On the other hand, if you ask artists who have not been involved too much with Photoshop or graphics professionals who are able to dissociate the desired functionality from one implementation that they already know, then you can get a set of very useful ideas that can bring GIMP forward without being a copycat.
This doesn't make sense. Trying to find a digital artist who doesn't use Photoshop would be like trying to find a writer who doesn't use a keyboard. And getting a graphics professional to switch away from the best program Adobe makes will be an exercise in frustration. The only reason to switch away from Photoshop would be to use a tool which does a better job. There is no other reason. Doing things this way sounds, to me, like a plan to keep the GIMP constrained to a tiny niche forever.
high-end photo manipulation
"High-end"? Without the ability to work in, or convert to, a printable color space, or without full support for ICC profiles? I'm not sure what your definition of "high-end" is.
Well a lot of people considered Moving from OS 9 to OS X a downgrade.
It wasn't a lot of people. It was a vocal minority, the same minority which swore up and down that they'd never touch Apple again after the Intel switch and who spend hours debating the tiniest "flaws" in OS X's GUI. In other words, people for whom computers are an obsession or a fetish.
The the rest of us--people for whom computers are tools used to make money--OS X, and the features it brought, were long overdue. The switch was entirely worth it if only for the addition of a modern memory susbsyetem to an Apple OS. No more preemptive multitasking and having to specify how much memory each application got.
I'm not talking about web typography. Im talking about print. And, if you go take a look at the type libraries of any large ad agency, pre-press house or printer you will find that almost all of the fonts are Postscript Type 1. More and more Opentype fonts are appearing, but at this moment it's still almost all Type 1. In five years that may not be the case. But as the original poster said that Opentype is the de facto standard now, I stand by my statement.
Furthermore, "Opentype" is more of a marketing phrase than a description of the technology. From Wikipedia:
OpenType uses the general "sfnt" structure of a TrueType font, but it adds several smartfont options which enhance the font's typographic and language support capabilities. The glyph outline data in an OpenType font may be in one of two formats: TrueType format outlines, in a 'glyf' table, or Compact Font Format (CFF) outlines in a 'CFF ' table. CFF outline data is based on the PostScript language Type 2 font format. The table name 'CFF ' is four characters long, ending in a space character.
For many purposes, such as layout, it doesn't matter what the outline data format is, but for some purposes, such as rasterisation, it is significant. The term "OpenType" doesn't specify outline data format. Sometimes terms like "OpenType (PostScript flavor)", "OpenType CFF", or "OpenType (TrueType flavor)" are used to indicate which outline format a particular OpenType font contains.
But with John "I never met a corporation I didn't like" Roberts at the helm, I am not hopeful.
And now I will predict the future: the state of U.S. broadband will continue to stagnate as the rest of the world moves to higher and higher speeds. Your monthly bill will now steadily rise, and your speeds will not. I don't know how much longer I will be able to hang onto my ISP now (Earthlink leases lines from Verizon, who owns almost all of the infrastructure under Manhattan) and I'm sure that when Verizon "takes" over my service, I will be offered the same speed at a higher rate.
And, fifteen years from now, when the deplorable state of American broadband access becomes an issue, some idiot will be claiming that the problem is still too much regulation and that what we need is one national broadband company, which will give you a nice, fast 768 Kbps line for only $150/month.
Bastards. Bastard-coated bastards, with a chewy, bastard filling.
don't see that limited RAM in Mac OS X should affect crashing --- performance yes, but crashing? memory gets swapped out or it doesn't, right?
I dunno. My experience is that the CS suite is very sensitive to low memory situations; I was recently at a job where InDesign was crashing ten to fifteen times a day. In fact, at one of the places I work IT has decided to give all of the production machines more memory to make sure that CS (CS2, in this case) had 1 GB of RAM just for its own use. I have seen InDesign take 800 MB just to print a 60 page document. And, as long as we're passing on anecdotes, I have only found two programs which can lock up OS X so bad that I need to do a hardware reset. One is Google Earth, and the other is Illustrator.
Do you know jack-shit about a) marketing or b) economics? Here is a simple question for you. Picture a commodity market, if box A does web browsing, email blah blah blah (as you pointed out in you original post) and box B does the same + shiney Windows sticker + 100% retail markup. Will the majority of consumers in this commodity market chose their box by brand, or by value?
Of course you're right, which is why Apple went out of business years ago. They just can't compete with other brands' prices.
