That's not so much a critique of presentation software so much as a critique of how people USE it.
Whoever sets up the presentations for Steve Jobs, for example, tends to do a pretty good job for his keynotes.
I personally use presentation software not to present information to others, but as "cue cards" for myself.
Presentation software has its uses, although I would agree with you that most of the time, it's used very, very poorly.
No one has mentioned this yet, so here's a good opportunity to plug Dr. Edward Tufte's The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint.
It takes a lot of guts for a comedian to play to an audience he can't see while telling the cold hard truth about the audience he can see.
How so? He knows exactly what his real audience likes, and he played right to them. They're the ones who keep his bills paid, not the press corps and not the Administration. What sort of consequences could he possibly have faced? The disapproval of the press? The government sending goons after him? Exactly. You can't be gutsy if you face no real ill-consequences for your acts.
It was no different than when Imus insulted President Clinton when he had his turn at this. Both of those guys make their whole living by insulting the mighty and the famous; both performances were nothing more than another day's routine work.
Do have an honest counter argument or is insulting him the best you can come up with?
He did. I invite you to go back and re-read his post, starting with this part:
Apple's DRM has done more for the availability of music on the internets than anything except bittorrent. If it wasn't for Jobs having the cojones to square off against the music and movie congloms we'd all be renting our music by now. Without DRM iTunes would be eMusic.
See? Of course you don't have to agree with his argument, but there it is, all bottom-line-up-front like. The insult that came after may have been gratuitous but it was not his main argument (FWIW I've only read one novel by Cory Doctorow - Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom - but it was sufficiently awful for me to decide to never read anything by him again).
If I give you property, I don't have it anymore. My wealth has decreased; yours has increased; the net difference is zero.
If I give you an idea, I still have it. My wealth has stayed the same; yours has increased; the net gain is 100%.
Ideas aren't property and they can't be property. By failing to realize that fact we are only hurting ourselves. It's as simple as that.
Music isn't an "idea." It is the result of creative effort on the part of artists who provide a service - the creation and performance of music - as well as that of a host of technical people and business people (sound engineers, marketeers, etc. etc.). They provide consumers with a service and have every right to compensation for that service, just as if they were performing their music live.
You are an apologist for thievery. You just mock virtue when you try to make your greed look like something it isn't with specious arguments. It's as simple as this: you're a cheap bastard who wants something for nothing at the expense of others.
I like how you emphasise "ONLY" to hint at a small amount, and then go on to itemise five colours (plus white and black). I don't know, I wouldn't release a consumer audio device and describe it as "ONLY available in SEVEN colours".
And he was right on the money. The ONLY color DEVICE they played with in all that time was the iPod Mini, which was not a computer of course, and was quickly replaced by the (black or white) iPod Nano. Reading what you quoted in the context of the rest of his comment, his point stands: with a minor exception, Apple's hardware since 2001 has been monochromatic, thus refuting the GP's point.
So I am afraid this jet car is actually a bit pathetic. It's no more powerful than the (street legal, normally drivable) VW Bugatti, which costs about the same, and it is less powerful than a suitable modded tractor engine.
Pathetic? The guy mounted a jet engine on the back of a VW Beetle. Jet engine. Beetle. Who cares how its performance stacks up with some prissy sports car or a hot rodded tractor? The jet powered Beetle transcends cool in ways the Bugatti never will.
Also, what's with macs and Hollywood? Pretty much everyone I know who works in the film industry owns a mac. Is it because of the product placement Apple likes to do?
Or, they are cooler/ hipper than you.
Re:frustrated a few times with Windows limitations
on
Boot Camp For Suckers?
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· Score: 4, Interesting
whereas mac closes off its systems so normal users cant screw it up.
How did this get modded "interesting?"
Care to elaborate how Mac OS X "closes off its systems so normal users can't screw it up?"
I think that microsoft should try to narrow what it does instead of trying to do everything that it can. By narrowing it's views, the products it produces will be better.
No, by all means let them try to do more - eventually (hopefully) MS will overextend itself and then the whole rotten house of cards will collapse.
