I still think that Microsoft did not understand what the Internet is about: interoperability.
That may be how the Internet looks to the geek.
But there are a growing number of "gated communities" that simply use the net as a connecting link:
Steam. Netflix. YouTube, MySpace, WoW and so on.
Now I know, someone will surely insist that the Windows platform still has the majority of the market share and most users don't care, but you see, most users also don't write applications, and as long as you try to feed BS to the later group of people, you are going nowhere.
Until your boss gives you your marching orders.
Market share matters to him because that is what keeps his company and his clients in business.
If he needs Flash or Silverlight to remain competitive so be it.
I mean many people are fed up that everything Microsoft does is obsolete in three years time and you can start anew with learning and development (see VB, classic ASP and so forth).
It interests me that the geek who trumpets the least show of innovation and experimentation elsewhere expects Microsoft to remain static.
Steve Jobs once quoted Henry Ford regarding how they feel about what customers think they want: "If I'd asked my customers what they wanted, they'd have said a faster horse."
Ford was still producing the Model T well into the 1920s - despite alarming declines in sales. The Ford came with a hand crank until 1919.
Ford's competitors were offering better styling, better brakes, suspensions and so on.
Ford offered one of the first farm tractors. But it was Ferguson and John Deere that introduced the PTO and three-point hitch.
Sexual content in a movie that would earn an R rating by the MPAA, earns an A (adults only) rating in game
There are fundamental differences between a video game and a movie:
The movie lasts 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Your minimum "investment" in a video game is likely to be ten times that.
The theatrical feature is not interactive.
You are distanced both physically and psychologically from the action. That is the fundamental reason why graphic violence/extreme violence in a video game is distrusted.
Hot Coffee was adolescent button mashing - and ultimately as trivial and offensive as Custer's Revenge.
If this is the best you have to offer - other than beating up a prostitute - than you might as well exclude sex from your RPG.
1 Ubuntu Linux 8.10 by Canonical $13 {#195 in Software] 3 Disney's Magic Artist Deluxe $10 5 Star Trek: The Complete Comics Collection $34 6 Reader Rabbit 1st Grade $12 8 Ubuntu and Kubuntu Linux 9.04 4 DVDs + "Introduction to Linux" DVD $9 [#793 in Software] 13 Archie Comics Bronze Age $14 14 Fedora 11.4 DVDS+DVD Video $9 19 Linux Diversity [Ubuntu, Kbuntu, Fedora, SuSe, Debian] 12 DVDs+Video $24 [#1,073 in Software]
Yes, its not surprising that most of the software in the list are products from a convicted monopolist for their operating system. In a perfect world they'd stick to selling the OS, and let other companies develop productivity software, but not Microsoft - they have to supply you with *everything*.
In an imperfect world, the "convicted monopolist" label is worth a mod point or two on Slashdot.
No one else gives a damn.
In an imperfect world, users tend to at look at applications and system software as a tightly integrated whole:
17 iLife 2009 18 iWork 20009 19 MobileMe 24 Mac OSX 10.5.6 53 Mac Box Set 60 iWork '09 Family Pack 61 iLife Family Pack 84 Final Cut Express 4 85 Mobile Me Family Pack
#7 Adobe Photoshop elements. Do people *need* to put their neighbour's head on porn starlets?
MS though has finally realized that unless Windows 7 is a hit, Linux/OS X/Now ChromeOS is going to kill them in the OS market. Office has stagnated and has had a popular revolt going on because of the "ribbon" UI that a lot of people hate
1 Win 7 Premium Upgrade 2 Win 7 Professional Upgrade 3 MS Office Home and Student 2007 5 MS Office Home and Student 2008 - Mac 12 Outlook 2007 17 Street & Trips 2009 18 Win 7 Ultimate Upgrade 30 XP Home Full Version 31 MS Office Standard 2007 Full Version 35 Street & Trips with GPS 2009 36 MS Office Small Business 2007 Upgrade 38 XP Pro SP3 System Builders 40 MS Office Small Business 2007 Full Version 41 MS Office Pro 2007 Full Version 45 MS Works 9.0 50 Windows Live One Care 56 Windows XP Pro SP2 Full Version 79 MS Vista Premium Full Version 95 XP Home SP2 Upgrade 97 Vista Home Premium Upgrade 98 Publisher 2007 99 Access 2007
At any given moment about 1 in 4 of the software bestsellers in software will be Microsoft products for the Windows market. Office 2007/8 has had an extraordinarily successful run.