I'm not sure why you are so angry, but I guess that doesn't matter. People aren't going to switch to Linux because it's cheaper. They already wouldn't done that. People aren't going to switch to Linux because it's more stable, or because it's F/OSS, or any of that. People are going to continue to buy what they buy unless 1) external factors force a major realignment or 2) they're given a good reason to switch. Neither is coming.
Will the majority of consumers in this commodity market chose their box by brand, or by value?
As I said, people will continue to buy what they buy. People who have good experiences with Dell will stick with Dell. People who have good experiences with Apple will continue to buy Apple.
I know there's a general bias against marketing on Slashdot. Hell, even I think it's bullshit 50% of the time. But marketing--real, well done marketing, like Apple does--is a very difficult thing, and it's something which very few companies in any industry do well. Some companies do it well and poorly at the same time. Most of Microsoft's market is for shit, but their XBox division does it very well (at least in the U.S. They suck at it in Japan.)
Fr'example, let's look at the iPod versus the Zune. Apple's iPod marketing is very focused and seemingly very simple. It has one, overriding message: the iPod is music. Not 'the iPod can help you manage your music collection'. Not 'the iPod makes your music sound better'. Not even 'you can share your music with your friends with the iPod'. Simply, 'the iPod is music'. And because the iPod's product design backs this up, it's an enormously successful product because the whole thing is designed to make managing your music collection and using the device as simple as possible. There are no extraneous features, and none advertised. You aren't told what you can do with your music, or how to handle it, or how many in formats you can listen to it. You are simpye told, 'this is music.' You plug it into your machine. It grabs your playlists. You press play.
Now, let's look at the Zune, if you can find one. It wasn't sold as an mp3 player: it was sold as some weird cross between a music player and a social networking device. The message wasn't 'this thing is music'. The message was. ..
. ..well, there was no message. There wasn't a coherent narrative, or a center of focus. There was just 'here's this thing which will do stuff. With music. Buy it. ..'
Linux has no narrative an average computer user will care about.
For example the mainstream adoption of bittorent to download movies. All of a sudden everyone knows how it works and where to look for torrents etc.
Define "mainstream". If you mean, "most people on Slashdot", that's not mainstream. If you mean, "most people who post on internet forums", that's not mainstream. Add up all of the people downloading movies via bittorrent and I will bet you don't have more than 5% of the computer users out there. Bite further into that number and I bet you will find that 10% of those users account for 90% of that downloading. Most people get their movies by buying them.
I will go back to what I've said before; this isn't a technology issue, and it isn't a price issue. It's a marketing issue, and no one is marketing Linux in a professional way.
Now to finish the thought: any article which focuses on technology or pricing as a way to gain Linux market share misses the point. It's a marketing issue, and there's nothing I can see in the F/OSS or Linux world which is doing anything about that.
Add this to the list of things which should make Linux gain marketshare. Off the top of my head, the list includes: Microsoft's problems with XP/Vista, Apple's problems with 10.4/10.5, Apple's switch to Intel, the latest Windows virus, the introduction of the iPhone, the introduction of the iTMS, the fact that Balmer is a sweaty ape, and on and on.
The reason that Linux is, and will remain a niche player in the OS desktop market have almost next to nothing to do with technology. I think many posters here have at least a minimum familiarity with Linux, at least enough to know that a well-maintained Linux system can easily do all of the things more normal computer buyers need. It can check email, surf the web, handle digital pictures, play music, load music onto iPods, balance checkbook and find porn. The problem for Linux is that Windows and OS X can do all these things as well. Given this, there's no reason for an average consumer to switch.
What about hardware lock in? What about free, as in speech and beer?
No one cares.
I will repeat that: the average consumer doesn't care about either one. Most consumers already hold themselves in a sort of vendor lock in. If they've had a good experience buying from Dell, odds are they will continue to buy from Dell. If they've had good luck with Macs their entire computing lives, odds are they will stay there. And it's not just with computers. We all know people who will only by Hondas, or Fords, or Black & Decker or Bose. This isn't a technology issue, it's a marketing and consumer loyalty issue, and no amount of fancy kernel engineering will change that. It's the same for free speech and beer: your average consumer doesn't see the cost of the OS, because s/he buys one with the computer. My brother ran the OS his Powerbook came with (10.2.8) for years. He only accidently upgraded to 10.4 because he brought his machine to me to fix an unrelated problem, and I said something like, "Holy shit, you're still running 10.2.8." It was all the same to him, and I'm not sure he noticed the difference between 10.2 and 10.4. I'm sure he will be running whatever version of 10.4 his MacBook Pro came with until the next time he sees me.
