Unfortunately the contract phones have been making inroads in Europe too, but the situation isn't nearly as bad because enough people still want the phones separately. Due to this, the carriers can't actually cripple the phones they provide or charge exorbitant prices for simple network service. Basically, you're only limiting yourself to the 24-month billing lock in, but the Americans are also getting higher prices, less choice in hardware, crippled software, and no realistic option to buy separately.
Plus if the European carriers started acting like American carriers, the governments would come down on them so hard Microsoft's fine would look small...
Yes, companies should try to maximize profits. However, what you just described is a monopolistic profit maximizer. Understandable with a new wonderdrug that cost billions to develop, but it should absolutely not happen with general health care and phone network cartels of all things.
It's because US carriers compete based on who has the iPhone and who has the Pre rather than network price/quality. Then users "buy" $800 devices for "$99" and make fun of uncrippled foreign cell phone brands because they're "so expensive", and have useless features like application downloads from Sourceforge.
Because they want to control the platform with their webapps, and want to do ad targeting. If they mainly contributed code to existing projects like for example Nokia does, they wouldn't be in control anymore.
(1) So what exactly are we waiting for? We already have GNU on Linux. So we're happy, right?
In an ideal world, I really wouldn't care what anyone else uses. However, people sending GNU users documents in proprietary formats and using proprietary communications protocols force our hand in this. We must gain more market share in order to help ourselves get acknowledged. This is why "Linux on the desktop" is so important.
If, on the other hand, an incompatible system that happens to use the Linux kernel becomes popular, we have gained nothing. GNU will still be left out in the cold, and that's really what we're all using here, even if we call it "Linux".
(2) I also run GNU on Windows (via Cygwin), and on OSX. Does this mean Linux has no point (hint: no)
No, it means Linux has a point to me, but not you (?). If you run GNU on Windows, we can still communicate, and are thus both fundamentally happy, even if we might disagree about whether our kernel needs to be Free. Not so with the hordes of users who use Word and Skype. If Word used ODT and Skype some VoIP standard there wouldn't be any OS wars apart from profit.
Although, that said, I also believe that storing everyone's data in webapps on a major scale is extremely dangerous, so in this particular case there's also a philosophical reason to want to warn others for their own benefit, rather than just self-interest.
I don't think it's a marketing thing at all. In all likelihood Chrome OS marketing won't push the word Linux at all. Just like TiVo doesn't mention Linux in its ads.
Ah, but there are two different target audiences. Using the Linux kernel will make a lot of moderately technically inclined people think that it's a good choice even if it's just the kernel on a closed device. Have you noticed how many non-geeks are impressed by OSX running on the iPhone even though none of the features are exposed to the end user?
Rather, if you need a kernel for a new OS, Linux is a pragmatic one to choose.
Agreed, but that doesn't mean we need to embrace it. Google's design decisions are an attempt to fragment the FOSS community for their benefit.
Assuming they've kept their edge, that statement is the key: They lead, they don't follow. That's why the competition are catching up to them, and not the reverse. Provided they keep doing that, there is little room for error to occur
That's an amazingly arrogant attitude that Apple would do well to not share. Apple may have the edge in ease of use, but they never had an edge in anything else. If the competition can catch up on designing good user interfaces before Apple can catch up on hardware and features, there is actually very much room for error.
I get that the UI is most important for many, but it's lame to ignore everything else.
Maybe lag isn't the correct word. More like I had trouble timing the shake of my hand correctly vs. timing the press of a button. Even if it's my own fault, I still think a button would be better:)
I kept running into enemies because the spin would either activate too early or too late. Mario games usually have such tight controls that I went into situations where timing was too critical for shaking the remote.
I admit that it's probably 50% my fault for not having a consistent shake that would trigger the effect the same moment every time. However, I also don't think that any such lag is acceptable, and would rather press a button.
In my opinion, the Wii remote loses only to the mouse and keyboard in FPS games. However, I agree that it's sluggish. For example, I started having problems towards the end of Mario Galaxy, because I had until then almost completely avoided using the spin attack due to timing issues. I really didn't know how to use it well by the time I needed it, like in the Luigi platform level.
The remote needs more buttons, really badly. The motion controls should NEVER be used when a button could do the same job.
The Wii in general is a great concept, but its hardware limitations are really starting to show. The next generation product can't be as reliant on the motion controls or it'll tank. I also hope Nintendo realizes that many traditional gamers bought it for the sole reason of playing Mario, Zelda and Metroid, not because it's actually a good platform for them. Switching to 100% casual would be a disaster.
Short term, I would personally at the very least want updated hardware with an integrated 1080p upscaler (or even native. Is it possible to lie to the games and render and antialias polygons more precisely than requested?).
Oh, you were talking about Enterprise. I thought you meant the movie and its possible sequels. The enemy Romulans were just a bunch of assholes on a ship imho - not representing all Romulans.
