miss that. (In Windows, if you right click and drag, when you let go you're presented with the options of copying, moving, or creating a shortcut.)
I have a couple of disclaimers there: 1.) I'm not saying it can't be done. Actually, if it can be done, I'd love to be notified because I do use a Mac from time to time. 2.) What I'm saying can easily be simplified down to "it's unfamiliar".
I will say, though, that I know a guy who's gone from Mac to PC. Some of the concepts he's unaware of are surprising.
" How the heck are they going to do live-action robots transforming... lots of CGI?"
Precisely. From an fx point of view, it's more than plausible. Not only have commercials featured this, but some ameteurs have pulled it off as well.
I think you'd be surprised, though, at how many people are Transformers fans today. I recently visited an FX studio and was shocked at how many Transformers models they had posed around their cubes. (next to LotR figurines...) There are also quite a few people wearing autobot/decepticon insignias in various forms. (Hats, t-shirts, bumper stickers...)
I think a LOT of people would like to see a live-action transformers movie. Unfortunately, it would be VERY easy for the director to really fudge it up. The animated Transformers movie from the mid-eighties showed a glimpse of being 'more grown up'. (main characters dying, swearing, etc...) For the people I'm thinking of, it'd be great if they did something more matrue and sci-fi. They've got a great mythos to draw from, but those tards are quite likely going to try to appeal to kids. (Inspector Gadget, anyone? )
So, yeah, expect a lot of news about it followed by moaning and groaning.
"It just happens that Firefox doesn't have usability issues that interfere with _my_ habits. I like, for example, its handling of dialogs, explanation of actions and defaults."
To each is own. Me personally, I enjoy all the little things they did to make browsing easier. Magnifying glass, 'paste and go' in the address bar, the notes panel, the mail client that is brilliant for handling forum email, etc. Whenever I use FireFox, I end up looking for buttons that aren't there.
"When you talk about innovation... well, what innovation are you talking about? lots of free software (not just OSS software) is way ahead of what is available in proprietary software."
I have a feeling we'll never totally agree on this just on the grounds of different experience. FireFox comes to mind, it has a lot of features that popped up well after Opera produced them. The GIMP further comes to mind, it's quite painful to use if you're a Photoshop user. Linux is quite the technological triumph, but the UI always feels a generation or two behind Windows. Thunderbird's not bad, but it's not Outlook either. (Granted, I don't think Outlook was its goal so maybe that isn't fair. I have to say, though, I tossed it after getting tired of finding bugs.) (Note: I'm talking about Outlook 2000, not Outlook Express. It's like comparing Word to Wordpad.)
Again, I'm not sure we'll agree, so please don't feel too defensive. My experiences with OSS have almost always made me feel it is perpetually behind its proprietary counterparts. If you have a different experience, I can't really argue with it, nor would I try to.
"Would it be possible to make it "see" infared. Then it would translated it to false color? It would be like the first upgrade in Rouge angent."
Are you talking about detecting simple infra-red, or are you talking about seeing heat? I ask because you can see plain ol' infa-red with your digital camera. Wanna try a little experiment? Turn on your digital camera and point your remote on it, you'll see it blink. Sadly, you can't really see heat through your camera.
So here's my question: How does infra-red detect heat? I know there are snakes that can see heat, so I'm imagining that it can be detected passively...?
Actually, from the end-user point of view, Opera's probably the best one out there. Depends on how you view it, though.:)
"What I meant is that mozilla developers produce code of a much more measurable (for the general public) quality, and that fact for itself is important."
I'm not sure I agree with that, but I don't think I can strongly dispute it either. Frankly, I'm not impressed with OSS software. I mean, some of it I am. A lot of it, I'm not. My idea of quality is that features work. I'll give you an example: A few months ago my gf reformatted her computer. She installed FireFox. (or was it Mozilla? I can't remember.) She absent-mindedly tried to import her IE bookmarks. (Absent-minded because it was a fresh install. No bookmarks to import.) FireFox crashed. It crashed every single time she tried it until she created a bookmark from IE. Quality, to me, says they would have written that feature with the idea that it coudl be run without the required data. Error checking.