It failed because it doesn't fucking work
on
Why AnywhereCD Failed
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
So, I figure I'd throw a few bucks into the company's till try to find some music I like. I did find some oldish Oakenfold I never got around to buying, so I got it, followed the instructions in the email they sent me and figured I download the mp3s while I ran some errands. The only problem is I can't.
Well, that's not the only problem. Problem #1 is that I have to download some third party app to download the mp3s, which doesn't make sense: I have downloaded thousands of things off of websites, and none of them has needed a third party app. What does this third party app do? Does it install spyware on my system? Does it report back to the record companies? Where's the info telling me what it does? But I did it anyway, cause I want my music. Only now, it won't download anything: it's stuck in "adding album to queue", where it's been for fifteen minutes. I looked in the email, and it mentioned another way to download the tracks, which is to click on the Playlist in my online music locker. Only problem is that the music I just bought isn't there, so I can't download it. Boy, I hope I get the CD in the mail, or I just wasted $20 on nothing. Or, in other words, I just got ripped off
So, Mr. Robertson, your idea failed for one simple reason: it sucks. Apple's iTunes Music Store runs circles around CDAnywhere in ease of use and execution. So does eMusic.com. You failed to produce a competitive product, plain and simple, and all the conspiracy theories in the world won't explain it away.
From what I remember reading in the lead up to the iPhone debut, Apple approached all of the major U.S. cel providers and was turned down by each one. All of them wanted a lot of control over the phone's design and, especially, its software. They wanted, essentially, to sell a slight modified version of something they were already selling, with an Apple sticker on it. Obviously, this is not the way Apple works, as they are a vertically-integrated systems provider. And, obviously, this is another sign of the sickness of the U.S. cel phone market.
There's really only one viable reason: Apple wanted a share of the carrier's profits, which meant giving AT&T an exclusive deal.
Oh, Lord. Please point out to me the place in the U.S. where it's easy to buy an unlocked phone and take it from carrier to carrier, cause I'd like to live there. Then maybe I could cancel my contract without an early termination fee and sign up to another carrier without signing a contract. Look, Apple does some stupid shit, but blaming them for the terrible and non-competitive state of the U.S. cel phone industry is just plain stupid. We have, IMO, a de facto telecommunications monopoly in this country, and the reasons for that are a whole lot more complicate than 'Apple is teh sux0r!' The whole essay reads like someone who lives a fair distance from logic. And then there's this:
But recently, well... the generous view would be that Apple's screwing up. ..
No, the view among a small percentage of Slashdot posters and some people with blogs is that Apple's screwing up. The view of most rational people is they're doing just fine. Why didn't he just call the essay "I Hate Apple"?
A major content company, which doesn't understand what's going on, takes another step towards obsolescence.
Morons.
The RIAA, the television networks and all of the other major content companies need to realize that their old distribution model, which was based on a relative paucity of what we would consider bandwidth, is over. And they will either adapt, or die.
BTW, what things belonging to mom and dad were you dodging?
Didn't leave out words, but did use the possessive when I shouldn't have.
As for Atlanta, I visited the downtown several years ago, and had to avoid all kinds of druggies and vagrants on the streets, people pissing in the middle of the subway station, etc. It wasn't a pretty place. And the neighborhoods north of the airport didn't look like someplace anyone would want to live in.
Then what's the point of getting a degree in creative writing
Because it's what I wanted to do, and what I do do.
or your ability to evaluate others
I evaluate others' work based on my own feelings, preconceptions and biases. But I don't pretend that mine are correct: they are just mine. I think Tom Clancy is a horrible, horrible writer, yet there are millions and millions of people who buy his books and love him. I can't tell a Clancy fan they're wrong. I can tell him or her my opinion, but I can't tell him his opinion is wrong. It's an opinion. He's entitled to it, no matter how wrong I think it is.
My opinion of a piece of music, for example, can never be "more or less informed" than that of my sister, who is a graduate student at Juilliard
Absolutely correct.
Look at it this way. I think Modanna's music is crap. I will argue with you until the sun comes up. But I cannot tell a Madonna fan they're wrong for liking her.
