One of the things that's become clear as I've gotten used to the appliance-like experience of Ubuntu is that the future of software in an open source-dominated world is going to be significantly different than the world dominated by Microsoft. So what distant point on the horizon has Ubuntu shone a light on for me? Simple. Software will increasingly compete on ease of use in the total software experience more than on features. The future will be more about being simple than about any other dimension.
Isn't usability and simplicity just another feature? Maybe I'm a bit lost here as to what he's trying to say, I'd sum it up more like this. The future software will be about features and not about proprietary systems and formats that lock you into one vendor.
I don't know. MS has a TV network called MSNBC. I don't see why they couldn't have another network called Télé Vista. If I saw that name on a TV channel, and you asked me who owned it, I would probably say Microsoft.
How does firefox-extensions = firefox+features? Sorry, but once you take the the extension from firefox, you might as well be using IE 7 since it has all the basic functionality.
That would be a nice $300 notebook, if it didn't look like an oversized PDA. I'm all for portability in notebooks, but once they're too small to have a full sized keyboard, they should lose the right to call it a notebook.
But if you're running games, why are you using a laptop. I can understand using a laptop for a couple simple games, but if you're really hardcore into games, then why wouldn't you get a full sized computer.
Maybe he was actually trying to tell the truth to the customer so that they would come back many times and buy many things, instead of buying one thing and being disappointed when they found out they were lied to, and decided never to go to that store again.
Well, I get my prints at Walmart, for $CDN 0.19 a picture. We leave then hanging on the wall, often in direct sunlight, and I've never seen any fading. I've seen some photos that other people have given me placed in the same location and they have experienced major fading. I have yet to ask them whether they are printed at home or elsewhere, but one of them looked like it was a picture from a portrait studio. I don't understand the hype with printing at home. You very rarely have to have a hard copy right now, and with all the problems with clogged heads, printers breaking, and $50 ink cartridges, I don't have any desire to print any of my pictures at home.
Wii Sports isn't the be all and end all of sports games for the Wii. It's a free game that's included with the system. And a darn good one at that. You don't see any of the other systems coming with a free game. I haven't seen that since the original NES. I'm sure there will be sports games released in the future that will have online play. Give it time. As for Wii sports, find some real world friends and invite them over to play. If they aren't there with you, you're missing out on most of the fun anyway.
Go get out a hex editor and starting changing that Binary so that instead of James Bond 007, it's Generic Shoot-em-up number 72. If it's the same game with the same graphics, and same features, I don't think anybody will care that it isn't Bond.
I think this is a much better idea than making the hard drive included in the unit. Many people have no need for tons of harddrive space, and will probably only buy 10 or 20 Virtual Console games. For them, the Wii has plenty of space. But for those who want to go out and buy 100 virtual console games, or download movies, tv, and music from "non-existent by probably exist in the future" movie, tv and music channels, then I would say that it would be a great idea for them to offer the ability to upgrade.
You could say the same about photoshop. It's the same as the "drawing circles in GIMP" complaint. There's stuff that's easier to do in one than in the other. I find that putting a border on an image is easier in GIMP than in Photoshop. I'm sure there's other examples of things that are easier in GIMP. I've used GIMP a lot and actually like it a lot more than photoshop because it's what I have become used to. I find it a lot easier to do a lot of common tasks in GIMP because that's what I learned on. But i'm not a professional, and just use it for a hobby, so maybe my opinion doesn't matter.
Really, GIMP isn't a bad place to get started. Saying they can't afford the $2500 Adobe software really means they can't justify the expense for someone who's just learning and won't be generating any cash flow from their work. Working in GIMP, or some other less expensive alternative like Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop Elements, is a great way to acquire skills without spending thousands on software. Once you fell you're being limited by these products and are ready to move into the professional realm, and start getting paid for your work, then you can go out and get the Adobe Software. You might have to relearn how to do some things, but you'll have a good foundation and understand the concepts. Besides, it's more important that you have a good eye for design, and can actually create something that looks good and is a attractive to the people looking at it then worrying about CMYK color palettes, and color profiles for printing your work.
They may not directly see money, but if there's a bunch of add-on devices then they could probably sell a lot more. Mind you, it doesn't seem like they are having any trouble selling them the way they are, but adding extra features with almost no development time is probably a good investment.
Well theoritically, this could be better. If the efficiency of converting from heat to sound was 80%, and the efficiency of converting from sound to electricity was 80%, then it would be more efficient than a thermoelectric device that was only %50 efficient. It doesn't matter how many processes you go through, it's how efficient those processes are. For instance, you can use solar panels to create electricity. And some have an efficiency of somewhere around %5. Now you could also use Coal power to create Hydrogen from water, and use hydrogen to generate electricity, and you'd end up way more efficient than many solar panels.
