No, it features no nerds. It features nothing but some animated coloured-pencil-type line art. It gives absolutely no clear indication that it's talking about something computer-related.
I will congratulate Linux and the winning contestant on achieving what Apple did and Microsoft tried to. And that is simplify Linux down to an idea easy to grasp with no actual numbers or ideas surrounding it. Like the Mac ads, it's just "cool" to be a Mac. I like that they imply that to be Linux is to enjoy freedom but it's no more convincing to me than the Mac ads. I'm a Linux fanatic but I'm realistic.
But, see, there's a big, big problem with the winning ad.
Unless you already know what Linux is, which many, many people do not, it is utterly meaningless.
I know it has become popular to make ads that don't really explain what they're for in recent times, but that only works if the brand they're advertising is already recognizable, at least among their target demographic. But The Great Unwashed Masses don't even know what Linux is yet. Knowing that "it's freedom" tells them nothing, and the cute little animated graphics don't give any indication that it's even something to do with a computer—yeah, the graphics themselves are sometimes clearly computer-related, but these days, what isn't?
When Linux is already as recognizable a name as Mac, iPod, Coke, or Nike, and everyone knows that "it's just another alternative to Mac or Windows," then we can make ads like this to push the "freedom" aspect of it.
But until then, this ad doesn't tell a non-geek anything...except that Linux is pretentious.
Nevertheless, I maintain that you can not maintain both faith and knowledge of evolution at the same time, without some hush-hush here or there.
Again, you're ridiculously overgeneralizing.
You can not maintain faith in a literal interpretation of the Bible and knowledge of evolution at the same time. I don't disagree with that, and don't attempt to claim that anyone who believes that every word of the Bible is true is anything other than an idiot. Generalizing from that to all faith is the bigotry that I object to. What about, for instance, Deism—faith in the "watchmaker God", who made everything and set up the universal constants, then stood back to watch it unfold? Yes, you're correct that there's no discernible distinction between that kind of God and no God, but I challenge you to credibly claim that there is any conflict between that kind of faith and a belief in evolution.
Or, heck, faith in Buddhism, which does not posit any God, but rather an afterlife and a desirable state of the soul. No, it's not testable, and no, it's not science—but why should it be vilified for the sins of a small (if vocal) group of stupid fundamentalist Christians?
if you want to cling to both at the same time, you can only do that if you modify your religion so much that it doesn't match any of the mainstream versions anymore.
The theory of evolution is fundamentally hostile to faith because it explains one of the great mysteries that form a core part of pretty much every religion
Um, no.
The theory of evolution is fundamentally hostile to fundamentalist dogma.
To be a Christian, one is not required to believe that every word of the Bible is true. There are a hell of a lot of Christians who know without a doubt that most of it is either totally made up or allegorical. The ones who don't are, for the most part, stupid, raised to be stupid, and raising their children to be stupid.
I know you're an aggressive atheist who believes that all religion is nothing but delusion, but I would like to think that you're not as closed-minded as those you deride. Please don't make the mistake of believing that the extremist nutjobs of Christianity represent our entire faith. That's just as bigoted and prejudiced as believing that all Muslims are suicide bombers just waiting for the right target.
I think the mods' problem with you is your erroneous extrapolation of a couple of (admittedly important) problems with particular unions to the conclusion that all unions are evil and must be destroyed wherever they are found.
Now, the matter of hundreds of different HTML rendering engines would be just as magically turned into a non-problem if only we had a standard that describes this "HTML" thing, that specifies just which tags exist, what they mean and how they should be rendered. If only we had such a... oh, wait...
Actually, to be pedantic, I'm pretty sure the HTML standards have explicitly avoided defining how the various elements should be rendered, leaving that up to the user agents to decide.
If you actually paid attention, you'd be able to tell that that wasn't the Safari 4 Beta, but just an update to Safari 3.
As several others have noted in this thread (whom you apparently ignored), you have to deliberately go out and download the Safari 4 Beta from Apple's website.
Most all experts are peddling a pet theory that they hope will go mainstream and carry them into the history books.
This is common knowledge.
"Common knowledge"? Really?
Everyone who's highly educated has some pet theory that they're trying to push?
I think you need to loosen your tinfoil hat, mate. Or maybe just get your head out of your butt long enough to realize that there are more experts in their fields than just those high-powered researchers who are close enough to any cutting edge to come up with controversial theories.
The purpose of experts is to forward their own agenda
I'm not sure how tongue-in-cheek you're trying to be here, so if you are, then this is directed at the people who really believe this.
This is honestly one of the biggest and (to me) scariest and most incomprehensible problems with the American consciousness right now: the belief that not only do they, the average Americans, know better than the experts in their fields, but that those experts are, to a man, interested solely or primarily in putting forward their own "agenda"—which is necessarily something other than "educate people" or "show the truth".
