Here's where I see the biggest problem, as an example:
Currently, I earn about six figures.
-Most startups fail. -Any successful startup tends not to even turn one time of profit for two to five years.
So . . . how long is it going to take me and my earth-shatteringly brilliant idea to finally start turning six figures in PERSONAL PROFIT per year? And once you've accomplished that - what's the big deal? You've now invested FAR more energy, time, money and financial stability (loans) to get what you already had in the first place (six figures per year).
For the most part, I see people who dream of a startup in the same light I see gamblers in vegas.
Geeks rarely exhibit the behaviors and habits of successful business men. Hell, if you can't even be bothered to shower, how can you be expected to bother to show up to work and meetings and run your business? Further, geeks tend to push aside the important things and focus on what (to them) are the "fun" things. That doesn't help anyone succeed.
More importantly, as geeks are fond of saying "I'm an engineer - not a manager". They don't want to be bothered with business things. They want to sit in a dark room drinking soda and coding. If you just want to code and make stuff and let someone else do the important work (the marketing, management, payroll, loan negotiation, paying the bills, business plans, etc) then . . . well, work for a company like most of you probably already do.
The really successful people tend to be business oriented and let other people do the grunt work . . . because they have to make the decisions around the place.
Not to mention, most businesses fail. And by most, I mean almost EVERY business fails.
On the other hand, if someone wants the stress and ulcers and short life and agony that comes with being responsible for every aspect of a business that won't do much more than provide you with the income you already had when you worked for someone else, go for it I guess... But remember, you HAVE the salary you're making now. When you work for yourself, you will probalby not turn *any* profit for years. Much less make what you're already making.
Frankly, I just don't think geeks are cut out for business and running their own companies. What successful companies out there have an owner or CEO that still spends the majority of their time designing and writing their own software and such? I bet it's small or nonexistant.
(Note to mods: How "insightful" are comments made about a product by a person who's never used the product going to be?)
Note the words "ever using it again". I never used it as in "as my real browser". Did I try it? Sure. Didn't like it. Ditched it.
Opera has never forced banner ads on anyone. Currently, you can download the browser free, with no banner ads. Prior to a few months ago, you could pay (gasp) and not have to put up with the banners. In either case, it's your choice.
Or I could not pay and use Firefox, which works wonderfully. Is it worth $30 for me to have a slightly smaller memory footprint? Not really.
Which swelled the download file to, what?, 3.7mb? Looks like the Firefox download is 5mb. You're not forced to use the e-mail client, address book, etc. Hell, until you mentioned them, I'd forgotten they existed. Moreover, Opera, "out of the box", comes with many bells-and-whistles that are only available to Firefox as plug-ins. I'd rather do one install and have things just work, than have to download a half-dozen other bits, install them, and then pray that they don't break when the next FF version comes out.
And that's where the big difference comes in. Some people would like to install one thing and have it do everythign under the sun out of the box including reading their mind. Firefox on the other hand comes with what is essential, does it well and let's me decide what I need or want to add onto it. And for free, might I add.
Opera is not new on the scene: it predated FF by many years. Many features in FF (most famously, tabbed browsing) were in Opera far earlier. Opera is light, fast, stable, ready-to-roll out of the box. No, it's not open source, but it's silly to think that code is high quality if and only if it's open source. We already have a good thing going on with Opera.
However, "we" don't already have it. Firefox "we" do have as in by way of its licensing. So why would you PAY (what will probably be a huge amount) for something that is not much different than the FREE and OPEN thing? YOU don't already have a good thing going on with Opera. *I* don't already have a good thing going on with Opera. Opera's COMPANY has a good thing going on with opera. Based on Google's history and their supposed interest and sponsorship of "open source" communities, you would think that such wonderful things as you see in Opera would not be enough for them to buy them out. Especially when they could improve Firefox and help everyone out. And that, my friend, is why I suspect there is something else going on here. They're not going to buy out Opera simply so they can attach the google brand and logo to it for the world to surf myspace and blogs on.
If "wedging the browser market" is really your concern, then I'm surprised that you are so loyal to a relative late-comer to the market, and can't be bothered to look at a high-quality, non-IE browser that has been on the market for many more years.