I haven't seen most of Enterprise, but I vaguely remember being embarrassed during the episode in which the earth gets attacked by super-terrorists. Is that the kind of thing you mean?
FWIW, I think it would be possible to create an alien race of assholes without it being racist, but you have to be careful to not use it as a reference to the real world. ID4 did a good job, I think. Alien too, but they weren't intelligent. Predator had an amoral alien race.
In fact, I think it's a bit presumptuous to assume that all alien species would share our social peculiarities. By concluding that they must have good and bad people just like us, you're just copy-pasting our situation on them. The Vulcans (TOS, not these new emotional ones) were pretty uniformly superior to us apart from a few madmen, so the opposite should be a valid idea too.
30 seconds now, but they'll make better ones. In any case, if they can make all the other stuff unnecessary by having scanners, it will be faster, because a lot of people do end up spending more than that time, and you're waiting in line behind them. (Also, if we develop a foolproof weapon detector, the stupid lists of names could be scrapped (not that they shouldn't anyway)).
Furthermore, I don't personally think someone seeing a body scan of you is a matter of dignity. It's not like you've never been in a locker room, and they're not even forcing you to actually take off your clothes (which WOULD be really stupid).
This isn't "you've got nothing to worry about if you don't have anything to hide"-bullshit. You're just uptight about your body. Which is fair enough, I guess, but I don't think it should affect any laws. Unless we can argue that airlines don't need to check for weapons at all, I think a full body scanner is a fairly efficient way of doing so.
Stay away from my data, though. I agree with your point about drawing a line.
They can go through all your data, they can "mistakenly" put you on a danger list, they can force you to leave random stuff behind, and the one thing the politicians take issue with is the one device that might actually make security FASTER because OMG BOOBIES.
This is a farce, not a victory for "human dignity".
I think GuloGulo2 is being unnecessarily adversarial, but he is essentially correct. If the Americans don't give a fuck about something, there's nothing anyone can do about it.
Luckily, once other countries can't live with it anymore, there will be war (economic or military). This creates a real incentive for people to care about their neighbors, unlike the ridiculous world courts.
Countries that let foreign courts overrule their own courts are insane. The US is 100% correct on this. If the US government violates human rights, Americans need to do something about it themselves. Courts formed by treaty are a really sick form of peer pressure, nothing more.
The global touchy feely "peace and unity" lobby is only successful in castrating the good guys and feeling smug. Take the land mine ban, for example. The countries that really need it are never going to care, and it messes things up in peaceful countries that relied on them as deterrents.
I get that, but it was so illogical that someone should've removed him from duty right then and there. In fact, it was attempted murder, and there's no way Kirk would've respected him afterwards. It made no sense.
My theory is this: either the writers or the target audience have the emotional maturity of a five year old. I don't know which, but it's making many modern movies exceedingly annoying to me (even ones that are otherwise excellent).
I also think there's a tendency towards general mild overacting that makes the characters more comedic, but less real. Movie characters have always cracked jokes, and Star Trek traditionally even has some slapstick, but the one liners no longer sound like an adult would say them (mostly limited to Scotty).
There have also always been chase scenes, but nowadays they're just there for no purpose. Like when Starfleet suddenly had a dune buggy and Picard just had to go drive around and get into a firefight.
The movie itself was ok, but I'm not hopeful about the future ones that will probably follow. Sure, the plot was entertaining enough, and it wasn't a bad movie, but to me it seemed like that was by chance rather than by design.
The writers once again demonstrated that they're childish and stupid. The premise was ripped straight out of Nemesis, complete with badly scripted Romulan renegades in a super powerful ship with a planetkiller main weapon. They did it better this time, but it was still the exact same premise! (And it's never going to be done well, it's so lame. At least the guy wasn't a clone.)
Then there's yet more main character stupidity just to move the plot forward. For example, an out of control crew member was left behind on a deadly planet instead of being put in the brig, just so he could end up somewhere else. I can ignore physics errors, I can't ignore illogical actions!
That's not a good thing. The distro on the Eee is not nice to use. Bypassing sysv init is exactly the kind of "clever" hack that others in this thread are bashing Windows programmers for. I'm also experiencing weird focus problems and the updater seems to want me to click yes on every package.
Just install DebianEeePC and apply the optional optimizations. It's fast enough, and no bullshit.
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Unfortunately the contract phones have been making inroads in Europe too, but the situation isn't nearly as bad because enough people still want the phones separately. Due to this, the carriers can't actually cripple the phones they provide or charge exorbitant prices for simple network service. Basically, you're only limiting yourself to the 24-month billing lock in, but the Americans are also getting higher prices, less choice in hardware, crippled software, and no realistic option to buy separately.
Plus if the European carriers started acting like American carriers, the governments would come down on them so hard Microsoft's fine would look small...