Mod this guy up, grandparent simply Does Not Get It, and that mentality is why Apple's competition consistently fail to make a dent in the iPod's market share. I'm as far from a hipster as you can get (dumpy nerd, of course) but no way would I trade my iPod for some Rube Goldberg wonder toy like this archos player mentioned. The iPod does its job very well - plays music - it is reliable and elegant. People are tired of feature creep and the iPod's sales numbers show it.
Yeah, just like the diesel engine...oh wait...that one rotted on the shelf until the patent expired. Fancy that. Did Mr. Armstrong(FM radio) a lot of good also. You got it backwards. If not for IP privileges, we might have had this thing fifty years ago or more. IP rewards the first. I'd rather reward the best.
I think you need to go back and re-read what he wrote. There are reasons pecuiliar to medicine - you know, that involve insuring lots of people don't die because of this device - require extremely expensive testing and no one will be willing to foot that bill unless they have a good chance of making money on it. The patent ensures that they will.
What I like about it is the co-op with my friends. You can't be a one man tank, I could easily be beaten up by a group of level 3-4 monsters. And for the strong monsters, you *need* the cooperation.
Sounds like WoW to me. Can't imagine someone soloing Lord Kazzak, for instance.
Seriously, would you prefer the world wide web was centrally administered simply because something like Geocities could exist?
I think that is an exceptionally poor analogy. The WWW is too broad in scope and too general in purpose to compare to something like a game.
I have to agree with the parent, after having played NWN for some time: player created content really sucks. I kept looking and looking for diamonds in the rough to crop up eventually and make that game worth it. Never happened. Even the good stuff fell far short of a mediocre effort by a dedicated developer. I think this underestimates the effort it takes to make game settings that are as immersive and interesting as what you can find in a game like WoW.
World of Warcraft is simply the most popular MMORPG right now. This same article could have been written about Everquest 1 a few years ago.
EQ arguably sucked even more time than WoW, and other PC games were still sold. There are many gamers who don't like the MMO thing and will continue to buy other games and consoles.
Eventually, someone will make a WoW-killer in the MMORPG arena. It may take a few years, but it'll happen.
What's different about WoW now and EQ then is that quite a few quality games were available on the PC when EQ was in its heyday, but now PC gaming, with a few exceptions, is mostly ass, IMO. The titles are fewer and less interesting with each passing year, so WoW has less real competition.
Some of us who misspent a big chunk of their time on MUDs knew exactly what the end game would look like, and said "no thanks" right away. I do wonder when a major fantasy MMOG will allow area creation... then the 3D MUD GUI will be complete at last.
That's too bad then. You cheated yourself out of a fine game for a silly reason. All games will get boring after a while, but you've got months of play (maybe less if you are one of those who plays 10 hours a day) until you hit the end game. Blizzard put tremendous effort in the game and the world there and the player is appropriately rewarded. I used to play MUDs too back in the day, and there came the day I got bored of them and moved on to other things. But I had a lot of fun along the way, so it was worth it.
Ah BUT Lineage is not a gamble .
It is a game . No different than someone that would cheat at Air Hockey
You may not be aware of this, but the hundreds of millions of dollars are made off of these games each year by individuals and now companies that farm items in the game world. So it's a lot more like a gamble now than Air Hockey in fact. Where such huge quantities of cash change hands, will not remain a lawless vacuum for long. Bring one major part of the real world - money - the other bits, like the law, is sure to follow.
Difference: Blackjack, at least in most countrys, is a regulated form of gambling. If the rules for gambling are broken then it becomes a crime. Playing Lineage II is not gambling, and is in fact not regulate
Like I said, crafted For low level content, I don't think that's as important as high level content.
Whats the alternative? Get to 60, and spend 5 hours to get a group together and repeat the same 6 instances every week, hoping for a drop?
