"We all agree one major platform is better than many wildly different platforms right?"
No. For the same reason that one species of banana is bad news. How about potato blight? Oh, biology. Doesn't have anything to do with computers. While in biology, a monoculture is a bad thing and means that a simple virus can drop a culture into famine and poverty, that simply doesn't happen in the world of computing.......oh wait.
Different code bases implementing fully documented standards is the only way we will get through all this. One company should not control everything regardless of how hard they work to make their code secure. In the end the computers will either have to be complete black boxes with no user modifiable features or there will need to be multiple implementations from different sources to avoid a catastrophic single point failure.
MS has had prototypes to try and install XP on, does anyone think they were successful? It looks like an amazing amount of thought has gone into the design and execution. MS must be scared to death of this thing.
They spend all this time and effort getting the user interface looking different and updated and yet behind it all sits the same old scummy code which results in printouts that don't look exactly like what you had on the screen.....
Re:Big screens == large power bills
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Plasma or LCD?
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· Score: 1
"Projectors are useless in all but pitch black conditions. Maybe you have a very unsociable household but around these parts people don't like to sit in silence in the dark everytime the TV's on.
Oh and projectors are just great when someone walks in front of the beam. And the picture is washed out."
As I said, I have a regular TV which is fine for normal use. I think large screens (certainly in our house) are too big for regular use but great for movies. As a compromise I have a regular size CRT widescreen TV for normal viewing and a projector for movies. I didn't install the projector in the living room, we are fortunate to have a spare room out over the garage connected to my computer room which isn't needed as a bedroom. I installed blackout blinds in that room as well as the computer room, cut a small hole in the wall (fiddly to get right), mounted the projector on the ceiling in the computer room and put a 70" screen in the cinema room with two nice chairs and a decent surround system. It can be properly blacked out and the projector is barely audible since it is in another room. Since the projector is ceiling mounted people don't get in the way of the screen. Nice to have a permanent set up. Previously I had been using the projector in a portable mode which did mean a bit of set up time but now I can just go into the cinema room, flick the power on and get on with the movie.
Big screens == large power bills
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Plasma or LCD?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I was horrified when I found out how much electricity these large LCDs and plasmas use, especially in the 50" or bigger sizes. My current front projection system runs at 70" although it is perfectly capable of throwing a 120" image in a bigger room. With the DLP projector, DTS/DD receiver and LD/DVD combi player running the whole setup draws 280 watts. An equivalent size plasma is going to draw >600 watts on its own. LCD is better but if you really want a large screen experience a projection system is cheaper and more energy efficient. Also, for normal TV viewing we simply have a small 28" widescreen CRT which uses about 80 watts. Material shot for TV still looks better on a smaller screen so the projector is used for movies rather than general viewing. Also, if colour fidelity are important to you then LCDs and plasmas are a poor choice.
"Well, MFS isn't actually that bad, really, at least not for simple, rudimentary procedures"
Simple is right. It is OK for learning how things look and what to do but it isn't like flying. I know because I am learning to fly and the first time I tried to do a landing in MSFS I put the thing down perfectly. I'm not bad but nowhere near that good. At home I use Xplane which I find more realistic because it is a heck of a lot harder to do a good landing and it flies in a way which is pretty realistic. I also use FlightGear because it has some features (such as mouselook in a 3D cockpit) which make it better for circuit training than Xplane.
The main thing is to treat it as much like the real situation as possible. I have a CH yoke and pedals and I have set up both FG and Xplane to be as close to the Cessna 150 I fly in reality as possible with my limited equipment. When I prepare for takeoff I go through the checklist and do all of them just as I do in the real thing. Practicing stuff like this on even a basic sim is far cheaper than doing it in real life and just as effective.
Of course, it isn't the real thing no matter how good the sim. I have my first solo coming up (instructor said I was up to it) and no amount of sim time will prepare me for the reality of sitting in the cockpit on my own for the first time as I taxi out onto the runway......
"there must be something wonderful about only using the bottom, right corner "
When I got my first Mac (I liked it so much I now have four) it drove me nuts as did having to use the menu bar at the top of the screen. Also things like the mouse cursor disapearing when I scrolled a window or clicking into a window only bringing it forward rather than activating the button I clicked on. These were all things which nearly caused me to dump the platform but over time I learned that there is something wonderful about it. Muscle memory is the key. I have found that I can now do things much more quickly than originally because a flick of the mouse takes me to the top left of the screen where I hit the menu with great accuracy (trackpad too). When I want to resize a window, woosh, straight down to the bottom right corner and zip the window is resized. No danger of hitting close because I decided to widen the window up near the close button. Losing the mouse cursor when you scroll? I wouldn't have it any other way. On Windows it annoys the heck out of me that the mouse doesn't disappear when I scroll.
As more people come to the Mac from Windows, this discussion will keep coming back. The way the Mac does things isn't wrong or broken. Its just different and in time it becomes second nature.
"How seamless windows compatibility worked out for OS2."
It's not a bad point but in this case it is not quite the same idea. Windows software isn't runable by default on a Mac, you have to make the decision and buy software to do it, and more to the point, even when it does run it isn't seamless like it was on OS2. It is definitely jarring but less than having the Windows desktop take up your whole screen. It doesn't encourage you to continue to buy Windows software, it just lets you run it in a reasonable way with better compatibility than wine but with less integration than wine does. OS X software is still way better to use than Windows software even through Parallels so the market will still prefer OS X native code.
"You never know. As long as running Windows in Parallels requires a copy of Windows that's purchased from Microsoft, they're still getting their money. Parallels is an interesting situation for Microsoft, as it means that some portion of the folks buying Macs are paying them for Windows anyway (and at retail prices at that, which is much more profitable for Microsoft than OEM)."