What reasonable basis is there for believing that everyone who's highly educated is somehow trying to subvert society to some nefarious end??
Reader Bastian227 adds a link to this letter from Steve Jobs on Apple's website, which also says that Tim Cook will be responsible for daily operations, though Jobs will remain involved with major strategic decisions.
Less than 24 hours ago on Slashdot, emphasis mine.
But my point is that it's hard to define what the "best" is. I'm certainly willing to agree that "best selling" is a lousy way of determining it (after all, look at Windows...or, for that matter, McDonald's). But, as I pointed out in my original post, for most people, "best" doesn't necessarily mean simply "most features", or even "most features that I would like." A music player that plays every format known to man is useless if you can't actually figure out how to get your songs to play on it. A phone with a 30 day battery life is useless if you can't figure out how to call people in your contact list. A smartphone with all the bells and whistles is useless if the browser crashes every 10 seconds.
The problem is, of course, outside of a feature list, "good" is pretty hard to quantify. I don't have the answers; I just get annoyed when people list off the features of one device and then another, count them both up, and then say, "Well, of course this one is better! It has more features!"
So the iPod (whichever one, pick your poison) may or may not be the "best" out there today. Either way, though, the iPod did gain its dominance through having a better user experience, even if it's since kept it at least partially through its "cool factor", and thus many people not knowing about anything else.
i disagree, one of the benefits of the Palm is that it does not do the iTunes thing. Owning a piece of hardware should not require you to join a "special" club no matter how "cool" they make it seem. If you want to join a special club to get access to specific content that should be your decision.
Um...so what's a club now? "People who have downloaded iTunes"? You do know that a) it's free, b) you don't have to sign up for anything to get it, and c) using iTunes in no way requires you to use the iTunes Store, don't you?
That's when they ask if they can have Word... sigh.
And you tell them...what? MS Word is available for Mac. OpenOffice.org Write is very similar to the Windows version of Word 2003.
The iPhone is the only phone I've seen with working demo models on the high street. All other phones have only plastic carcasses nailed to the wall. Even the G1. How am I supposed to make a judgement about that?
Wow, that sounds messed up. I go into a Verizon store in small-town Upstate NY and I can poke at real working phones of at least a dozen different models. Naturally they're all heavily tethered to the wall, but I can pick them up, look at them on all sides, and see what the software acts like while I'm deciding.
The real difference between the Palm Pre and the iPhone when it comes to developers, is that all Palm's standard apps that come with the phone were written with javascript, CSS, and HTML. They're "eating their own dogfood", so to speak.
So do you think the original iPhone apps were not written in Objective-C using Xcode?
Verizon might theoretically have more coverage in general, but I have rarely found anywhere I've travelled that hasn't had reception with T-Mobile.
I know some people in our area who tried T-Mobile, and got practically no service. I don't know where you generally travel, but we live far from any major metropolitan areas, and rarely frequent them. We're not exactly in the sticks, but we're relatively rural.
We have been seriously considering switching to AT&T, thoughâ"partly for the iPhone, partly because they're slightly more permissive than Verizon with what you can do with your phone, and partly because they're GSM. We just haven't taken the plunge yet.
Translation: no matter how good it is, it won't sell unless it's shiny and has 'Apple' written on it?
Overcoming the "cool factor" that Apple has (whether you like it or not, it's difficult to deny it's there) would be somewhat difficult, of course, but the really important thing would be to do the same thing Apple does with its user interface: study what actually makes a good one, and then use that information to make a user interface that is easy to use and lets people actually get at the features of the device they want to use.
Having a slideout keyboard is ALREADY better than the iPhone. Uses multitouch-like gestures to surf the Web and navigate the device. Decent camera in it. Elegant hardware design. User-replaceable battery.
Slashdot Mirror
Then come back and talk.
No, it features no nerds. It features nothing but some animated coloured-pencil-type line art. It gives absolutely no clear indication that it's talking about something computer-related.
Dan Aris
I will congratulate Linux and the winning contestant on achieving what Apple did and Microsoft tried to. And that is simplify Linux down to an idea easy to grasp with no actual numbers or ideas surrounding it. Like the Mac ads, it's just "cool" to be a Mac. I like that they imply that to be Linux is to enjoy freedom but it's no more convincing to me than the Mac ads. I'm a Linux fanatic but I'm realistic.
But, see, there's a big, big problem with the winning ad.
Unless you already know what Linux is, which many, many people do not, it is utterly meaningless.
