It's actually a little easier than all that. Joe six-pack picks up Red-Hat Linux at the CompUSA because he heard "it's the most popular" or "it's the best" or some other such thing. He loads it up (terrifically easy install) and starts to work.
Is Red Hat Linux "the best"? Who knows, but it is one of the most talked about in the media and it is on the shelf at CompUSA so why not give it a whirl?
OR...
Same reasoning, but he ends up downloading Fedora for free from one of the mirrors after going to the Red Hat web site.
THEN...
After he's wet his whistle, he'll start looking at some other distros (or not) and settle on something he likes.
Yes, this is how Joe Six-Pack really thinks. He goes with the distro he's heard about and gives it a try. It's probably going to be Red Hat/Fedora (but might not, depending on what kind of people he hangs out with).
Put another way: How on Earth is Joe Six-Pack going to figure out what brand of beer to buy? What car to buy? What brand of PC to buy? Which video game to buy? He might be a little confused, but he'll probably end up with the market leader with a reasonable chance that he'll try something else later on. He'll do this because the market leader is the one he's heard more stuff about. From this perspective, picking a Linux distro is probably not much more stresful than picking a candy bar brand. We don't really evaluate candy bars _that_ thouroughly... we buy a Snickers.
Of course, +1 Funny would be a good mod too. But that would only work if you had a sense of humor about the issue.
Possibly irrelevant story to follow:
I went to military journalist school about 15 years ago. One of the interesting aspects of the school is that it wasn't just an Army school (my branch of service), but, in fact, trained military journalists from all branches of service. This was my first interactions with significant numbers of Air Force, Navy and Marine personnel.
One of the things I found out is that the different branches have very different core cultures. One of the way this was exhibited was in the status they gave to their branch.
Army people will bitch incestantly about the Army. They may be slightly annoyed when others do it, but they won't give them too hard a time because they all had such a good time cutting it down themselves.
Air Force people really do look at their service like a job. If you were to cut down the Air Force to them they'd just shrug and not pay much attention.
Navy people seem to have all joined on a dare. They don't complain too much about the navy and they have a lot of pride in it, but they're not going to get into fisticuffs unless the offence is very bad.
Then there were the Marines. If you made fun of the Corp in front of a Marine, you'd get an extremely stern, "that's not funny" at best. Yes, even things that every other human being on the planet would find funny, the Marines would most certainly NOT find humourus if it even slightly disparaged the Corp. Of course, they had no problem at all making fun of every other service.
How is this relevant to the matter at hand? It's become my opinion over the last couple of days that The Mac Faithful (TMF from now on) are just like the Marines. They are proud and they have some good reasons to be proud, but they are completely incapable of finding fault with themselves or seeing humor in that fault.
Since I started this line of thinking, I'll have to compare a couple of other OSs too.
Windows users are definately the Army. They have the largest numbers and don't hesitate to crack on their own platform. Others don't hesitate either and for the most part no one gets too worked up about it.
Unix users are mostly the Air Force (Some of them show Marine tendencies though). They pretty much do their jobs and shrug it off if someone cracks on their OS.
Linux users are the Navy. They joined on a dare, but are pretty proud of their OS and wont hesitate to defend it.
Yeah I've stretched a bit with the other OSs, but I think I hit it dead on with TMF. The Few, the Proud, the Macs! pretty accurately describes their level of attachment. The thing is.... they should really lighten up.
Some projects fail because they don't have enough resources, or not enough time has been allotted. Sometimes, the project planners choose the wrong implementation or try to solve the wrong problem. Sometimes, projects fail because the users don't really tell you what they want
Amount of resources and time allotted are both directly related to leadership. Leaders decide both of these things. Choosing the wrong implimentation could go to the tech folks, but solving the wrong problem is most certainly a leadership decision too.
I'm not trying to lump every decision on the leader and I'm not trying to say others can't screw up, but the cold hard facts are that projects that reach a certain size tend to fail because of things leaders should be taking care of.
Specifically: Q. Who dicides how much time a project has? A. Management. But... what if the underlings give management a false impression about how long a task should take? A2 This is management 101: Work with what you know about your people ans statistics about past projects to determine if they're proposing adequate time. It's TOTALLY a management failure if the amount of time given a project is wrong.
Q. Who decides how much resources should be thrown at a project. A. Once again, this is TOTALLY a management decision. Yes your underlings may give you incorrect data to base this on, but if you're consistantly getting BAD DATA then it is a leadership FAILURE if you continue to believe the bad data.
Q. How do you make sure you're solving the right problem? A. If GM builds a the wrong car for the wrong market are you going to blame it on anyone but GM leadership? If not, then why are you going to give them a pass on implimenting a network infrastructure that fails so meet their needs?