Really, now? If I recall, Opera started just after Mosaic. While Firefox and Mozilla are no longer directly derived from actual full Mosaic/Netscape code, they've essentially been around since 1998 and that hardly makes them "the newcomer". I'm sure Opera has undergone at least one full rewrite since they began, too - which means the rewrite when they dropped the original Netscape code doesn't count as a ding against the age of Firefox/Mozilla, either . . . Which technically makes just about *everything* other than Firefox and Mozilla "newcomers".
Of course, in the interest of disclosure, I should probably mention that I was a former engineer at Netscape before AOL came in and had their way with it.
Re:Lets hope they open source it
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Google to Buy Opera?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I was going to check out Opera on OSX when I was looking for a Safari/Firefox replacement and decided to stick with Camino because with just one plugin/extension, it did all the things Opera seemed to claim to do.
As for the applications footprint - I couldn't speak to that since I've never benchmarked either of them. I just know that Firefox often has dozens of tabs opened on my system and it performs smoothly. And on the mobile front - I don't know who makes "Blaze" but that's what I use on my Treo 650 (it's the thing that comes installed on it). Then again, I've only browsed to one website one time in the two months I've owned it.
I just have a hard time believing that Google might go toward Opera and away from Firefox based on a little bit of extra performance or a shiny interface. After all, they could contribute to help Firefox with the first issue and they could modify it however they want to easily produce the second. It would also contribute to the respect that people have toward them for supporting open source and doing little to no evil.
I really hate to be an asshole here, but you know what I am tired of? I'm tired of every two-bit geek thinking that he's going to come up with a revolutionary idea, be able to implement it and be the next billion-dollar sell-out to Fox News Corp or Yahoo!.
The 90s are over. I hate to break it to my fellow geeks, but being successful in a startup was always a risky proposition even in the heyday. Your best bet, now, is to learn how to properly brown-nose and pick up lots of business and office-politics skills and make yourself satisfied with the "employee" thing. Working for other people kind of sucks, but it's better than suffering grand delusions of greatness.
Then again, it's christmas time and I like being a grinch. So go suck a glass ornament.:P
Re:Lets hope they open source it
on
Google to Buy Opera?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
The last time I saw a screenshot of Opera, it looked an awful lot like the current version of AOL stuff that people keep installing on my random home boxes when they visit (because AOL people are apparently willing to spend $30/mo even though you ALREADY HAVE internet access for them, just so they can chat with their moron friends in AOL chatrooms...)
Anyway - what's cheaper? Modifying Mozilla to whatever end pleases them? Or spending tens or hundreds of millions to buy out a company that has a browser and doing whatever to that?
The only difference I see is that I guess they can be more "closed" with their Opera modifications.
Since stores are private property, managers should simply ask parents to remove their children. The problem is, we all know how uptight and huffy parents get if you even insinuate anything about their parenting or their children. If a child is destroying your store and disturbing other customers and employees and you politely and discreetly ask them to remove the child or control the child, you are definitely going to lose a family-worth of customers which could amount to quite a bit every month. And there's always the strong chance that the parent is going to go Jerry-Springer all over your store and cause an even bigger scene.
There's nothing worse than a fat bloated sweat-pant and tee-shirt wearing obese mother with a shopping cart full of twinkies, soda and sugared cereal going on a loud rampage with her four toddlers because you dared to ask her to control her brats.
The thing is parenting is honestly not that impossible of a job. It's a lot like training a dog. It's called repetative conditioning. You reward good behavior with small things and you punish bad behavior. You set expectations and you follow through with positive or negative consequences accordingly. There's nothing worse than a parent who says they'll do something if they child doesn't XYZ and rather than following through, just repeats the "threat" over and over. But hey - a lot of parents are just too lazy to be consistant. I mean, if you are too lazy to carry and roll on a rubber to prevent having the kids in the first place, what are the odds you won't be too lazy when it comes time to being a real parent?
No kidding. It's time for all the "wikimedia" projects to get a new name that makes more sense. You want it to be accessible to everyone and how do you say the name of the project without someone being confused and requiring an explanation of the "wiki" part?
Calling it "wikipedia" and "wiktionary" and so forth is a lot like calling the hardbound editions of encyclopedias "paperpedias". What the fuck is a paperpedia? I dunno. I guess it's a pedia that's on paper sort of the way a wikipedia is a pedia on wiki?
