is that your average gamer doesn't neglect exercise because he can't exercise, but rather because he doesn't *want* to exercise. If he does, then in that case he'll use equipment specially designed for such, but no one will want to use an almost certainly inferior gamepad just because it happens to also be almost certainly inferior exercise equipment as well. (The traditional "do one thing, but do it well", argument... whose applicability is debatable in the case of closely related and easily combined electronics stuff, but not in the gamepad + exercise equipment case. What's next, an all-in-one flat panel LCD + screwdriver?:/)
Chances are they'd be intimidated by installing XP too, but most people get it pre-installed by OEMs. Switching to Linux, however, would most certainly involve installing it. (And besides, that was just an example - point being a desktop-oriented distro should have pre-set defaults during the install and just ask the user whether they're fine with them. Power users should use a distro meant for power users, ie Gentoo. (And that point, in turn, was just a tangental example to what the actual post was about:/))
IMO, while there are multiple things holding Linux back on the desktop (UI consistency, overall complexity (the average user should *not* have to select between filesystems; a simple notice during the install that "filesystem XYZ will be used, are you fine with this?" would be about right), lack of some specialized applications (Photoshop, et al), etc.), but by far the most significant is hardware support. For most people, if they install and the hardware doesn't work out of the box, they'll just give up and go back to windows; even if it's possible to recompile things and get it to work, they either won't know about it, won't know how, or just wouldn't bother. So, if IBM, OSDL, etc. really want to give a boost to Linux for the desktop, they should *pay* hardware manufacturers to write Linux drivers and have their products support Linux from day 1. This would give a healthy short-term boost, and once Linux gains significant market share, companies will want to have Linux drivers for their own financial good, and the problem will effectively go away by itself.
AFAIK so far, here are the pros and cons of the Rio Karma 20GB vs. iRiver iHP-120:
Karma: - Ethernet port - FLAC support - Mad on-the-fly playlisting capabilities (AutoDJ thingy)
iHP-120: - Comes with inline remote with LCD (can do everything you could with the main unit afaik) - Is completely plug-and-use as a generic hard drive for at least semi-modern OS-es (the Karma needs special software for transferring files) - FM tuner - Voice recording - Mad i/o and recording capabilities (line in/out, optical in/out)
What stands out is that, asides from the Karma's ethernet port, the iRiver's advantages are hardware-based, while the Karma's are software, meaning there's a good chance of the iRiver gaining some of them as well later through a firmware upgrade (of course, I wouldn't count on it, but it's something to be considered). Other than that, it basically depends on what you need it for.
So I assume that if UT2003 had come with an ATi instead of an nVidia splash screen, you would have had no problem with it? Ergo it's not the advertisement itself you dislike, but rather the fact that it's for a company you're irrationally biased against. (Note that I am in no way advocating the nVidia splash screen, but going out of your way to edit it to ATi out of sheer fanboyism is even worse.)
Think of them as keyboard shortcuts for the mouse. And the fact that 'normal' users haven't heard of it is exactly why it needs to be done. They make life easier.
One game you should definitely check out is Escape Velocity: Nova; I haven't actually tried it yet, but if it's anything like the original, then it's better than 99% of games out there, shareware or not. If only there were an MMO version...:)
so does anyone know if there's any limitations on the size of this thing? It doesn't seem to mention needing critical mass or anything of the sort, so is there any reason (aside from maintenance) we couldn't scale this type of reactor down even more and use it as a battery, and have a semi-big one power your home, and tiny ones for portable devices?
Open source software is a means and not an end, so if better/more cost-effective software can be created through commercial means, then it doesn't at all matter whether or not a competing, inferior product was created through open source. That said, the way things currently stand, there are precious few areas where commercial software has the advantage (off the top of my head, these are games, Mac OS X, and Opera).
Or the iRiver iHP-120 which is about as good, better because it has voice recording, FM radio (you can also record it), no DRM, and oogles of other features which I so badly don't need that I can't remember what they were, possibly worse because if you want one larger than 20GB you can't. Of course, there's nothing geekier than taking it apart and putting in a bigger one:)
with their personal server thingy? Store all your files on it, put it in your pocket, and access them wirelessly wherever you go. (As long as wherever you go has a PC to access them from, of course.)
> Of course, how old of a computer do you have?
Pretty damn old. AMD K6-2 350 MHz 256MB RAM, to be exact. Dialup, too.:( (I plan on getting a new computer pretty soon, and broadband as soon as - meaning, the nanosecond - it becomes available around here.)
And for the record, I actually tried Firebird, not Mozilla, and it was quite noticeably slower than Opera 7.x (and didn't have close to as many features, quite a lot if not most of which have become indispensable for me - I could list them all here, but it would seem mildly trollish).
This is explained somewhat by the application platform stuff, but as a previous post put it, the point of a web browser isn't for it to be an application platform - this is similar to how the point of a cow isn't for it to be a goat. Or if it is, then at least it shouldn't pretend otherwise and instead actually do something to cause people to *notice* the application platform part of it. As is, it's just a web browser which is noticeably slower for a reason which isn't (noticeable).
What they really need to work on is the speed and the bloat. You might not notice it if you're used to IE, but after using Opera ever since I've found out about it, having to endure something as slow as Mozilla causes me large varieties of pain which may or may not include the physical kind.