XP 67% Vista 18% Mac 6% Linux 4% W2003 2% Win 7 2% W2K 1%
The OS stats are from a pro's development-oriented site that shows a 50% share for Firefox. It is not preposterous to imagine Win 7 overtaking Linux before its official launch in October.
This guy doesn't have enough sense to anonymously leak the recordings to the web so he can't be sanctioned for them, and he has the nerve to call himself a professor?
Congratulations.
You have now upped the ante to the point where you risk doing time for contempt of court -
your tenured professorship at Harvard Law is at stake -
and your license to practice is at stake.
You will also very likely have made such a wreckage of your client's case that he will have no option but to settle out of court.
Still, I when the law is against you, and the facts - on the balance of probability - are against you, then all you've got left is to throw a hissy fit.
When the facts are against you, bang the law. When the law is against you, bang the facts. When the facts and the law are against you, bang the table.
--- and when your client insists on taking the stand, bang his head.
The Judge indicated that she was 'deeply concerned' about Prof. Nesson's apparent 'blatant disregard' of her order."
The many woes of the geek in court:
1 The lawyer who tells him what only what he wants to hear.
2 The pro bono lawyer with an axe to grind: "You too can become a poster child for the EFF!"
3 The law professor who thinks he would have made a hotshot trial attorney.
4 The defendant who also thinks he would have made a hotshot trial attorney.
5 The lawyer with an unholy gift for pissing off a judge.
6 The defendant who takes the stand. Only a geek could unleash such a steaming pile of shit - and never catch a whiff of it. "Tar and feathers ain't good enough for him, boys!"
7 The lawyer who ups the stakes each time he loses a round. The defendant who comes along for the ride.
The Supreme Court accepts perhaps 150 cases a year for oral argument. You just might make the cut.
You might also be the big winner in the tri-state lotto.
The Blue Light Special on Aisle Three
on
VLC 1.0.0 Released
·
· Score: 1
Well, grandma might not, but quite a few people with enough tech level to want to watch movies but not enough to compile something will.
Grandma buys the OEM system bundle.
Pretty much like everyone else who isn't posting to Slashdot on a long summer weekend.
Media play has to work in the store.
It has to look and sound as good as anything the OSX or Windows system can deliver out of the box.
It has to be competitive with the XBox 360 or PS3.
The high end HDTV has Ethernet and a minimally functional browser.
It won't be long before the mid-line set can "tune" Internet video directly - and it will be mp4 and not Ogg/Theora.
In the gaslight era, conversion to electric was often half-hearted.
The spectrum of the gaslight had shaped your choice of fabrics, paints and wallpaper. Finishes and textures of every sort. Cosmetics. The way you prepared and presented an evening meal.
Gaslight had the subtle animation and coloring of candlelight.
You could - and often did - spend a lot of money on leaded glass and crystal fixtures to play on these effects.
Electric light could seem harsh and unsparing in contrast - and well into the twenties and beyond you were far too likely to brush against a bare lamp dangling from a cord.
The tech that is everywhere is the most resistant to change - because it insinuates itself into the most intimate corners of our lives.
VLC 1.0.0 and 1.1.0 can be compiled with VAAPI to get hardware acceleration.
The simplest way to insure a permanent fractional 1% share for Linux is to require a compiler to gain functionality the OSX and Windows app delivers on launch.
Maybe she should pay the price of one record per shared mp3? That'd be something like $240.
It's the unlicensed - unlimited - wholesale distribution and redistribution of copyrighted files that sinks the geek in court.
Launch a program like Limewire.
See the number of users on the net? The animated bar graphs that track movement in and out of your "Shared Files" folder? The tray icon that reminds you how many files are in transit when the program is minimized? The option to allocate more or less upstream and downstream bandwidth to file sharing? The option to open up the hood and take a look inside the shared files folders of any active user - and scarf up all you can eat? The option to chat with other users?
The jury of your peers sure as hell does.
Does your P2P program or service enforce - or reward - a positive upload and download ratio? How desirable is it to "make available" as many of the most popular files as you can?
The only one who goes to trial claiming not to know how P2P works is the geek - and it wounds him to be called a liar.
However, I just don't figure how the imaginary damages could rack up $18k, let alone $192M. Whoever awarded those damages had no sense of proportion, or was bribed.
Statutory damages aren't imaginary.