Leaders solve the macro problems of the company. Large IT projects are part of this solution. A large IT project is about as complex as building a new HQ building. Leadership does not allow new HQ buildings projects to fail. Why on earth are you letting them get away with not managing IT projects (infrastructure by defininition)with as much dilligence?
This is facinating, but begs an important question: If you run a large corporation, what are some methods short of central management that will keep your whole company talking to each other?
Are open standards engough, or do you need something else?
Put another way, if I had let all the people in my fictional Fortune 500 company choose their own OS, for example, how do I make sure everyone can get to the data they need when they need it?
Major IT projects touch a lot of people. If you can't get everyone on board then the project is going to be very tough to complete succesfully. For that reason, the only real blame for "most" IT projects failing is leadership problems.
It's harsh, but true. If these agencies had had better leadership and management, the projects would have been delivered, or at least never started in favor of something better. Blaming is on anything else is an excersise in passing the buck.
Dude! Nice solution. Thanks much for helping with a problem that's been irritating me for about a year (GFs Powerbook) and has gotten extra added significance over the weekend as I got my first Mac, a used iBook.
And even if it is possible to build a PC the size of a Mini Mac with exactly the same specs (performance, weight, cost, color and whatnot), I bet not many people are going to rush out and get one soon.
You're kidding, right? Bare bones small FF PCs have been going like hotcakes for the LAN party crowd.
The hard part, IMHO, is the video card. How do you duplicate the size of the Mac-Mini while getting high-end graphics? When someone figures that out then the PC version is going to fly off the shelf.
The real reason is that if Apple went to a 2 button mouse, then Jobs would have to eat some crow and admit he was wrong.
The problem is that it's not just Jobs at this point. He has throngs of appologists ready to blast every possible argument for more than one button. The level of group-think with these people is just increadible.
HEY, MAC FOLK, YOU DON'T HAVE TO AGREE WITH EVERYTHING THE MOTHER SHIP TELLS YOU! THINK DIFFERENTly! THINK FOR YOURSELVES!
Great, now they'll lable me a troll for daring to disagree. Goodbye Karma.
TW - Brand new owner of a used iBook with OS X that I sincerely wish had two buttons built into the trackpad.
Let me know when I can upgrade my girlfriends Powerbook trackpad to two buttons. A mouse plugged in the USB port doesn't count.
BTW, I had more to say on this issue, but got momentarily confused by the extra buttons on my Logitec mouse and lost a half hour trying to figure it out. I'm better now. No need to call 911.
I don't know how other people feel about this, but for me, the Secure Digital format is pretty close to being as small as I want to get. I don't want to have to use tweezers to get my memory into and out of devices.
It's not as bad as all that. I use mini-SD in my cell phone and it's actually pretty nice to have the smaller size. I know it sounds bizzare, but SD cards look so big to me now. It's kind of like looking back at one of those Motorola flip phones we all thought were so small at the time.
But could you game on a TV and surf on a VGA monitor at the same time?
No, not on that single setup. But I just happen to have a laptop too.
So how can poorer people like myself afford to purchase and maintain a second computer? A $100 GameCube, a $40 DVD player, and a $40 VHS VCR are still a lot cheaper than a $520 Mac mini with a TV-out adapter and a $150 FireWire TV-in adapter.
This is the real rub. A huge chunk of this boils down to economics. My system is not at all typical and it's very expensive if you were to set it up from scratch. How on earth could I suggest it to others?
However, when you compare the Mac Mini 2006 and Windows Media Center 2006 setup to the next generation of consoles, things might end up looking a lot different. Knowledgeable people peg the next gen consoles at $400+ when first released. If that's the case, the extra cost for the Mini might not seem so high. If PC makers resopond with some low cost MCE computers, a real possibility considering the time frame involved and the quick responsivenes of PC manufacturers to a genuine market, then things will start to look even more interesting.
Of course then you have another problem. The thing I so much like about my PC is that I don't have to wait 5 years between realeases of the latest video cards. That jacks up the cost because you'll be buying your PS3 once in the same time I'll be buying many hundreds of dollars more of PC gear. But I don't have to buy more gear if I don't want to. It's my choice. And I very much like having that choice.
It pretty much depends on your priorities, but this all hasn't been a problem for me. There's a way longer, and much more boring explanation to go along with that statement, but I'll suffice it to say that I have things set up so my gaming computer runs the TV/Monitor (36" Mitsubishi Megaview) and I have a wireless keyboard and mouse and a nice lap desk kind of thing and I do everything I want to on my TV. I used to run a multimonitor setup with a 31" RCA and yes, I could game, surf, word proccess, whatever while others were watching TV. It was pretty cool.
But the real question isn't whether I'd want to set that up, but whether any other (hopefully saner) person would go to the hassle.