The primary weapon of 60 warriors is the Arcanite Reaper, which is a crafted axe, not a drop. While I think there should be more high end weaponsmith and armorsmith recipes, there is some decent stuff out there that is craftable and of great use to players in the end game. Sure, end game MC epics will trump pretty much anything, but it's not like those are common in any sense. No pick up group has so much as a ghost of a chance of making it through an instance like MC (or even getting into that one...) and starting getting the really great drops before they wipe horribly. Only the big, dedicated guilds can hope for MC drops, so that makes that gear rare on most servers. Thus, crafted items are still useful at the end game for most players.
In fact, high-60 is nothing but a collection of instances that you repeatedly grind to get gear. Less plot, less story, less changes, MORE repetition
Depends on the player. A lot of long-time 60 players I know spend most of their time in battlegrounds. So maybe for you high-60 is an instance grind, but that's your choice. Blizz has put out a lot of content in a fairly short span of time. Since May, we've gotten Battlegrounds and Black Wing Lair, and next patch IIRC will have Zul'Farrak. I think that's pretty good value, that's as much content as many full single player games. There are more instances planned, hero classes and siege weapons in battlegrounds. Oh yeah, and a whole new battleground in the next patch, Arathi Basin. What more can you realistically expect?
Ah, but there is a loophole here, IIRC. Blizz allows people in China to play on US servers under the excuse of Chinese students studying in the US who play WoW stateside during the school year getting to play their characters when they are at home in China.
There is no shortage of Chinese farmers on my server, Dalaran.
Re:I Agree with Monkey Boy. Where's OS Innovation?
on
Ballmer on Innovation
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· Score: 0, Troll
Exactly. Joe Windows, as "Rick and Roll" calls him, isn't worth the effort. They are coming to us in droves because of what we offer -- plain ordinary freedom. If ever Joe Windows decides that he wants freedom he will choose to join us.
The "big guys" are addressing our needs now because they see a powerful growing market. Microsoft has only one direction to go, down.
Joe Windows is worth only our disdain. He is the slave who supports the slaver system.
Slashdot Mirror
That's not so much a critique of presentation software so much as a critique of how people USE it. Whoever sets up the presentations for Steve Jobs, for example, tends to do a pretty good job for his keynotes. I personally use presentation software not to present information to others, but as "cue cards" for myself. Presentation software has its uses, although I would agree with you that most of the time, it's used very, very poorly.
No one has mentioned this yet, so here's a good opportunity to plug Dr. Edward Tufte's The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint.
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&EAN=9780961392154&itm=1
That was a joke, yes?
It takes a lot of guts for a comedian to play to an audience he can't see while telling the cold hard truth about the audience he can see.
How so? He knows exactly what his real audience likes, and he played right to them. They're the ones who keep his bills paid, not the press corps and not the Administration. What sort of consequences could he possibly have faced? The disapproval of the press? The government sending goons after him? Exactly. You can't be gutsy if you face no real ill-consequences for your acts.
It was no different than when Imus insulted President Clinton when he had his turn at this. Both of those guys make their whole living by insulting the mighty and the famous; both performances were nothing more than another day's routine work.
Do have an honest counter argument or is insulting him the best you can come up with?
He did. I invite you to go back and re-read his post, starting with this part:
Apple's DRM has done more for the availability of music on the internets than anything except bittorrent. If it wasn't for Jobs having the cojones to square off against the music and movie congloms we'd all be renting our music by now. Without DRM iTunes would be eMusic.
See? Of course you don't have to agree with his argument, but there it is, all bottom-line-up-front like. The insult that came after may have been gratuitous but it was not his main argument (FWIW I've only read one novel by Cory Doctorow - Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom - but it was sufficiently awful for me to decide to never read anything by him again).
If I give you property, I don't have it anymore. My wealth has decreased; yours has increased; the net difference is zero. If I give you an idea, I still have it. My wealth has stayed the same; yours has increased; the net gain is 100%. Ideas aren't property and they can't be property. By failing to realize that fact we are only hurting ourselves. It's as simple as that.
Music isn't an "idea." It is the result of creative effort on the part of artists who provide a service - the creation and performance of music - as well as that of a host of technical people and business people (sound engineers, marketeers, etc. etc.). They provide consumers with a service and have every right to compensation for that service, just as if they were performing their music live.