That isn't the problem for MS. Lets put it this way. I own four Macs and recently got rid of my only PC because I could now do everything I needed to using the Macs. If absolutely necessary, I can boot Windows in Parallels to run a specific piece of software just like I used to with OS9 apps but, just as I stopped buying OS9 apps, I also won't be buying Windows software even though I can run it. My preference is for OSX apps and I'm sure I'm not alone. What this does is it makes Windows a legacy system and legacy systems fade away eventually. MS might well be making good money off Windows sales to Mac users for the moment but what if more and more people buy Macs and prefer to buy OSX software? Well, software companies will fill the need and eventually these people will find that they don't need Windows any more so they will stop installing it. If that happens, the MS monopoly will be broken. MS really should be scared (I bet they are too). Windows isn't popular because it is good (it isn't) but because it has many many apps. Those apps can now run nicely on a Mac so people can buy a Mac without missing out on the apps but native ones are much nicer so once the move to Mac is made, the desire to purchase Windows software will decline and the market will notice.
I've installed it and it is very similar to Classic on PPC macs under OS X. As with OS 9 apps on OS X, a full copy of the operating system is running, but the windows are drawn directly to the desktop (or at least appear to, with some glitching at the moment). I have the Windows task bar running down the left hand side of my screen so it doesn't get in the way of my dock (at the bottom) and desktop icons (to the right). Running Windows with the classic theme looks better as the shaped edges of Windows apps leave a little triangle of the Windows desktop which looks a bit poor. Lighten up the theme and it works quite nicely on the OS X desktop.
Apple really needs to buy Parallels or do something similar. It would make a huge difference to people moving from Windows to the Mac and eventually, Windows could go the same way as Classic MacOS has under OS X and just fade away. I don't think MS would be very pleased with this development though:-)
Yeah, I know, I use it all the time for my own system. Just thought it would make her feel more secure to have to invite me to access her machine rather than think I could connect to it any time I liked. Also gives her more of a sense of self determination with her computer.
I bought my 76 year old dad an iMac G5 20" just as the G5s were being phased out so it was at a significant discount. He had never used a computer before but was interested in starting. He had no knowledge of Windows although some of his friends have. Turns out that they like the Mac too and are thinking about getting one next time.
My wife's grandmother was put onto Windows before we could do anything about it and now she won't consider anything else so I recently donated my last PC to her (all Mac now!) with the original copy of XP Home upgraded to SP2, AVG Free, Firefox and Thunderbird (which she has been using for a while under 98) and also TightVNC Server. She has an ADSL router modem and since the IP address changes frequently I have put a link on her desktop to a site which will tell her what the IP address of her machine is. If she has trouble, she can phone me and read out that number and I can VNC in and see what the problem is and fix it. I also set her own account up as a non-admin user and kept the password for admin to myself so her well meaning friends can't mess with the machine. This works well enough. She has a legit copy of Office2K which is really all she wanted and she can use Firefox and Thunderbird for web and e-mail. She called me once when she first got the machine because stuff had moved from 98 and I was able to remotely show her how to do what she wanted. Since then, not a peep.
My dad with his Mac, well, he is very pleased and I dare say he is having an easier time with it so for a fresh start, get a Mac.
"Is anyone else convinced that this will be the last version of Windows as we know it?"
It certainly should be but I don't know if MS has the balls that it takes to drop the entire OS and start again. What I expect will happen is that they will keep retreading this tired old crossply of an OS until it finally blows. In our company we treat Windows as a second place OS now. All workers have a copy of Windows running under VMware on their workstations but it is really relegated to running MS Office and a few other Windows only apps. Everything else is Linux or OS X depending on their preference. Windows Vista isn't even on our radar.
As someone who lived there for 8 years and then moved to the UK I have to say that NZ is *THE* place to be for sure. I went back on holiday last year and did all the fun stuff I could think of. Met up with old friends and had a brilliant time. Came back to the UK with the burning desire to move back to NZ and have put it into action. Currently in the last stages of getting a skilled migrant visa. Not decided where to live, its all good. Quite keen on the South Island though. Took up flying recently and there is some serious country down there:-)
Whangarei is really nice though. Heck, I wouldn't mind Wellington to be honest. You really really should do your best to make the move. Everyone is welcome. Even Brits although we do get a lot of stick:-D
Seriously, stay out. New Zealand doesn't need Americans. You wouldn't fit in! Believe me, the best place for Americans is America. Nowhere else is as suitable for you so just stay put.
The Wii is nothing more than a vastly overpriced GameCube turbo with a pointer bolted on.
And? I'm sorry but I just don't see why this is a problem. PC manufactuers have been doing just this since 1981 when the first IBM PC came out. Today, you can but a Dell box (or even a Mac now) which is nothing more than a much faster version of that first machine from 1981.
The Game Cube had some really good games and a decent library size so the fact that there is a ready selection of games at low prices makes a Wii very attractive. Every GC game will play on the Wii. Compare that with the level of backwards compatibility you get with the Xbox360. I know, I have a 360 and it may or may not play a particular Xbox game, perfectly or otherwise. The Wii won't have that problem. I own a GameCube, PS2 and 360. Yes, I pre-ordered a Wii. No, I haven't even considered ordering a PS3. I can't wait for the Wii.
