It took us forever to get mother-in-law on broadband. Her computer is a cast-off donated by one of her sons which I've upgraded a couple of times. Thing is, she only uses it for email. Why would you need broadband for that? She finally converted when the local cable company offered her a package that essentially included it for free compared to the combined cost of phone/tv/dialup.
Parenthetically, I think this is the only way you're going to convert casual users -- by bundling broadband in with services considered more important.
Having broadband at her house helps me when our family visits, because I can work from there if necessary (I'm on call essentially 24/7) instead of driving down to the local coffee shop to use their wifi. But for her, the value is that her Outlook Express mailbox fills up in 2 seconds instead of 12. Given her computer takes 4 1/2 minutes to boot, the speed of fetching her email is down in the noise.
I think most of the unwashed public just can't see any value. (other than looking at pr0n...) This seems odd to us geeks, but it's demonstrably true -- demonstrable if you know any non-geeks. Unless you're streaming video, the higher bandwidth is barely perceptible. Who cares if a page loads in 1/8 of a second instead of 1/2 of a second? Well, I do, (and there seems to be unnecessary latency on my 20/5 FIOS line) but I observe (without completely understanding) that normal people do not.
If you want broadband saturation, you need a Killer App. Until very recently, there wasn't any legitimate non-geek use for it. Now you can catch up on TV episodes and watch old programs as streaming video. This is a good start, but it isn't as cool to the rank and file as you might think. Fred and Ethyl are used to watching TV on their TV, and having to crouch over a 17 inch monitor and poke webpage buttons with a mouse is not part of their paradigm. (There are solutions for all of this, but they're not well integrated -- forget it unless you know a geek.)
The Netflix box, Apple TV, are a good start -- they're actually *more* convenient than driving to Blockbuster, rather than *less* convenient. (I tried to explain torrents to my mom once. Yeah, right...) But the hard fact is, Fred and Ethyl are still more likely to watch whatever is on cable at the time their butts happen to be on the couch. It's just the way it is.
In this response, I've completely ignored the huge amount of non-entertainment information available on the internet, because I think the great majority largely ignores it also. If an online news service has a million unique hits, that's not much in a country of 300+M people. I suspect that the great majority still wants someone attractive-looking to tell them what's important in 43 minutes minus commercials. This concerns me, because it tends to further stratify the country, but making someone buy a product they don't want and don't think they need is always going to be problematic.
>> The latest version of Mac OSX demonstrably runs acceptably on legacy hardware commonly available five years ago. I remember reading in slashdot that Vista "runs fine" on processors 3 Ghz and above. None of my systems are that fast.
> The first 3Ghz P4s were released in late 2002. More than 6 years ago.
That stretches the definition of "commonly available". I intentionally couched my arguments in what regular people (not geeks like us) would reasonably be expected to have. I understand that this point gets lost in slashdot discussions, as so many of us are in the business and are likely to have access to higher end hardware than would the unwashed masses.
Speaking from a consumer viewpoint, (non-geeks would say "the real world") I see that the wholesaler where I get my system components has a range of products from 1.6G celeron to 3.33G core 2 duo. Of the 30 processors they have for sale as of today, only 5, or a tad over 16 percent, three years after Vista's release, are "fast enough to run Vista".
> You don't and you never did. A US$600ish PC (and that's including the screen) would run Vista fine on the day it was released. In no way, shape, or form, did Vista ever require a "cutting edge machine".
You can't be serious. This is the problem with these discussions -- we have no common frame of reference. I suspect our definitions of "run" and "fine" are different. Just to use one counterexample, I'm pretty sure that the Microsoft execs who were privately badmouthing Vista's performance in 2005 (as revealed in other/. articles) were probably using better than $600 machines.
You know why, right? The producers are weaning you off those expensive special effects and preparing you for Caprica 90210 (alternate title: Galactica 1980+30), which purports to have oodles of the soap opera stuff without the pricy space scenes. Everybody wins.