You are an apologist for thievery. You just mock virtue when you try to make your greed look like something it isn't with specious arguments. It's as simple as this: you're a cheap bastard who wants something for nothing at the expense of others.
I like how you emphasise "ONLY" to hint at a small amount, and then go on to itemise five colours (plus white and black). I don't know, I wouldn't release a consumer audio device and describe it as "ONLY available in SEVEN colours".
And he was right on the money. The ONLY color DEVICE they played with in all that time was the iPod Mini, which was not a computer of course, and was quickly replaced by the (black or white) iPod Nano. Reading what you quoted in the context of the rest of his comment, his point stands: with a minor exception, Apple's hardware since 2001 has been monochromatic, thus refuting the GP's point.
Think of the social impact too-- a girl on a subway giving you a little smile and pointing to her iPod as she listens to your shared playlist
That's crazy talk. You seem to have forgotten you are posting on Slashdot.
So I am afraid this jet car is actually a bit pathetic. It's no more powerful than the (street legal, normally drivable) VW Bugatti, which costs about the same, and it is less powerful than a suitable modded tractor engine.
Pathetic? The guy mounted a jet engine on the back of a VW Beetle. Jet engine. Beetle. Who cares how its performance stacks up with some prissy sports car or a hot rodded tractor? The jet powered Beetle transcends cool in ways the Bugatti never will.
Wile E. Coyote would be proud.
Also, what's with macs and Hollywood? Pretty much everyone I know who works in the film industry owns a mac. Is it because of the product placement Apple likes to do?
Or, they are cooler/ hipper than you.
whereas mac closes off its systems so normal users cant screw it up.
How did this get modded "interesting?"
Care to elaborate how Mac OS X "closes off its systems so normal users can't screw it up?"
Ah, so that's the problem. Other people (iPod owners) are ignornant/ stupid, is all. Can't say I'm surprised to see you post that.
I think that microsoft should try to narrow what it does instead of trying to do everything that it can. By narrowing it's views, the products it produces will be better.
No, by all means let them try to do more - eventually (hopefully) MS will overextend itself and then the whole rotten house of cards will collapse.
Mod this guy up, grandparent simply Does Not Get It, and that mentality is why Apple's competition consistently fail to make a dent in the iPod's market share. I'm as far from a hipster as you can get (dumpy nerd, of course) but no way would I trade my iPod for some Rube Goldberg wonder toy like this archos player mentioned. The iPod does its job very well - plays music - it is reliable and elegant. People are tired of feature creep and the iPod's sales numbers show it.
Yeah, just like the diesel engine...oh wait...that one rotted on the shelf until the patent expired. Fancy that. Did Mr. Armstrong(FM radio) a lot of good also. You got it backwards. If not for IP privileges, we might have had this thing fifty years ago or more. IP rewards the first. I'd rather reward the best.
I think you need to go back and re-read what he wrote. There are reasons pecuiliar to medicine - you know, that involve insuring lots of people don't die because of this device - require extremely expensive testing and no one will be willing to foot that bill unless they have a good chance of making money on it. The patent ensures that they will.
Could they really not come up with a more original name?
Hello? This is Microsoft, where ripping off others is the company philosophy.
It's been my experience too. I haven't bought or played another game since getting into WoW.
What I like about it is the co-op with my friends. You can't be a one man tank, I could easily be beaten up by a group of level 3-4 monsters. And for the strong monsters, you *need* the cooperation.
Sounds like WoW to me. Can't imagine someone soloing Lord Kazzak, for instance.
Seriously, would you prefer the world wide web was centrally administered simply because something like Geocities could exist?
I think that is an exceptionally poor analogy. The WWW is too broad in scope and too general in purpose to compare to something like a game.
I have to agree with the parent, after having played NWN for some time: player created content really sucks. I kept looking and looking for diamonds in the rough to crop up eventually and make that game worth it. Never happened. Even the good stuff fell far short of a mediocre effort by a dedicated developer. I think this underestimates the effort it takes to make game settings that are as immersive and interesting as what you can find in a game like WoW.