My quick and dirty answer is that I did it the hard way, but Media Center type computers are becoming more and more popular on Windows and Linux and a lot of people are saying thats an excellent use for the Mac Mini as well.
The idea that people need to "run wires from their computer" is being replaced by the idea that people will buy a capable computer just to go in the entertainment center. If that's the case (I certainly did) then that media center PC all of a sudden is set to become a serious gaming machine.
I love gaming in the living room. I have the great sound from my great speakers in 7.1, I get a great big view and I'm kicked back in the couch instead of hunched over in a chair. And I get to play PC games which currently blow away anything available on a console (try to match doom 3). I do wish more titles supported split and quad screen views, but, hey, I also have a PS2 and I'm not afraid to use it too:-)
I had almost given up on Science Fiction. Lets face it, many of the standards are, well, juvinile. Battlestar Galactica isn't perfect, but I was very pleased to finally see something with more grown up aspirations and it gets a big thank you for helping to bring me back into the fold.
I think a lot of the things we disagree on can be boiled down to what bothers me doesnt' bother you and visa-versa.
However the graphics really is a big deal.
There are quite a few games out there that take real advantage of good PC hardware and the efect just can not be duplicated on current consoles. FarCry and Doom3, for example, are stunning and would just plain look inferior if ported to the PS2. Though many PC games are set for the lowest common denominator (UT 2004 runs just fine on old hardware), PC game designers have the option of going for the gusto and many of them choose that path.
I like a lot of different types of games, but I have a real soft spot for something that looks stunning. When I play the console after playing one of the hot shit PC games I end up feeling flat. When I see ads for brand-new, just realeased console games like Halo 2 I can totally tell the difference including lack of polygons, lack of textures, lack of lighting and minor or no bump mapping. It's pretty hard to get excited when the latest and greates Xbox and PS2 games just cant compare to the look of the PC.
Let me put it another way. When you see the stills and the videos from the consoles at E3, you're going to be blown away. That wouldn't be the case if the graphics weren't vastly improve and it wouldn't be the case if the graphics didn't matter. The PC has most of that capability right now without waiting for the PS3 realease in a year or two. By the time the PS3 hits the shelf the PC will most likely be dead even with the PS3 in graphics capabilities and a year later it will be better. I'm sure I'll have a PS3 shortly after it's released, but my PC will still be the superior gaming machine.
If no one has real numbers that are trustworthy, what numbers to do you use? Do you at least try to come up with something based on what you already know? Is the fact that I was honest and open about my process the entire time not a mitigating factor?
What do you do when you don't know the answer and dont have any good place to look? Do you put your head in the sand or do you just do your best to solve the problem with what you have? More to the point, when others are trying to solve the problem do you just blast them for doing it wrong or do you join in and try to help them do it right?
If you have some better numbers we could use, I'd be happy to listen. If you have some actual critsism of my process then I'd be happy to listen. But don't blast me for making an honest attempt to try to bridge the gap. Come help me bridge it better.
For a lot of games, I prefer the PS2 (and I assume the PS3) controller over a mouse and keyboard.
You do realize you can get these for PCs, don't you?
I'd rather play on my 27" TV. ETC.
My last three video cards all had an S-video port for the TV. I use it, too. But I won't have to when I get an HDTV with DVI.
I don't want to configure games to suit my system.
Can't help you much with this one, but customization ability is a good thing for many people. And if you're one of those people and you don't have the ability to customize, life can be pretty hard.
BTW, the folks who got PS2s right when they first came out were pretty jazzed about the great graphics. How do you feel about the fact that my PC graphics pretty much put your PS2 graphics to shame right now and you've got at least another year 'till you can fix the situation. See, customization can be a good thing.
That's not good enough. You (and many others) put that number out there, and I want you to back it up. You can't just debate-by-driveby like that and expect people to lend you credibility. If you are going to espouse a point of view, you should at least know enough about it to be able to defend it.
That's a debating tactic. It's designed to make a point rather than to say how you really feel. Do you really feel the numbers I put out were unreasonable, or just that I don't have any "proof"?
A lot of people got killed and seriously hurt in Iraq. It's a very significant number. My point isn't that 40,000 got injured or that 100,000 got killed. My point is that a lot of people have suffered or outright died to make this happen.
Further, my point is that that number is high enough that people should probably be feeling somewhat uncomfortable about the situation. It's kind of like when that stock you bought is way down and you're trying to figure out if it will bounce back or whether it was really a bone-headed decision in the first place. You may say "stay the course", and a lot of financial advisors will say that about a lot of investments, or you may say, "why send good money after bad." Maybe that decision doesn't even have anything to do with the amount of the loss, but with the inherent strengths and weekness of the company.
But you don't ignore data just because the only available data is incomplete. You come up with the best numbers you can and make a decision.