Yes, companies should try to maximize profits. However, what you just described is a monopolistic profit maximizer. Understandable with a new wonderdrug that cost billions to develop, but it should absolutely not happen with general health care and phone network cartels of all things.
It's because US carriers compete based on who has the iPhone and who has the Pre rather than network price/quality. Then users "buy" $800 devices for "$99" and make fun of uncrippled foreign cell phone brands because they're "so expensive", and have useless features like application downloads from Sourceforge.
Because when he's using a computer, Ballmer is SITTING on his chair, so he can't throw it. Duh! Fail physics much?
Because they want to control the platform with their webapps, and want to do ad targeting. If they mainly contributed code to existing projects like for example Nokia does, they wouldn't be in control anymore.
Strange to me on two levels.
(1) So what exactly are we waiting for? We already have GNU on Linux. So we're happy, right?
In an ideal world, I really wouldn't care what anyone else uses. However, people sending GNU users documents in proprietary formats and using proprietary communications protocols force our hand in this. We must gain more market share in order to help ourselves get acknowledged. This is why "Linux on the desktop" is so important.
If, on the other hand, an incompatible system that happens to use the Linux kernel becomes popular, we have gained nothing. GNU will still be left out in the cold, and that's really what we're all using here, even if we call it "Linux".
(2) I also run GNU on Windows (via Cygwin), and on OSX. Does this mean Linux has no point (hint: no)
No, it means Linux has a point to me, but not you (?). If you run GNU on Windows, we can still communicate, and are thus both fundamentally happy, even if we might disagree about whether our kernel needs to be Free. Not so with the hordes of users who use Word and Skype. If Word used ODT and Skype some VoIP standard there wouldn't be any OS wars apart from profit.
Although, that said, I also believe that storing everyone's data in webapps on a major scale is extremely dangerous, so in this particular case there's also a philosophical reason to want to warn others for their own benefit, rather than just self-interest.
I don't think it's a marketing thing at all. In all likelihood Chrome OS marketing won't push the word Linux at all. Just like TiVo doesn't mention Linux in its ads.
Ah, but there are two different target audiences. Using the Linux kernel will make a lot of moderately technically inclined people think that it's a good choice even if it's just the kernel on a closed device. Have you noticed how many non-geeks are impressed by OSX running on the iPhone even though none of the features are exposed to the end user?
Rather, if you need a kernel for a new OS, Linux is a pragmatic one to choose.
Agreed, but that doesn't mean we need to embrace it. Google's design decisions are an attempt to fragment the FOSS community for their benefit.
I feel like a retard making a post like this, but mod the parent up.
This is not what I have been waiting for by a long shot. We "Linux fans" use Linux as a means to run GNU, not buzzword webos UI.
"Linux" is becoming a marketing gimmick. Us starting to call it GNU/Linux has never made more sense.
You just wait. In another ten years, Apple will have invented it!
"the competition is now catching up"
Assuming they've kept their edge, that statement is the key: They lead, they don't follow. That's why the competition are catching up to them, and not the reverse. Provided they keep doing that, there is little room for error to occur
That's an amazingly arrogant attitude that Apple would do well to not share. Apple may have the edge in ease of use, but they never had an edge in anything else. If the competition can catch up on designing good user interfaces before Apple can catch up on hardware and features, there is actually very much room for error.
I get that the UI is most important for many, but it's lame to ignore everything else.
Maybe lag isn't the correct word. More like I had trouble timing the shake of my hand correctly vs. timing the press of a button. Even if it's my own fault, I still think a button would be better :)
I kept running into enemies because the spin would either activate too early or too late. Mario games usually have such tight controls that I went into situations where timing was too critical for shaking the remote.
I admit that it's probably 50% my fault for not having a consistent shake that would trigger the effect the same moment every time. However, I also don't think that any such lag is acceptable, and would rather press a button.
In my opinion, the Wii remote loses only to the mouse and keyboard in FPS games. However, I agree that it's sluggish. For example, I started having problems towards the end of Mario Galaxy, because I had until then almost completely avoided using the spin attack due to timing issues. I really didn't know how to use it well by the time I needed it, like in the Luigi platform level.
The remote needs more buttons, really badly. The motion controls should NEVER be used when a button could do the same job.
The Wii in general is a great concept, but its hardware limitations are really starting to show. The next generation product can't be as reliant on the motion controls or it'll tank. I also hope Nintendo realizes that many traditional gamers bought it for the sole reason of playing Mario, Zelda and Metroid, not because it's actually a good platform for them. Switching to 100% casual would be a disaster.
Short term, I would personally at the very least want updated hardware with an integrated 1080p upscaler (or even native. Is it possible to lie to the games and render and antialias polygons more precisely than requested?).
Unlike the RIAA and MPAA, they actually update the products when they do it.
