My big question is whether new versions of software, the so-called FAT binaries will run at 100% speed on the PPC architecture. Somehow in the back of my mind I see potential slow-downs which may devalue buying a PPC computer now and keeping it into the Intel transition.
You're nuts, or you have a system that's well above average. I'm looking at my laptop screen (OS X) and there's 10 windows open in 3 applications. This is such a perfect way to drag and drop between them. Hell, I can see even peeling back a document to get a glimpse of the desktop or my browser. CMD-Tab is nice but it can be disorienting with 10 apps open and sometimes you just want to see a piece of another window. After watching the demo, I'm convinced this is a huge jump forward for small or medium sized screens/power users.
In my first year I signed up for two computer science classes to fill my electives. I'd already done some serious programming thanks to a good teacher in highschool. In grade 11, I chose to program an flight booking system as my final project. When I got to University I was really expecting to be challenged, to learn OO and make the next Microsoft Word.
Bottom line was that the classes were so fucking boring and the teachers so lacking in charisma that I couldn't hack it. The first month was basically about the history of traffic light code. It was like that class-room scene from Ferris Bueller's Day off. I couldn't imagine anybody subjecting themselves to that kind of torture and I vowed to simply learn whatever I needed myself, IF I ever needed it. If the teachers were enthusiastic or sped things along a bit I might have taken a very different path but it was clear that CS was going to be 4 years of unnecessary drudgery and hell. I would suspect that many disgruntled and unemployed CS workers decide to teach, thus ruining it for many people.
Space colonization will probably kill a lot of natives of planet Earth, even just by accident. It seems inevitable there will be nuclear reactors in space and one is likely to screw up or fall back to earth sometime. Weapons are surely planned as well.
Street dates are good in principle at protecting small retailers but the reality is that the titles just don't get shipped to the small retailers by the street date and the big ones get their shipment. It's more of a way of controlling customer's purchasing habits now. You tell them they can have it on a particular day and then they show up to buy it on that day specifically.
Ballmer means "marketshare" not "innovation"
on
Ballmer on Innovation
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Ballmer's not talking about hardware innovation obviously and he's hardly even talking about software innovation. He really means "marketshare" when he means innovation: the ability to bring the market together under one platform and to create a huge environment for 3rd party solutions on top of that.
I don't know why they don't just call it a day and make the G (exponent) 4 with all the available processors in one box. I'm getting a little tired of this lagging 2-architecture roadmap.
Canada needs public medicare to compete. It's just too decentralized and not rich enough for a private system to be able to serve everyone adequately. If it went private you'd see even more of an exodus of doctors from the rural areas. This is another area where the government has to subsidize in order to provide a basic level of service. Do you think that any doctor could make more money in Canada than the US? We'd have an even bigger problem with people moving south to work.
If there's so much dignity and satisfaction in physical labor, why do so many parents who are 'stuck' in it for lack of education push their kids so hard to get the hell out of it?
Look, there's a lot of different forms of labour and a lot of them are helpful, healthy and productive. Many forms are dangerous and difficult, but I'm talking about things that are reasonable, like building things: homes, roads, consumer goods. They don't have to be automated you know. There are plenty of people who are willing to do an honest day's work for even a low wage.
Beyond that, many educated people realise that there is value in not always doing things the easy way. Have you never taken pride after building a dog-house or hanging a basketball net or repainting your living room? There are many jobs which are not stressful and offer the same kind of satisfaction day in and day out. Many of these jobs are being displaced by automation or through cheaper labour overseas, but all it takes is a change of attitude to get a few people together to do it out of desire here.
Your attitude is that of a hardship tourist, and if you were to spout off at someone who didn't have a choice in the matter, they'd be quite justified in punching you in the face.
Sorry, are you writing this from jail?
You have it deeply wrong: there is no way having a third of your employment being with the government (read: unproductive) is a good thing. It's a stagnating thing, and are you surprised that those jobs are stagnating, with all the union work rules and policies?
