I haven't heard those artifacts with MP3s since Xing fell into the dust and people started using the LAME encoder. I don't care about formats too much, so I keep my music in MP3. I like to choose my player for my media, not have my media choose my player. iTunes is pretty good.
Naah, it's not a media conspiracy. MP3 software was everywhere when OGG started up. Many people didn't want to convert from one lossy format to another, or have a media library of mixed formats, or both. Those "many people" turned out to be "most people", and so MP3 stayed, and OGG slipped off into the realm of those distributing playing software with the OGGs, such as the game developers you speak of. Everyone has an mp3 player. Everyone has had one on their computer since the late 90s. I still don't have an OGG player.
What really gets my goat is the massive mutli-million-dollar cathedrals. Couldn't that money help the poor? Or did Jesus advocate spending money on fancy churches? It's so blatant it's sickening, yet people are giving money hand-over-fist just to look good in their community. Religion, at best, makes people do the right thing for the wrong reason. It's not helping anything.
Scientology is laughed out of most countries. In the US, though, they managed to get recognised as a religion. They only managed to do that in the US.
So anything that claims to be a religion is automatically one? So if Al Qaida said they are a religion, they have to be respected as such? Is that really how your brain works?:)
Linux is not ready for the desktop. You acknowledged it yourself. "The next version of..." and "coming along" means it's not ready NOW. Linux isn't even ready for the desktop, and people are wondering why it's not being lapped up by everyone? Until a user doesn't have to make compromises to switch OS, they're not going to switch. People switch between OS X and XP because the two are eerily similar in many ways, and their major differences are in how people interract with their data. Linux is something completely different. Its disparate roots means there is no conformity across applications, drivers, utilities, whatever. It all adds up to a messy experience, fraught with "TODO:" and "Get our latest version from CVS and compile it to do what you want". You NEVER see that on XP or OS X, and until that's the case with Linux, it's going to stay *exactly* where it is. Linux, at the moment, is for people who like to tinker with their computer, in the same way as collectible cars are tinkered with by their owners. Yes, they're cars, and they can drive around, but the real appeal to the owner is not just their practicality, but getting under the hood and making it *their* car. Linux is great at being owned by the owner - it can be customised to the most finite degree, which is great for lots of folks. It's just not good for the other 98% of the desktop users out there, who don't give a rat's ass if their office documents are saved in an open spec, or how much microsoft sucks. They want to use their computers, and OS X and XP offers them an easier ride to doing a lot more things. It's no mystery. Advocates are not the solution. A coherent plan, lots and lots of developers, information architects, interface architects, years of development time, years of testing, and about $50bn to pay hardware and software companies to give a damn about your fledgling operating system is required, and that's not going to happen.
Seriously mate, get a fucking clue. Vista works fine for other graphics cards - the problem is with nVidia. nVidia even released drivers that fixed the problems of most users a day after Vista was released. Unless nVidia has access to the Vist source code, wrote a patch, and pushed it to Windows Update, the problem was in their drivers and not Vista.
I find all this very strange. I installed Vista RC1 on my PC, and it worked fine. Drivers for every piece of hardware were either included on the DVD image, or from windows update. Including my nVidia card, which worked brilliantly. weird.
Appealing to the lowest common denominator should never be encouraged. She wrote schlock fantasy, obviously targetted it at children (in a patronising fashion), and laughed as everyone lapped it up, seemingly oblivious to the contrived nature of its creation. She's the literary Britney Spears. yay her.
I got my wife one of those XPS 17" notebooks. The first thing I did was turn off all those ridiculous LEDs. They're great notebooks - they have better screens than the 17" apple notebooks, faster hard disks, and better graphics cards too.
So linux, on its own, can never succeed in toppling microsoft? That it'll require a massive fuck-up from the beast, or some radical opening of all their proprietary secrets, AND a massive investment in open-source development in order to remove MS from the office place?
Just because it could be misused is no reason to not adopt otherwise useful technology. We should instead work on making it impossible to be misused. It would be like banning a drug because the doctors administering it are too poorly trained to administer it safely all the time - in that rather rambing example, shouldn't we train the doctors, instead of limiting what help they can give? It's the same with technology, or in fact any social aparatus that can affect others. The police force for another example - the cops have demonstrated over the years that they are prone to being corrupted. Does that mean we should erradicate the police force, or work to make it better?