Yeah, I don't get it. Who's the parent and who's the child? How is it that parents suddenly (seemingly this generation and maybe the previous one) have no ability to tell their children "no". Or even better - use the fact that they are older, wiser, smarter, more clever and MAKE THE RULES to just not take the kids with them when they go shopping if they can't possibly find it in them to refuse to buy every single thing their brat wants?
These are the same kind of parents that end up with drug using, boozing, wild ass sluts that get knocked up at thirteen years old. After all, they're completely individual unique autonomous human beings and how can you possibly, you know, parent them by telling them not to do something or not letting them go somewhere or inject somethign into them or hump someone? I mean . . . have you ever BEEN a parent? It's just SO HARD what with children being fucking einsteins and having such massive mental powers and all of that enormous physical strength that a grown person five times the child's age can't possibly contend with!
There's nothing I hate more than sanctimonious prick parents saying things like "well, you have no children so shut your mouth and keep your opinions to yourself!" or even more drug addicts who say shit like "You've never been addicted to meth, so you don't know - shut your mouth!".
Look, I've never raised a kid (I've taken care of a number including my own siblings for great lengths of time over months or years, though) and it doesn't take a fucking rocket scientist to know certain truths . . . You know, like it's not hard to have a spine and raise your children without caving into their every want. Or... you know... you shouldn't beat your children or feed them ice cream every morning for breakfast.
In fact, parents (like drug users) are often some of the stupidest people on earth. I don't mean this as a flame or troll - but honestly, squirting out a kid is something that doesn't require any intelligence or qualification or wisdom. In fact, a lot of people might suggest that it's the least intelligent and prepared and qualified people that squirt out kids the most frequently.
Seriously - your comment is shit.
Re:Lets hope they open source it
on
Google to Buy Opera?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Seriously, why would you choose Opera over Firefox? The whole forced banner ads thing kind of drove me away from it (not that I ever used it, but it kept me from ever using it again even). Opera may be a fine browser, but we already have a really good (and open) thing going on with Firefox. Additionally, I don't think you can get Opera in "just the browser" flavor. Last time I checked, it forced you to download this really crappy email client of theirs and address book and other things.
What I *REALLY* don't get is the logic behind this. "Since they can't by Mozilla, they'll buy Opera".
Um. What? Mozilla is open-sourced. You don't HAVE to buy it. Just take the code and do your own thing with it. DUH.
I have a hard time believing they're going to intentionally wedge the browser market even further rather than back more work and collaboration and progress behind the already great open source browser that we have. Perhaps they just intend to buy it, strip it for some good stuff that they'll donate to Mozilla and... I dunno. Whatever else.
Seriously though - seems like a waste of money when they can just branch off from Mozilla. You know, with that sort of being the whole POINT of the license that Mozilla is under.
So how is it that, despite the Opera, MSIE, Netscape, Firefox and Mozilla icons all looking completely different, people still manage to get onto the web?
Besides, anyone interested in RSS is savvy enough to know the acronym without the need for a pretty standardized icon.
I think a better idea is not to step in and have idiotic requirements. Rather - if you're a stupid parent, you get fucked and buy your kid lots of crap and they end up spoiled. If you're a reasonable human being, you say "sorry - no" and the issue is done with. I don't know what kind of shitty parents most of you had, but it was a rare day I had the balls to ask my parents for something (especially while shopping) and if I did and they said "no" it was the end of discussion and I didn't press it. Maybe most people have whiney parents with no back-bone but that's not anyone else's problem but their own.
In fact - if you're going to start passing arbitrarily intrusive laws, why not just banish children from shopping centers and grocery stores altogether? I think that would please a lot more people than worrying about whether advertising will make it hard for pussified parents to refuse things to their snot-nosed runt children.
Um. Is it feasible that one could use all the features of their current Palm OS on their Treo with the new stuff (in time) under linux without going through any hoops with your carrier? I would imagine there must be some sort of "tag" in the Palm software that is required for service from your provider and seamless functionality.
Oh . . . . and with such a small device, usability and interface is very important. Somehow I don't expect much in that department with our (OSS/Linux) history.
The sad part is, since cable isn't offered ala carte, there's no way to easily show them your disinterest in their current lineup. Sure - you can stop watching. Sure - you can write a letter. But nothing speaks louder than "I'm cancelling your channel from my personal lineup". If they ever offer ala carte cable subscriptions, that will give the consumer a lot of power to impact crappy channels (or once good channels that have crapped out).