The specification has changed since the MBP was released. Originally, it announced with 1.67 or 1.83Ghz processors. When it was actually released, Apple upgraded the spec to 1.83 and 2.0Ghz for free with the option of a 2.16Ghz Core Duo for extra money. Then they upgraded the base model to 2.0Ghz and the top model got the 2.16Ghz processor as standard which is the current position. In addition, they have added the option of the glossy screen for no charge. My 2Ghz model cost me £1699 in April but today you can buy a 2Ghz machine for £1399. OK, my machine came with 1GB of RAM and a 256MB video card and the base 2Ghz model only comes with 512MB RAM and a 128MB video card but other than that it is identical. RAM is cheap (not from Apple though) so the base model can be bumped up to 1.5GB for an extra £100 or so from Crucial. Really, I have been impressed with Apple gear since I switched three years back. The machines are well built and perform nicely. You cannot compare a Mac versus a PC without taking OS X into account. OS X outperforms Windows in every way (security, stability, ease of use, power, looks) so that alone puts a Mac in a different league. With Parallels I can run Windows in a window or full screen, along with any other x86 OS, and the performance is more than acceptable (I have Boot Camp installed but have stopped using it) so I have access to a far larger software library now than a PC.
I have a 2Ghz MacBook Pro with 256MB ATI X1600 and 2GB of RAM. It is my swiss-army knife laptop. It does everything and it does it all very very well. The screen is nice (non-reflective version) and bright with good resolution. The core duo performs very well and with parallels I can run concurrent sessions of Windows XP and Fedora 5 on top of OS X. With Boot Camp I can reboot and play Call of Duty 2 at pretty high settings and Doom 3 and Far Cry play very well indeed.
I'll also second the vote for the build quality. I bought a first gen iBook G4 933Mhz and I still use it regularly despite the MBP because it is robust, smaller and the battery life is very good. The heat issues with the MBP are blown out of all proportion, every laptop I have ever had would run very very hot when playing games and you wouldn't want to play games on your lap anyway. I've measured the temps and the MBP gets no hotter when working hard than the iBook G4 did but you don't hear lots of complaints about the iBook because of its plastic case. Yes, aluminium is going to conduct the heat more rapidly but internally the thing gets no hotter than any other laptop and for something that is high performance I am happy to know that the heat I am feeling is not staying inside an insulated box.
These days the MBP is getting to quite a sensible price and the value of having a real graphics card, not to mention the nice backlit keyboard and all the other useful built in features means that the MacBook Pro is definitely the best value machine around in my book and that doesn't even include the ability to run OS X which is the killer for me. If it can't run OS X it isn't worth buying. No, I don't consider hacking OS X to run on a Sony Vaio as an option.
This is a console with about the same horsepower as the original XBOX (technology circa 2002) with a new age powerglove for a controller, all selling at a premium price. This thing will be a museum piece long before it reaches the traditional console end-of-life cycle. It's just not worth it.
I don't know how you figure that out. Unlike the Xbox versus Xbox 360 you can directly compare the performance/power of the Wii against the Game Cube. The GC was only barely less powerful than the Xbox and certainly more powerful than the PS2. The Wii is pretty much a GC with 3x the clock speed on both CPU and graphics while being fully backwards compatible so it will be able to perfectly play GC games many of which are very good so there is a large library of available games to buy and be reissued.
No-one is going to argue that the raw compute power of the Wii is pretty far behind the 360 and PS3 but it really doesn't matter if none of the games really do much new. The 360 and PS3 are nothing but the evolution of the NES, nothing new, just more power. Nintendo defined the current controller structure and the Wii redefines it.
Judging by the number of people queuing up to pre-order the Wii this last weekend I think it is going to be very successful.
The only Xbox game I have bought so far was Halo 2. I had never played it because I didn't have an Xbox but when I bought the 360 it was only £10 so I figured "what the hey" because MS would obviously make the effort to ensure that Halo and Halo 2 played perfectly. Not. I don't know if anyone else has played it through from start to finish but I have and I can tell you that the emulation is not perfect. I don't know how much better it looks than on the Xbox (I believe they updated some of the textures) but in the later levels I noticed that whenever there was a really bright flash there was a residual semi-transparent image of the flash that wouldn't go away. Yes, you could see through it but it was really annoying and meant that you had to save your progress, exit to the main menu, and then reload. I lost count of how many times I had to do this. I have not bothered to buy any more Xbox games. Mind you, I haven't bought many 360 games either (at £50 a go what do you expect?), just a few preowned ones and nothing really that stands out as being massively better than the original Xbox.
Oh, I played the demo of Saints Row having heard it was better than GTA: San Andreas. No, it isn't. The control is crappy, there is far too little blood and it crashed my 360.
I agree. One of my friends trained as a teacher and after a few jobs quit and went to work in an electronics store because the teaching work was horrible. I considered being a teacher myself but decided against it because the incentives are not there.
However, the reality that teaching is not treated with the respect it deserves and so the good people are not encouraged to join the profession does not mean we should make the education system poor to cope with the crap teachers that do join. There is a reason the quality of education is taking a nose dive and this 'realistic' thinking isn't going to help. You have to stand up and shout from the rooftops that it isn't good enough! Until you do that and actually change the dynamics you will continue to have poor quality teaching and poor quality education as a result. Fix the fundamental problem rather than trying to limit the damage to the current teachers. The qood ones will shine, the bad ones will leave. I would rather teach my kids myself than have them be taught by someone who can barely function.
Oh, and we should not be teaching operating systems, we should be teaching computing concepts and as I said in my first post, the concepts exist in all currently used GUIs so the choice of which one to use shouldn't matter. It is fear of the unknown that is the problem. I have experienced plenty of resistance to new systems from people I have worked with over the years but the fact is, if they know how to use a keyboard and mouse then the rest is child's play. Can these teachers use a keyboard and mouse????
Don't be so defeatist.
So, we should cripple our education system because the teachers aren't able to learn anything new themselves. Heck, we'll have people complaining that they'll have to come up with a new mneomic for the names of planets next.....