But I also have a problem with people whose arguments against it rely entirely upon inflammatory rhetoric and made-up statistics.
I don't think I used inflammatory rhetoric, but I did make up the numbers. I told you I made them up and I told you how I made them up. I made them up the way I did because I thought that whatever side you were on you were likely to see them as concervative minimums. Do you really think my numbers are inflated? If not, then why can't you just look at them and tell me how you feel about that many people being killed and hurt? Personally, it makes me feel like crap.
Whatever we achieve in Iraq will need a measuring stick, and those numbers are probably a good minimum place to start measuring. Will the good we do outweigh the lives lost? Will the good we do make up for all the people with missing limbs and brain damage? Why don't YOU stick a number on it and measure it? Why don't YOU tell ME how we measure up? That's not rhetoric; that's evaluation.
It's high time conservatives start helping out in the evaluation. It's not disloyal to say "we fucked up." It also doesn't mean you're saying we should pull out and leave them in an even worse situation than when we started. Conservatives admit there were no WMDs and they know people have died (well, SOME amount has died, haven't they?) so how come they have such a phobia about pulling out the scales of justice and weighing the good vs. the bad?
Put another way... put the way I said it originally: At what point do you start to feel uncomfortable about what we did? I wouldn't be complaining if only 1/2 dozen guys were dead. Even you would be complaining if it were a million. What point in between gives you a queasy stomach? And do you, in good faith, think there's a chance we've already reached it?
There have been about 1,500 US soldiers killed and about 10,000 injured in Iraq. Presumably the US killed the enemy at a higher ratio than 2-1. Don't know what the ratio is, but the better you think our troops are, the more interesting it gets. If it's 2-1 (unlikely) then that's 4,500 killed and about 30,000 injured.
But wait, what about civilians? No good figures here (I have however, seen a lot of really shitty estimates that have every flu victim in the war zone counted as a KIA for Bush) but the figure would just about have to be at least 1 to 1 for US soldier's dead. No, I don't have anything to back that up, but I seriously doubt anyone really believes less than that got killed.
Ok, tally it all up and we have about 6,000 dead and about 40,000 wounded in a VERY concervative, no facts estimate.
That's a whole lot less than 100,000. But who cares? It's a shitload of people who've had their lives seriously affected or cut short by the war.
So my question for you is this: Even if 100,000 dead is a pure fantasy number, are you comfortable with 6,000 dead and 40,000 injured? If you are comfortale with those numbers, at what point do you start feeling uncomfortable?
As I recall from years ago, Jeff used to claim that the division between "Operating System", "Application" and "Content" was big learning barrier and slowed down computer use. So he would essentially abolish the first two items, or at least keep them largely invisible from the user.
Actually, I've seen more confusion over the last two items.
I've been asked on several occasions to help people find their missing documents. Naturally I've asked them "where did you last see it?" A surpisingly common answer is, "it's in Word."
I would ask them some more questions and they'd show me "exactly where it is" by clicking Open from the File menu of word and showing me "where the doument should be"..." right there in word."
Sometimes they'd show me the list of recently opened documents hanging right off the file menu "in Word."
My point is that this guy and a lot of other computer guys don't seem to realise that most users have no problem understanding applications. They click the icon that looks like a letter and lo and behold, they can write a letter.
Where the problem is for many of them is understanding what happens to their letter when they hit "save". The box that opens up when a user hits "save" doesnt look anything like their desktop or "my documents" to many new computer users. It's obvious to you and me, but to them it's a completly different storage repository. If there was some graphical element that demonstrated more clearly to these users exactly what happens to their document, it would be a godsend for grandmas and other new computer users.
No you can't, the child's dead before they might possibly be productive (let alone afford) a computer.
This is like saying the doctor is more important than the teacher. In some respects, this is correct. You can't teach a dead child. But in other respects this is dead wrong. A child that grows up and has no way to make a living is going to be a drain on resources that would otherwise, well, go toward treating sick children.
Any way you look at it, both are very respectable proffesions. Any way you look at it, the world would be pretty bad off without one or the other.
Any way you look at it, the open source community is making a MASSIVE contribution in monitary value to the children of the world and they deserve to have that contribution treated with respect.... Just like Bill Gates deserves respect for his very generous contributions.
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It's actually a little easier than all that. Joe six-pack picks up Red-Hat Linux at the CompUSA because he heard "it's the most popular" or "it's the best" or some other such thing. He loads it up (terrifically easy install) and starts to work.
Is Red Hat Linux "the best"? Who knows, but it is one of the most talked about in the media and it is on the shelf at CompUSA so why not give it a whirl?
OR...
Same reasoning, but he ends up downloading Fedora for free from one of the mirrors after going to the Red Hat web site.
THEN...