I have no doubt that in general OSS software has better development practices, but they really fall flat on their face when the programmers overlook UI features.
Again, I think we're measuring two differnet sides of the equation, so please don't feel like I'm trying to poo-poo your point into the ground.
"What you say about a company being for profit, and the fact that they should fix issues faster goeas against the fact that vulnerability fixes are available faster for software developed by free charge software."
Perhaps. In some cases that is true, in some cases it isn't. It depends on how critical the problem is. There are a lot of problems with FireFox/Mozilla, for example, that have been problems for years. Microsoft's not immune to this, but it really does depend on what the programmer is interested in working on.
As for as innovation goes, OSS has a lousy habit of being a cheap carbon copy of whatever it is they're imitating. (GIMP, uck.) For once, I'd like to see OSS develop in an innovative way.
And Open Source programmers come from the good programmers cabbage patch or something?
" there is even people who do read their code."
If they feel like it. Sadly, errors and half-assed functionality still get through.
"Mozilla feature list comes from user feedback + whatever the maintainers feel is sensible to add."
Whatever they feel like adding. (Or, more appropriately, copying from another app.)
"So, what I mean is that there can be other reasons than just personal like or dislike to talk about quality between MS software."
Maybe. However, Mozilla (nor Open Source, really) is perfect, and shit still happens. It doesn't matter if you're using something make by Microsoft or by the community, there are downsides to it. Frankly, since I'm so sick of both extremes of it, I've settled on Opera. They're for profit. That means they get problems fixed. That also means they stay innovative to compete. I have a better browsing experience as a result of it.
"As a sys admin, I love the prospect of redundancy, but are there any benefits to bringing this multiplicity to anything else from a consumers perspective? Or does it stop here?"
Well, the reason I find these cards interesting is I can buy one now. In a few months, when prices have dropped, I can buy the other and get ~2x performance.
YMMV etc, but it's intriguing to me. I'm sick of throwing away hardware.
Slashdot Mirror
"Everyone is a felon in the country. Convicted felons are a different story."
Stupid copyright law!
"The American electoral system is getting pretty lame. A whole lot of asses need to be soundly kicked and then tossed in jail forever."
Uh, yeah, because the USA has an exclusive on this area of politics.
"Most the games at the store that are made for Windows are (mostly) also made for Mac."
Bullshit. I recently went game shopping with my cousin for his Mac. We went to a Mac store in L.A.. A big Mac store. It barely had half an aisle of games, a lot of them 2 years old. Despite the fact that he had only a handful of games to begin with, he still left the store disappointed. This is in stark contrast to going somewhere like Best Buy and having 2 or 3 aisles of 6 months old or newer games. I think what you really mean to say is "a few of PC's most popular titles have made it to Mac. Occasionally they even happen within a year of the original release date."
"Besdies, computers are meant for work."
Wrong. Computers are meant to do whatever you want them to do. It would be a waste of money to spend $2k on a machine and not have any fun on it. (Conversely, it'd be a waste of money to spend 2K on it and do nothing but play games.)
"You want to play games than I'd suggest a PS2."
Correction: If you want to play a certain selection of genres, get a PS2. If you want to play FPS multiplayer or MMORPG, a PS2 isn't going to do you a lot of good.
Indisputably, PCs are far more general purpose machines than Macs. Some of this claim is based on technical specs, some of it is based on the way the market works, and some if it is based on the wide variety of people with varied needs. (including the desire to have a huge game library.)
Note to Mods: Just to be clear, this is not intended as an insult to Macs. Think about what I've actually stated before knee-jerk modding my comment as flamebait.
"I've had flying cars in my 20 year plan for about 50 years. I think TIME Magazine and National Geographic have as well. So, we'll see this Japanese stuff in 2057 is what they're saying, right?"
Uh. Heh. The problem with flying cars isn't so much the technology, it's the pilots. Higher class people can afford their own planes, but they're not exactly selling like hotcakes. Why? Because it takes a lot of hours to get your pilot's license. In order to make flying cars practical for mass-audiences (like they promise in PopSci), cars have to basically fly on their own. That sort of automation isn't all that practical today. GPS is helping, though...