Yes, you've just made my point. The very fact that there is no opportunity for any other kind of employment due to economic infeasibility breeds stagnation. If you don't have natural variety, you have to introduce artificially stimulated variety.
As most people tend to live in the suburbs, there is also little redistribution of wealth. People go to work and then they go home. It's exceedingly hard to get anybody out to buy anything that isn't the new blockbuster DVD.
Maybe if the other stuff wasn't overpriced crap?
It's not. You might find it hard to believe but a market which is so heavily segmented cannot support a whole range of goods no matter how much money is available on the whole. If people are unwilling to spend, it is impossible to sell.
And what's with this 'redistribution of wealth' nonsense? Were you born after 1989? Communism has been EOL'd for 15+ years, and was deprecated long before then.
You misunderstand what those words mean in the context of what I said. Because people don't stop at stores on their way from work to home, or don't go to the symphony, or whatever else, all the money stays in their pockets. They hoarde it, or dump it into massive SUVs or monstrous houses. If the money doesn't flow around, you can't have varied businesses and capital tends to only flow between the rich, or down through families through inheritance.
Read P.J. O'Rourke's 'Holidays in Hell' and other works where he visits pre-1989 communist countries and describes just how depressing socialism can be.
Hello, over here... you're just diverting the argument with some expletive about Communism. Since when does giving people the opportunity (through government or 3rd parties) to have a job in a field they like equate to totalitarian Communism? They can choose to be unemployed or to find some service job or whatever. No one's forcing anybody to do anything.
Seriously, given public education (the closest I'll come to supporting government power) and job training, maybe these folks are neither smart nor energetic enough to get training in something useful and rewarding? Or maybe they're just useless goth mopes?
Has it never occurred to you that maybe part of the system we have makes it hard for people to get education, training, loans for business etc. Do you have no sympathy for people who were never taught the basic skills of entrepreneurship or who had poor schooling in inner city schools. They're not all lazy mopes and they could choose to do something more productive given the opportunity. It would help all of society out.
For starters, physical labor sucks. Do you really want to be a coal miner?
Not all physical labor sucks. In fact, a lot of it is rewarding, healthy and *gasp* fun! You just jumped to the worst possible example. A medium amount of physical labor each day, spent working on something you like, or a task which solves a problem is good, even essential to being happy.
It's a conscious choice of choosing less speed, automation and wealth, so that people can be occupied and feel fulfilled with the little jobs they do and do well.
Wow. Please sign me up for the complete opposite of that. If my work isn't useful, I'd much rather be told that so I can find something else to do than be deceived into an inflated sense of self-worth. And I'm curious, at what point do you draw the line at which automation is prohibited? Shall we get rid of computers so we can restore secretarial pools?
Once again you're reacting with some preconceived notion. I never said that people should be doing work that is useless or forced to work. On the contrary, there is a lot of possibility for meaningful work with government or 3rd party assistance. Maybe you like to put computers together, or maybe you like book binding. Is there a use for each beyond economic reasoning? Yes: we need computers and we need books.
Why is it so hard for you to imagine that if the government, or your local union or whatever group wanted to subsidize a local company to hire out of work people or people who would like to switch jobs. Co-ops aren't some kind of radical nazi idea, they exist all over in tons of forms. You can even have very profitable co-ops. Research Mountain Equipment Coop for example. They're huge, responsible, employ a ton of people AND make good products.
No, that's what your idea of utopia is like, and it appears to be a form of Marx's "workers paradise". In my utopia, essential products like food and shelter are virtually free, and people can do what they want to rather than being herded into make-work feel-good "jobs".
Again, I never said anything about forcing anyone to do anything. It's about providing OPPORTUNITY!
Who's utopia is more realistic? Yours relies on inexhaustible natural resources to give you something which appears free, all the while debasing the majority of society. This is delusional. Everything has a cost, whether you can conceive of it as monetary or not. You can't get free food or shelter for free without sacrificing a whole lot more.
Perhaps you're privileged in the job you have and aren't able to sympathize with the tens of millions of unemployed or under employed people. Perhaps your city still has a good mix of industrial, manufacturing and service jobs. Once those switch to primarily service jobs things start to go haywire.