Statutory damages come into play only when the jury as the trier of fact decides - unanimously - that the plaintiff is entitled to a recovery.
Statutory damages come into play only when the actual damages are are difficult to calculate or the state has set an arbitrary limit on recovery.
The jury awards statutory damages based on the judge's instructions on how to use the statutory formula.
That decision also has to be unanimous.
The jury never gets to hear your Robin Hood defense.
Your po'boy defense.
The bribery of a judge or jury in the American federal system is so rare as to be unworthy of discussion.
Regardless - if someone destroyed my life over some songs, I'd probably do the same to them.
But your life hasn't been destroyed.
The geek as drama queen. Not a pretty sight.
You have been given every opportunity to settle out of court. You can still do so now.
You have a right to appeal the decision.
The risk is that the appellate courts will simply scale back the damages without ever reaching the constitutional issues.
The pro bono attorney out to make new law exits your case because it has dead-ended.
You are now free to negotiate a reasonable schedule of payments.
The debt will constrain you somewhat - but that makes you no different from anyone else whose debts cannot be wholly extinguished in bankruptcy.
What's few hundred k more for battery and assault, if you already owe $190M more than you can reasonably ever earn. For that matter, no monetary fine would ever feel like anything - and jail time is expensive to the society. So.. maybe it's just not worth it?
Talk like this is pathological.
The assault takes you in to the criminal justice system. The state will prosecute for simple assault. The feds will act to protect the decisions of its courts, the safety of every participant in a trial, the right of the plaintiff to make his case for recovery without fear of physical retaliation.
It would destroy the content industry not the content creators.
The P2P trade is in big media - the corporate product. Launch any file sharing program. Look at what is being offered. The date of release. How many sources are available.
The geek is lying when he tells you that this isn't what he wants.
If a car that suits their day-to-day driving needs can't handle an annual 12 hour drive to grandma's for Thanksgiving, they're not going to buy a second car just for that one trip.
It isn't just about that once-a-year vacation.
It is about every run that doesn't quite fit into a family's daily routine.
It isn't just about mileage either. It's about passenger space, cargo capacity and so on. You might have a boat or trailer that needs towing.
've proposed that people rent a car for their once-a-year trips. A decent rail system would also fill this need for intermediate trip lengths, but alas the U.S. has sacrificed its rail system for freeways.
Rail passenger traffic was in decline long before the interstates. It is hard to beat the convenience of portal to portal service. You can bring your kids, your pets and all the cargo you could ever want to carry - at almost no additional expense.
The Pennsylvania Turnpike opened in 1940 - at least two decades before most drivers were likely to be carrying a credit card - and without an instant and trusted line of credit renting a car isn't a particularly realistic option.
New York to Chicago on the Twentieth Century Limited was a grand experience for those who could afford it.
Albany to New York by coach was a very different experience.
Slashdot Mirror
Explain to me why the revenue generated by a copyrighted work has any relevance to the question of "fair use."
To me this looks like the Robin Hood defense.
Which usually ends with the jury delivering a tar and feathers hand-off of the geek to the Sheriff of Nottingham.
In a routine civil suit for damages, the jury never gets to hear testimony about the financial state of the plaintiff or defendant.
The geek drawing down three to four times the salary of the juror he faces might want to think twice before opening up this particular can of worms.
That may be how the Internet looks to the geek.
But there are a growing number of "gated communities" that simply use the net as a connecting link:
Steam. Netflix. YouTube, MySpace, WoW and so on.
Now I know, someone will surely insist that the Windows platform still has the majority of the market share and most users don't care, but you see, most users also don't write applications, and as long as you try to feed BS to the later group of people, you are going nowhere.
Until your boss gives you your marching orders.
Market share matters to him because that is what keeps his company and his clients in business.
If he needs Flash or Silverlight to remain competitive so be it.
I mean many people are fed up that everything Microsoft does is obsolete in three years time and you can start anew with learning and development (see VB, classic ASP and so forth).
It interests me that the geek who trumpets the least show of innovation and experimentation elsewhere expects Microsoft to remain static.
Steve Jobs once quoted Henry Ford regarding how they feel about what customers think they want: "If I'd asked my customers what they wanted, they'd have said a faster horse."
Ford was still producing the Model T well into the 1920s - despite alarming declines in sales. The Ford came with a hand crank until 1919.
Ford's competitors were offering better styling, better brakes, suspensions and so on.
Ford offered one of the first farm tractors. But it was Ferguson and John Deere that introduced the PTO and three-point hitch.