I don't see the problem with the sales tax part. If brick and mortar stores are required to collect sales tax, then so should online shops. Online shops shouldn't get exempt from collection taxes just because they don't have a physical presence in the state. A web site is just as good as a physical presence, and if you want to sell to people in a certain country or state, you should be prepared to collect taxes for that state. I live in Canada, and have to pay sales tax on every online purchase I make, I don't see why Americans think it should be any different.
The reason why OpenOffice has failed to replace MS Office, is simply due to the fact that the MS Office format is entrenched in society, and because it isn't standardized. Given the option between spending $300 on an office suite, and using OpenOffice, most people will choose to pirate the $300 office suite, or just cough up the money, not because they need any of the particular features of MS Word, but because it's the only thing that will read the documents properly. If you took the proprietary documents out of the equation, I think that most people would just use OpenOffice, especially in a home setting.
I still wonder about the costs of transporting the fuel. If you have to transport a couple hundred litres of fuel (I'm not sure on the amount) to each house every month, then is that more or less efficient than delivering truckloads of fuel to a single power plant. Obviously, it's easier to just truck it all to one place, but does it offset the efficiency lost from line transmission. Obviously it would still be a lot less connected and prone to failure, and there would be no high tension lines. However, I think that people may end up paying less if they had a choice (gas, coal, oil, hydrogen, biodeisel) as to who they bought their fuel supply from every month.
The problem is that the viewers for MS word documents don't work on operating systems like Linux. Also, it's up to MS as to whether or not they want to continue supporting the viewers. If MS decides to drop support for certain viewers, then people are not free to view the documents. There's many reasons to switch away from office formats. Having all your documents unreadable except by programs released by a single commercial entity is not good, because they can charge you whatever they want to read them. Proof of this is that they charge $300 for a word processor. Something that hasn't needed new features for most people for the last 10 years.
You're right, they shouldn't be choosing technical formats. But what they should be doing is setting down laws which determine what non-technical characteristics the formats should have. They should be open for anybody to use. There should be no licensing costs associated with implementing the document readers, and the specs should be freely (as in beer) obtainable. Other likely formats would be Adobe Acrobat, at least for read only files. I'd actually prefer this for stuff that you're not supposed to need to edit, as it ensures that the document doesn't have weird formatting or problems translating between different versions of the program. I'm not saying it should be ODF that governments release their documents in, but it should be something that's open to all citizens, not just users of MS Windows who like to spend $200 on an OS and $300 on a word processor.
Especially in a mobile computing environment. I can't see much use for a high quality Microphone if you're just going to be in a noise environment anyway. Although, it may be useful if you are recording in a noise setting, and then trying to pick out specific sounds later on. Might be good for surveillance applications. However like you said, The quality of the microphone makes little difference when you factor in the position and acoustic environment. Surveillance would probably need something a little more sophisticated.
To further illustrate your point, let's just imagine that Linux was under a BSD license. Then, when some router manufacturer used that code in their router, the end user wouldn't obtain the source, and wouldn't be a able to freely modify the router to do what you want. With BSD you aren't garaunteeing that the source will always be available for the user to modify, fix, or extend. The GPL provides this, ensuring that something released as free, stays open, so that whoever uses the code has access to the source. I've even seen certain projects, which are licensed under BSD where the author wouldn't release the source to you unless you gave a $10 donation. Although I'm aware that the GPL has wording that allows them to charge for the cost of distribution of the source, I don't think I've ever seen a GPL application require that you pay them for the ability to download the software, and certainly not one who's compiled binary fits in 219 KB.
You might want to check out TortoiseSVN if you're using svn on windows. It makes version control really easy, and you don't even have to touch the command line.
Is it just me, or have they stopped producing storage media that will actually stand up to a little bit of punishment. Currently for my data I'm using SD cards with a USB adapter. The adapter is nice because it' protects the card inside. I don't mind carrying around something a little clunkier if it means my data will be there when I need it. I hate that CDs don't have protection like Minidiscs, and I think that it's likely that these tiny things could snap off in the USB port, or you could drop them, and they might fall apart, or somebody might step on and destroy them.
Sounds like the new digital camera I picked up. Instead of just appearing as a USB storage device it appears as some other kind of device and uses Picture Transfer Protocol to transfer the pictures. Works OK in windows. Managed to get it working for Linux after a couple hours of hunting around. And that's just download support. Apparently there is no upload support. You can't actually put stuff back on the camera. I just went out and got a USB SD Adapter. That way my files are easily transfered to my computer, and I can put stuff back on the card after it's been deleted. It sounds like a great idea to have the device, or the card itself handle all this stuff, but unless it's with something that's as universally supported as FAT32, then it's just a big pain.