As a case example, I live in Ottawa, Canada which is the capital of the country. Our employment mix is what many want the western world to be: 33% government, 33% high tech and 33% low-end restaurant/service jobs. We also have an ungodly high unemployment rate, something like 10%.
It's probably no surprise that almost everyone hates their job. The best you can hope for is a middle management job with little or no creativity. As most people tend to live in the suburbs, there is also little redistribution of wealth. People go to work and then they go home. It's exceedingly hard to get anybody out to buy anything that isn't the new blockbuster DVD. On top of all that, the cost of living is high which drives out most of the creative people.
Overall, it's a really depressing environment to work and live in.
I personally know hundreds of people (through my record store) that would gladly work in some kind of manufacturing for a basic wage, or on a farm, landscaping, whatever just to keep busy and productive. The general malaise that results from not having a job or having a crappy paper-pushing job where you never accomplish anything, affects the whole city.
Except, at a point nobody enjoys their job or they don't have a job. The barrier to innovation or self-employment by the normal individual is very high and you end up with a society of hopeless, dreamless sheep who just live out their days like zombies.
What's so wrong with full employment and preserving meaningful physical labour. It's a conscious choice of choosing less speed, automation and wealth, so that people can be occupied and feel fulfilled with the little jobs they do and do well. That's what utopia is like, not where all our work is done by machines and we relax on the sofa eating chips.
I would submit that for all but the slowest of reaction-timed individuals, driving slower brings next to no increase in your driving ability. Situationally it might save you from a few "accidents" but those are nearly all avoidable with even the slightest bit of training.
How many times have you watched an old person simply drive into a post at 5mph? These people make the same driving decisions regardless of speed. They drive mechanically, like zombies. I've watched a line of cars drive off the road in a snow-storm each because they were following the car ahead. I was driving the same speed but somehow I managed to avoid the same fate!
Thank you for your considerate and well reasoned response, especially about the WRX experience. Most people simply don't realize the potential or responsibility even a basic car offers and they need to be told in a controlled environment so that they can be better drivers.
I agree with most of what you propose, especially with speed limits based on driving ability. This would give a huge incentive to bad drivers to learn to drive better as they would be allowed to do their driving and get places faster.
I don't agree with the coming back every few years for a test because this could just turn into a big money grab too. If people get the hands on training in the beginning I think the retention will be pretty good. Once you learn how to control a car in a drift around a corner you aren't likely to forget that skill, for example.
You're exactly right. The speed at which you are safe is entirely connected to your driving ability, your car's performance and the situation.
A week long course in car control - controlling skids, controlled acceleration, obstacle avoidance, maximum braking, as well as experience when the car is loaded, when it has bad tires etc. would completely transform most people's ability. Most people never experience this stuff until they're confronted with a dangerous situation which inevitably becomes a bad crash.
When you've got people driving around 4000 pound SUVs, I think this kind of thing should be mandatory. Most people have no idea of what their car can do or how dangerous it is to others.
Instead of training drivers up front, the government lazily imposes speed and these GPS bullshit restrictions to debase all of society.
Hopefully someone can tell us about a few countries where they care about good driving and reward you with lighter speed limits and less policing.
Sure it's Sunday but how does this half page article buy some guy represent any kind of real news? I'm getting really tired of editors green-lighting these obviously unresearched, entirely too short analyses. I read Slashdot for the NEWS THAT MATTERS!
In smaller businesses or development houses, it's simply a monetary issue. You want to hire one guy who can do it all, or at least do it all 90% of the time and find a creative solution the other 10%. You only have to pay one person as opposed to two. It's the same in creative houses. Nowadays if you want to be a web developer on your own or in a small house you have to be able to do everything from HTML to PHP to PERL to Flash/Actionscript and maybe even MySQL. Since the bottom fell out of the market, companies just can't afford to hire 5 experts where 1 guy with medium knowledge will suffice.