Teachers are supposed to impart knowledge to our kids. If the teachers are unable to learn new stuff then the kids would be better off being given a book to learn from. Teachers have to be able to explain what they are trying to teach. If the teachers simply learn parrot fashion and can only point at stuff without explaining what is behind it then they have no right being in the profession.
The very best teachers I had during my long (very long....) education were those who not only taught what we needed to know but also could explain why.
Besides which, there is plenty of evidence that people who continue to learn new stuff throughout their lives retain their mental faculties far better than those who simply sit back and complain that things aren't the way they used to be.
I am so sick of society pandering to the lowest common denominator. It is pathetic that we try so hard to ensure no-one fails that we pull back the brilliant minds and destroy their potential. IT skills training is the worst example of this. Calling it IT is an insult to those of us who have real IT skill.
Ah, that old straw man. Are schools teaching computing or Windows? All the basic skills they need to use any computer GUI can be taught with Linux just as well as Windows. In fact, having variety will make the students much more comfortable with the idea that things move and so in order to find the setting you want you need to hunt about a bit. People worry about the time to retrain users but you can put a Windows user on a Mac and within an hour they will be able to function and quite possibly be as capable as they are on Windows within a day. Most people who claim to know Windows really don't know much beyond using a bit of Office (badly) and the file manager. I say to people that if they can use a keyboard and a mouse they can use a Mac and the same is true of Linux, especially in a supported environment where all they need is to be able to do their work and someone else will keep it running. Sure, for home users Windows may be the best option (well, no, it isn't, buy a Mac, but that is another story) but where you don't have to run the system yourself you should be able to cope with whatever you are put in front of. At our site we have a mixure of Windows, Linux and Macs and the only people who really have problems are the PA and secretarial types who really don't know anything about their computers and function by remembering where stuff is. Move anything and they panic. Everyone else, the younger more computer literate types are happy enough on whatever they get. There is no benefit teaching students where to find something on version X of Windows, teach them what to look for based on what it is that they are trying to do and when it moves they will still be able to function.
We have bought a number of quad opteron machines recently because we do a lot of background number crunching and they need to run Linux. However, everyone has also been using laptops for Windows software. At my suggestion we have been configuring VMware images of XP Pro with Office for each user and installing vmware-player on each of these Linux workstations.
We have a Linux server that runs Samba for roaming profiles to the current Windows laptops and this works OK as it does mean if a laptop dies the user has all their configuration stored on the server but unless the replacement machine is configured exactly like their old one (and the users do have various needs for software beyond just the basics so they often do differ) the roaming profile doesn't exactly work and there is a bit of fiddling.
With the VM setup the users are able to use their image on any machine (shortly even on the Macs) and it is theirs regardless so the roaming profile works well too. This also means that Windows only uses up a small part of their workstation so we can gang the quads together into a cluster and do some serious work. The best part is that each night we do an rsync of the home directories (to another server and external drives to be stored in a firesafe) which also contains their VM and so if they screw up their Windows system we can just copy back the one from the day before and all is well. Far better than Windows Restore which isn't entirely able to put a machine back into a previous state.
Finally, the price of all this destroys any other solution I can think of for running Windows apps in a largely Linux environment. The player is free, the Windows and Office licences we had already bought, Linux is free and we have got a 40 processor Opteron cluster available that effectively cost us nothing too because we needed to put desktops in to replace the laptops that some idiot thought would be a good idea when the company first got started. Every user has a local vmplayer on their Linux machine. They are getting dual 20" monitors which is better than the 15" laptop with a 17" monitor attached as the laptops can't drive anything better so they can run Windows on one monitor and have Linux on the other.
With the current situation they were all running lots of Linux apps using VNC to our few available Linux machines and lots of terminals (cygwin or putty) but had Windows because there is still a perception that we need Office, mostly PowerPoint, although I have made sure they all have OpenOffice. They were crying out for more compute power as the company grew so for not much money I was able to buy 10 Quad Opteron workstations to give them the power, dual monitors don't cost much now either and vmplayer gives them Windows on one screen and Linux on the other, or Linux on both if they don't need to be running Windows apps. They still have the laptops for presentations and mobile use but they don't need to use them every day which should prolong their lives so there is a saving there too. What's not to like?
I really screwed up on my original degree. I was already quite late doing it since I messed up my O levels so had to do some of them again which put me a year behind. When I got my degree it wasn't a high grade so I ended up doing various unrelated jobs. Eventually, I learned I wanted more from life so I got a loan and paid my way through a Masters, got a good job and then started my PhD at age 27. When I finished it three years later I was 30 which was quite old to do a postdoc as most other PhDs were in their mid 20's. However, I kept at it and have continued to work in my field of choice and am now 40 and getting paid very well. So, I have decided to learn to fly and next week I take my first solo. Hopefully, I'll get my PPL by the end of the year. Whether I'll do anything with it other than recreation I don't know but the fact is, I couldn't have afforded to do it when I was 20 when it would have lead me to a career. There are benefits to being older. You are more focussed. I remember older students when I did my first degree who seemed to work way harder than I did. When I did my PhD though I found that I had learned a work ethic which I didn't have during my first degree.
So, what am I saying? If you want to do it, do it. To hell with people say you should and shouldn't do because of your age. Heck, 30 is nothing in an age when people are living longer and productive lives. OK, so I'm 40 but at this point in time it is looking like I might have another 30 years of working in front of me, maybe more. You just don't know. If you want to do something new and can get the qualification, do it and stuff conventional thinking.
I don't know where the fallacy that kids are great at technology and old people aren't comes from. I am constantly preseneted with kids who supposedly know computers who help my mum with her PC and screw it up and I have to fix it (she's getting a Mac next I swear). These kids can't program and know very little beyond Windows and yet are treated like they have some sort of fantastic talent. Sheesh. I think the difference is that the young are more willing to try new stuff so if you keep that same attitude, whatever your age you will still act and feel young.