Melodrama. BTW, I thought they were Egyptian mythology references?
I don't watch any crime dramas. Never got into them.
Please don't get me wrong, I don't mean to say that every single show must be happy and foofy with spit-take freeze frame at the end, followed by canned laughter. Really, really, not.
I guess my points are twofold:
1) There becomes a time when a show is such a consistent, relentless downer that one questions what fun one is still getting out of the show, or even if questioning one's definition of "fun" might be in order. (Obvious question: Why do I watch it, if I hate it so much? Answer: Peer pressure.)
2) I freely admit, this is a personal issue: I hate watching characters behave stupidly. Of course, mistakes are what plots are made of. But when confronted with a decision that any mammal would get right, and then making the stupid decision just so the writers can wedge in some other implausibility later, well, I stop enjoying myself at that point. Maybe it's just me.
Sigh. Ok ok, rewrite for the excruciatingly pedantic:
Watching episode 4.11 was more depressing than, I dunno, being at work. Seriously, this is entertainment?
To continue:
Is it relaxing to watch people flail about ineffectively, who are more screwed than we could possibly imagine ourselves to be? Has what constitutes entertainment degenerated to this? Merely to present fictional characters who's lives suck more than our own?
My wife is a rabid fan of what she calls "AMC". (I had to look up what she meant by that.) She's also a rabid fan of Galactica. Coincidence?
The latest version of Mac OSX demonstrably runs acceptably on legacy hardware commonly available five years ago. I remember reading in slashdot that Vista "runs fine" on processors 3 Ghz and above. None of my systems are that fast.
Truth, an OS tends to accumulate bloat with each release. But there is bloat, and there is bloat. The situation is not one of "this is bloated and that is not". Microsoft is unquestionably the front runner in the bloat race, so much so that the requirements of the OS has outstripped what people are generally willing to purchase. The performance of the hardware commonly available on Fred and Ethyl's card table did finally catch up with XP, but it was clear that it wouldn't catch up with Vista in time. Or has even now. And I don't know about you, but it seemed to me that Microsoft was being pretty arrogant to assume that I would buy a brand new, cutting edge machine just to run Vista.
So I can see the panic to make 7 more efficient, and to sell Microsoft as less autocratic. But what we're all ignoring here is that Windows 7 has not been released yet. Vista looked fast in beta, too.
I was wondering why my pets would hide when I got home from Fry's.
"I returned it, of course. It may have been an awesome Decepticon -- to strike fear in dogs and cats everywhere -- but it was a crappy router. Last I saw, it was tearing the clothes off the return lady. I got out of there fast. Times like this, 's why I never take in-store credit."
"A friend said he saw it later on the toy shelf, marked down 5% with a tag that said 'manual missing'. There were stories of horrible things done to the Chatty Cathy dolls after dark."
"Word is, finally some kid bought it. But when he got it home, it turned back into a router. A crappy one."
Dunno about "owned". I bought a Belkin wireless network adapter and it was dead right out of the box. Returned it and got something else. I guess you'd call that "rented".
Why did Belkin even both to do this? They make wonderful products. Just the other day, I got a Belkin Tunebase FM Transmitter with ClearScan for iPod and it was my best purchase ever. It plays my ipod over the radio with amazing fidelity, and my truck gets better gas mileage to boot. I've sold my home and I'm living out of my truck because the sound is so much better. (Where's my money?)
Seriously, the first thing that needs to happen is a bunch of people should "review" Belkin's products with the evidence that they're faking reviews. It'd pretty much finish them, at least with Amazon customers. This is extremely annoying and we need to make it as painful as possible.
Easy. Total storage on all ipods sold divided by the estimated storage requirements for all cds sold. Because as we all know, someone with a 40 gig ipod must be stealing music, because nobody could own that many cds.