I know it has become popular to make ads that don't really explain what they're for in recent times, but that only works if the brand they're advertising is already recognizable, at least among their target demographic. But The Great Unwashed Masses don't even know what Linux is yet. Knowing that "it's freedom" tells them nothing, and the cute little animated graphics don't give any indication that it's even something to do with a computer—yeah, the graphics themselves are sometimes clearly computer-related, but these days, what isn't?
When Linux is already as recognizable a name as Mac, iPod, Coke, or Nike, and everyone knows that "it's just another alternative to Mac or Windows," then we can make ads like this to push the "freedom" aspect of it.
But until then, this ad doesn't tell a non-geek anything...except that Linux is pretentious.
Dan Aris
No, it's a much more obscure reference than Gilbert and Sullivan ;-)
Dan Aris
...Solaren was purchased by the Mikado Group, whose chairman, Dauragon C. Mikado, says that the satellite plan will bring ultimate power...
listens to the crickets
Yeah...didn't expect many people to get that reference.
Dan Aris
Nevertheless, I maintain that you can not maintain both faith and knowledge of evolution at the same time, without some hush-hush here or there.
Again, you're ridiculously overgeneralizing.
You can not maintain faith in a literal interpretation of the Bible and knowledge of evolution at the same time. I don't disagree with that, and don't attempt to claim that anyone who believes that every word of the Bible is true is anything other than an idiot. Generalizing from that to all faith is the bigotry that I object to. What about, for instance, Deism—faith in the "watchmaker God", who made everything and set up the universal constants, then stood back to watch it unfold? Yes, you're correct that there's no discernible distinction between that kind of God and no God, but I challenge you to credibly claim that there is any conflict between that kind of faith and a belief in evolution.
Or, heck, faith in Buddhism, which does not posit any God, but rather an afterlife and a desirable state of the soul. No, it's not testable, and no, it's not science—but why should it be vilified for the sins of a small (if vocal) group of stupid fundamentalist Christians?
if you want to cling to both at the same time, you can only do that if you modify your religion so much that it doesn't match any of the mainstream versions anymore.
So? What's wrong with that?
Dan Aris
The theory of evolution is fundamentally hostile to faith because it explains one of the great mysteries that form a core part of pretty much every religion
Um, no.
The theory of evolution is fundamentally hostile to fundamentalist dogma.
To be a Christian, one is not required to believe that every word of the Bible is true. There are a hell of a lot of Christians who know without a doubt that most of it is either totally made up or allegorical. The ones who don't are, for the most part, stupid, raised to be stupid, and raising their children to be stupid.
I know you're an aggressive atheist who believes that all religion is nothing but delusion, but I would like to think that you're not as closed-minded as those you deride. Please don't make the mistake of believing that the extremist nutjobs of Christianity represent our entire faith. That's just as bigoted and prejudiced as believing that all Muslims are suicide bombers just waiting for the right target.
Dan Aris
Wow, this is a little spooky. Just saw the preview for next week's Dollhouse, and it looks like they'll be using something very similar to this...
Dan Aris
I think the mods' problem with you is your erroneous extrapolation of a couple of (admittedly important) problems with particular unions to the conclusion that all unions are evil and must be destroyed wherever they are found.
Dan Aris
Now, the matter of hundreds of different HTML rendering engines would be just as magically turned into a non-problem if only we had a standard that describes this "HTML" thing, that specifies just which tags exist, what they mean and how they should be rendered. If only we had such a... oh, wait...
Actually, to be pedantic, I'm pretty sure the HTML standards have explicitly avoided defining how the various elements should be rendered, leaving that up to the user agents to decide.
Dan Aris
If you actually paid attention, you'd be able to tell that that wasn't the Safari 4 Beta, but just an update to Safari 3.
As several others have noted in this thread (whom you apparently ignored), you have to deliberately go out and download the Safari 4 Beta from Apple's website.
Dan Aris
Frankly, I don't see any of the major extinction events of the geological past being something the human race couldn't survive.
I would generally tend to agree—however, it is very important to make the distinction between the human race and human civilization.
Dan Aris
One of the scariest things to me is how many millions of people have been slaughtered by those who know "The Truth".
There's a big difference between "the truth" and "The Truth." It's not a good idea to get them mixed up.
Dan Aris
Most all experts are peddling a pet theory that they hope will go mainstream and carry them into the history books. This is common knowledge.
"Common knowledge"? Really?
Everyone who's highly educated has some pet theory that they're trying to push?
I think you need to loosen your tinfoil hat, mate. Or maybe just get your head out of your butt long enough to realize that there are more experts in their fields than just those high-powered researchers who are close enough to any cutting edge to come up with controversial theories.
Dan Aris
The purpose of experts is to forward their own agenda
I'm not sure how tongue-in-cheek you're trying to be here, so if you are, then this is directed at the people who really believe this.