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I don't know. MS has a TV network called MSNBC. I don't see why they couldn't have another network called Télé Vista. If I saw that name on a TV channel, and you asked me who owned it, I would probably say Microsoft.
How does firefox-extensions = firefox+features? Sorry, but once you take the the extension from firefox, you might as well be using IE 7 since it has all the basic functionality.
That would be a nice $300 notebook, if it didn't look like an oversized PDA. I'm all for portability in notebooks, but once they're too small to have a full sized keyboard, they should lose the right to call it a notebook.
But if you're running games, why are you using a laptop. I can understand using a laptop for a couple simple games, but if you're really hardcore into games, then why wouldn't you get a full sized computer.
Maybe he was actually trying to tell the truth to the customer so that they would come back many times and buy many things, instead of buying one thing and being disappointed when they found out they were lied to, and decided never to go to that store again.
Well, I get my prints at Walmart, for $CDN 0.19 a picture. We leave then hanging on the wall, often in direct sunlight, and I've never seen any fading. I've seen some photos that other people have given me placed in the same location and they have experienced major fading. I have yet to ask them whether they are printed at home or elsewhere, but one of them looked like it was a picture from a portrait studio. I don't understand the hype with printing at home. You very rarely have to have a hard copy right now, and with all the problems with clogged heads, printers breaking, and $50 ink cartridges, I don't have any desire to print any of my pictures at home.
Wii Sports isn't the be all and end all of sports games for the Wii. It's a free game that's included with the system. And a darn good one at that. You don't see any of the other systems coming with a free game. I haven't seen that since the original NES. I'm sure there will be sports games released in the future that will have online play. Give it time. As for Wii sports, find some real world friends and invite them over to play. If they aren't there with you, you're missing out on most of the fun anyway.
Go get out a hex editor and starting changing that Binary so that instead of James Bond 007, it's Generic Shoot-em-up number 72. If it's the same game with the same graphics, and same features, I don't think anybody will care that it isn't Bond.
I think this is a much better idea than making the hard drive included in the unit. Many people have no need for tons of harddrive space, and will probably only buy 10 or 20 Virtual Console games. For them, the Wii has plenty of space. But for those who want to go out and buy 100 virtual console games, or download movies, tv, and music from "non-existent by probably exist in the future" movie, tv and music channels, then I would say that it would be a great idea for them to offer the ability to upgrade.
You could say the same about photoshop. It's the same as the "drawing circles in GIMP" complaint. There's stuff that's easier to do in one than in the other. I find that putting a border on an image is easier in GIMP than in Photoshop. I'm sure there's other examples of things that are easier in GIMP. I've used GIMP a lot and actually like it a lot more than photoshop because it's what I have become used to. I find it a lot easier to do a lot of common tasks in GIMP because that's what I learned on. But i'm not a professional, and just use it for a hobby, so maybe my opinion doesn't matter.
Really, GIMP isn't a bad place to get started. Saying they can't afford the $2500 Adobe software really means they can't justify the expense for someone who's just learning and won't be generating any cash flow from their work. Working in GIMP, or some other less expensive alternative like Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop Elements, is a great way to acquire skills without spending thousands on software. Once you fell you're being limited by these products and are ready to move into the professional realm, and start getting paid for your work, then you can go out and get the Adobe Software. You might have to relearn how to do some things, but you'll have a good foundation and understand the concepts. Besides, it's more important that you have a good eye for design, and can actually create something that looks good and is a attractive to the people looking at it then worrying about CMYK color palettes, and color profiles for printing your work.
They may not directly see money, but if there's a bunch of add-on devices then they could probably sell a lot more. Mind you, it doesn't seem like they are having any trouble selling them the way they are, but adding extra features with almost no development time is probably a good investment.
Well theoritically, this could be better. If the efficiency of converting from heat to sound was 80%, and the efficiency of converting from sound to electricity was 80%, then it would be more efficient than a thermoelectric device that was only %50 efficient. It doesn't matter how many processes you go through, it's how efficient those processes are. For instance, you can use solar panels to create electricity. And some have an efficiency of somewhere around %5. Now you could also use Coal power to create Hydrogen from water, and use hydrogen to generate electricity, and you'd end up way more efficient than many solar panels.