"And for the extra mouse buttons."
Heh. Macs actually handle MB's 2 and 3 just fine. What does bug me about OSX is that Windows has some features that I've learned how to be productive with, and I can't find them in OSX. Right clicking and dragging a folder to bring up a context menu... argh I miss that. (In Windows, if you right click and drag, when you let go you're presented with the options of copying, moving, or creating a shortcut.)
I have a couple of disclaimers there: 1.) I'm not saying it can't be done. Actually, if it can be done, I'd love to be notified because I do use a Mac from time to time. 2.) What I'm saying can easily be simplified down to "it's unfamiliar".
I will say, though, that I know a guy who's gone from Mac to PC. Some of the concepts he's unaware of are surprising.
"Why aren't we all using Macs in the first place?"
Games.
"Hasn't this been asked a thousand times already"
No, RTFA. I'll give you a little clue: read the bit about A to B and A to C.
" How the heck are they going to do live-action robots transforming... lots of CGI?"
Precisely. From an fx point of view, it's more than plausible. Not only have commercials featured this, but some ameteurs have pulled it off as well.
I think you'd be surprised, though, at how many people are Transformers fans today. I recently visited an FX studio and was shocked at how many Transformers models they had posed around their cubes. (next to LotR figurines...) There are also quite a few people wearing autobot/decepticon insignias in various forms. (Hats, t-shirts, bumper stickers...)
I think a LOT of people would like to see a live-action transformers movie. Unfortunately, it would be VERY easy for the director to really fudge it up. The animated Transformers movie from the mid-eighties showed a glimpse of being 'more grown up'. (main characters dying, swearing, etc...) For the people I'm thinking of, it'd be great if they did something more matrue and sci-fi. They've got a great mythos to draw from, but those tards are quite likely going to try to appeal to kids. (Inspector Gadget, anyone? )
So, yeah, expect a lot of news about it followed by moaning and groaning.
"But we really want to know: does it run Linux?"
Run Linux? It can barely walk slowly!
"Completely useless with the pseudo-walking, but still, if I had money, I'd buy 12." ... it'll be the best prom EVER!!
"In case of a late-night Slashdotting, I've got a copy of the movie stashed temporarily: robo movie"
I triple-dog-dare-you to point a gun at it!
"Help!! the terminators are here"
Okay, that's it. If anybody asks me if I've seen John Connor, I'm pointing in your direction.
"At the time of this post, most of the sections of the site are unavailable with a 'coming soon' sign on them."
You can find more information on this topic here.
"Certainly I hope it doesn't run windows... we don't want the blind people to see only a blue screen all the time, right?"
A million Slashdotters called, they want their joke back.
"Will it have a feature where you can see through women's clothing?"
Man that'd be cool if they just fed the internet right to it!
"A human brain encased in a robot running linux?"
Ugh. Imagine being lactose intolerant because you're not running the latest kernel.
"It just happens that Firefox doesn't have usability issues that interfere with _my_ habits. I like, for example, its handling of dialogs, explanation of actions and defaults."
To each is own. Me personally, I enjoy all the little things they did to make browsing easier. Magnifying glass, 'paste and go' in the address bar, the notes panel, the mail client that is brilliant for handling forum email, etc. Whenever I use FireFox, I end up looking for buttons that aren't there.
"When you talk about innovation... well, what innovation are you talking about? lots of free software (not just OSS software) is way ahead of what is available in proprietary software."
I have a feeling we'll never totally agree on this just on the grounds of different experience. FireFox comes to mind, it has a lot of features that popped up well after Opera produced them. The GIMP further comes to mind, it's quite painful to use if you're a Photoshop user. Linux is quite the technological triumph, but the UI always feels a generation or two behind Windows. Thunderbird's not bad, but it's not Outlook either. (Granted, I don't think Outlook was its goal so maybe that isn't fair. I have to say, though, I tossed it after getting tired of finding bugs.) (Note: I'm talking about Outlook 2000, not Outlook Express. It's like comparing Word to Wordpad.)