> The only thing he has going for him is in the looks. His face has a similar appearance to the comic and his body is more or less the same build.
Not sure that's true anymore. The Spike character is in his twenties, and Reeves is 44 and (more importantly) is starting to look it. Although I haven't seen TDTESS, (And won't unless someone holds a gun to my head. A big gun.) a recent photo seems to show Reeves has gotten a tad jowly. I don't think he's up to it physically. Which means all the fight scenes will be in jerky-cam so you can't tell how lame they are.
I can't think of any A-lister who'd be right for the part, and anyway, I'm generally opposed to putting A-listers in sci-fi films from obscure sources, because a big chunk of the budget goes to salaries, leaving insufficient left over for trivialities like writing, sets, effects. Leave the A-list "Stars" for the yearly period costume melodrama Oscar-bait. Cast talented unknowns everywhere else. But that's just me...
...if Spike had been a cement pillar. Oh God oh God oh God thisisgonnasuck.... Ok ok ok, lots of movies never actually make it to the screen... or the lineup changes... At worst case, just think of the money we'll save by not seeing it...
I know I know I know, let's get Paris Hilton as Faye, Larry the Cable Guy as Jet, and the director's preteen hermaphrodite as Ed. Get the writers from Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, make sure the executives are in charge of rewrites and hire McG as director. It'll be so craptacular that people will flock to theaters just to see the screen melt.
I dunno, with some of the choices the studios are making... Some enterprising theater owner should just replace all the chairs with airline seats. At least there'd be a barf bag within easy reach.
Slashdot Mirror
It took us forever to get mother-in-law on broadband. Her computer is a cast-off donated by one of her sons which I've upgraded a couple of times. Thing is, she only uses it for email. Why would you need broadband for that? She finally converted when the local cable company offered her a package that essentially included it for free compared to the combined cost of phone/tv/dialup.
Parenthetically, I think this is the only way you're going to convert casual users -- by bundling broadband in with services considered more important.
Having broadband at her house helps me when our family visits, because I can work from there if necessary (I'm on call essentially 24/7) instead of driving down to the local coffee shop to use their wifi. But for her, the value is that her Outlook Express mailbox fills up in 2 seconds instead of 12. Given her computer takes 4 1/2 minutes to boot, the speed of fetching her email is down in the noise.
I think most of the unwashed public just can't see any value. (other than looking at pr0n...) This seems odd to us geeks, but it's demonstrably true -- demonstrable if you know any non-geeks. Unless you're streaming video, the higher bandwidth is barely perceptible. Who cares if a page loads in 1/8 of a second instead of 1/2 of a second? Well, I do, (and there seems to be unnecessary latency on my 20/5 FIOS line) but I observe (without completely understanding) that normal people do not.
If you want broadband saturation, you need a Killer App. Until very recently, there wasn't any legitimate non-geek use for it. Now you can catch up on TV episodes and watch old programs as streaming video. This is a good start, but it isn't as cool to the rank and file as you might think. Fred and Ethyl are used to watching TV on their TV, and having to crouch over a 17 inch monitor and poke webpage buttons with a mouse is not part of their paradigm. (There are solutions for all of this, but they're not well integrated -- forget it unless you know a geek.)
The Netflix box, Apple TV, are a good start -- they're actually *more* convenient than driving to Blockbuster, rather than *less* convenient. (I tried to explain torrents to my mom once. Yeah, right...) But the hard fact is, Fred and Ethyl are still more likely to watch whatever is on cable at the time their butts happen to be on the couch. It's just the way it is.
In this response, I've completely ignored the huge amount of non-entertainment information available on the internet, because I think the great majority largely ignores it also. If an online news service has a million unique hits, that's not much in a country of 300+M people. I suspect that the great majority still wants someone attractive-looking to tell them what's important in 43 minutes minus commercials. This concerns me, because it tends to further stratify the country, but making someone buy a product they don't want and don't think they need is always going to be problematic.