The market does not NEED competition because the RIAA is a monopoly. They love how the market is set up now and there's no reason for anything to change. Beyond that, people are stupid and will choose convenience over fair use and quality. I have people walking into my record store and telling me they can get a particular album on iTunes for only a dollar more! And they consider this a good thing! Trust me, the educated "Slashdotters" are outnumbered 10 million to one in this case. Didn't a report just come out that 35% of online downloads (illegal or legal) came from legal sources? The world has gone MAD MAD MAD.
You refer to "proofreading dialog boxes and checking for consistent menu options" as not being fun. On the contrary, this is exactly the type of thing I want to do. I have a general understanding of programming but I really enjoy creating a consistent, seamless interface to what's underneath. I've never been able to find where to sign up my talents. All the Linux distro pages are completely intimidating and text-heavy.
So, where do I sign up? Who do I talk to who will listen?
I don't even have to download the program to see that it sucks. That UI is one of the worst I have ever seen. It's like one of those Chinese organizers you buy at a Buck or Two for $2.99.
Photoshop or not, you have to at least try to make the buttons and icons usable. And what's with those palettes? Who needs a palette for the various transform commands? I'd go blind searching for the right button in my "Toolbox" window.
Sure, you've got a list of things that are important to you, but for workflow and 90% of things you need to do with a document, InDesign wipes the floor with Quark. Even having to go through the learning curve for InDesign, I found I can work about twice as fast.
You're probably the only one in history who thinks Quark is "on your side and more forgiving."
While this is likely the reality, the way it actually works is that most creative professionals believed that Macs were faster for their type of work. I know, I believed it and I have dozens of pro friends who were the same. Sure, we love the operating system, but what component of the reason for choosing the platform was that? Not 100%. My point is that for most of Apple's traditional user base, there was a percentage of sway that speed held in the choice between Mac & Windows which was offset and equal to the "compatibility" problems you'd have while working with clients' systems. Whatever that percentage was, it's now erased, bringing the odds up for using Windows.
Slashdot Mirror
My big question is whether new versions of software, the so-called FAT binaries will run at 100% speed on the PPC architecture. Somehow in the back of my mind I see potential slow-downs which may devalue buying a PPC computer now and keeping it into the Intel transition.
You're nuts, or you have a system that's well above average. I'm looking at my laptop screen (OS X) and there's 10 windows open in 3 applications. This is such a perfect way to drag and drop between them. Hell, I can see even peeling back a document to get a glimpse of the desktop or my browser. CMD-Tab is nice but it can be disorienting with 10 apps open and sometimes you just want to see a piece of another window. After watching the demo, I'm convinced this is a huge jump forward for small or medium sized screens/power users.
In my first year I signed up for two computer science classes to fill my electives. I'd already done some serious programming thanks to a good teacher in highschool. In grade 11, I chose to program an flight booking system as my final project. When I got to University I was really expecting to be challenged, to learn OO and make the next Microsoft Word.
Bottom line was that the classes were so fucking boring and the teachers so lacking in charisma that I couldn't hack it. The first month was basically about the history of traffic light code. It was like that class-room scene from Ferris Bueller's Day off. I couldn't imagine anybody subjecting themselves to that kind of torture and I vowed to simply learn whatever I needed myself, IF I ever needed it. If the teachers were enthusiastic or sped things along a bit I might have taken a very different path but it was clear that CS was going to be 4 years of unnecessary drudgery and hell. I would suspect that many disgruntled and unemployed CS workers decide to teach, thus ruining it for many people.
Haiku or not, the image of a 10 year old girl reading a poem about how great Bill Gates is, to Bill Gates is enough to make me puke.
Space colonization will probably kill a lot of natives of planet Earth, even just by accident. It seems inevitable there will be nuclear reactors in space and one is likely to screw up or fall back to earth sometime. Weapons are surely planned as well.
Street dates are good in principle at protecting small retailers but the reality is that the titles just don't get shipped to the small retailers by the street date and the big ones get their shipment. It's more of a way of controlling customer's purchasing habits now. You tell them they can have it on a particular day and then they show up to buy it on that day specifically.
