While visiting the Apple store for an iPhone battery replacement, I tried the MacBook Pros that were on display. The "new" keyboard is positively terrible - not much key travel and poor feedback.
Major updates every 6 months is like having to install service packs twice a year (I know the monthly updates are cumulative). Even if major features are added, I hold my breath every time these big updates come. It's inevitable that some driver will stop working, or some program will be auto-removed without much notification.
In last year's Anniversary Update, my finger print reader stopped working on an older HP laptop. In the Creators Update, a AMD Raedon 7600 HD video card stopped working in my 4 year old desktop. Although the telemetry may tell MS that the majority of Win10 big updates install problem free, there are many, many users that have problems like I have.
It seems that the devs are adding back previously cut features and code to NMS. A lot of what was hyped about the game had to exist in one form or another at some point. I've never played the game, and avoided purchasing it based on all the negative feedback. If Hello Games had been more upfront with the missing features at launch, and then had some sort of roll out schedule, things might have been better. The deal with Sony may not have been a great idea.
While I've moved on from XP and realize that MS is not supporting it anymore, MS was still selling copies of XP as late 2009. Yes, that's 6 years ago, but calling an OS ancient is over the top when MS was putting it on netbook PCs from 2009. If you're willing to sell a legal copy of XP eight to nine years after it was first introduced, you shouldn't be surprised when people are still using it (and this netbook was a consumer product).
This discussion reminds me of some of the press and marketing hype before Windows 95 was released. Many PC industry authors praised Win95 as a "complete rewrite from the ground up", "a completely new 32-bit implementation of Windows", or "Windows with DOS completely removed".
In his excellent books "Unauthorized Windows 95" and "Unauthorized DOS", author Andrew Schulman went to great lengths to debunk the popular misconceptions about DOS7 and Win95. Many times things were hinted at by MS, fanned by the press to include their own desires for the OS, and then left to stand by MS. Pretty great marketing.
(1) Fix Windows Explorer so it doesn't crash and restart when accessing network or smb shares.
(2) Improve os signal handling or inter-process communication...I don't how many times Windows seems like it locks up waiting for something, but it looks like it has crashed.
(3) Take all of the functionality that was in TweakUI and PowerToys for XP and roll it into the standard Control Panel.
(4) Make it easier to install programs somewhere else besides c:\program files\... many programs do not give you the option.
(5) Improve the speed of MS networking - why does it seem that NFS is faster?
(6) Fix UAC, it's still too annoying
(7) Develop a multi-pc license package for home use (5 windows installs for $250-$300)
(8) Fix media player so that it does a better job detecting, downloading and installing codecs. How many times does it say that a codec has been found and installed, but the video still does not play.
(9) Faster booting and startup
(10) Browse Xbox harddrive, be able to move "save games" files and other purchased content to PC (I know something like this is on the list, but I would like to be able to more easily move my Oblivion and HL2 files from console to console).
(11) Better estimation of my "Windows Experience" score in Vista - my wife's 2.2Ghz Core 2, Nvidia 8400GT, 2GB RAM laptop has a lower experience score than my P4 Dual-Core 1.6Ghz, Intel X3100, 1GB desktop.
(12) Built-in SSH, SCP, SFTP
(13) Better command completion (like my favorite tcsh)
*Writing* Pacing: In many of the early episodes, the pacing of the stories was terrible, often slowing to the point of boredom. Remember the episode where the Ferengi were stealing parts of the Enterprise (yawn)? Or how about "A Night in Sickbay" (yawn^2)?
Continuity: Initially, there were problems with continuity with the ST universe. Many episodes only paid lip service to previous ST material by mentioning it, and then went promptly went nowhere. Only when the ratings began to slip did the producers make an intelligent effort to tie into the old school.
Also, it was cool at the beginning of the series when Enterprise didn't have all of the tech that Picard et. al. were supposed to have. I liked the feeling of a small, weak Earth ship that didn't have all the answers. Bit by bit though, the same level of technology has crept back, to where except for the occasional shuttle pod, the tech is equivalent.