There are fundamental differences between a video game and a movie:
The movie lasts 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Your minimum "investment" in a video game is likely to be ten times that.
The theatrical feature is not interactive.
You are distanced both physically and psychologically from the action. That is the fundamental reason why graphic violence/extreme violence in a video game is distrusted.
Hot Coffee was adolescent button mashing - and ultimately as trivial and offensive as Custer's Revenge.
If this is the best you have to offer - other than beating up a prostitute - than you might as well exclude sex from your RPG.
Because you haven't got a clue.
the currently-released build seems to work well on my old PowerBook 1400 -- despite being a little memory-hungry.
Some things never change.
Too bad Amazon does not offer linux distro downloads or openoffice.org downloads...
Amazon Best Sellers In Linux
1 Ubuntu Linux 8.10 by Canonical $13 {#195 in Software]
3 Disney's Magic Artist Deluxe $10
5 Star Trek: The Complete Comics Collection $34
6 Reader Rabbit 1st Grade $12
8 Ubuntu and Kubuntu Linux 9.04 4 DVDs + "Introduction to Linux" DVD $9 [#793 in Software]
13 Archie Comics Bronze Age $14
14 Fedora 11.4 DVDS+DVD Video $9
19 Linux Diversity [Ubuntu, Kbuntu, Fedora, SuSe, Debian] 12 DVDs+Video $24 [#1,073 in Software]
OpenOffice At Amazon
The Linux product needs a universal installer if you want to compete with DVD and - in time perhaps - Blu-Ray distribution for Windows and Mac.
The geek may fantasize about "unlimited free broadband" - but it ain't going to happen anytime soon.
Yes, its not surprising that most of the software in the list are products from a convicted monopolist for their operating system. In a perfect world they'd stick to selling the OS, and let other companies develop productivity software, but not Microsoft - they have to supply you with *everything*.
In an imperfect world, the "convicted monopolist" label is worth a mod point or two on Slashdot.
No one else gives a damn.
In an imperfect world, users tend to at look at applications and system software as a tightly integrated whole:
17 iLife 2009
18 iWork 20009
19 MobileMe
24 Mac OSX 10.5.6
53 Mac Box Set
60 iWork '09 Family Pack
61 iLife Family Pack
84 Final Cut Express 4
85 Mobile Me Family Pack
#7 Adobe Photoshop elements. Do people *need* to put their neighbour's head on porn starlets?
The geek is far too obsessed with porn.
Amazon Best Sellers in Software Updated hourly.
1 Win 7 Premium Upgrade
2 Win 7 Professional Upgrade
3 MS Office Home and Student 2007
5 MS Office Home and Student 2008 - Mac
12 Outlook 2007
17 Street & Trips 2009
18 Win 7 Ultimate Upgrade
30 XP Home Full Version
31 MS Office Standard 2007 Full Version
35 Street & Trips with GPS 2009
36 MS Office Small Business 2007 Upgrade
38 XP Pro SP3 System Builders
40 MS Office Small Business 2007 Full Version
41 MS Office Pro 2007 Full Version
45 MS Works 9.0
50 Windows Live One Care
56 Windows XP Pro SP2 Full Version
79 MS Vista Premium Full Version
95 XP Home SP2 Upgrade
97 Vista Home Premium Upgrade
98 Publisher 2007
99 Access 2007
At any given moment about 1 in 4 of the software bestsellers in software will be Microsoft products for the Windows market. Office 2007/8 has had an extraordinarily successful run.
OS Platform Statistics For June
XP 67%
Vista 18%
Mac 6%
Linux 4%
W2003 2%
Win 7 2%
W2K 1%
The OS stats are from a pro's development-oriented site that shows a 50% share for Firefox. It is not preposterous to imagine Win 7 overtaking Linux before its official launch in October.
This guy doesn't have enough sense to anonymously leak the recordings to the web so he can't be sanctioned for them, and he has the nerve to call himself a professor?
Congratulations.
You have now upped the ante to the point where you risk doing time for contempt of court -
your tenured professorship at Harvard Law is at stake -
and your license to practice is at stake.
You will also very likely have made such a wreckage of your client's case that he will have no option but to settle out of court.
Still, I when the law is against you, and the facts - on the balance of probability - are against you, then all you've got left is to throw a hissy fit.
When the facts are against you, bang the law.
When the law is against you, bang the facts.
When the facts and the law are against you, bang the table.