Honestly, they don't care about female viewers. If they want to target the female viewer, they'll hit Oxygen or We or one of the Oprah / Soap Opera / MTV reality show timeslots. The demographic here is young males, 18-34 with disposable income.
Yeah, it sucks and all and that kind of thing can tend to happen with a hard shutdown... But you know, it could all be avoided with a reasonable backup power supply unit. Either one big one for all of them or several small ones. YOu just need enough time for them to shut down gracefully. If you're running Windows they often come with software that will instruct the systems ot safely shutdown after the outage is detected and before the juice runs out.
Sure, they're not free or cheap, but figure if you make $30-$40/hr and if you spend eight hours rebuilding a bunch of boxes, you might as well have just spent a few hundred on a nice power supply...
All they ever talked about on G4TV.com was console games, so I really only ever turned in because nothing else was on and that faux-punk chick (I think it was Laura) was kinda hot.
There are enough channels available that you'd think they could split the stuff up. Cars and dumb dude stuff on one channel and games/geek on another.
I don't know that I like the ominous sound of "we're keeping blah blah and blah for the old audience"... sounds like they're eventually planning to ditch all the remotely geek stuff and replace it with 24x7 MTV/Comedy Central washouts.
The Screensavers and Call For Help were fairly "dumbed down" shows. I, however, liked them. I used them mostly for background noise until Kevin Rose came on because his segments were usually somewhat interesting. I alo really liked Patrick a lot. Not for any particular geek reasons but more that he had a really good sense of humor and seem very likable.
I'm a linux and unix guy by habit and trade, but I found both of these shows interesting to a degree because it was good to hear people like Leo explain things to your typical user. Sometimes it would clue me in on how to explain something to my own family or friends that I might otherwise find painfully frustrating.
Also - I thought Call for Help or The Screensavers (one of the two) came back to G4 this year? Leo made a huge deal about it on his blog and then . . . after watching like two episodes, I never saw it again . . . ?
I think a good geek network should have plenty of room for the uber geek and the yet to be initiated geek alike.
The only shows I watch are, I'm ashamed to admit it, Attack of the Show and then the occasional X-Play or Icons. I like watching stuff about the history of gaming and the people in it.
You may, however, cancel Cheat! and get rid of that annoying hostess all together. Please also get rid of all of your stupid car shows. I don't need to watch some guy named "Big C" with a bunch of fake bling showing photos of the occasional car between long takes of mostly naked asian chicks. You can put that on your sister-network -- MTV/MTV2.
Please also get rid of Arena. Or rather - make it less campy. The only hosts who seemingly care at all are Kevin P - and that's only because he's a real dork and the other two hosts are jocks and middle-aged eye-candy. Maybe you could replace Arena with video, tips, interviews and sponsored competitions of REAL "cyberathletes". I hear a lot about this "Fatal1ty" guy who kicks a lot of ass but you've never shown him gaming. You could become the ESPN of "cyberathletes". It could be boring. Maybe not. It certainly couldn't be worse than the random inexperienced dorks you have competing on Arena currently. If I wanted to watch a bunch of dumbasses suck at games, I'd videotape myself and my friends.
PS - More hot smart chicks. Not semi-hot chicks and not hot chicks doing stupid things. Actual hot chicks like the old Screensavers chick who does plays or something now or even Jessika from the last iteration of the show (yum). That Laura chick from Martin Sargeant's show wasn't too bad, either. Morgan Webb should maybe just have her own show where she poses half nude with various geek paraphenalia.
Oh - and since you guys are pushing MAKE magazine all the time on your show and reality/DIY shows are all the rage on every other network, why don't you have a weekly hour long DIY show for geeks? Kevin Rose and Yoshi would be perfect for it - but I'm not picky.
Geeks want to like your network. But we don't. Some of us watch it only because there is nothing else and the closest we ever had (Discovery and The Learning Channel) have turned into chick-reality shows that have nothing to do with discovering or learning ANYTHING.
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Here's where I see the biggest problem, as an example:
Currently, I earn about six figures.
-Most startups fail.
-Any successful startup tends not to even turn one time of profit for two to five years.