3. Profit
Oh, you were talking about Enterprise. I thought you meant the movie and its possible sequels. The enemy Romulans were just a bunch of assholes on a ship imho - not representing all Romulans.
I haven't seen most of Enterprise, but I vaguely remember being embarrassed during the episode in which the earth gets attacked by super-terrorists. Is that the kind of thing you mean?
FWIW, I think it would be possible to create an alien race of assholes without it being racist, but you have to be careful to not use it as a reference to the real world. ID4 did a good job, I think. Alien too, but they weren't intelligent. Predator had an amoral alien race.
In fact, I think it's a bit presumptuous to assume that all alien species would share our social peculiarities. By concluding that they must have good and bad people just like us, you're just copy-pasting our situation on them. The Vulcans (TOS, not these new emotional ones) were pretty uniformly superior to us apart from a few madmen, so the opposite should be a valid idea too.
30 seconds now, but they'll make better ones. In any case, if they can make all the other stuff unnecessary by having scanners, it will be faster, because a lot of people do end up spending more than that time, and you're waiting in line behind them. (Also, if we develop a foolproof weapon detector, the stupid lists of names could be scrapped (not that they shouldn't anyway)).
Furthermore, I don't personally think someone seeing a body scan of you is a matter of dignity. It's not like you've never been in a locker room, and they're not even forcing you to actually take off your clothes (which WOULD be really stupid).
This isn't "you've got nothing to worry about if you don't have anything to hide"-bullshit. You're just uptight about your body. Which is fair enough, I guess, but I don't think it should affect any laws. Unless we can argue that airlines don't need to check for weapons at all, I think a full body scanner is a fairly efficient way of doing so.
Stay away from my data, though. I agree with your point about drawing a line.
They can go through all your data, they can "mistakenly" put you on a danger list, they can force you to leave random stuff behind, and the one thing the politicians take issue with is the one device that might actually make security FASTER because OMG BOOBIES.
This is a farce, not a victory for "human dignity".
I think GuloGulo2 is being unnecessarily adversarial, but he is essentially correct. If the Americans don't give a fuck about something, there's nothing anyone can do about it.
Luckily, once other countries can't live with it anymore, there will be war (economic or military). This creates a real incentive for people to care about their neighbors, unlike the ridiculous world courts.
Countries that let foreign courts overrule their own courts are insane. The US is 100% correct on this. If the US government violates human rights, Americans need to do something about it themselves. Courts formed by treaty are a really sick form of peer pressure, nothing more.
The global touchy feely "peace and unity" lobby is only successful in castrating the good guys and feeling smug. Take the land mine ban, for example. The countries that really need it are never going to care, and it messes things up in peaceful countries that relied on them as deterrents.
"Xenophobic animosity"? You do realize we were supposed to be against them because they were assholes, not because of their skin color?
That said, I agree it can't ride on action alone.
I get that, but it was so illogical that someone should've removed him from duty right then and there. In fact, it was attempted murder, and there's no way Kirk would've respected him afterwards. It made no sense.
My theory is this: either the writers or the target audience have the emotional maturity of a five year old. I don't know which, but it's making many modern movies exceedingly annoying to me (even ones that are otherwise excellent).
I also think there's a tendency towards general mild overacting that makes the characters more comedic, but less real. Movie characters have always cracked jokes, and Star Trek traditionally even has some slapstick, but the one liners no longer sound like an adult would say them (mostly limited to Scotty).
There have also always been chase scenes, but nowadays they're just there for no purpose. Like when Starfleet suddenly had a dune buggy and Picard just had to go drive around and get into a firefight.
The movie itself was ok, but I'm not hopeful about the future ones that will probably follow. Sure, the plot was entertaining enough, and it wasn't a bad movie, but to me it seemed like that was by chance rather than by design.
The writers once again demonstrated that they're childish and stupid. The premise was ripped straight out of Nemesis, complete with badly scripted Romulan renegades in a super powerful ship with a planetkiller main weapon. They did it better this time, but it was still the exact same premise! (And it's never going to be done well, it's so lame. At least the guy wasn't a clone.)
Then there's yet more main character stupidity just to move the plot forward. For example, an out of control crew member was left behind on a deadly planet instead of being put in the brig, just so he could end up somewhere else. I can ignore physics errors, I can't ignore illogical actions!
You really shouldn't be accessing websites with your server using any browser...
How is that a response? He just won't use your service.
Neither will I, by the way. And many others. Aren't you the one who needs the ad revenue?
That's not a good thing. The distro on the Eee is not nice to use. Bypassing sysv init is exactly the kind of "clever" hack that others in this thread are bashing Windows programmers for. I'm also experiencing weird focus problems and the updater seems to want me to click yes on every package.
Just install DebianEeePC and apply the optional optimizations. It's fast enough, and no bullshit.