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is that your average gamer doesn't neglect exercise because he can't exercise, but rather because he doesn't *want* to exercise. If he does, then in that case he'll use equipment specially designed for such, but no one will want to use an almost certainly inferior gamepad just because it happens to also be almost certainly inferior exercise equipment as well. (The traditional "do one thing, but do it well", argument... whose applicability is debatable in the case of closely related and easily combined electronics stuff, but not in the gamepad + exercise equipment case. What's next, an all-in-one flat panel LCD + screwdriver? :/)
Chances are they'd be intimidated by installing XP too, but most people get it pre-installed by OEMs. Switching to Linux, however, would most certainly involve installing it. (And besides, that was just an example - point being a desktop-oriented distro should have pre-set defaults during the install and just ask the user whether they're fine with them. Power users should use a distro meant for power users, ie Gentoo. (And that point, in turn, was just a tangental example to what the actual post was about :/))
IMO, while there are multiple things holding Linux back on the desktop (UI consistency, overall complexity (the average user should *not* have to select between filesystems; a simple notice during the install that "filesystem XYZ will be used, are you fine with this?" would be about right), lack of some specialized applications (Photoshop, et al), etc.), but by far the most significant is hardware support. For most people, if they install and the hardware doesn't work out of the box, they'll just give up and go back to windows; even if it's possible to recompile things and get it to work, they either won't know about it, won't know how, or just wouldn't bother. So, if IBM, OSDL, etc. really want to give a boost to Linux for the desktop, they should *pay* hardware manufacturers to write Linux drivers and have their products support Linux from day 1. This would give a healthy short-term boost, and once Linux gains significant market share, companies will want to have Linux drivers for their own financial good, and the problem will effectively go away by itself.
AFAIK so far, here are the pros and cons of the Rio Karma 20GB vs. iRiver iHP-120:
Karma:
- Ethernet port
- FLAC support
- Mad on-the-fly playlisting capabilities (AutoDJ thingy)
iHP-120:
- Comes with inline remote with LCD (can do everything you could with the main unit afaik)
- Is completely plug-and-use as a generic hard drive for at least semi-modern OS-es (the Karma needs special software for transferring files)
- FM tuner
- Voice recording
- Mad i/o and recording capabilities (line in/out, optical in/out)
What stands out is that, asides from the Karma's ethernet port, the iRiver's advantages are hardware-based, while the Karma's are software, meaning there's a good chance of the iRiver gaining some of them as well later through a firmware upgrade (of course, I wouldn't count on it, but it's something to be considered). Other than that, it basically depends on what you need it for.
So I assume that if UT2003 had come with an ATi instead of an nVidia splash screen, you would have had no problem with it? Ergo it's not the advertisement itself you dislike, but rather the fact that it's for a company you're irrationally biased against. (Note that I am in no way advocating the nVidia splash screen, but going out of your way to edit it to ATi out of sheer fanboyism is even worse.)
Think of them as keyboard shortcuts for the mouse. And the fact that 'normal' users haven't heard of it is exactly why it needs to be done. They make life easier.
One game you should definitely check out is Escape Velocity: Nova; I haven't actually tried it yet, but if it's anything like the original, then it's better than 99% of games out there, shareware or not. If only there were an MMO version... :)
Think of them as being for your mouse what keyboard shortcuts are for your keyboard. They make life easier.
so does anyone know if there's any limitations on the size of this thing? It doesn't seem to mention needing critical mass or anything of the sort, so is there any reason (aside from maintenance) we couldn't scale this type of reactor down even more and use it as a battery, and have a semi-big one power your home, and tiny ones for portable devices?
It's just a translation error so I don't know if it counts, but if it does, then it beats all the rest hands down.
Open source software is a means and not an end, so if better/more cost-effective software can be created through commercial means, then it doesn't at all matter whether or not a competing, inferior product was created through open source. That said, the way things currently stand, there are precious few areas where commercial software has the advantage (off the top of my head, these are games, Mac OS X, and Opera).
Or the iRiver iHP-120 which is about as good, better because it has voice recording, FM radio (you can also record it), no DRM, and oogles of other features which I so badly don't need that I can't remember what they were, possibly worse because if you want one larger than 20GB you can't. Of course, there's nothing geekier than taking it apart and putting in a bigger one :)
with their personal server thingy? Store all your files on it, put it in your pocket, and access them wirelessly wherever you go. (As long as wherever you go has a PC to access them from, of course.)
> Of course, how old of a computer do you have? Pretty damn old. AMD K6-2 350 MHz 256MB RAM, to be exact. Dialup, too. :( (I plan on getting a new computer pretty soon, and broadband as soon as - meaning, the nanosecond - it becomes available around here.)
And for the record, I actually tried Firebird, not Mozilla, and it was quite noticeably slower than Opera 7.x (and didn't have close to as many features, quite a lot if not most of which have become indispensable for me - I could list them all here, but it would seem mildly trollish).
This is explained somewhat by the application platform stuff, but as a previous post put it, the point of a web browser isn't for it to be an application platform - this is similar to how the point of a cow isn't for it to be a goat. Or if it is, then at least it shouldn't pretend otherwise and instead actually do something to cause people to *notice* the application platform part of it. As is, it's just a web browser which is noticeably slower for a reason which isn't (noticeable).
What they really need to work on is the speed and the bloat. You might not notice it if you're used to IE, but after using Opera ever since I've found out about it, having to endure something as slow as Mozilla causes me large varieties of pain which may or may not include the physical kind.