So . . . how long is it going to take me and my earth-shatteringly brilliant idea to finally start turning six figures in PERSONAL PROFIT per year? And once you've accomplished that - what's the big deal? You've now invested FAR more energy, time, money and financial stability (loans) to get what you already had in the first place (six figures per year).
For the most part, I see people who dream of a startup in the same light I see gamblers in vegas.
Geeks rarely exhibit the behaviors and habits of successful business men. Hell, if you can't even be bothered to shower, how can you be expected to bother to show up to work and meetings and run your business? Further, geeks tend to push aside the important things and focus on what (to them) are the "fun" things. That doesn't help anyone succeed.
More importantly, as geeks are fond of saying "I'm an engineer - not a manager". They don't want to be bothered with business things. They want to sit in a dark room drinking soda and coding. If you just want to code and make stuff and let someone else do the important work (the marketing, management, payroll, loan negotiation, paying the bills, business plans, etc) then . . . well, work for a company like most of you probably already do.
The really successful people tend to be business oriented and let other people do the grunt work . . . because they have to make the decisions around the place.
Not to mention, most businesses fail. And by most, I mean almost EVERY business fails.
On the other hand, if someone wants the stress and ulcers and short life and agony that comes with being responsible for every aspect of a business that won't do much more than provide you with the income you already had when you worked for someone else, go for it I guess... But remember, you HAVE the salary you're making now. When you work for yourself, you will probalby not turn *any* profit for years. Much less make what you're already making.
Frankly, I just don't think geeks are cut out for business and running their own companies. What successful companies out there have an owner or CEO that still spends the majority of their time designing and writing their own software and such? I bet it's small or nonexistant.
No, I only said I hate being an asshole *here*. As in at this moment in this thread with regard to this topic.
In general, I quite happily am an asshole and reap the rewards of it. Ask any fellow asshole. It's a badge of honor.
(Note to mods: How "insightful" are comments made about a product by a person who's never used the product going to be?)
Note the words "ever using it again". I never used it as in "as my real browser". Did I try it? Sure. Didn't like it. Ditched it.
Opera has never forced banner ads on anyone. Currently, you can download the browser free, with no banner ads. Prior to a few months ago, you could pay (gasp) and not have to put up with the banners. In either case, it's your choice.
Or I could not pay and use Firefox, which works wonderfully. Is it worth $30 for me to have a slightly smaller memory footprint? Not really.
Which swelled the download file to, what?, 3.7mb? Looks like the Firefox download is 5mb. You're not forced to use the e-mail client, address book, etc. Hell, until you mentioned them, I'd forgotten they existed. Moreover, Opera, "out of the box", comes with many bells-and-whistles that are only available to Firefox as plug-ins. I'd rather do one install and have things just work, than have to download a half-dozen other bits, install them, and then pray that they don't break when the next FF version comes out.
And that's where the big difference comes in. Some people would like to install one thing and have it do everythign under the sun out of the box including reading their mind. Firefox on the other hand comes with what is essential, does it well and let's me decide what I need or want to add onto it. And for free, might I add.
Opera is not new on the scene: it predated FF by many years. Many features in FF (most famously, tabbed browsing) were in Opera far earlier. Opera is light, fast, stable, ready-to-roll out of the box. No, it's not open source, but it's silly to think that code is high quality if and only if it's open source. We already have a good thing going on with Opera.
However, "we" don't already have it. Firefox "we" do have as in by way of its licensing. So why would you PAY (what will probably be a huge amount) for something that is not much different than the FREE and OPEN thing? YOU don't already have a good thing going on with Opera. *I* don't already have a good thing going on with Opera. Opera's COMPANY has a good thing going on with opera. Based on Google's history and their supposed interest and sponsorship of "open source" communities, you would think that such wonderful things as you see in Opera would not be enough for them to buy them out. Especially when they could improve Firefox and help everyone out. And that, my friend, is why I suspect there is something else going on here. They're not going to buy out Opera simply so they can attach the google brand and logo to it for the world to surf myspace and blogs on.
If "wedging the browser market" is really your concern, then I'm surprised that you are so loyal to a relative late-comer to the market, and can't be bothered to look at a high-quality, non-IE browser that has been on the market for many more years.