Ballmer's not talking about hardware innovation obviously and he's hardly even talking about software innovation. He really means "marketshare" when he means innovation: the ability to bring the market together under one platform and to create a huge environment for 3rd party solutions on top of that.
I don't know why they don't just call it a day and make the G (exponent) 4 with all the available processors in one box. I'm getting a little tired of this lagging 2-architecture roadmap.
Canada needs public medicare to compete. It's just too decentralized and not rich enough for a private system to be able to serve everyone adequately. If it went private you'd see even more of an exodus of doctors from the rural areas. This is another area where the government has to subsidize in order to provide a basic level of service. Do you think that any doctor could make more money in Canada than the US? We'd have an even bigger problem with people moving south to work.
If there's so much dignity and satisfaction in physical labor, why do so many parents who are 'stuck' in it for lack of education push their kids so hard to get the hell out of it?
Look, there's a lot of different forms of labour and a lot of them are helpful, healthy and productive. Many forms are dangerous and difficult, but I'm talking about things that are reasonable, like building things: homes, roads, consumer goods. They don't have to be automated you know. There are plenty of people who are willing to do an honest day's work for even a low wage.
Beyond that, many educated people realise that there is value in not always doing things the easy way. Have you never taken pride after building a dog-house or hanging a basketball net or repainting your living room? There are many jobs which are not stressful and offer the same kind of satisfaction day in and day out. Many of these jobs are being displaced by automation or through cheaper labour overseas, but all it takes is a change of attitude to get a few people together to do it out of desire here.
Your attitude is that of a hardship tourist, and if you were to spout off at someone who didn't have a choice in the matter, they'd be quite justified in punching you in the face. Sorry, are you writing this from jail? You have it deeply wrong: there is no way having a third of your employment being with the government (read: unproductive) is a good thing. It's a stagnating thing, and are you surprised that those jobs are stagnating, with all the union work rules and policies?
Yes, you've just made my point. The very fact that there is no opportunity for any other kind of employment due to economic infeasibility breeds stagnation. If you don't have natural variety, you have to introduce artificially stimulated variety.
As most people tend to live in the suburbs, there is also little redistribution of wealth. People go to work and then they go home. It's exceedingly hard to get anybody out to buy anything that isn't the new blockbuster DVD.
Maybe if the other stuff wasn't overpriced crap?
It's not. You might find it hard to believe but a market which is so heavily segmented cannot support a whole range of goods no matter how much money is available on the whole. If people are unwilling to spend, it is impossible to sell.
And what's with this 'redistribution of wealth' nonsense? Were you born after 1989? Communism has been EOL'd for 15+ years, and was deprecated long before then.
You misunderstand what those words mean in the context of what I said. Because people don't stop at stores on their way from work to home, or don't go to the symphony, or whatever else, all the money stays in their pockets. They hoarde it, or dump it into massive SUVs or monstrous houses. If the money doesn't flow around, you can't have varied businesses and capital tends to only flow between the rich, or down through families through inheritance.
Read P.J. O'Rourke's 'Holidays in Hell' and other works where he visits pre-1989 communist countries and describes just how depressing socialism can be.
Hello, over here... you're just diverting the argument with some expletive about Communism. Since when does giving people the opportunity (through government or 3rd parties) to have a job in a field they like equate to totalitarian Communism? They can choose to be unemployed or to find some service job or whatever. No one's forcing anybody to do anything.
Seriously, given public education (the closest I'll come to supporting government power) and job training, maybe these folks are neither smart nor energetic enough to get training in something useful and rewarding? Or maybe they're just useless goth mopes?
Has it never occurred to you that maybe part of the system we have makes it hard for people to get education, training, loans for business etc. Do you have no sympathy for people who were never taught the basic skills of entrepreneurship or who had poor schooling in inner city schools. They're not all lazy mopes and they could choose to do something more productive given the opportunity. It would help all of society out.
For starters, physical labor sucks. Do you really want to be a coal miner?