After he's wet his whistle, he'll start looking at some other distros (or not) and settle on something he likes.
Yes, this is how Joe Six-Pack really thinks. He goes with the distro he's heard about and gives it a try. It's probably going to be Red Hat/Fedora (but might not, depending on what kind of people he hangs out with).
Put another way: How on Earth is Joe Six-Pack going to figure out what brand of beer to buy? What car to buy? What brand of PC to buy? Which video game to buy? He might be a little confused, but he'll probably end up with the market leader with a reasonable chance that he'll try something else later on. He'll do this because the market leader is the one he's heard more stuff about. From this perspective, picking a Linux distro is probably not much more stresful than picking a candy bar brand. We don't really evaluate candy bars _that_ thouroughly... we buy a Snickers.
TW
Of course, +1 Funny would be a good mod too. But that would only work if you had a sense of humor about the issue.
Possibly irrelevant story to follow:
I went to military journalist school about 15 years ago. One of the interesting aspects of the school is that it wasn't just an Army school (my branch of service), but, in fact, trained military journalists from all branches of service. This was my first interactions with significant numbers of Air Force, Navy and Marine personnel.
One of the things I found out is that the different branches have very different core cultures. One of the way this was exhibited was in the status they gave to their branch.
Army people will bitch incestantly about the Army. They may be slightly annoyed when others do it, but they won't give them too hard a time because they all had such a good time cutting it down themselves.
Air Force people really do look at their service like a job. If you were to cut down the Air Force to them they'd just shrug and not pay much attention.
Navy people seem to have all joined on a dare. They don't complain too much about the navy and they have a lot of pride in it, but they're not going to get into fisticuffs unless the offence is very bad.
Then there were the Marines. If you made fun of the Corp in front of a Marine, you'd get an extremely stern, "that's not funny" at best. Yes, even things that every other human being on the planet would find funny, the Marines would most certainly NOT find humourus if it even slightly disparaged the Corp. Of course, they had no problem at all making fun of every other service.
How is this relevant to the matter at hand? It's become my opinion over the last couple of days that The Mac Faithful (TMF from now on) are just like the Marines. They are proud and they have some good reasons to be proud, but they are completely incapable of finding fault with themselves or seeing humor in that fault.
Since I started this line of thinking, I'll have to compare a couple of other OSs too.
Windows users are definately the Army. They have the largest numbers and don't hesitate to crack on their own platform. Others don't hesitate either and for the most part no one gets too worked up about it.
Unix users are mostly the Air Force (Some of them show Marine tendencies though). They pretty much do their jobs and shrug it off if someone cracks on their OS.
Linux users are the Navy. They joined on a dare, but are pretty proud of their OS and wont hesitate to defend it.
Yeah I've stretched a bit with the other OSs, but I think I hit it dead on with TMF. The Few, the Proud, the Macs! pretty accurately describes their level of attachment. The thing is.... they should really lighten up.
TW
Great, you make a legitimate comment and get marked flaimbait. Even the Linux crowd will let you disagree with them in an open forum.
TW
Some projects fail because they don't have enough resources, or not enough time has been allotted. Sometimes, the project planners choose the wrong implementation or try to solve the wrong problem. Sometimes, projects fail because the users don't really tell you what they want
Amount of resources and time allotted are both directly related to leadership. Leaders decide both of these things. Choosing the wrong implimentation could go to the tech folks, but solving the wrong problem is most certainly a leadership decision too.
I'm not trying to lump every decision on the leader and I'm not trying to say others can't screw up, but the cold hard facts are that projects that reach a certain size tend to fail because of things leaders should be taking care of.
Specifically:
Q. Who dicides how much time a project has?
A. Management.
But... what if the underlings give management a false impression about how long a task should take?
A2 This is management 101: Work with what you know about your people ans statistics about past projects to determine if they're proposing adequate time. It's TOTALLY a management failure if the amount of time given a project is wrong.
Q. Who decides how much resources should be thrown at a project.
A. Once again, this is TOTALLY a management decision. Yes your underlings may give you incorrect data to base this on, but if you're consistantly getting BAD DATA then it is a leadership FAILURE if you continue to believe the bad data.
Q. How do you make sure you're solving the right problem?
A. If GM builds a the wrong car for the wrong market are you going to blame it on anyone but GM leadership? If not, then why are you going to give them a pass on implimenting a network infrastructure that fails so meet their needs?
Leaders solve the macro problems of the company. Large IT projects are part of this solution. A large IT project is about as complex as building a new HQ building. Leadership does not allow new HQ buildings projects to fail. Why on earth are you letting them get away with not managing IT projects (infrastructure by defininition)with as much dilligence?
This is facinating, but begs an important question: If you run a large corporation, what are some methods short of central management that will keep your whole company talking to each other?