Slashdot Mirror
"We all agree one major platform is better than many wildly different platforms right?"
No. For the same reason that one species of banana is bad news. How about potato blight? Oh, biology. Doesn't have anything to do with computers. While in biology, a monoculture is a bad thing and means that a simple virus can drop a culture into famine and poverty, that simply doesn't happen in the world of computing.......oh wait.
Different code bases implementing fully documented standards is the only way we will get through all this. One company should not control everything regardless of how hard they work to make their code secure. In the end the computers will either have to be complete black boxes with no user modifiable features or there will need to be multiple implementations from different sources to avoid a catastrophic single point failure.
MS has had prototypes to try and install XP on, does anyone think they were successful? It looks like an amazing amount of thought has gone into the design and execution. MS must be scared to death of this thing.
They spend all this time and effort getting the user interface looking different and updated and yet behind it all sits the same old scummy code which results in printouts that don't look exactly like what you had on the screen.....
"Projectors are useless in all but pitch black conditions. Maybe you have a very unsociable household but around these parts people don't like to sit in silence in the dark everytime the TV's on.
Oh and projectors are just great when someone walks in front of the beam. And the picture is washed out."
As I said, I have a regular TV which is fine for normal use. I think large screens (certainly in our house) are too big for regular use but great for movies. As a compromise I have a regular size CRT widescreen TV for normal viewing and a projector for movies. I didn't install the projector in the living room, we are fortunate to have a spare room out over the garage connected to my computer room which isn't needed as a bedroom. I installed blackout blinds in that room as well as the computer room, cut a small hole in the wall (fiddly to get right), mounted the projector on the ceiling in the computer room and put a 70" screen in the cinema room with two nice chairs and a decent surround system. It can be properly blacked out and the projector is barely audible since it is in another room. Since the projector is ceiling mounted people don't get in the way of the screen. Nice to have a permanent set up. Previously I had been using the projector in a portable mode which did mean a bit of set up time but now I can just go into the cinema room, flick the power on and get on with the movie.
I was horrified when I found out how much electricity these large LCDs and plasmas use, especially in the 50" or bigger sizes. My current front projection system runs at 70" although it is perfectly capable of throwing a 120" image in a bigger room. With the DLP projector, DTS/DD receiver and LD/DVD combi player running the whole setup draws 280 watts. An equivalent size plasma is going to draw >600 watts on its own. LCD is better but if you really want a large screen experience a projection system is cheaper and more energy efficient. Also, for normal TV viewing we simply have a small 28" widescreen CRT which uses about 80 watts. Material shot for TV still looks better on a smaller screen so the projector is used for movies rather than general viewing. Also, if colour fidelity are important to you then LCDs and plasmas are a poor choice.
"Well, MFS isn't actually that bad, really, at least not for simple, rudimentary procedures"
Simple is right. It is OK for learning how things look and what to do but it isn't like flying. I know because I am learning to fly and the first time I tried to do a landing in MSFS I put the thing down perfectly. I'm not bad but nowhere near that good. At home I use Xplane which I find more realistic because it is a heck of a lot harder to do a good landing and it flies in a way which is pretty realistic. I also use FlightGear because it has some features (such as mouselook in a 3D cockpit) which make it better for circuit training than Xplane.
The main thing is to treat it as much like the real situation as possible. I have a CH yoke and pedals and I have set up both FG and Xplane to be as close to the Cessna 150 I fly in reality as possible with my limited equipment. When I prepare for takeoff I go through the checklist and do all of them just as I do in the real thing. Practicing stuff like this on even a basic sim is far cheaper than doing it in real life and just as effective.
Of course, it isn't the real thing no matter how good the sim. I have my first solo coming up (instructor said I was up to it) and no amount of sim time will prepare me for the reality of sitting in the cockpit on my own for the first time as I taxi out onto the runway......
"there must be something wonderful about only using the bottom, right corner "
When I got my first Mac (I liked it so much I now have four) it drove me nuts as did having to use the menu bar at the top of the screen. Also things like the mouse cursor disapearing when I scrolled a window or clicking into a window only bringing it forward rather than activating the button I clicked on. These were all things which nearly caused me to dump the platform but over time I learned that there is something wonderful about it. Muscle memory is the key. I have found that I can now do things much more quickly than originally because a flick of the mouse takes me to the top left of the screen where I hit the menu with great accuracy (trackpad too). When I want to resize a window, woosh, straight down to the bottom right corner and zip the window is resized. No danger of hitting close because I decided to widen the window up near the close button. Losing the mouse cursor when you scroll? I wouldn't have it any other way. On Windows it annoys the heck out of me that the mouse doesn't disappear when I scroll.
As more people come to the Mac from Windows, this discussion will keep coming back. The way the Mac does things isn't wrong or broken. Its just different and in time it becomes second nature.
"How seamless windows compatibility worked out for OS2."
It's not a bad point but in this case it is not quite the same idea. Windows software isn't runable by default on a Mac, you have to make the decision and buy software to do it, and more to the point, even when it does run it isn't seamless like it was on OS2. It is definitely jarring but less than having the Windows desktop take up your whole screen. It doesn't encourage you to continue to buy Windows software, it just lets you run it in a reasonable way with better compatibility than wine but with less integration than wine does. OS X software is still way better to use than Windows software even through Parallels so the market will still prefer OS X native code.
"You never know. As long as running Windows in Parallels requires a copy of Windows that's purchased from Microsoft, they're still getting their money. Parallels is an interesting situation for Microsoft, as it means that some portion of the folks buying Macs are paying them for Windows anyway (and at retail prices at that, which is much more profitable for Microsoft than OEM)."