*Stories* How did that temporal war arc get resolved? Did they make it up as they went along? Why did it seem so clumsy and difficult to follow? How about the Xindi/Star Wars/Death Star arc? Why did it take 4 years to start seeing elements of the ST universe we were yearning for from the start?
*Characters* Viewers relating to Characters: Did the show ever get the viewers to really care about the characters? Maybe you could care about "Trip", but the rest of the cast could get blown out the airlock, and no one would protest.
Erratic Character Development: Why did so many of the episodes have the cast acting out of character? This was a problem with Voyager too, where each week a character would act differently, and negate or forget their development to that point in the series. Viewers watch the show and think "he wouldn't do or say that".
Crummy casting: Why is Scott Bakula so unbelievable and unconvincing in the role of Archer? Why can't he be taken seriously like Patrick Stewart was? This is an anchoring role for a Star Trek series - you can't miss-cast the role, and then expect the series to succeed. Voyager had problems here too, but I could at least stomach Janeway.
Yes it's easy to criticize the series at this point, but these guys have had 4 years, gazillions of dollars, and a lot of fan input to draw from to get the show right. Time to look elsewhere for sci-fi entertainment.
My 3-year old Sony SAT-T60/DirectTivo box starting acting up a couple of weeks ago - whether I was watching live TV or recording a show, the video would freeze or go black while the audio stream would continue just fine.
It's kind of weird watching the Tivo record hours and hours of programs with audio only - I had a really elaborate tape recorder.
Anyway, a DirecTv tech came out to move my dish to a better location. While he was there, my wife showed him the "audio only" Tivo - he unplugged it for about a minute and let it come back up.
(1) Installing a PCI ethernet card in a slot, and then not making sure it was seated correctly - apply power, smell smoke.
(2) Trying to place a large heatsink/fan on top of a processor, and not watching how close I was to a voltage regulator on the motherboard - apply power, arc of electricity, and then smell smoke.
(3) Stupidly applying OS patches to a Solaris system without bringing the system down, or at least into single user mode. Reboot machine, see string of error messages about corrupted libraries and missing files. Spend weeking recovering before people arrive Monday.
(4) Condifently tell wife that I need to apply the lastest service pack to her working Win 2K box. She says, "it works ok", I say, "You really need this svc pack". Result...a Win 2k box that rebooted whenever you logged in. Fortunately, I had selected "archive old files" before installing it.
(5) Ok, this one is not mine...I give the wife a PDA, she puts the PDA in her purse and goes to the store. She finishes loading the groceries into the trunk and reaches up to close the lid. At the same time, the PDA slides out of her purse while the truck lid is travelling down. Her timing is impeccable, and the PDA gets perfectly smashed by the trunk lid. The funny thing is that I was able to hot sync it one last time and retrieve all of her data. And then I had to give her my PDA because she didn't have one.
Re:Good... down with Real
on
Real Problems
·
· Score: 1
I don't think that Adobe Acrobat Reader is without fault.
At times, Adobe has buried the reader download link on the website and asked for email registration.
In addition, Reader dispalys annoying splash screens and insists on constantly checking for updates...yes, I know these options can be disabled, but it points to a general sense that utility programs are becoming less useful, and getting more in the way.
Great, another super expensive corporate transaction for Comcast.
(1) Offer $$$ for desired company. (2) Add to company debt to finance $$$ deal (3) Once deal is complete raise rates on customers to recoup costs.
I'm still smarting from my cable internet bill hitting $57/month (started at $39, $42, $45, $50, $52, and now $57), and I am paying more for less speed. ATTBI was a big pill to swallow, now Disney?
I can't speak to server or database applications, but in the EDA tools market, there seems to be a steady migration from proprietary Unix (Solaris,etc) to Linux. My small company has saved considerable money configuring fast Linux boxes to run our Synopsys tools instead of investing in new Sun hardware. With the exception of a couple of tools that haven't been ported to Linux yet (and the vendors suggest that it will be done in the next year), I'll probably have my Sun decommissioned soon.