Really, now? If I recall, Opera started just after Mosaic. While Firefox and Mozilla are no longer directly derived from actual full Mosaic/Netscape code, they've essentially been around since 1998 and that hardly makes them "the newcomer". I'm sure Opera has undergone at least one full rewrite since they began, too - which means the rewrite when they dropped the original Netscape code doesn't count as a ding against the age of Firefox/Mozilla, either . . . Which technically makes just about *everything* other than Firefox and Mozilla "newcomers".
Of course, in the interest of disclosure, I should probably mention that I was a former engineer at Netscape before AOL came in and had their way with it.
I was going to check out Opera on OSX when I was looking for a Safari/Firefox replacement and decided to stick with Camino because with just one plugin/extension, it did all the things Opera seemed to claim to do.
As for the applications footprint - I couldn't speak to that since I've never benchmarked either of them. I just know that Firefox often has dozens of tabs opened on my system and it performs smoothly. And on the mobile front - I don't know who makes "Blaze" but that's what I use on my Treo 650 (it's the thing that comes installed on it). Then again, I've only browsed to one website one time in the two months I've owned it.
I just have a hard time believing that Google might go toward Opera and away from Firefox based on a little bit of extra performance or a shiny interface. After all, they could contribute to help Firefox with the first issue and they could modify it however they want to easily produce the second. It would also contribute to the respect that people have toward them for supporting open source and doing little to no evil.
I think there's something else going on.
I really hate to be an asshole here, but you know what I am tired of? I'm tired of every two-bit geek thinking that he's going to come up with a revolutionary idea, be able to implement it and be the next billion-dollar sell-out to Fox News Corp or Yahoo!.
:P
The 90s are over. I hate to break it to my fellow geeks, but being successful in a startup was always a risky proposition even in the heyday. Your best bet, now, is to learn how to properly brown-nose and pick up lots of business and office-politics skills and make yourself satisfied with the "employee" thing. Working for other people kind of sucks, but it's better than suffering grand delusions of greatness.
Then again, it's christmas time and I like being a grinch. So go suck a glass ornament.
The last time I saw a screenshot of Opera, it looked an awful lot like the current version of AOL stuff that people keep installing on my random home boxes when they visit (because AOL people are apparently willing to spend $30/mo even though you ALREADY HAVE internet access for them, just so they can chat with their moron friends in AOL chatrooms...)
Anyway - what's cheaper? Modifying Mozilla to whatever end pleases them? Or spending tens or hundreds of millions to buy out a company that has a browser and doing whatever to that?
The only difference I see is that I guess they can be more "closed" with their Opera modifications.
Since stores are private property, managers should simply ask parents to remove their children. The problem is, we all know how uptight and huffy parents get if you even insinuate anything about their parenting or their children. If a child is destroying your store and disturbing other customers and employees and you politely and discreetly ask them to remove the child or control the child, you are definitely going to lose a family-worth of customers which could amount to quite a bit every month. And there's always the strong chance that the parent is going to go Jerry-Springer all over your store and cause an even bigger scene.
There's nothing worse than a fat bloated sweat-pant and tee-shirt wearing obese mother with a shopping cart full of twinkies, soda and sugared cereal going on a loud rampage with her four toddlers because you dared to ask her to control her brats.
The thing is parenting is honestly not that impossible of a job. It's a lot like training a dog. It's called repetative conditioning. You reward good behavior with small things and you punish bad behavior. You set expectations and you follow through with positive or negative consequences accordingly. There's nothing worse than a parent who says they'll do something if they child doesn't XYZ and rather than following through, just repeats the "threat" over and over. But hey - a lot of parents are just too lazy to be consistant. I mean, if you are too lazy to carry and roll on a rubber to prevent having the kids in the first place, what are the odds you won't be too lazy when it comes time to being a real parent?
No kidding. It's time for all the "wikimedia" projects to get a new name that makes more sense. You want it to be accessible to everyone and how do you say the name of the project without someone being confused and requiring an explanation of the "wiki" part?
Calling it "wikipedia" and "wiktionary" and so forth is a lot like calling the hardbound editions of encyclopedias "paperpedias". What the fuck is a paperpedia? I dunno. I guess it's a pedia that's on paper sort of the way a wikipedia is a pedia on wiki?
I mean . . . come on.