Not all physical labor sucks. In fact, a lot of it is rewarding, healthy and *gasp* fun! You just jumped to the worst possible example. A medium amount of physical labor each day, spent working on something you like, or a task which solves a problem is good, even essential to being happy.
It's a conscious choice of choosing less speed, automation and wealth, so that people can be occupied and feel fulfilled with the little jobs they do and do well.
Wow. Please sign me up for the complete opposite of that. If my work isn't useful, I'd much rather be told that so I can find something else to do than be deceived into an inflated sense of self-worth. And I'm curious, at what point do you draw the line at which automation is prohibited? Shall we get rid of computers so we can restore secretarial pools?
Once again you're reacting with some preconceived notion. I never said that people should be doing work that is useless or forced to work. On the contrary, there is a lot of possibility for meaningful work with government or 3rd party assistance. Maybe you like to put computers together, or maybe you like book binding. Is there a use for each beyond economic reasoning? Yes: we need computers and we need books.
Why is it so hard for you to imagine that if the government, or your local union or whatever group wanted to subsidize a local company to hire out of work people or people who would like to switch jobs. Co-ops aren't some kind of radical nazi idea, they exist all over in tons of forms. You can even have very profitable co-ops. Research Mountain Equipment Coop for example. They're huge, responsible, employ a ton of people AND make good products.
No, that's what your idea of utopia is like, and it appears to be a form of Marx's "workers paradise". In my utopia, essential products like food and shelter are virtually free, and people can do what they want to rather than being herded into make-work feel-good "jobs".
Again, I never said anything about forcing anyone to do anything. It's about providing OPPORTUNITY!
Who's utopia is more realistic? Yours relies on inexhaustible natural resources to give you something which appears free, all the while debasing the majority of society. This is delusional. Everything has a cost, whether you can conceive of it as monetary or not. You can't get free food or shelter for free without sacrificing a whole lot more.
Perhaps you're privileged in the job you have and aren't able to sympathize with the tens of millions of unemployed or under employed people. Perhaps your city still has a good mix of industrial, manufacturing and service jobs. Once those switch to primarily service jobs things start to go haywire.
As a case example, I live in Ottawa, Canada which is the capital of the country. Our employment mix is what many want the western world to be: 33% government, 33% high tech and 33% low-end restaurant/service jobs. We also have an ungodly high unemployment rate, something like 10%.
It's probably no surprise that almost everyone hates their job. The best you can hope for is a middle management job with little or no creativity. As most people tend to live in the suburbs, there is also little redistribution of wealth. People go to work and then they go home. It's exceedingly hard to get anybody out to buy anything that isn't the new blockbuster DVD. On top of all that, the cost of living is high which drives out most of the creative people.
Overall, it's a really depressing environment to work and live in.
I personally know hundreds of people (through my record store) that would gladly work in some kind of manufacturing for a basic wage, or on a farm, landscaping, whatever just to keep busy and productive. The general malaise that results from not having a job or having a crappy paper-pushing job where you never accomplish anything, affects the whole city.
Except, at a point nobody enjoys their job or they don't have a job. The barrier to innovation or self-employment by the normal individual is very high and you end up with a society of hopeless, dreamless sheep who just live out their days like zombies.
What's so wrong with full employment and preserving meaningful physical labour. It's a conscious choice of choosing less speed, automation and wealth, so that people can be occupied and feel fulfilled with the little jobs they do and do well. That's what utopia is like, not where all our work is done by machines and we relax on the sofa eating chips.
I would submit that for all but the slowest of reaction-timed individuals, driving slower brings next to no increase in your driving ability. Situationally it might save you from a few "accidents" but those are nearly all avoidable with even the slightest bit of training.
How many times have you watched an old person simply drive into a post at 5mph? These people make the same driving decisions regardless of speed. They drive mechanically, like zombies. I've watched a line of cars drive off the road in a snow-storm each because they were following the car ahead. I was driving the same speed but somehow I managed to avoid the same fate!