That isn't the problem for MS. Lets put it this way. I own four Macs and recently got rid of my only PC because I could now do everything I needed to using the Macs. If absolutely necessary, I can boot Windows in Parallels to run a specific piece of software just like I used to with OS9 apps but, just as I stopped buying OS9 apps, I also won't be buying Windows software even though I can run it. My preference is for OSX apps and I'm sure I'm not alone. What this does is it makes Windows a legacy system and legacy systems fade away eventually. MS might well be making good money off Windows sales to Mac users for the moment but what if more and more people buy Macs and prefer to buy OSX software? Well, software companies will fill the need and eventually these people will find that they don't need Windows any more so they will stop installing it. If that happens, the MS monopoly will be broken. MS really should be scared (I bet they are too). Windows isn't popular because it is good (it isn't) but because it has many many apps. Those apps can now run nicely on a Mac so people can buy a Mac without missing out on the apps but native ones are much nicer so once the move to Mac is made, the desire to purchase Windows software will decline and the market will notice.
I've installed it and it is very similar to Classic on PPC macs under OS X. As with OS 9 apps on OS X, a full copy of the operating system is running, but the windows are drawn directly to the desktop (or at least appear to, with some glitching at the moment). I have the Windows task bar running down the left hand side of my screen so it doesn't get in the way of my dock (at the bottom) and desktop icons (to the right). Running Windows with the classic theme looks better as the shaped edges of Windows apps leave a little triangle of the Windows desktop which looks a bit poor. Lighten up the theme and it works quite nicely on the OS X desktop.
:-)
Apple really needs to buy Parallels or do something similar. It would make a huge difference to people moving from Windows to the Mac and eventually, Windows could go the same way as Classic MacOS has under OS X and just fade away. I don't think MS would be very pleased with this development though
Yeah, I know, I use it all the time for my own system. Just thought it would make her feel more secure to have to invite me to access her machine rather than think I could connect to it any time I liked. Also gives her more of a sense of self determination with her computer.
I bought my 76 year old dad an iMac G5 20" just as the G5s were being phased out so it was at a significant discount. He had never used a computer before but was interested in starting. He had no knowledge of Windows although some of his friends have. Turns out that they like the Mac too and are thinking about getting one next time.
My wife's grandmother was put onto Windows before we could do anything about it and now she won't consider anything else so I recently donated my last PC to her (all Mac now!) with the original copy of XP Home upgraded to SP2, AVG Free, Firefox and Thunderbird (which she has been using for a while under 98) and also TightVNC Server. She has an ADSL router modem and since the IP address changes frequently I have put a link on her desktop to a site which will tell her what the IP address of her machine is. If she has trouble, she can phone me and read out that number and I can VNC in and see what the problem is and fix it. I also set her own account up as a non-admin user and kept the password for admin to myself so her well meaning friends can't mess with the machine. This works well enough. She has a legit copy of Office2K which is really all she wanted and she can use Firefox and Thunderbird for web and e-mail. She called me once when she first got the machine because stuff had moved from 98 and I was able to remotely show her how to do what she wanted. Since then, not a peep.
My dad with his Mac, well, he is very pleased and I dare say he is having an easier time with it so for a fresh start, get a Mac.
"Is anyone else convinced that this will be the last version of Windows as we know it?"
It certainly should be but I don't know if MS has the balls that it takes to drop the entire OS and start again. What I expect will happen is that they will keep retreading this tired old crossply of an OS until it finally blows. In our company we treat Windows as a second place OS now. All workers have a copy of Windows running under VMware on their workstations but it is really relegated to running MS Office and a few other Windows only apps. Everything else is Linux or OS X depending on their preference. Windows Vista isn't even on our radar.
As someone who lived there for 8 years and then moved to the UK I have to say that NZ is *THE* place to be for sure. I went back on holiday last year and did all the fun stuff I could think of. Met up with old friends and had a brilliant time. Came back to the UK with the burning desire to move back to NZ and have put it into action. Currently in the last stages of getting a skilled migrant visa. Not decided where to live, its all good. Quite keen on the South Island though. Took up flying recently and there is some serious country down there :-)
:-D
Whangarei is really nice though. Heck, I wouldn't mind Wellington to be honest. You really really should do your best to make the move. Everyone is welcome. Even Brits although we do get a lot of stick
Seriously, stay out. New Zealand doesn't need Americans. You wouldn't fit in! Believe me, the best place for Americans is America. Nowhere else is as suitable for you so just stay put.
(for the humour impared *JOKE*!)
And? I'm sorry but I just don't see why this is a problem. PC manufactuers have been doing just this since 1981 when the first IBM PC came out. Today, you can but a Dell box (or even a Mac now) which is nothing more than a much faster version of that first machine from 1981.
The Game Cube had some really good games and a decent library size so the fact that there is a ready selection of games at low prices makes a Wii very attractive. Every GC game will play on the Wii. Compare that with the level of backwards compatibility you get with the Xbox360. I know, I have a 360 and it may or may not play a particular Xbox game, perfectly or otherwise. The Wii won't have that problem. I own a GameCube, PS2 and 360. Yes, I pre-ordered a Wii. No, I haven't even considered ordering a PS3. I can't wait for the Wii.