--- and when your client insists on taking the stand, bang his head.
The Judge indicated that she was 'deeply concerned' about Prof. Nesson's apparent 'blatant disregard' of her order."
The many woes of the geek in court:
1 The lawyer who tells him what only what he wants to hear.
2 The pro bono lawyer with an axe to grind:
"You too can become a poster child for the EFF!"
3 The law professor who thinks he would have made a hotshot trial attorney.
4 The defendant who also thinks he would have made a hotshot trial attorney.
5 The lawyer with an unholy gift for pissing off a judge.
6 The defendant who takes the stand.
Only a geek could unleash such a steaming pile of shit - and never catch a whiff of it. "Tar and feathers ain't good enough for him, boys!"
7 The lawyer who ups the stakes each time he loses a round. The defendant who comes along for the ride.
The Supreme Court accepts perhaps 150 cases a year for oral argument. You just might make the cut.
You might also be the big winner in the tri-state lotto.
Well, grandma might not, but quite a few people with enough tech level to want to watch movies but not enough to compile something will.
Grandma buys the OEM system bundle.
Pretty much like everyone else who isn't posting to Slashdot on a long summer weekend.
Media play has to work in the store.
It has to look and sound as good as anything the OSX or Windows system can deliver out of the box.
It has to be competitive with the XBox 360 or PS3.
The high end HDTV has Ethernet and a minimally functional browser.
It won't be long before the mid-line set can "tune" Internet video directly - and it will be mp4 and not Ogg/Theora.
Navigating Sourceforge is a voyage of the damned.
There are only two types of projects here. Those going nowhere, and those already solidly anchored.
the Wii controllers SOUNDED cool. But, at the end of the day, I realized the essential flaw in them: I'm a lazy-ass.
Wii Fit isn't sold to the couch potato - but to the young woman who makes it a regular part of her exercise regime.
Wii Sports appeals to the competitive senior only too well aware of his physical limitations.
The Wii has found a very profitable niche among non-traditional gamers.
just because of a more pleasing spectrum?
In the gaslight era, conversion to electric was often half-hearted.
The spectrum of the gaslight had shaped your choice of fabrics, paints and wallpaper. Finishes and textures of every sort. Cosmetics. The way you prepared and presented an evening meal.
Gaslight had the subtle animation and coloring of candlelight.
You could - and often did - spend a lot of money on leaded glass and crystal fixtures to play on these effects.
Electric light could seem harsh and unsparing in contrast - and well into the twenties and beyond you were far too likely to brush against a bare lamp dangling from a cord.
The tech that is everywhere is the most resistant to change - because it insinuates itself into the most intimate corners of our lives.
VLC 1.0.0 and 1.1.0 can be compiled with VAAPI to get hardware acceleration. The simplest way to insure a permanent fractional 1% share for Linux is to require a compiler to gain functionality the OSX and Windows app delivers on launch.
Oh, you mean, do you have to pay royalties to watch it legally? Probably. Do you follow every law on the books or are you just trolling?
You do if you want to see your OEM product on sale in the mega-mall.
Which does much to explain why OSX and Windows have a 99% share of the client desktop.
The geek may be comfortable downloading a "gray market" codec.
The shopper laying out $800-$1500 for his HTPC wants an iron-clad guarantee of full-featured hardware-accelerated media play. Demoed in the store.
Maybe she should pay the price of one record per shared mp3? That'd be something like $240.
It's the unlicensed - unlimited - wholesale distribution and redistribution of copyrighted files that sinks the geek in court.
Launch a program like Limewire.
See the number of users on the net?
The animated bar graphs that track movement in and out of your "Shared Files" folder?
The tray icon that reminds you how many files are in transit when the program is minimized?
The option to allocate more or less upstream and downstream bandwidth to file sharing?
The option to open up the hood and take a look inside the shared files folders of any active user - and scarf up all you can eat?
The option to chat with other users?
The jury of your peers sure as hell does.
Does your P2P program or service enforce - or reward - a positive upload and download ratio?
How desirable is it to "make available" as many of the most popular files as you can?
The only one who goes to trial claiming not to know how P2P works is the geek - and it wounds him to be called a liar.
However, I just don't figure how the imaginary damages could rack up $18k, let alone $192M.
Whoever awarded those damages had no sense of proportion, or was bribed.
Statutory damages aren't imaginary.
Statutory damages come into play only when the jury as the trier of fact decides - unanimously - that the plaintiff is entitled to a recovery.