Thank you for your considerate and well reasoned response, especially about the WRX experience. Most people simply don't realize the potential or responsibility even a basic car offers and they need to be told in a controlled environment so that they can be better drivers.
I agree with most of what you propose, especially with speed limits based on driving ability. This would give a huge incentive to bad drivers to learn to drive better as they would be allowed to do their driving and get places faster.
I don't agree with the coming back every few years for a test because this could just turn into a big money grab too. If people get the hands on training in the beginning I think the retention will be pretty good. Once you learn how to control a car in a drift around a corner you aren't likely to forget that skill, for example.
You're exactly right. The speed at which you are safe is entirely connected to your driving ability, your car's performance and the situation.
A week long course in car control - controlling skids, controlled acceleration, obstacle avoidance, maximum braking, as well as experience when the car is loaded, when it has bad tires etc. would completely transform most people's ability. Most people never experience this stuff until they're confronted with a dangerous situation which inevitably becomes a bad crash. When you've got people driving around 4000 pound SUVs, I think this kind of thing should be mandatory. Most people have no idea of what their car can do or how dangerous it is to others. Instead of training drivers up front, the government lazily imposes speed and these GPS bullshit restrictions to debase all of society. Hopefully someone can tell us about a few countries where they care about good driving and reward you with lighter speed limits and less policing.
Sure it's Sunday but how does this half page article buy some guy represent any kind of real news? I'm getting really tired of editors green-lighting these obviously unresearched, entirely too short analyses. I read Slashdot for the NEWS THAT MATTERS!
In smaller businesses or development houses, it's simply a monetary issue. You want to hire one guy who can do it all, or at least do it all 90% of the time and find a creative solution the other 10%. You only have to pay one person as opposed to two. It's the same in creative houses. Nowadays if you want to be a web developer on your own or in a small house you have to be able to do everything from HTML to PHP to PERL to Flash/Actionscript and maybe even MySQL. Since the bottom fell out of the market, companies just can't afford to hire 5 experts where 1 guy with medium knowledge will suffice.
The market does not NEED competition because the RIAA is a monopoly. They love how the market is set up now and there's no reason for anything to change. Beyond that, people are stupid and will choose convenience over fair use and quality. I have people walking into my record store and telling me they can get a particular album on iTunes for only a dollar more! And they consider this a good thing! Trust me, the educated "Slashdotters" are outnumbered 10 million to one in this case. Didn't a report just come out that 35% of online downloads (illegal or legal) came from legal sources? The world has gone MAD MAD MAD.
You refer to "proofreading dialog boxes and checking for consistent menu options" as not being fun. On the contrary, this is exactly the type of thing I want to do. I have a general understanding of programming but I really enjoy creating a consistent, seamless interface to what's underneath. I've never been able to find where to sign up my talents. All the Linux distro pages are completely intimidating and text-heavy.
So, where do I sign up? Who do I talk to who will listen?
Time travel works now?
I don't even have to download the program to see that it sucks. That UI is one of the worst I have ever seen. It's like one of those Chinese organizers you buy at a Buck or Two for $2.99.
Photoshop or not, you have to at least try to make the buttons and icons usable. And what's with those palettes? Who needs a palette for the various transform commands? I'd go blind searching for the right button in my "Toolbox" window.
Sure, you've got a list of things that are important to you, but for workflow and 90% of things you need to do with a document, InDesign wipes the floor with Quark. Even having to go through the learning curve for InDesign, I found I can work about twice as fast.
You're probably the only one in history who thinks Quark is "on your side and more forgiving."
While this is likely the reality, the way it actually works is that most creative professionals believed that Macs were faster for their type of work. I know, I believed it and I have dozens of pro friends who were the same. Sure, we love the operating system, but what component of the reason for choosing the platform was that? Not 100%. My point is that for most of Apple's traditional user base, there was a percentage of sway that speed held in the choice between Mac & Windows which was offset and equal to the "compatibility" problems you'd have while working with clients' systems. Whatever that percentage was, it's now erased, bringing the odds up for using Windows.