Yeah, I don't get it. Who's the parent and who's the child? How is it that parents suddenly (seemingly this generation and maybe the previous one) have no ability to tell their children "no". Or even better - use the fact that they are older, wiser, smarter, more clever and MAKE THE RULES to just not take the kids with them when they go shopping if they can't possibly find it in them to refuse to buy every single thing their brat wants?
These are the same kind of parents that end up with drug using, boozing, wild ass sluts that get knocked up at thirteen years old. After all, they're completely individual unique autonomous human beings and how can you possibly, you know, parent them by telling them not to do something or not letting them go somewhere or inject somethign into them or hump someone? I mean . . . have you ever BEEN a parent? It's just SO HARD what with children being fucking einsteins and having such massive mental powers and all of that enormous physical strength that a grown person five times the child's age can't possibly contend with!
On the other hand. You, also, are full of shit.
There's nothing I hate more than sanctimonious prick parents saying things like "well, you have no children so shut your mouth and keep your opinions to yourself!" or even more drug addicts who say shit like "You've never been addicted to meth, so you don't know - shut your mouth!".
Look, I've never raised a kid (I've taken care of a number including my own siblings for great lengths of time over months or years, though) and it doesn't take a fucking rocket scientist to know certain truths . . . You know, like it's not hard to have a spine and raise your children without caving into their every want. Or... you know... you shouldn't beat your children or feed them ice cream every morning for breakfast.
In fact, parents (like drug users) are often some of the stupidest people on earth. I don't mean this as a flame or troll - but honestly, squirting out a kid is something that doesn't require any intelligence or qualification or wisdom. In fact, a lot of people might suggest that it's the least intelligent and prepared and qualified people that squirt out kids the most frequently.
Seriously - your comment is shit.
Seriously, why would you choose Opera over Firefox? The whole forced banner ads thing kind of drove me away from it (not that I ever used it, but it kept me from ever using it again even). Opera may be a fine browser, but we already have a really good (and open) thing going on with Firefox. Additionally, I don't think you can get Opera in "just the browser" flavor. Last time I checked, it forced you to download this really crappy email client of theirs and address book and other things.
What I *REALLY* don't get is the logic behind this. "Since they can't by Mozilla, they'll buy Opera".
Um. What? Mozilla is open-sourced. You don't HAVE to buy it. Just take the code and do your own thing with it. DUH.
I have a hard time believing they're going to intentionally wedge the browser market even further rather than back more work and collaboration and progress behind the already great open source browser that we have. Perhaps they just intend to buy it, strip it for some good stuff that they'll donate to Mozilla and... I dunno. Whatever else.
Seriously though - seems like a waste of money when they can just branch off from Mozilla. You know, with that sort of being the whole POINT of the license that Mozilla is under.
So how is it that, despite the Opera, MSIE, Netscape, Firefox and Mozilla icons all looking completely different, people still manage to get onto the web?
Besides, anyone interested in RSS is savvy enough to know the acronym without the need for a pretty standardized icon.
I think a better idea is not to step in and have idiotic requirements. Rather - if you're a stupid parent, you get fucked and buy your kid lots of crap and they end up spoiled. If you're a reasonable human being, you say "sorry - no" and the issue is done with. I don't know what kind of shitty parents most of you had, but it was a rare day I had the balls to ask my parents for something (especially while shopping) and if I did and they said "no" it was the end of discussion and I didn't press it. Maybe most people have whiney parents with no back-bone but that's not anyone else's problem but their own.
In fact - if you're going to start passing arbitrarily intrusive laws, why not just banish children from shopping centers and grocery stores altogether? I think that would please a lot more people than worrying about whether advertising will make it hard for pussified parents to refuse things to their snot-nosed runt children.
It's all been moved to Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.
Um. Is it feasible that one could use all the features of their current Palm OS on their Treo with the new stuff (in time) under linux without going through any hoops with your carrier? I would imagine there must be some sort of "tag" in the Palm software that is required for service from your provider and seamless functionality.
Oh . . . . and with such a small device, usability and interface is very important. Somehow I don't expect much in that department with our (OSS/Linux) history.
Yes, apparently I'm one of the "clueless" for recognizing what demographic G4TV executives are after.
*eyeroll*
Retard.