I don't see the problem with the sales tax part. If brick and mortar stores are required to collect sales tax, then so should online shops. Online shops shouldn't get exempt from collection taxes just because they don't have a physical presence in the state. A web site is just as good as a physical presence, and if you want to sell to people in a certain country or state, you should be prepared to collect taxes for that state. I live in Canada, and have to pay sales tax on every online purchase I make, I don't see why Americans think it should be any different.
The reason why OpenOffice has failed to replace MS Office, is simply due to the fact that the MS Office format is entrenched in society, and because it isn't standardized. Given the option between spending $300 on an office suite, and using OpenOffice, most people will choose to pirate the $300 office suite, or just cough up the money, not because they need any of the particular features of MS Word, but because it's the only thing that will read the documents properly. If you took the proprietary documents out of the equation, I think that most people would just use OpenOffice, especially in a home setting.
I still wonder about the costs of transporting the fuel. If you have to transport a couple hundred litres of fuel (I'm not sure on the amount) to each house every month, then is that more or less efficient than delivering truckloads of fuel to a single power plant. Obviously, it's easier to just truck it all to one place, but does it offset the efficiency lost from line transmission. Obviously it would still be a lot less connected and prone to failure, and there would be no high tension lines. However, I think that people may end up paying less if they had a choice (gas, coal, oil, hydrogen, biodeisel) as to who they bought their fuel supply from every month.
The problem is that the viewers for MS word documents don't work on operating systems like Linux. Also, it's up to MS as to whether or not they want to continue supporting the viewers. If MS decides to drop support for certain viewers, then people are not free to view the documents. There's many reasons to switch away from office formats. Having all your documents unreadable except by programs released by a single commercial entity is not good, because they can charge you whatever they want to read them. Proof of this is that they charge $300 for a word processor. Something that hasn't needed new features for most people for the last 10 years.
You're right, they shouldn't be choosing technical formats. But what they should be doing is setting down laws which determine what non-technical characteristics the formats should have. They should be open for anybody to use. There should be no licensing costs associated with implementing the document readers, and the specs should be freely (as in beer) obtainable. Other likely formats would be Adobe Acrobat, at least for read only files. I'd actually prefer this for stuff that you're not supposed to need to edit, as it ensures that the document doesn't have weird formatting or problems translating between different versions of the program. I'm not saying it should be ODF that governments release their documents in, but it should be something that's open to all citizens, not just users of MS Windows who like to spend $200 on an OS and $300 on a word processor.
Especially in a mobile computing environment. I can't see much use for a high quality Microphone if you're just going to be in a noise environment anyway. Although, it may be useful if you are recording in a noise setting, and then trying to pick out specific sounds later on. Might be good for surveillance applications. However like you said, The quality of the microphone makes little difference when you factor in the position and acoustic environment. Surveillance would probably need something a little more sophisticated.
To further illustrate your point, let's just imagine that Linux was under a BSD license. Then, when some router manufacturer used that code in their router, the end user wouldn't obtain the source, and wouldn't be a able to freely modify the router to do what you want. With BSD you aren't garaunteeing that the source will always be available for the user to modify, fix, or extend. The GPL provides this, ensuring that something released as free, stays open, so that whoever uses the code has access to the source. I've even seen certain projects, which are licensed under BSD where the author wouldn't release the source to you unless you gave a $10 donation. Although I'm aware that the GPL has wording that allows them to charge for the cost of distribution of the source, I don't think I've ever seen a GPL application require that you pay them for the ability to download the software, and certainly not one who's compiled binary fits in 219 KB.
You might want to check out TortoiseSVN if you're using svn on windows. It makes version control really easy, and you don't even have to touch the command line.
Is it just me, or have they stopped producing storage media that will actually stand up to a little bit of punishment. Currently for my data I'm using SD cards with a USB adapter. The adapter is nice because it' protects the card inside. I don't mind carrying around something a little clunkier if it means my data will be there when I need it. I hate that CDs don't have protection like Minidiscs, and I think that it's likely that these tiny things could snap off in the USB port, or you could drop them, and they might fall apart, or somebody might step on and destroy them.
Sounds like the new digital camera I picked up. Instead of just appearing as a USB storage device it appears as some other kind of device and uses Picture Transfer Protocol to transfer the pictures. Works OK in windows. Managed to get it working for Linux after a couple hours of hunting around. And that's just download support. Apparently there is no upload support. You can't actually put stuff back on the camera. I just went out and got a USB SD Adapter. That way my files are easily transfered to my computer, and I can put stuff back on the card after it's been deleted. It sounds like a great idea to have the device, or the card itself handle all this stuff, but unless it's with something that's as universally supported as FAT32, then it's just a big pain.
But sometimes they yell at you if you smash too many pumpkins.