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While visiting the Apple store for an iPhone battery replacement, I tried the MacBook Pros that were on display. The "new" keyboard is positively terrible - not much key travel and poor feedback.
Major updates every 6 months is like having to install service packs twice a year (I know the monthly updates are cumulative). Even if major features are added, I hold my breath every time these big updates come. It's inevitable that some driver will stop working, or some program will be auto-removed without much notification. In last year's Anniversary Update, my finger print reader stopped working on an older HP laptop. In the Creators Update, a AMD Raedon 7600 HD video card stopped working in my 4 year old desktop. Although the telemetry may tell MS that the majority of Win10 big updates install problem free, there are many, many users that have problems like I have.
It seems that the devs are adding back previously cut features and code to NMS. A lot of what was hyped about the game had to exist in one form or another at some point. I've never played the game, and avoided purchasing it based on all the negative feedback. If Hello Games had been more upfront with the missing features at launch, and then had some sort of roll out schedule, things might have been better. The deal with Sony may not have been a great idea.
While I've moved on from XP and realize that MS is not supporting it anymore, MS was still selling copies of XP as late 2009. Yes, that's 6 years ago, but calling an OS ancient is over the top when MS was putting it on netbook PCs from 2009. If you're willing to sell a legal copy of XP eight to nine years after it was first introduced, you shouldn't be surprised when people are still using it (and this netbook was a consumer product).
Is AOL anything more than the Huffington Post and Tech-Crunch these days?
This discussion reminds me of some of the press and marketing hype before Windows 95 was released. Many PC industry authors praised Win95 as a "complete rewrite from the ground up", "a completely new 32-bit implementation of Windows", or "Windows with DOS completely removed".
In his excellent books "Unauthorized Windows 95" and "Unauthorized DOS", author Andrew Schulman went to great lengths to debunk the popular misconceptions about DOS7 and Win95. Many times things were hinted at by MS, fanned by the press to include their own desires for the OS, and then left to stand by MS. Pretty great marketing.
(1) Fix Windows Explorer so it doesn't crash and restart when accessing network or smb shares.
... many programs do not give you the option.
(2) Improve os signal handling or inter-process communication...I don't how many times Windows seems like it locks up waiting for something, but it looks like it has crashed.
(3) Take all of the functionality that was in TweakUI and PowerToys for XP and roll it into the standard Control Panel.
(4) Make it easier to install programs somewhere else besides c:\program files\
(5) Improve the speed of MS networking - why does it seem that NFS is faster?
(6) Fix UAC, it's still too annoying
(7) Develop a multi-pc license package for home use (5 windows installs for $250-$300)
(8) Fix media player so that it does a better job detecting, downloading and installing codecs. How many times does it say that a codec has been found and installed, but the video still does not play.
(9) Faster booting and startup
(10) Browse Xbox harddrive, be able to move "save games" files and other purchased content to PC (I know something like this is on the list, but I would like to be able to more easily move my Oblivion and HL2 files from console to console).
(11) Better estimation of my "Windows Experience" score in Vista - my wife's 2.2Ghz Core 2, Nvidia 8400GT, 2GB RAM laptop has a lower experience score than my P4 Dual-Core 1.6Ghz, Intel X3100, 1GB desktop.
(12) Built-in SSH, SCP, SFTP
(13) Better command completion (like my favorite tcsh)
(14) Built-in virtualization or OS guest hosting.
In general, why did Enterprise fail?
*Writing*
Pacing: In many of the early episodes, the pacing of the stories was terrible, often slowing to the point of boredom. Remember the episode where the Ferengi were stealing parts of the Enterprise (yawn)? Or how about "A Night in Sickbay" (yawn^2)?
Continuity: Initially, there were problems with continuity with the ST universe. Many episodes only paid lip service to previous ST material by mentioning it, and then went promptly went nowhere. Only when the ratings began to slip did the producers make an intelligent effort to tie into the old school.
Also, it was cool at the beginning of the series when Enterprise didn't have all of the tech that Picard et. al. were supposed to have. I liked the feeling of a small, weak Earth ship that didn't have all the answers. Bit by bit though, the same level of technology has crept back, to where except for the occasional shuttle pod, the tech is equivalent.