A product like that would sell itself.
Again, frames of reference. Could you have purchased hardware of that caliber at that price when Vista was released?
This is the kinder, gentler Microsoft we heard about just yesterday?
>> The latest version of Mac OSX demonstrably runs acceptably on legacy hardware commonly available five years ago. I remember reading in slashdot that Vista "runs fine" on processors 3 Ghz and above. None of my systems are that fast.
> The first 3Ghz P4s were released in late 2002. More than 6 years ago.
That stretches the definition of "commonly available". I intentionally couched my arguments in what regular people (not geeks like us) would reasonably be expected to have. I understand that this point gets lost in slashdot discussions, as so many of us are in the business and are likely to have access to higher end hardware than would the unwashed masses.
Speaking from a consumer viewpoint, (non-geeks would say "the real world") I see that the wholesaler where I get my system components has a range of products from 1.6G celeron to 3.33G core 2 duo. Of the 30 processors they have for sale as of today, only 5, or a tad over 16 percent, three years after Vista's release, are "fast enough to run Vista".
> You don't and you never did. A US$600ish PC (and that's including the screen) would run Vista fine on the day it was released. In no way, shape, or form, did Vista ever require a "cutting edge machine".
You can't be serious. This is the problem with these discussions -- we have no common frame of reference. I suspect our definitions of "run" and "fine" are different. Just to use one counterexample, I'm pretty sure that the Microsoft execs who were privately badmouthing Vista's performance in 2005 (as revealed in other /. articles) were probably using better than $600 machines.
A shell game?? In this industry???
You know why, right? The producers are weaning you off those expensive special effects and preparing you for Caprica 90210 (alternate title: Galactica 1980+30), which purports to have oodles of the soap opera stuff without the pricy space scenes. Everybody wins.
I suspect that existential futility is easier to script.
> The fact that the Cylons didn't manage to wipe them out in the first season is purely an artifact of it being fiction.
Bravo! Let's face it, the entire cast is Too Stupid To Live. Wow, that might be an end-season spoiler...
> It's called drama.
Melodrama. BTW, I thought they were Egyptian mythology references?
I don't watch any crime dramas. Never got into them.
Please don't get me wrong, I don't mean to say that every single show must be happy and foofy with spit-take freeze frame at the end, followed by canned laughter. Really, really, not.
I guess my points are twofold:
1) There becomes a time when a show is such a consistent, relentless downer that one questions what fun one is still getting out of the show, or even if questioning one's definition of "fun" might be in order. (Obvious question: Why do I watch it, if I hate it so much? Answer: Peer pressure.)
2) I freely admit, this is a personal issue: I hate watching characters behave stupidly. Of course, mistakes are what plots are made of. But when confronted with a decision that any mammal would get right, and then making the stupid decision just so the writers can wedge in some other implausibility later, well, I stop enjoying myself at that point. Maybe it's just me.
Sigh. Ok ok, rewrite for the excruciatingly pedantic:
Watching episode 4.11 was more depressing than, I dunno, being at work. Seriously, this is entertainment?
To continue:
Is it relaxing to watch people flail about ineffectively, who are more screwed than we could possibly imagine ourselves to be? Has what constitutes entertainment degenerated to this? Merely to present fictional characters who's lives suck more than our own?
My wife is a rabid fan of what she calls "AMC". (I had to look up what she meant by that.) She's also a rabid fan of Galactica. Coincidence?
Did you read the rest of my comment, or did you stop right there?
Episode 4.11 was more depressing than, I dunno, being at work. Seriously, this is entertainment?
The latest version of Mac OSX demonstrably runs acceptably on legacy hardware commonly available five years ago. I remember reading in slashdot that Vista "runs fine" on processors 3 Ghz and above. None of my systems are that fast.