Are open standards engough, or do you need something else?
Put another way, if I had let all the people in my fictional Fortune 500 company choose their own OS, for example, how do I make sure everyone can get to the data they need when they need it?
Serious question, not an attack.
TW
Major IT projects touch a lot of people. If you can't get everyone on board then the project is going to be very tough to complete succesfully. For that reason, the only real blame for "most" IT projects failing is leadership problems.
It's harsh, but true. If these agencies had had better leadership and management, the projects would have been delivered, or at least never started in favor of something better. Blaming is on anything else is an excersise in passing the buck.
Dude! Nice solution. Thanks much for helping with a problem that's been irritating me for about a year (GFs Powerbook) and has gotten extra added significance over the weekend as I got my first Mac, a used iBook.
Once again, Thanks!
TW
And even if it is possible to build a PC the size of a Mini Mac with exactly the same specs (performance, weight, cost, color and whatnot), I bet not many people are going to rush out and get one soon.
You're kidding, right? Bare bones small FF PCs have been going like hotcakes for the LAN party crowd.
The hard part, IMHO, is the video card. How do you duplicate the size of the Mac-Mini while getting high-end graphics? When someone figures that out then the PC version is going to fly off the shelf.
TW
You get a nice honorable mention, but it doesn't take two hands to do the same thing on my Toshiba Tecra (four buttons... all quite useful).
Now if Apple put the CTRL key right under the trackpad...
TW
The real reason is that if Apple went to a 2 button mouse, then Jobs would have to eat some crow and admit he was wrong.
The problem is that it's not just Jobs at this point. He has throngs of appologists ready to blast every possible argument for more than one button. The level of group-think with these people is just increadible.
HEY, MAC FOLK, YOU DON'T HAVE TO AGREE WITH EVERYTHING THE MOTHER SHIP TELLS YOU! THINK DIFFERENTly! THINK FOR YOURSELVES!
Great, now they'll lable me a troll for daring to disagree. Goodbye Karma.
TW - Brand new owner of a used iBook with OS X that I sincerely wish had two buttons built into the trackpad.
Let me know when I can upgrade my girlfriends Powerbook trackpad to two buttons. A mouse plugged in the USB port doesn't count.
BTW, I had more to say on this issue, but got momentarily confused by the extra buttons on my Logitec mouse and lost a half hour trying to figure it out. I'm better now. No need to call 911.
TW
I don't know how other people feel about this, but for me, the Secure Digital format is pretty close to being as small as I want to get. I don't want to have to use tweezers to get my memory into and out of devices.
It's not as bad as all that. I use mini-SD in my cell phone and it's actually pretty nice to have the smaller size. I know it sounds bizzare, but SD cards look so big to me now. It's kind of like looking back at one of those Motorola flip phones we all thought were so small at the time.
TW
Not ANOTHER format.. now i'll need to buy a 7-way-card reader instead of the currenet 6-way beasts of devices companies put out.
No you wont. It'll plug right into your SD card slot.
TW
I was pretty sceptical 'till I got to that part. This seems like a well thought out product all the way around.
TW
But could you game on a TV and surf on a VGA monitor at the same time?
No, not on that single setup. But I just happen to have a laptop too.
So how can poorer people like myself afford to purchase and maintain a second computer? A $100 GameCube, a $40 DVD player, and a $40 VHS VCR are still a lot cheaper than a $520 Mac mini with a TV-out adapter and a $150 FireWire TV-in adapter.
This is the real rub. A huge chunk of this boils down to economics. My system is not at all typical and it's very expensive if you were to set it up from scratch. How on earth could I suggest it to others?
However, when you compare the Mac Mini 2006 and Windows Media Center 2006 setup to the next generation of consoles, things might end up looking a lot different. Knowledgeable people peg the next gen consoles at $400+ when first released. If that's the case, the extra cost for the Mini might not seem so high. If PC makers resopond with some low cost MCE computers, a real possibility considering the time frame involved and the quick responsivenes of PC manufacturers to a genuine market, then things will start to look even more interesting.
Of course then you have another problem. The thing I so much like about my PC is that I don't have to wait 5 years between realeases of the latest video cards. That jacks up the cost because you'll be buying your PS3 once in the same time I'll be buying many hundreds of dollars more of PC gear. But I don't have to buy more gear if I don't want to. It's my choice. And I very much like having that choice.
TW
It pretty much depends on your priorities, but this all hasn't been a problem for me. There's a way longer, and much more boring explanation to go along with that statement, but I'll suffice it to say that I have things set up so my gaming computer runs the TV/Monitor (36" Mitsubishi Megaview) and I have a wireless keyboard and mouse and a nice lap desk kind of thing and I do everything I want to on my TV. I used to run a multimonitor setup with a 31" RCA and yes, I could game, surf, word proccess, whatever while others were watching TV. It was pretty cool.