I just slipstream my XP with drivers for my machine, so it's not required. It takes about 20 minutes in total, and using the right application, you can strip out parts you don't want installed, giving you a tiny XP unattended install, with all your drivers and software ready to go. Rebuilding takes about 30 minutes.
It's to make sure the downloads aren't watchable any further than their terrestrial broadcasts. They are required to do everything they can to protect their broadcasts, and at the same time to ensure access to them by the public. They have to use DRM, as it's there. Suggesting it's anything to do with Microsoft is ridiculous, as there is no evidence what-so-ever to support such a claim.
I'm seriously not trolling - I read every word of your post and I'm commenting out of sheer curiosity.
The iPhone does work, but only for the things Apple wants you to do on it. And you can't fit an entire phone book, calendar and notes on your current phones? Did you buy them in 1998? I've got a free W810i, which is far from a smart phone, and even that can keep every bit of information I need on it. Any smartphone out there can do the same, and offer everything else you need. Broken antennas? Again, are you still in the late 90s? I've never, EVER had a phone with a broken battery cover (or any physical defect requiring tape), and if you can break a normal phone, the delicate iPhone will not survive very long at all. Move on and off the phone & web? Try any smart phone out there today. You've not identified a single reason to use the iPhone over any cheaper, currently available smartphone out there. I don't doubt your sincerity for one second - I really am curious as to what you do with your phones:)
Because then the dollar is worth 1/2000th of a pound, for example. Changing the zeroes after the number doesn't actually change its value in comparison to other currencies. It's just a cosmetic effect, and usually only used when the number of zeroes gets in the way. Such as the Turkish Lira a while back. You only needed a few bucks of that and you were a millionaire.
If you want to change Microsoft, become a shareholder:) That does a lot more than just spiting yourself and using Linux. Microsoft won't notice 100 people ditching XP, but they will notice 100 very loud shareholders at the AGM.
Windows doesn't deliberately break their software. They just stop supporting it. Considering support for Linux software doesn't exist in any meaningful sense (unless you pay for it, which also has a limited support shelf-life, akin to Windows), and support for OSX dies out after a while, I can't see your point. Sure, Microsoft is larger, but they're not doing anything different. Their anti-competative judgements are borne from their strength in the market, not simply down to what they're doing. They're doing the same damned thing as other companies, it's just far more noticeable.
I've never felt "locked in" to Microsoft, any more than I feel "locked in" to not eating poop. It has everything I've ever wanted, and the alternative offers a much degraded experience.
I guess some people don't give a damn about the "bad things" Microsoft has done, as they ultimately delivered the most widely-adopted OS ever, with the most widely-supported hardware and software base ever.
Thanks for the tips! It still doesn't make all GUI elements keyboard-accessible, though, which is a show-stopper for me. Having to go back to the mouse just to move the focus to the next element, then go back to the keyboard, makes working much harder.
Oh yes, and some OSX GUI elements don't accept being tabbed to, so you can't change them using the keyboard. Drop-down menues spring to mind. That's a deal breaker.
Morality is not enough to force people to change their ways. They see the "injustices" of Microsoft as comparable to any other injustices by any other company. Heck, the US government has done far more fucked-up things than Microsoft, and by your logic all Americans should move to Canada.
It's not the applications in general that are the problem, but the OS itself. The alt-tab doesn't show individual documents open in an application, and launching applications can't be done as swiftly as the windows+r shortcut. I use alt-tab more than I use a mouse, and even the alt-tab replacements that are similar in functionality to Windows's aren't as quick. I'm not trolling - I worked at a design agency as a PHP contractor, and they put me on a G5. I used OSX for 8 hours every day for 6 weeks, and that was the major problem I had. I have no problem admitting good points about operating systems - I'm no fanboy.
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I haven't heard those artifacts with MP3s since Xing fell into the dust and people started using the LAME encoder. I don't care about formats too much, so I keep my music in MP3. I like to choose my player for my media, not have my media choose my player. iTunes is pretty good.