The specification has changed since the MBP was released. Originally, it announced with 1.67 or 1.83Ghz processors. When it was actually released, Apple upgraded the spec to 1.83 and 2.0Ghz for free with the option of a 2.16Ghz Core Duo for extra money. Then they upgraded the base model to 2.0Ghz and the top model got the 2.16Ghz processor as standard which is the current position. In addition, they have added the option of the glossy screen for no charge. My 2Ghz model cost me £1699 in April but today you can buy a 2Ghz machine for £1399. OK, my machine came with 1GB of RAM and a 256MB video card and the base 2Ghz model only comes with 512MB RAM and a 128MB video card but other than that it is identical. RAM is cheap (not from Apple though) so the base model can be bumped up to 1.5GB for an extra £100 or so from Crucial. Really, I have been impressed with Apple gear since I switched three years back. The machines are well built and perform nicely. You cannot compare a Mac versus a PC without taking OS X into account. OS X outperforms Windows in every way (security, stability, ease of use, power, looks) so that alone puts a Mac in a different league. With Parallels I can run Windows in a window or full screen, along with any other x86 OS, and the performance is more than acceptable (I have Boot Camp installed but have stopped using it) so I have access to a far larger software library now than a PC.
I have a 2Ghz MacBook Pro with 256MB ATI X1600 and 2GB of RAM. It is my swiss-army knife laptop. It does everything and it does it all very very well. The screen is nice (non-reflective version) and bright with good resolution. The core duo performs very well and with parallels I can run concurrent sessions of Windows XP and Fedora 5 on top of OS X. With Boot Camp I can reboot and play Call of Duty 2 at pretty high settings and Doom 3 and Far Cry play very well indeed.
I'll also second the vote for the build quality. I bought a first gen iBook G4 933Mhz and I still use it regularly despite the MBP because it is robust, smaller and the battery life is very good. The heat issues with the MBP are blown out of all proportion, every laptop I have ever had would run very very hot when playing games and you wouldn't want to play games on your lap anyway. I've measured the temps and the MBP gets no hotter when working hard than the iBook G4 did but you don't hear lots of complaints about the iBook because of its plastic case. Yes, aluminium is going to conduct the heat more rapidly but internally the thing gets no hotter than any other laptop and for something that is high performance I am happy to know that the heat I am feeling is not staying inside an insulated box.
These days the MBP is getting to quite a sensible price and the value of having a real graphics card, not to mention the nice backlit keyboard and all the other useful built in features means that the MacBook Pro is definitely the best value machine around in my book and that doesn't even include the ability to run OS X which is the killer for me. If it can't run OS X it isn't worth buying. No, I don't consider hacking OS X to run on a Sony Vaio as an option.
I don't know how you figure that out. Unlike the Xbox versus Xbox 360 you can directly compare the performance/power of the Wii against the Game Cube. The GC was only barely less powerful than the Xbox and certainly more powerful than the PS2. The Wii is pretty much a GC with 3x the clock speed on both CPU and graphics while being fully backwards compatible so it will be able to perfectly play GC games many of which are very good so there is a large library of available games to buy and be reissued.
No-one is going to argue that the raw compute power of the Wii is pretty far behind the 360 and PS3 but it really doesn't matter if none of the games really do much new. The 360 and PS3 are nothing but the evolution of the NES, nothing new, just more power. Nintendo defined the current controller structure and the Wii redefines it.
Judging by the number of people queuing up to pre-order the Wii this last weekend I think it is going to be very successful.
The only Xbox game I have bought so far was Halo 2. I had never played it because I didn't have an Xbox but when I bought the 360 it was only £10 so I figured "what the hey" because MS would obviously make the effort to ensure that Halo and Halo 2 played perfectly. Not. I don't know if anyone else has played it through from start to finish but I have and I can tell you that the emulation is not perfect. I don't know how much better it looks than on the Xbox (I believe they updated some of the textures) but in the later levels I noticed that whenever there was a really bright flash there was a residual semi-transparent image of the flash that wouldn't go away. Yes, you could see through it but it was really annoying and meant that you had to save your progress, exit to the main menu, and then reload. I lost count of how many times I had to do this. I have not bothered to buy any more Xbox games. Mind you, I haven't bought many 360 games either (at £50 a go what do you expect?), just a few preowned ones and nothing really that stands out as being massively better than the original Xbox.
Oh, I played the demo of Saints Row having heard it was better than GTA: San Andreas. No, it isn't. The control is crappy, there is far too little blood and it crashed my 360.
I agree. One of my friends trained as a teacher and after a few jobs quit and went to work in an electronics store because the teaching work was horrible. I considered being a teacher myself but decided against it because the incentives are not there. However, the reality that teaching is not treated with the respect it deserves and so the good people are not encouraged to join the profession does not mean we should make the education system poor to cope with the crap teachers that do join. There is a reason the quality of education is taking a nose dive and this 'realistic' thinking isn't going to help. You have to stand up and shout from the rooftops that it isn't good enough! Until you do that and actually change the dynamics you will continue to have poor quality teaching and poor quality education as a result. Fix the fundamental problem rather than trying to limit the damage to the current teachers. The qood ones will shine, the bad ones will leave. I would rather teach my kids myself than have them be taught by someone who can barely function. Oh, and we should not be teaching operating systems, we should be teaching computing concepts and as I said in my first post, the concepts exist in all currently used GUIs so the choice of which one to use shouldn't matter. It is fear of the unknown that is the problem. I have experienced plenty of resistance to new systems from people I have worked with over the years but the fact is, if they know how to use a keyboard and mouse then the rest is child's play. Can these teachers use a keyboard and mouse???? Don't be so defeatist.
So, we should cripple our education system because the teachers aren't able to learn anything new themselves. Heck, we'll have people complaining that they'll have to come up with a new mneomic for the names of planets next.....
Teachers are supposed to impart knowledge to our kids. If the teachers are unable to learn new stuff then the kids would be better off being given a book to learn from. Teachers have to be able to explain what they are trying to teach. If the teachers simply learn parrot fashion and can only point at stuff without explaining what is behind it then they have no right being in the profession.