Funnily enough, I have the opposite problem: Apple's monitors are set too low for me, which means I am always looking down at them. One of the reasons I bought Viewsonic for home: it sits higher than Apple's monitors.
Also, if you've ever visited Manhattan, you'd know that children there are a rarity
Don't know where you were, If you look at the census data you will see that almost 20% of Manhattan's population is under the age of 18. All I know is that I can't walk down the sidewalk without dodging mom's and dad's and their damn strollers.
And, don't worry: the end of the petroleum economy will radically change the American landscape. It's already happening in some areas. Atlanta, for instance, has seen big increase in people moving away from the 'burbs and into the city center to get away from long commutes and having to own a car.
Slashdot Mirror
This doesn't make sense. Trying to find a digital artist who doesn't use Photoshop would be like trying to find a writer who doesn't use a keyboard. And getting a graphics professional to switch away from the best program Adobe makes will be an exercise in frustration. The only reason to switch away from Photoshop would be to use a tool which does a better job. There is no other reason. Doing things this way sounds, to me, like a plan to keep the GIMP constrained to a tiny niche forever.
"High-end"? Without the ability to work in, or convert to, a printable color space, or without full support for ICC profiles? I'm not sure what your definition of "high-end" is.
Indeed, you are right.
It wasn't a lot of people. It was a vocal minority, the same minority which swore up and down that they'd never touch Apple again after the Intel switch and who spend hours debating the tiniest "flaws" in OS X's GUI. In other words, people for whom computers are an obsession or a fetish.
The the rest of us--people for whom computers are tools used to make money--OS X, and the features it brought, were long overdue. The switch was entirely worth it if only for the addition of a modern memory susbsyetem to an Apple OS. No more preemptive multitasking and having to specify how much memory each application got.
I'm not talking about web typography. Im talking about print. And, if you go take a look at the type libraries of any large ad agency, pre-press house or printer you will find that almost all of the fonts are Postscript Type 1. More and more Opentype fonts are appearing, but at this moment it's still almost all Type 1. In five years that may not be the case. But as the original poster said that Opentype is the de facto standard now, I stand by my statement.
Furthermore, "Opentype" is more of a marketing phrase than a description of the technology. From Wikipedia:
OpenType uses the general "sfnt" structure of a TrueType font, but it adds several smartfont options which enhance the font's typographic and language support capabilities. The glyph outline data in an OpenType font may be in one of two formats: TrueType format outlines, in a 'glyf' table, or Compact Font Format (CFF) outlines in a 'CFF ' table. CFF outline data is based on the PostScript language Type 2 font format. The table name 'CFF ' is four characters long, ending in a space character.
For many purposes, such as layout, it doesn't matter what the outline data format is, but for some purposes, such as rasterisation, it is significant. The term "OpenType" doesn't specify outline data format. Sometimes terms like "OpenType (PostScript flavor)", "OpenType CFF", or "OpenType (TrueType flavor)" are used to indicate which outline format a particular OpenType font contains.
But with John "I never met a corporation I didn't like" Roberts at the helm, I am not hopeful.
And now I will predict the future: the state of U.S. broadband will continue to stagnate as the rest of the world moves to higher and higher speeds. Your monthly bill will now steadily rise, and your speeds will not. I don't know how much longer I will be able to hang onto my ISP now (Earthlink leases lines from Verizon, who owns almost all of the infrastructure under Manhattan) and I'm sure that when Verizon "takes" over my service, I will be offered the same speed at a higher rate.
And, fifteen years from now, when the deplorable state of American broadband access becomes an issue, some idiot will be claiming that the problem is still too much regulation and that what we need is one national broadband company, which will give you a nice, fast 768 Kbps line for only $150/month.
Bastards. Bastard-coated bastards, with a chewy, bastard filling.
Not even close, dude. Postscript Type 1 still rules the roost.
run like hell from our drum-fed, fully automatic robot overlords.
I dunno. My experience is that the CS suite is very sensitive to low memory situations; I was recently at a job where InDesign was crashing ten to fifteen times a day. In fact, at one of the places I work IT has decided to give all of the production machines more memory to make sure that CS (CS2, in this case) had 1 GB of RAM just for its own use. I have seen InDesign take 800 MB just to print a 60 page document. And, as long as we're passing on anecdotes, I have only found two programs which can lock up OS X so bad that I need to do a hardware reset. One is Google Earth, and the other is Illustrator.
Of course you're right, which is why Apple went out of business years ago. They just can't compete with other brands' prices.