Again, I'm not sure we'll agree, so please don't feel too defensive. My experiences with OSS have almost always made me feel it is perpetually behind its proprietary counterparts. If you have a different experience, I can't really argue with it, nor would I try to.
Cheers.
"Breast inlargements, designer babies, bionic implants....where is it all going?"
Better quality of life for future generations?
"Some related recent press releases about this kind of technology :"
Or, if you're lazy like me, you'll click on the links in a couple of days when the story re-runs.
"How do we expect Star Trek to hold any weight if we do an end run around the technology!"
You'd think a dude that wore a banana-clip would be able to strike up a conversation with the ladies.
"Would it be possible to make it "see" infared. Then it would translated it to false color? It would be like the first upgrade in Rouge angent."
Are you talking about detecting simple infra-red, or are you talking about seeing heat? I ask because you can see plain ol' infa-red with your digital camera. Wanna try a little experiment? Turn on your digital camera and point your remote on it, you'll see it blink. Sadly, you can't really see heat through your camera.
So here's my question: How does infra-red detect heat? I know there are snakes that can see heat, so I'm imagining that it can be detected passively...?
"Opera suxx : )"
:)
Actually, from the end-user point of view, Opera's probably the best one out there. Depends on how you view it, though.
"What I meant is that mozilla developers produce code of a much more measurable (for the general public) quality, and that fact for itself is important."
I'm not sure I agree with that, but I don't think I can strongly dispute it either. Frankly, I'm not impressed with OSS software. I mean, some of it I am. A lot of it, I'm not. My idea of quality is that features work. I'll give you an example: A few months ago my gf reformatted her computer. She installed FireFox. (or was it Mozilla? I can't remember.) She absent-mindedly tried to import her IE bookmarks. (Absent-minded because it was a fresh install. No bookmarks to import.) FireFox crashed. It crashed every single time she tried it until she created a bookmark from IE. Quality, to me, says they would have written that feature with the idea that it coudl be run without the required data. Error checking.
I have no doubt that in general OSS software has better development practices, but they really fall flat on their face when the programmers overlook UI features.
Again, I think we're measuring two differnet sides of the equation, so please don't feel like I'm trying to poo-poo your point into the ground.
"What you say about a company being for profit, and the fact that they should fix issues faster goeas against the fact that vulnerability fixes are available faster for software developed by free charge software."
Perhaps. In some cases that is true, in some cases it isn't. It depends on how critical the problem is. There are a lot of problems with FireFox/Mozilla, for example, that have been problems for years. Microsoft's not immune to this, but it really does depend on what the programmer is interested in working on.
As for as innovation goes, OSS has a lousy habit of being a cheap carbon copy of whatever it is they're imitating. (GIMP, uck.) For once, I'd like to see OSS develop in an innovative way.
"MS programmers come from who-knows-where,"
And Open Source programmers come from the good programmers cabbage patch or something?
" there is even people who do read their code."
If they feel like it. Sadly, errors and half-assed functionality still get through.
"Mozilla feature list comes from user feedback + whatever the maintainers feel is sensible to add."
Whatever they feel like adding. (Or, more appropriately, copying from another app.)
"So, what I mean is that there can be other reasons than just personal like or dislike to talk about quality between MS software."
Maybe. However, Mozilla (nor Open Source, really) is perfect, and shit still happens. It doesn't matter if you're using something make by Microsoft or by the community, there are downsides to it. Frankly, since I'm so sick of both extremes of it, I've settled on Opera. They're for profit. That means they get problems fixed. That also means they stay innovative to compete. I have a better browsing experience as a result of it.
"As a sys admin, I love the prospect of redundancy, but are there any benefits to bringing this multiplicity to anything else from a consumers perspective? Or does it stop here?"
Well, the reason I find these cards interesting is I can buy one now. In a few months, when prices have dropped, I can buy the other and get ~2x performance.
YMMV etc, but it's intriguing to me. I'm sick of throwing away hardware.
"No one walks away from 25 billion in profit a year to avoid being fined 1.4 billion."
That really depends on whether or not they'd make that 1.4 billion back in EUROPE. There's still the USA, etc.