:-)
But the real question isn't whether I'd want to set that up, but whether any other (hopefully saner) person would go to the hassle.
My quick and dirty answer is that I did it the hard way, but Media Center type computers are becoming more and more popular on Windows and Linux and a lot of people are saying thats an excellent use for the Mac Mini as well.
The idea that people need to "run wires from their computer" is being replaced by the idea that people will buy a capable computer just to go in the entertainment center. If that's the case (I certainly did) then that media center PC all of a sudden is set to become a serious gaming machine.
I love gaming in the living room. I have the great sound from my great speakers in 7.1, I get a great big view and I'm kicked back in the couch instead of hunched over in a chair. And I get to play PC games which currently blow away anything available on a console (try to match doom 3). I do wish more titles supported split and quad screen views, but, hey, I also have a PS2 and I'm not afraid to use it too
TW
Sci-fi for grownups.
I had almost given up on Science Fiction. Lets face it, many of the standards are, well, juvinile. Battlestar Galactica isn't perfect, but I was very pleased to finally see something with more grown up aspirations and it gets a big thank you for helping to bring me back into the fold.
TW
I think a lot of the things we disagree on can be boiled down to what bothers me doesnt' bother you and visa-versa.
However the graphics really is a big deal.
There are quite a few games out there that take real advantage of good PC hardware and the efect just can not be duplicated on current consoles. FarCry and Doom3, for example, are stunning and would just plain look inferior if ported to the PS2. Though many PC games are set for the lowest common denominator (UT 2004 runs just fine on old hardware), PC game designers have the option of going for the gusto and many of them choose that path.
I like a lot of different types of games, but I have a real soft spot for something that looks stunning. When I play the console after playing one of the hot shit PC games I end up feeling flat. When I see ads for brand-new, just realeased console games like Halo 2 I can totally tell the difference including lack of polygons, lack of textures, lack of lighting and minor or no bump mapping. It's pretty hard to get excited when the latest and greates Xbox and PS2 games just cant compare to the look of the PC.
Let me put it another way. When you see the stills and the videos from the consoles at E3, you're going to be blown away. That wouldn't be the case if the graphics weren't vastly improve and it wouldn't be the case if the graphics didn't matter. The PC has most of that capability right now without waiting for the PS3 realease in a year or two. By the time the PS3 hits the shelf the PC will most likely be dead even with the PS3 in graphics capabilities and a year later it will be better. I'm sure I'll have a PS3 shortly after it's released, but my PC will still be the superior gaming machine.
TW
If no one has real numbers that are trustworthy, what numbers to do you use? Do you at least try to come up with something based on what you already know? Is the fact that I was honest and open about my process the entire time not a mitigating factor?
What do you do when you don't know the answer and dont have any good place to look? Do you put your head in the sand or do you just do your best to solve the problem with what you have? More to the point, when others are trying to solve the problem do you just blast them for doing it wrong or do you join in and try to help them do it right?
If you have some better numbers we could use, I'd be happy to listen. If you have some actual critsism of my process then I'd be happy to listen. But don't blast me for making an honest attempt to try to bridge the gap. Come help me bridge it better.
TW
For a lot of games, I prefer the PS2 (and I assume the PS3) controller over a mouse and keyboard.
You do realize you can get these for PCs, don't you?
I'd rather play on my 27" TV. ETC.
My last three video cards all had an S-video port for the TV. I use it, too. But I won't have to when I get an HDTV with DVI.
I don't want to configure games to suit my system.
Can't help you much with this one, but customization ability is a good thing for many people. And if you're one of those people and you don't have the ability to customize, life can be pretty hard.
BTW, the folks who got PS2s right when they first came out were pretty jazzed about the great graphics. How do you feel about the fact that my PC graphics pretty much put your PS2 graphics to shame right now and you've got at least another year 'till you can fix the situation. See, customization can be a good thing.
TW
That's not good enough. You (and many others) put that number out there, and I want you to back it up. You can't just debate-by-driveby like that and expect people to lend you credibility. If you are going to espouse a point of view, you should at least know enough about it to be able to defend it.
That's a debating tactic. It's designed to make a point rather than to say how you really feel. Do you really feel the numbers I put out were unreasonable, or just that I don't have any "proof"?
A lot of people got killed and seriously hurt in Iraq. It's a very significant number. My point isn't that 40,000 got injured or that 100,000 got killed. My point is that a lot of people have suffered or outright died to make this happen.
Further, my point is that that number is high enough that people should probably be feeling somewhat uncomfortable about the situation. It's kind of like when that stock you bought is way down and you're trying to figure out if it will bounce back or whether it was really a bone-headed decision in the first place. You may say "stay the course", and a lot of financial advisors will say that about a lot of investments, or you may say, "why send good money after bad." Maybe that decision doesn't even have anything to do with the amount of the loss, but with the inherent strengths and weekness of the company.