I'm not sure why you are so angry, but I guess that doesn't matter. People aren't going to switch to Linux because it's cheaper. They already wouldn't done that. People aren't going to switch to Linux because it's more stable, or because it's F/OSS, or any of that. People are going to continue to buy what they buy unless 1) external factors force a major realignment or 2) they're given a good reason to switch. Neither is coming.
As I said, people will continue to buy what they buy. People who have good experiences with Dell will stick with Dell. People who have good experiences with Apple will continue to buy Apple.
No. No.
And no.
I know there's a general bias against marketing on Slashdot. Hell, even I think it's bullshit 50% of the time. But marketing--real, well done marketing, like Apple does--is a very difficult thing, and it's something which very few companies in any industry do well. Some companies do it well and poorly at the same time. Most of Microsoft's market is for shit, but their XBox division does it very well (at least in the U.S. They suck at it in Japan.)
Fr'example, let's look at the iPod versus the Zune. Apple's iPod marketing is very focused and seemingly very simple. It has one, overriding message: the iPod is music. Not 'the iPod can help you manage your music collection'. Not 'the iPod makes your music sound better'. Not even 'you can share your music with your friends with the iPod'. Simply, 'the iPod is music'. And because the iPod's product design backs this up, it's an enormously successful product because the whole thing is designed to make managing your music collection and using the device as simple as possible. There are no extraneous features, and none advertised. You aren't told what you can do with your music, or how to handle it, or how many in formats you can listen to it. You are simpye told, 'this is music.' You plug it into your machine. It grabs your playlists. You press play.
Now, let's look at the Zune, if you can find one. It wasn't sold as an mp3 player: it was sold as some weird cross between a music player and a social networking device. The message wasn't 'this thing is music'. The message was. . .
. . .well, there was no message. There wasn't a coherent narrative, or a center of focus. There was just 'here's this thing which will do stuff. With music. Buy it. . .'
Linux has no narrative an average computer user will care about.
Define "mainstream". If you mean, "most people on Slashdot", that's not mainstream. If you mean, "most people who post on internet forums", that's not mainstream. Add up all of the people downloading movies via bittorrent and I will bet you don't have more than 5% of the computer users out there. Bite further into that number and I bet you will find that 10% of those users account for 90% of that downloading. Most people get their movies by buying them.
I will go back to what I've said before; this isn't a technology issue, and it isn't a price issue. It's a marketing issue, and no one is marketing Linux in a professional way.
Crap: Hit "Submit" instead of "Preview."
Now to finish the thought: any article which focuses on technology or pricing as a way to gain Linux market share misses the point. It's a marketing issue, and there's nothing I can see in the F/OSS or Linux world which is doing anything about that.
Add this to the list of things which should make Linux gain marketshare. Off the top of my head, the list includes: Microsoft's problems with XP/Vista, Apple's problems with 10.4/10.5, Apple's switch to Intel, the latest Windows virus, the introduction of the iPhone, the introduction of the iTMS, the fact that Balmer is a sweaty ape, and on and on.
The reason that Linux is, and will remain a niche player in the OS desktop market have almost next to nothing to do with technology. I think many posters here have at least a minimum familiarity with Linux, at least enough to know that a well-maintained Linux system can easily do all of the things more normal computer buyers need. It can check email, surf the web, handle digital pictures, play music, load music onto iPods, balance checkbook and find porn. The problem for Linux is that Windows and OS X can do all these things as well. Given this, there's no reason for an average consumer to switch.
What about hardware lock in? What about free, as in speech and beer?
No one cares.
I will repeat that: the average consumer doesn't care about either one. Most consumers already hold themselves in a sort of vendor lock in. If they've had a good experience buying from Dell, odds are they will continue to buy from Dell. If they've had good luck with Macs their entire computing lives, odds are they will stay there. And it's not just with computers. We all know people who will only by Hondas, or Fords, or Black & Decker or Bose. This isn't a technology issue, it's a marketing and consumer loyalty issue, and no amount of fancy kernel engineering will change that. It's the same for free speech and beer: your average consumer doesn't see the cost of the OS, because s/he buys one with the computer. My brother ran the OS his Powerbook came with (10.2.8) for years. He only accidently upgraded to 10.4 because he brought his machine to me to fix an unrelated problem, and I said something like, "Holy shit, you're still running 10.2.8." It was all the same to him, and I'm not sure he noticed the difference between 10.2 and 10.4. I'm sure he will be running whatever version of 10.4 his MacBook Pro came with until the next time he sees me.