Naah, it's not a media conspiracy. MP3 software was everywhere when OGG started up. Many people didn't want to convert from one lossy format to another, or have a media library of mixed formats, or both. Those "many people" turned out to be "most people", and so MP3 stayed, and OGG slipped off into the realm of those distributing playing software with the OGGs, such as the game developers you speak of. Everyone has an mp3 player. Everyone has had one on their computer since the late 90s. I still don't have an OGG player.
What really gets my goat is the massive mutli-million-dollar cathedrals. Couldn't that money help the poor? Or did Jesus advocate spending money on fancy churches? It's so blatant it's sickening, yet people are giving money hand-over-fist just to look good in their community. Religion, at best, makes people do the right thing for the wrong reason. It's not helping anything.
At least the Friday police wear hawaiian shirts and are frequently drunk. It's the Monday police you gotta watch out for.
Scientology is laughed out of most countries. In the US, though, they managed to get recognised as a religion. They only managed to do that in the US.
:)
So anything that claims to be a religion is automatically one? So if Al Qaida said they are a religion, they have to be respected as such? Is that really how your brain works?
Linux is not ready for the desktop. You acknowledged it yourself. "The next version of..." and "coming along" means it's not ready NOW. Linux isn't even ready for the desktop, and people are wondering why it's not being lapped up by everyone? Until a user doesn't have to make compromises to switch OS, they're not going to switch. People switch between OS X and XP because the two are eerily similar in many ways, and their major differences are in how people interract with their data. Linux is something completely different. Its disparate roots means there is no conformity across applications, drivers, utilities, whatever. It all adds up to a messy experience, fraught with "TODO:" and "Get our latest version from CVS and compile it to do what you want". You NEVER see that on XP or OS X, and until that's the case with Linux, it's going to stay *exactly* where it is. Linux, at the moment, is for people who like to tinker with their computer, in the same way as collectible cars are tinkered with by their owners. Yes, they're cars, and they can drive around, but the real appeal to the owner is not just their practicality, but getting under the hood and making it *their* car. Linux is great at being owned by the owner - it can be customised to the most finite degree, which is great for lots of folks. It's just not good for the other 98% of the desktop users out there, who don't give a rat's ass if their office documents are saved in an open spec, or how much microsoft sucks. They want to use their computers, and OS X and XP offers them an easier ride to doing a lot more things. It's no mystery. Advocates are not the solution. A coherent plan, lots and lots of developers, information architects, interface architects, years of development time, years of testing, and about $50bn to pay hardware and software companies to give a damn about your fledgling operating system is required, and that's not going to happen.
Score: 5, Absolute bullshit
Seriously mate, get a fucking clue. Vista works fine for other graphics cards - the problem is with nVidia. nVidia even released drivers that fixed the problems of most users a day after Vista was released. Unless nVidia has access to the Vist source code, wrote a patch, and pushed it to Windows Update, the problem was in their drivers and not Vista.
I find all this very strange. I installed Vista RC1 on my PC, and it worked fine. Drivers for every piece of hardware were either included on the DVD image, or from windows update. Including my nVidia card, which worked brilliantly. weird.
Appealing to the lowest common denominator should never be encouraged. She wrote schlock fantasy, obviously targetted it at children (in a patronising fashion), and laughed as everyone lapped it up, seemingly oblivious to the contrived nature of its creation. She's the literary Britney Spears. yay her.
I got my wife one of those XPS 17" notebooks. The first thing I did was turn off all those ridiculous LEDs. They're great notebooks - they have better screens than the 17" apple notebooks, faster hard disks, and better graphics cards too.
So linux, on its own, can never succeed in toppling microsoft? That it'll require a massive fuck-up from the beast, or some radical opening of all their proprietary secrets, AND a massive investment in open-source development in order to remove MS from the office place?
Just because it could be misused is no reason to not adopt otherwise useful technology. We should instead work on making it impossible to be misused. It would be like banning a drug because the doctors administering it are too poorly trained to administer it safely all the time - in that rather rambing example, shouldn't we train the doctors, instead of limiting what help they can give? It's the same with technology, or in fact any social aparatus that can affect others. The police force for another example - the cops have demonstrated over the years that they are prone to being corrupted. Does that mean we should erradicate the police force, or work to make it better?