The sad part is, since cable isn't offered ala carte, there's no way to easily show them your disinterest in their current lineup. Sure - you can stop watching. Sure - you can write a letter. But nothing speaks louder than "I'm cancelling your channel from my personal lineup". If they ever offer ala carte cable subscriptions, that will give the consumer a lot of power to impact crappy channels (or once good channels that have crapped out).
Honestly, they don't care about female viewers. If they want to target the female viewer, they'll hit Oxygen or We or one of the Oprah / Soap Opera / MTV reality show timeslots. The demographic here is young males, 18-34 with disposable income.
In Soviet Russia, monkey beats . . . oh hey . . . !
Yeah, it sucks and all and that kind of thing can tend to happen with a hard shutdown... But you know, it could all be avoided with a reasonable backup power supply unit. Either one big one for all of them or several small ones. YOu just need enough time for them to shut down gracefully. If you're running Windows they often come with software that will instruct the systems ot safely shutdown after the outage is detected and before the juice runs out.
Sure, they're not free or cheap, but figure if you make $30-$40/hr and if you spend eight hours rebuilding a bunch of boxes, you might as well have just spent a few hundred on a nice power supply...
All they ever talked about on G4TV.com was console games, so I really only ever turned in because nothing else was on and that faux-punk chick (I think it was Laura) was kinda hot.
There are enough channels available that you'd think they could split the stuff up. Cars and dumb dude stuff on one channel and games/geek on another.
I don't know that I like the ominous sound of "we're keeping blah blah and blah for the old audience"... sounds like they're eventually planning to ditch all the remotely geek stuff and replace it with 24x7 MTV/Comedy Central washouts.
The Screensavers and Call For Help were fairly "dumbed down" shows. I, however, liked them. I used them mostly for background noise until Kevin Rose came on because his segments were usually somewhat interesting. I alo really liked Patrick a lot. Not for any particular geek reasons but more that he had a really good sense of humor and seem very likable.
I'm a linux and unix guy by habit and trade, but I found both of these shows interesting to a degree because it was good to hear people like Leo explain things to your typical user. Sometimes it would clue me in on how to explain something to my own family or friends that I might otherwise find painfully frustrating.
Also - I thought Call for Help or The Screensavers (one of the two) came back to G4 this year? Leo made a huge deal about it on his blog and then . . . after watching like two episodes, I never saw it again . . . ?
I think a good geek network should have plenty of room for the uber geek and the yet to be initiated geek alike.
The only shows I watch are, I'm ashamed to admit it, Attack of the Show and then the occasional X-Play or Icons. I like watching stuff about the history of gaming and the people in it.
You may, however, cancel Cheat! and get rid of that annoying hostess all together. Please also get rid of all of your stupid car shows. I don't need to watch some guy named "Big C" with a bunch of fake bling showing photos of the occasional car between long takes of mostly naked asian chicks. You can put that on your sister-network -- MTV/MTV2.
Please also get rid of Arena. Or rather - make it less campy. The only hosts who seemingly care at all are Kevin P - and that's only because he's a real dork and the other two hosts are jocks and middle-aged eye-candy. Maybe you could replace Arena with video, tips, interviews and sponsored competitions of REAL "cyberathletes". I hear a lot about this "Fatal1ty" guy who kicks a lot of ass but you've never shown him gaming. You could become the ESPN of "cyberathletes". It could be boring. Maybe not. It certainly couldn't be worse than the random inexperienced dorks you have competing on Arena currently. If I wanted to watch a bunch of dumbasses suck at games, I'd videotape myself and my friends.
PS - More hot smart chicks. Not semi-hot chicks and not hot chicks doing stupid things. Actual hot chicks like the old Screensavers chick who does plays or something now or even Jessika from the last iteration of the show (yum). That Laura chick from Martin Sargeant's show wasn't too bad, either. Morgan Webb should maybe just have her own show where she poses half nude with various geek paraphenalia.
Oh - and since you guys are pushing MAKE magazine all the time on your show and reality/DIY shows are all the rage on every other network, why don't you have a weekly hour long DIY show for geeks? Kevin Rose and Yoshi would be perfect for it - but I'm not picky.
Geeks want to like your network. But we don't. Some of us watch it only because there is nothing else and the closest we ever had (Discovery and The Learning Channel) have turned into chick-reality shows that have nothing to do with discovering or learning ANYTHING.
Spoken like a man who has clealry never used CDE! :P