But you don't ignore data just because the only available data is incomplete. You come up with the best numbers you can and make a decision.
But I also have a problem with people whose arguments against it rely entirely upon inflammatory rhetoric and made-up statistics.
I don't think I used inflammatory rhetoric, but I did make up the numbers. I told you I made them up and I told you how I made them up. I made them up the way I did because I thought that whatever side you were on you were likely to see them as concervative minimums. Do you really think my numbers are inflated? If not, then why can't you just look at them and tell me how you feel about that many people being killed and hurt? Personally, it makes me feel like crap.
Whatever we achieve in Iraq will need a measuring stick, and those numbers are probably a good minimum place to start measuring. Will the good we do outweigh the lives lost? Will the good we do make up for all the people with missing limbs and brain damage? Why don't YOU stick a number on it and measure it? Why don't YOU tell ME how we measure up? That's not rhetoric; that's evaluation.
It's high time conservatives start helping out in the evaluation. It's not disloyal to say "we fucked up." It also doesn't mean you're saying we should pull out and leave them in an even worse situation than when we started. Conservatives admit there were no WMDs and they know people have died (well, SOME amount has died, haven't they?) so how come they have such a phobia about pulling out the scales of justice and weighing the good vs. the bad?
Put another way... put the way I said it originally: At what point do you start to feel uncomfortable about what we did? I wouldn't be complaining if only 1/2 dozen guys were dead. Even you would be complaining if it were a million. What point in between gives you a queasy stomach? And do you, in good faith, think there's a chance we've already reached it?
TW
There have been about 1,500 US soldiers killed and about 10,000 injured in Iraq. Presumably the US killed the enemy at a higher ratio than 2-1. Don't know what the ratio is, but the better you think our troops are, the more interesting it gets. If it's 2-1 (unlikely) then that's 4,500 killed and about 30,000 injured.
But wait, what about civilians? No good figures here (I have however, seen a lot of really shitty estimates that have every flu victim in the war zone counted as a KIA for Bush) but the figure would just about have to be at least 1 to 1 for US soldier's dead. No, I don't have anything to back that up, but I seriously doubt anyone really believes less than that got killed.
Ok, tally it all up and we have about 6,000 dead and about 40,000 wounded in a VERY concervative, no facts estimate.
That's a whole lot less than 100,000. But who cares? It's a shitload of people who've had their lives seriously affected or cut short by the war.
So my question for you is this: Even if 100,000 dead is a pure fantasy number, are you comfortable with 6,000 dead and 40,000 injured? If you are comfortale with those numbers, at what point do you start feeling uncomfortable?
TW
As I recall from years ago, Jeff used to claim that the division between "Operating System", "Application" and "Content" was big learning barrier and slowed down computer use. So he would essentially abolish the first two items, or at least keep them largely invisible from the user.
Actually, I've seen more confusion over the last two items.
I've been asked on several occasions to help people find their missing documents. Naturally I've asked them "where did you last see it?" A surpisingly common answer is, "it's in Word."
I would ask them some more questions and they'd show me "exactly where it is" by clicking Open from the File menu of word and showing me "where the doument should be"..." right there in word."
Sometimes they'd show me the list of recently opened documents hanging right off the file menu "in Word."
My point is that this guy and a lot of other computer guys don't seem to realise that most users have no problem understanding applications. They click the icon that looks like a letter and lo and behold, they can write a letter.
Where the problem is for many of them is understanding what happens to their letter when they hit "save". The box that opens up when a user hits "save" doesnt look anything like their desktop or "my documents" to many new computer users. It's obvious to you and me, but to them it's a completly different storage repository. If there was some graphical element that demonstrated more clearly to these users exactly what happens to their document, it would be a godsend for grandmas and other new computer users.
TW
Aren't we supposed to, like, hate that, or something?
When I read this it almost made me spit my lunch on my monitor.
I'll be sure to check back later to see the concensus of the Slashdot community so I'll know what to think.
TW
No you can't, the child's dead before they might possibly be productive (let alone afford) a computer.
This is like saying the doctor is more important than the teacher. In some respects, this is correct. You can't teach a dead child. But in other respects this is dead wrong. A child that grows up and has no way to make a living is going to be a drain on resources that would otherwise, well, go toward treating sick children.
Any way you look at it, both are very respectable proffesions. Any way you look at it, the world would be pretty bad off without one or the other.
Any way you look at it, the open source community is making a MASSIVE contribution in monitary value to the children of the world and they deserve to have that contribution treated with respect.... Just like Bill Gates deserves respect for his very generous contributions.
TW