So, I figure I'd throw a few bucks into the company's till try to find some music I like. I did find some oldish Oakenfold I never got around to buying, so I got it, followed the instructions in the email they sent me and figured I download the mp3s while I ran some errands. The only problem is I can't.
Well, that's not the only problem. Problem #1 is that I have to download some third party app to download the mp3s, which doesn't make sense: I have downloaded thousands of things off of websites, and none of them has needed a third party app. What does this third party app do? Does it install spyware on my system? Does it report back to the record companies? Where's the info telling me what it does? But I did it anyway, cause I want my music. Only now, it won't download anything: it's stuck in "adding album to queue", where it's been for fifteen minutes. I looked in the email, and it mentioned another way to download the tracks, which is to click on the Playlist in my online music locker. Only problem is that the music I just bought isn't there, so I can't download it. Boy, I hope I get the CD in the mail, or I just wasted $20 on nothing. Or, in other words, I just got ripped off
So, Mr. Robertson, your idea failed for one simple reason: it sucks. Apple's iTunes Music Store runs circles around CDAnywhere in ease of use and execution. So does eMusic.com. You failed to produce a competitive product, plain and simple, and all the conspiracy theories in the world won't explain it away.
It's not real until Apple says it.
From what I remember reading in the lead up to the iPhone debut, Apple approached all of the major U.S. cel providers and was turned down by each one. All of them wanted a lot of control over the phone's design and, especially, its software. They wanted, essentially, to sell a slight modified version of something they were already selling, with an Apple sticker on it. Obviously, this is not the way Apple works, as they are a vertically-integrated systems provider. And, obviously, this is another sign of the sickness of the U.S. cel phone market.
Thanks, dude. I didn't know how easy it was to get an unlocked phone.
Oh, Lord. Please point out to me the place in the U.S. where it's easy to buy an unlocked phone and take it from carrier to carrier, cause I'd like to live there. Then maybe I could cancel my contract without an early termination fee and sign up to another carrier without signing a contract. Look, Apple does some stupid shit, but blaming them for the terrible and non-competitive state of the U.S. cel phone industry is just plain stupid. We have, IMO, a de facto telecommunications monopoly in this country, and the reasons for that are a whole lot more complicate than 'Apple is teh sux0r!' The whole essay reads like someone who lives a fair distance from logic. And then there's this:
No, the view among a small percentage of Slashdot posters and some people with blogs is that Apple's screwing up. The view of most rational people is they're doing just fine. Why didn't he just call the essay "I Hate Apple"?
The phrase . . .beyond which the future becomes unpredictable.
Is this opposed to the perfectly predictable future we've had up until now?
A major content company, which doesn't understand what's going on, takes another step towards obsolescence.
Morons.
The RIAA, the television networks and all of the other major content companies need to realize that their old distribution model, which was based on a relative paucity of what we would consider bandwidth, is over. And they will either adapt, or die.
"It says, 'bird, camel, Horus, snake, bundle of reeds!' "
Didn't leave out words, but did use the possessive when I shouldn't have.
Go look again: the city is changing rapidly.
Because it's what I wanted to do, and what I do do.
I evaluate others' work based on my own feelings, preconceptions and biases. But I don't pretend that mine are correct: they are just mine. I think Tom Clancy is a horrible, horrible writer, yet there are millions and millions of people who buy his books and love him. I can't tell a Clancy fan they're wrong. I can tell him or her my opinion, but I can't tell him his opinion is wrong. It's an opinion. He's entitled to it, no matter how wrong I think it is.
Absolutely correct.
Look at it this way. I think Modanna's music is crap. I will argue with you until the sun comes up. But I cannot tell a Madonna fan they're wrong for liking her.
Funnily enough, I have the opposite problem: Apple's monitors are set too low for me, which means I am always looking down at them. One of the reasons I bought Viewsonic for home: it sits higher than Apple's monitors.
Don't know where you were, If you look at the census data you will see that almost 20% of Manhattan's population is under the age of 18. All I know is that I can't walk down the sidewalk without dodging mom's and dad's and their damn strollers.
And, don't worry: the end of the petroleum economy will radically change the American landscape. It's already happening in some areas. Atlanta, for instance, has seen big increase in people moving away from the 'burbs and into the city center to get away from long commutes and having to own a car.