This is honestly one of the biggest and (to me) scariest and most incomprehensible problems with the American consciousness right now: the belief that not only do they, the average Americans, know better than the experts in their fields, but that those experts are, to a man, interested solely or primarily in putting forward their own "agenda"—which is necessarily something other than "educate people" or "show the truth".
What reasonable basis is there for believing that everyone who's highly educated is somehow trying to subvert society to some nefarious end??
Dan Aris
...and I've gotten robocalls on my cell, too, saying my car warranty was going to expire.
If, as you say, you have to have someone actually on the line, then no, they're not legal.
Dan Aris
This is Slashdot. News for Nerds, not News for Puerile Imbeciles.
*Ahem* "You must be new here."
Dan Aris
Reader Bastian227 adds a link to this letter from Steve Jobs on Apple's website, which also says that Tim Cook will be responsible for daily operations, though Jobs will remain involved with major strategic decisions.
Less than 24 hours ago on Slashdot, emphasis mine.
Hello, are you stupid, people?
Dan Aris
But my point is that it's hard to define what the "best" is. I'm certainly willing to agree that "best selling" is a lousy way of determining it (after all, look at Windows...or, for that matter, McDonald's). But, as I pointed out in my original post, for most people, "best" doesn't necessarily mean simply "most features", or even "most features that I would like." A music player that plays every format known to man is useless if you can't actually figure out how to get your songs to play on it. A phone with a 30 day battery life is useless if you can't figure out how to call people in your contact list. A smartphone with all the bells and whistles is useless if the browser crashes every 10 seconds.
The problem is, of course, outside of a feature list, "good" is pretty hard to quantify. I don't have the answers; I just get annoyed when people list off the features of one device and then another, count them both up, and then say, "Well, of course this one is better! It has more features!"
So the iPod (whichever one, pick your poison) may or may not be the "best" out there today. Either way, though, the iPod did gain its dominance through having a better user experience, even if it's since kept it at least partially through its "cool factor", and thus many people not knowing about anything else.
Dan Aris
It's not because it's better, it's because it's seen more everywhere.
But how did it get that way in the first place? It's not like the iPod was the first mainstream MP3 player.
Dan Aris
i disagree, one of the benefits of the Palm is that it does not do the iTunes thing. Owning a piece of hardware should not require you to join a "special" club no matter how "cool" they make it seem.
If you want to join a special club to get access to specific content that should be your decision.
Um...so what's a club now? "People who have downloaded iTunes"? You do know that a) it's free, b) you don't have to sign up for anything to get it, and c) using iTunes in no way requires you to use the iTunes Store, don't you?
That's when they ask if they can have Word... sigh.
And you tell them...what? MS Word is available for Mac. OpenOffice.org Write is very similar to the Windows version of Word 2003.
In what way is Word not available for Mac?
I know, I know...IHBT, IHL. IWHAND.
Dan Aris
The iPhone is the only phone I've seen with working demo models on the high street. All other phones have only plastic carcasses nailed to the wall. Even the G1. How am I supposed to make a judgement about that?
Wow, that sounds messed up. I go into a Verizon store in small-town Upstate NY and I can poke at real working phones of at least a dozen different models. Naturally they're all heavily tethered to the wall, but I can pick them up, look at them on all sides, and see what the software acts like while I'm deciding.
Dan Aris
The real difference between the Palm Pre and the iPhone when it comes to developers, is that all Palm's standard apps that come with the phone were written with javascript, CSS, and HTML. They're "eating their own dogfood", so to speak.
So do you think the original iPhone apps were not written in Objective-C using Xcode?
Dan Aris
Verizon might theoretically have more coverage in general, but I have rarely found anywhere I've travelled that hasn't had reception with T-Mobile.
I know some people in our area who tried T-Mobile, and got practically no service. I don't know where you generally travel, but we live far from any major metropolitan areas, and rarely frequent them. We're not exactly in the sticks, but we're relatively rural.
We have been seriously considering switching to AT&T, thoughâ"partly for the iPhone, partly because they're slightly more permissive than Verizon with what you can do with your phone, and partly because they're GSM. We just haven't taken the plunge yet.
Dan Aris
Translation: no matter how good it is, it won't sell unless it's shiny and has 'Apple' written on it?
Overcoming the "cool factor" that Apple has (whether you like it or not, it's difficult to deny it's there) would be somewhat difficult, of course, but the really important thing would be to do the same thing Apple does with its user interface: study what actually makes a good one, and then use that information to make a user interface that is easy to use and lets people actually get at the features of the device they want to use.
Dan Aris
Having a slideout keyboard is ALREADY better than the iPhone. Uses multitouch-like gestures to surf the Web and navigate the device. Decent camera in it. Elegant hardware design. User-replaceable battery.
What was I saying about laundry lists again?
Dan Aris