Statutory damages come into play only when the actual damages are are difficult to calculate or the state has set an arbitrary limit on recovery.
The jury awards statutory damages based on the judge's instructions on how to use the statutory formula.
That decision also has to be unanimous.
The jury never gets to hear your Robin Hood defense.
Your po'boy defense.
The bribery of a judge or jury in the American federal system is so rare as to be unworthy of discussion.
Regardless - if someone destroyed my life over some songs, I'd probably do the same to them.
But your life hasn't been destroyed.
The geek as drama queen. Not a pretty sight.
You have been given every opportunity to settle out of court. You can still do so now.
You have a right to appeal the decision.
The risk is that the appellate courts will simply scale back the damages without ever reaching the constitutional issues.
The pro bono attorney out to make new law exits your case because it has dead-ended.
You are now free to negotiate a reasonable schedule of payments.
The debt will constrain you somewhat - but that makes you no different from anyone else whose debts cannot be wholly extinguished in bankruptcy.
What's few hundred k more for battery and assault, if you already owe $190M more than you can reasonably ever earn. For that matter, no monetary fine would ever feel like anything - and jail time is expensive to the society. So.. maybe it's just not worth it?
Talk like this is pathological.
The assault takes you in to the criminal justice system. The state will prosecute for simple assault. The feds will act to protect the decisions of its courts, the safety of every participant in a trial, the right of the plaintiff to make his case for recovery without fear of physical retaliation.
one of the reasons why there will never be a true Democracy.
The true democracy defines its own rules. The initiate is there by invitation. The initiate is there to learn. He can be voted off the island.
I was at a neighborhood party this weekend, which provided something like a random sample of the population. You know, morons.
I can't even think like this.
Much less put it into words.
The Kindle didn't hang around for long. Maybe it's just not good at parties
Reading defines the pleasures of solitude.
Reading aloud is performance - an improvisational drama - with the book as your script.
To hold an audience - you need a story and not a gadget.
Why would anyone buy a device where someone *else* decides what apps you can run and what you cannot run?
Because programs vetted by Apple are likely to be accurately described, genuinely useful, and fully compatible with your phone.
They also 'helpfully' keep 70+% of the price end-users pay.
Try self-publishing through other channels and see how much you net.
It would destroy the content industry not the content creators.
The P2P trade is in big media - the corporate product.
Launch any file sharing program. Look at what is being offered. The date of release. How many sources are available.
The geek is lying when he tells you that this isn't what he wants.
The industry is used to having it their own way for too long, and they have to realise that their days of bleeding the customer dry are numbered.
To talk of bleeding the customer dry is lunatic.
The federal minimum wage in 1939 was 30 cents an hour. That would buy you one adult ticket to the movies or a single 78 RPM phonograph record.
Two tracks.
The roadshow production of Gone With The Wind would have been priced at $2 to $5 bucks.
The 78 was disposable. The light-weight tonearm with a diamond stylus doesn't come into general use until the mid or late fifties.
The federal minimum wage will rise to $7.25 an hour on July 24. The average U.S. ticket price for a movie in 2008 was $7.18.
The Video-on-Demand rental is $5.
You can do much better than that with a subscription to Netflix.
Amazon's Best Sellers in Music CDs will only rarely set you back more than $9.99. The mp3 single 89 cents.
The customer isn't paying more for entertainment in real terms than his great-grandfather did.
If a car that suits their day-to-day driving needs can't handle an annual 12 hour drive to grandma's for Thanksgiving, they're not going to buy a second car just for that one trip.
It isn't just about that once-a-year vacation.
It is about every run that doesn't quite fit into a family's daily routine.
It isn't just about mileage either. It's about passenger space, cargo capacity and so on. You might have a boat or trailer that needs towing.
've proposed that people rent a car for their once-a-year trips. A decent rail system would also fill this need for intermediate trip lengths, but alas the U.S. has sacrificed its rail system for freeways.
Rail passenger traffic was in decline long before the interstates. It is hard to beat the convenience of portal to portal service. You can bring your kids, your pets and all the cargo you could ever want to carry - at almost no additional expense.
The Pennsylvania Turnpike opened in 1940 - at least two decades before most drivers were likely to be carrying a credit card - and without an instant and trusted line of credit renting a car isn't a particularly realistic option.
New York to Chicago on the Twentieth Century Limited was a grand experience for those who could afford it.
Albany to New York by coach was a very different experience.