World of Warcraft is simply the most popular MMORPG right now. This same article could have been written about Everquest 1 a few years ago. EQ arguably sucked even more time than WoW, and other PC games were still sold. There are many gamers who don't like the MMO thing and will continue to buy other games and consoles. Eventually, someone will make a WoW-killer in the MMORPG arena. It may take a few years, but it'll happen.
What's different about WoW now and EQ then is that quite a few quality games were available on the PC when EQ was in its heyday, but now PC gaming, with a few exceptions, is mostly ass, IMO. The titles are fewer and less interesting with each passing year, so WoW has less real competition.
Some of us who misspent a big chunk of their time on MUDs knew exactly what the end game would look like, and said "no thanks" right away. I do wonder when a major fantasy MMOG will allow area creation... then the 3D MUD GUI will be complete at last.
That's too bad then. You cheated yourself out of a fine game for a silly reason. All games will get boring after a while, but you've got months of play (maybe less if you are one of those who plays 10 hours a day) until you hit the end game. Blizzard put tremendous effort in the game and the world there and the player is appropriately rewarded. I used to play MUDs too back in the day, and there came the day I got bored of them and moved on to other things. But I had a lot of fun along the way, so it was worth it.
Ah BUT Lineage is not a gamble . It is a game . No different than someone that would cheat at Air Hockey
You may not be aware of this, but the hundreds of millions of dollars are made off of these games each year by individuals and now companies that farm items in the game world. So it's a lot more like a gamble now than Air Hockey in fact. Where such huge quantities of cash change hands, will not remain a lawless vacuum for long. Bring one major part of the real world - money - the other bits, like the law, is sure to follow.
Difference: Blackjack, at least in most countrys, is a regulated form of gambling. If the rules for gambling are broken then it becomes a crime. Playing Lineage II is not gambling, and is in fact not regulate
Looks like it's regulated now, at least in Japan.
Like I said, crafted For low level content, I don't think that's as important as high level content. Whats the alternative? Get to 60, and spend 5 hours to get a group together and repeat the same 6 instances every week, hoping for a drop?
The primary weapon of 60 warriors is the Arcanite Reaper, which is a crafted axe, not a drop. While I think there should be more high end weaponsmith and armorsmith recipes, there is some decent stuff out there that is craftable and of great use to players in the end game. Sure, end game MC epics will trump pretty much anything, but it's not like those are common in any sense. No pick up group has so much as a ghost of a chance of making it through an instance like MC (or even getting into that one...) and starting getting the really great drops before they wipe horribly. Only the big, dedicated guilds can hope for MC drops, so that makes that gear rare on most servers. Thus, crafted items are still useful at the end game for most players.
In fact, high-60 is nothing but a collection of instances that you repeatedly grind to get gear. Less plot, less story, less changes, MORE repetition
Depends on the player. A lot of long-time 60 players I know spend most of their time in battlegrounds. So maybe for you high-60 is an instance grind, but that's your choice. Blizz has put out a lot of content in a fairly short span of time. Since May, we've gotten Battlegrounds and Black Wing Lair, and next patch IIRC will have Zul'Farrak. I think that's pretty good value, that's as much content as many full single player games. There are more instances planned, hero classes and siege weapons in battlegrounds. Oh yeah, and a whole new battleground in the next patch, Arathi Basin. What more can you realistically expect?
Ah, but there is a loophole here, IIRC. Blizz allows people in China to play on US servers under the excuse of Chinese students studying in the US who play WoW stateside during the school year getting to play their characters when they are at home in China.
There is no shortage of Chinese farmers on my server, Dalaran.
Exactly. Joe Windows, as "Rick and Roll" calls him, isn't worth the effort. They are coming to us in droves because of what we offer -- plain ordinary freedom. If ever Joe Windows decides that he wants freedom he will choose to join us. The "big guys" are addressing our needs now because they see a powerful growing market. Microsoft has only one direction to go, down. Joe Windows is worth only our disdain. He is the slave who supports the slaver system.
You don't get a lot of dates, do you?