Truth, an OS tends to accumulate bloat with each release. But there is bloat, and there is bloat. The situation is not one of "this is bloated and that is not". Microsoft is unquestionably the front runner in the bloat race, so much so that the requirements of the OS has outstripped what people are generally willing to purchase. The performance of the hardware commonly available on Fred and Ethyl's card table did finally catch up with XP, but it was clear that it wouldn't catch up with Vista in time. Or has even now. And I don't know about you, but it seemed to me that Microsoft was being pretty arrogant to assume that I would buy a brand new, cutting edge machine just to run Vista.
So I can see the panic to make 7 more efficient, and to sell Microsoft as less autocratic. But what we're all ignoring here is that Windows 7 has not been released yet. Vista looked fast in beta, too.
I was wondering why my pets would hide when I got home from Fry's.
"I returned it, of course. It may have been an awesome Decepticon -- to strike fear in dogs and cats everywhere -- but it was a crappy router. Last I saw, it was tearing the clothes off the return lady. I got out of there fast. Times like this, 's why I never take in-store credit."
"A friend said he saw it later on the toy shelf, marked down 5% with a tag that said 'manual missing'. There were stories of horrible things done to the Chatty Cathy dolls after dark."
"Word is, finally some kid bought it. But when he got it home, it turned back into a router. A crappy one."
Sorry...
> Also, it has a review that doesn't even review the movie, but instead says the books are great, therefore the movie should be too.
Right, because there's never been a crappy movie made from a good book.
And Brenden Fraiser has never made a crappy movie, so it has to be good!
And I'm the tooth fairy! So floss every day or I won't bring you any candy!
That's what they want you to believe!
Dunno about "owned". I bought a Belkin wireless network adapter and it was dead right out of the box. Returned it and got something else. I guess you'd call that "rented".
Why did Belkin even both to do this? They make wonderful products. Just the other day, I got a Belkin Tunebase FM Transmitter with ClearScan for iPod and it was my best purchase ever. It plays my ipod over the radio with amazing fidelity, and my truck gets better gas mileage to boot. I've sold my home and I'm living out of my truck because the sound is so much better. (Where's my money?)
Seriously, the first thing that needs to happen is a bunch of people should "review" Belkin's products with the evidence that they're faking reviews. It'd pretty much finish them, at least with Amazon customers. This is extremely annoying and we need to make it as painful as possible.
> How can they be sure 95% of them are illegal?
Easy. Total storage on all ipods sold divided by the estimated storage requirements for all cds sold. Because as we all know, someone with a 40 gig ipod must be stealing music, because nobody could own that many cds.
Nope, it's the screwed one.
> The only thing he has going for him is in the looks. His face has a similar appearance to the comic and his body is more or less the same build.
Not sure that's true anymore. The Spike character is in his twenties, and Reeves is 44 and (more importantly) is starting to look it. Although I haven't seen TDTESS, (And won't unless someone holds a gun to my head. A big gun.) a recent photo seems to show Reeves has gotten a tad jowly. I don't think he's up to it physically. Which means all the fight scenes will be in jerky-cam so you can't tell how lame they are.
I can't think of any A-lister who'd be right for the part, and anyway, I'm generally opposed to putting A-listers in sci-fi films from obscure sources, because a big chunk of the budget goes to salaries, leaving insufficient left over for trivialities like writing, sets, effects. Leave the A-list "Stars" for the yearly period costume melodrama Oscar-bait. Cast talented unknowns everywhere else. But that's just me...
I know I know I know, let's get Paris Hilton as Faye, Larry the Cable Guy as Jet, and the director's preteen hermaphrodite as Ed. Get the writers from Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, make sure the executives are in charge of rewrites and hire McG as director. It'll be so craptacular that people will flock to theaters just to see the screen melt.
I dunno, with some of the choices the studios are making... Some enterprising theater owner should just replace all the chairs with airline seats. At least there'd be a barf bag within easy reach.
God I'm depressed. Isn't it lunch yet?
Poison is easier.