The very best teachers I had during my long (very long....) education were those who not only taught what we needed to know but also could explain why.
Besides which, there is plenty of evidence that people who continue to learn new stuff throughout their lives retain their mental faculties far better than those who simply sit back and complain that things aren't the way they used to be.
I am so sick of society pandering to the lowest common denominator. It is pathetic that we try so hard to ensure no-one fails that we pull back the brilliant minds and destroy their potential. IT skills training is the worst example of this. Calling it IT is an insult to those of us who have real IT skill.
Ah, that old straw man. Are schools teaching computing or Windows? All the basic skills they need to use any computer GUI can be taught with Linux just as well as Windows. In fact, having variety will make the students much more comfortable with the idea that things move and so in order to find the setting you want you need to hunt about a bit. People worry about the time to retrain users but you can put a Windows user on a Mac and within an hour they will be able to function and quite possibly be as capable as they are on Windows within a day. Most people who claim to know Windows really don't know much beyond using a bit of Office (badly) and the file manager. I say to people that if they can use a keyboard and a mouse they can use a Mac and the same is true of Linux, especially in a supported environment where all they need is to be able to do their work and someone else will keep it running. Sure, for home users Windows may be the best option (well, no, it isn't, buy a Mac, but that is another story) but where you don't have to run the system yourself you should be able to cope with whatever you are put in front of. At our site we have a mixure of Windows, Linux and Macs and the only people who really have problems are the PA and secretarial types who really don't know anything about their computers and function by remembering where stuff is. Move anything and they panic. Everyone else, the younger more computer literate types are happy enough on whatever they get. There is no benefit teaching students where to find something on version X of Windows, teach them what to look for based on what it is that they are trying to do and when it moves they will still be able to function.
We have bought a number of quad opteron machines recently because we do a lot of background number crunching and they need to run Linux. However, everyone has also been using laptops for Windows software. At my suggestion we have been configuring VMware images of XP Pro with Office for each user and installing vmware-player on each of these Linux workstations.
We have a Linux server that runs Samba for roaming profiles to the current Windows laptops and this works OK as it does mean if a laptop dies the user has all their configuration stored on the server but unless the replacement machine is configured exactly like their old one (and the users do have various needs for software beyond just the basics so they often do differ) the roaming profile doesn't exactly work and there is a bit of fiddling.
With the VM setup the users are able to use their image on any machine (shortly even on the Macs) and it is theirs regardless so the roaming profile works well too. This also means that Windows only uses up a small part of their workstation so we can gang the quads together into a cluster and do some serious work. The best part is that each night we do an rsync of the home directories (to another server and external drives to be stored in a firesafe) which also contains their VM and so if they screw up their Windows system we can just copy back the one from the day before and all is well. Far better than Windows Restore which isn't entirely able to put a machine back into a previous state.
Finally, the price of all this destroys any other solution I can think of for running Windows apps in a largely Linux environment. The player is free, the Windows and Office licences we had already bought, Linux is free and we have got a 40 processor Opteron cluster available that effectively cost us nothing too because we needed to put desktops in to replace the laptops that some idiot thought would be a good idea when the company first got started. Every user has a local vmplayer on their Linux machine. They are getting dual 20" monitors which is better than the 15" laptop with a 17" monitor attached as the laptops can't drive anything better so they can run Windows on one monitor and have Linux on the other.
With the current situation they were all running lots of Linux apps using VNC to our few available Linux machines and lots of terminals (cygwin or putty) but had Windows because there is still a perception that we need Office, mostly PowerPoint, although I have made sure they all have OpenOffice. They were crying out for more compute power as the company grew so for not much money I was able to buy 10 Quad Opteron workstations to give them the power, dual monitors don't cost much now either and vmplayer gives them Windows on one screen and Linux on the other, or Linux on both if they don't need to be running Windows apps. They still have the laptops for presentations and mobile use but they don't need to use them every day which should prolong their lives so there is a saving there too. What's not to like?
I really screwed up on my original degree. I was already quite late doing it since I messed up my O levels so had to do some of them again which put me a year behind. When I got my degree it wasn't a high grade so I ended up doing various unrelated jobs. Eventually, I learned I wanted more from life so I got a loan and paid my way through a Masters, got a good job and then started my PhD at age 27. When I finished it three years later I was 30 which was quite old to do a postdoc as most other PhDs were in their mid 20's. However, I kept at it and have continued to work in my field of choice and am now 40 and getting paid very well. So, I have decided to learn to fly and next week I take my first solo. Hopefully, I'll get my PPL by the end of the year. Whether I'll do anything with it other than recreation I don't know but the fact is, I couldn't have afforded to do it when I was 20 when it would have lead me to a career. There are benefits to being older. You are more focussed. I remember older students when I did my first degree who seemed to work way harder than I did. When I did my PhD though I found that I had learned a work ethic which I didn't have during my first degree.
So, what am I saying? If you want to do it, do it. To hell with people say you should and shouldn't do because of your age. Heck, 30 is nothing in an age when people are living longer and productive lives. OK, so I'm 40 but at this point in time it is looking like I might have another 30 years of working in front of me, maybe more. You just don't know. If you want to do something new and can get the qualification, do it and stuff conventional thinking.
I don't know where the fallacy that kids are great at technology and old people aren't comes from. I am constantly preseneted with kids who supposedly know computers who help my mum with her PC and screw it up and I have to fix it (she's getting a Mac next I swear). These kids can't program and know very little beyond Windows and yet are treated like they have some sort of fantastic talent. Sheesh. I think the difference is that the young are more willing to try new stuff so if you keep that same attitude, whatever your age you will still act and feel young.