*Stories*
How did that temporal war arc get resolved? Did they make it up as they went along? Why did it seem so clumsy and difficult to follow? How about the Xindi/Star Wars/Death Star arc? Why did it take 4 years to start seeing elements of the ST universe we were yearning for from the start?
*Characters*
Viewers relating to Characters: Did the show ever get the viewers to really care about the characters? Maybe you could care about "Trip", but the rest of the cast could get blown out the airlock, and no one would protest.
Erratic Character Development: Why did so many of the episodes have the cast acting out of character? This was a problem with Voyager too, where each week a character would act differently, and negate or forget their development to that point in the series. Viewers watch the show and think "he wouldn't do or say that".
Crummy casting: Why is Scott Bakula so unbelievable and unconvincing in the role of Archer? Why can't he be taken seriously like Patrick Stewart was? This is an anchoring role for a Star Trek series - you can't miss-cast the role, and then expect the series to succeed. Voyager had problems here too, but I could at least stomach Janeway.
Yes it's easy to criticize the series at this point, but these guys have had 4 years, gazillions of dollars, and a lot of fan input to draw from to get the show right. Time to look elsewhere for sci-fi entertainment.
My 3-year old Sony SAT-T60/DirectTivo box starting acting up a couple of weeks ago - whether I was watching live TV or recording a show, the video would freeze or go black while the audio stream would continue just fine.
It's kind of weird watching the Tivo record hours and hours of programs with audio only - I had a really elaborate tape recorder.
Anyway, a DirecTv tech came out to move my dish to a better location. While he was there, my wife showed him the "audio only" Tivo - he unplugged it for about a minute and let it come back up.
It's worked great ever since.
(1) Installing a PCI ethernet card in a slot, and then not making sure it was seated correctly - apply power, smell smoke.
(2) Trying to place a large heatsink/fan on top of a processor, and not watching how close I was to a voltage regulator on the motherboard - apply power, arc of electricity, and then smell smoke.
(3) Stupidly applying OS patches to a Solaris system without bringing the system down, or at least into single user mode. Reboot machine, see string of error messages about corrupted libraries and missing files. Spend weeking recovering before people arrive Monday.
(4) Condifently tell wife that I need to apply the lastest service pack to her working Win 2K box. She says, "it works ok", I say, "You really need this svc pack". Result...a Win 2k box that rebooted whenever you logged in. Fortunately, I had selected "archive old files" before installing it.
(5) Ok, this one is not mine...I give the wife a PDA, she puts the PDA in her purse and goes to the store. She finishes loading the groceries into the trunk and reaches up to close the lid. At the same time, the PDA slides out of her purse while the truck lid is travelling down. Her timing is impeccable, and the PDA gets perfectly smashed by the trunk lid. The funny thing is that I was able to hot sync it one last time and retrieve all of her data. And then I had to give her my PDA because she didn't have one.
I don't think that Adobe Acrobat Reader is without fault. At times, Adobe has buried the reader download link on the website and asked for email registration. In addition, Reader dispalys annoying splash screens and insists on constantly checking for updates...yes, I know these options can be disabled, but it points to a general sense that utility programs are becoming less useful, and getting more in the way.
Great, another super expensive corporate transaction for Comcast.
(1) Offer $$$ for desired company.
(2) Add to company debt to finance $$$ deal
(3) Once deal is complete raise rates on customers to recoup costs.
I'm still smarting from my cable internet bill hitting $57/month (started at $39, $42, $45, $50, $52, and now $57), and I am paying more for less speed. ATTBI was a big pill to swallow, now Disney?
I can't speak to server or database applications, but in the EDA tools market, there seems to be a steady migration from proprietary Unix (Solaris,etc) to Linux. My small company has saved considerable money configuring fast Linux boxes to run our Synopsys tools instead of investing in new Sun hardware. With the exception of a couple of tools that haven't been ported to Linux yet (and the vendors suggest that it will be done in the next year), I'll probably have my Sun decommissioned soon.