I just slipstream my XP with drivers for my machine, so it's not required. It takes about 20 minutes in total, and using the right application, you can strip out parts you don't want installed, giving you a tiny XP unattended install, with all your drivers and software ready to go. Rebuilding takes about 30 minutes.
It's to make sure the downloads aren't watchable any further than their terrestrial broadcasts. They are required to do everything they can to protect their broadcasts, and at the same time to ensure access to them by the public. They have to use DRM, as it's there. Suggesting it's anything to do with Microsoft is ridiculous, as there is no evidence what-so-ever to support such a claim.
I'm seriously not trolling - I read every word of your post and I'm commenting out of sheer curiosity. The iPhone does work, but only for the things Apple wants you to do on it. And you can't fit an entire phone book, calendar and notes on your current phones? Did you buy them in 1998? I've got a free W810i, which is far from a smart phone, and even that can keep every bit of information I need on it. Any smartphone out there can do the same, and offer everything else you need. Broken antennas? Again, are you still in the late 90s? I've never, EVER had a phone with a broken battery cover (or any physical defect requiring tape), and if you can break a normal phone, the delicate iPhone will not survive very long at all. Move on and off the phone & web? Try any smart phone out there today. You've not identified a single reason to use the iPhone over any cheaper, currently available smartphone out there. I don't doubt your sincerity for one second - I really am curious as to what you do with your phones :)
But if you unlock it, you lose internet access and MMS! Oh no!!!11eleven
You can buy polonium 210 on the internet, btw.
Oh, by "libertarian" you mean selfish republican. Gotcha.
Because then the dollar is worth 1/2000th of a pound, for example. Changing the zeroes after the number doesn't actually change its value in comparison to other currencies. It's just a cosmetic effect, and usually only used when the number of zeroes gets in the way. Such as the Turkish Lira a while back. You only needed a few bucks of that and you were a millionaire.
If you want to change Microsoft, become a shareholder :) That does a lot more than just spiting yourself and using Linux. Microsoft won't notice 100 people ditching XP, but they will notice 100 very loud shareholders at the AGM.
:-P
Windows doesn't deliberately break their software. They just stop supporting it. Considering support for Linux software doesn't exist in any meaningful sense (unless you pay for it, which also has a limited support shelf-life, akin to Windows), and support for OSX dies out after a while, I can't see your point. Sure, Microsoft is larger, but they're not doing anything different. Their anti-competative judgements are borne from their strength in the market, not simply down to what they're doing. They're doing the same damned thing as other companies, it's just far more noticeable.
I've never felt "locked in" to Microsoft, any more than I feel "locked in" to not eating poop. It has everything I've ever wanted, and the alternative offers a much degraded experience.
I guess some people don't give a damn about the "bad things" Microsoft has done, as they ultimately delivered the most widely-adopted OS ever, with the most widely-supported hardware and software base ever.
To sum up: meh.
Nope. That doesn't enable all controls, just more controls. It's not well labeled. Drop-down boxes still didn't work for me.
Thanks for the tips! It still doesn't make all GUI elements keyboard-accessible, though, which is a show-stopper for me. Having to go back to the mouse just to move the focus to the next element, then go back to the keyboard, makes working much harder.
Oh yes, and some OSX GUI elements don't accept being tabbed to, so you can't change them using the keyboard. Drop-down menues spring to mind. That's a deal breaker.
Morality is not enough to force people to change their ways. They see the "injustices" of Microsoft as comparable to any other injustices by any other company. Heck, the US government has done far more fucked-up things than Microsoft, and by your logic all Americans should move to Canada.
It's not the applications in general that are the problem, but the OS itself. The alt-tab doesn't show individual documents open in an application, and launching applications can't be done as swiftly as the windows+r shortcut. I use alt-tab more than I use a mouse, and even the alt-tab replacements that are similar in functionality to Windows's aren't as quick. I'm not trolling - I worked at a design agency as a PHP contractor, and they put me on a G5. I used OSX for 8 hours every day for 6 weeks, and that was the major problem I had. I have no problem admitting good points about operating systems - I'm no fanboy.