AHA, I see a fatal flaw in there plan, just use two large rotors, which when turned up to speed act as a flyweel that can be engauged with some gearing to spin a smaller rotor
Seriously though, this is a bloddy difficult contest, I think the best bet is burning dead bodies as mentioned earlier...
Beethoven was not paid for the dozens of times other performers played his works. However- because dozens and dozens of performers were playing his works, he was paid a very tidy sum to play live, at massive concerts.
This is how things used to work; now- they stop anyone from touching the song unless they pay- which means that only certain songs/composers can rise to the top of there fields; and all the folk who would play a modern beethoven's work (because it's well known) have to make up there own stuff, further dividing the spectrum
As for how an artist can get compensated when you, or I download an MP3 try the following;
we download, we listen, we like, we give feedback- the artist is encouraged and sells sheet music (Since the public could just as eaily copy your music, matters well give them the oportunity to pay and copy it right!), cups, shirts, low price burned CD's from his/her website, and finally goes on tour in your neighborhood: You purchase just one of the above, and the artist most likely makes more money then they would have had you purchased ten of there CD's through the existing RIAA type consortiums. If you and 500 of your friends buy all of the above, the artist is doing well, and if you and 1000 others buy all of the above every year for 20 years, the artists has made a carrier and can retire, if it's 10000 others, they can retire in 2 years, or work for 20 and then be rich.
Scenario 2: You download, you listen, you don't like- you buy none of the artists crap; the artist has not lost anything: The RIAA is not charging him 40,000 a year for advertising; you tell your friends that you didne't like it- maby one of them tries it, and dose, above situation happens.
Why would they have to miss the romatic note in the cover?; if e-books are ever implimeted properly (IE; PS/html files, that you can add too) you'll be able to write in them, highlight things, etc.
Of course as mentioned elsewhere, the current e-book makers don't WANT it to work that way. In a few years however, the line between 'old tablet PC' and 'ebook reader' will blurr, and then they'll have no choice but to make them do everything least, they loose to old tablet PCs.
I have an old AMD-k6 running linux, right now; however it spent a few weeks shelved while I upgraded some things on my main computers and needed to canabalize parts.
While it was in storage my cat decided that the computers interior would make an ideal litter box, and he peed on the network card- when I finally came to turn the computer on I noticed the horrid smell, and fused shut with rust/salts network card.
My solution was to windex the computer throughly until the card was free, and the board was clean, then apply rubbing alcohol to evaporate the water in the windex, then apply a thin layre of WD-40 to the entire thing to drive off the water. I turned the computer on immediately to find it working.
It's called natural touch because it has the 'split' down the middel of the keys, allowing your hands to rest in a more 'natural' position while typing. I find that the natural touch (or ergonomic depending on who you talk to) setup dose really make there seem to be more space on the keybaord, because your hands are not crammed against each other while typing.
Much as you probabally don't want to hear the word microsoft: A microsoft natural touch keyboard will do exactly what you want it to do- it's FULL size (most modern keyboards have had there keys reduced in size by about 25%), just like the old IBM keyboards.
Another good option is a belkin natural touch; I have one of those too, the belkin is lighter and also opperates as a USB hub, which is nice, but the tactile responce on the microsoft keyboard is excelent, it makes a good and proper 'clikety-click' with each keypress, which I find allows me to type faster for whatever reason (possibly because with the very audable click of each key my brain dose not have to process weither or not it applied enough pressure.)
Outside of natural touch keyboards, the word of the day seems to be, smaller, cheaper, breaks easier...
emerge gaim
apt-get gaim
yum gaim
Download the gaim.RPM, doubleclick
Download the gaim.DEB, doubleclick
Somehow, this seems easier then
download AIM, Download ICQ, Download MSN, download yahoo, doubleclick all 4, go through 4 differnet click through agreements, then run 4 seperate programs
Download Trillian, doubleclick, go through click-through agreement.
as for a printer, on linux:
install cups (see above, replace GAIM with CUPS) plug printer in, open web browser, type 127.0.0.1:631, click printers, click add printer, print.
On windows:
plug printer in, insert install disk, follow on screen instructions, restart computer, print.
In this resepct, windows dose have the advantage, however, most printer companies (though no fault of windows personally) like to install 'monitor software' (keeping track of how much ink you have left, and how many pages you've printed...) which eats computer resources that you'd rather use for anything else when your not printing things.
This is great news, bethsheda's existing games have allwase been very interesting, and had top of the line push the modern graphics card but don't obsolete it, graphics; having them do a fallout would be amazing.
Now, I've seen some negatives to this concept, but I think they SHOULD just use the morrowind engine, with some updates (espically in hit location based dammage; though that could be as simple as assigning a hit location and then taking a negative to hit, but positive to dammage and other effects on a hit), and a new graphic set, there terribly in depth magic system could easily be changed to reflect a 'build-technology' ability, with 'magic' being replcaed by 'battery power' for your myrad of interesting devices (no need for fireballs since there will be guns; I'm more thinking of light sources, battery opperated weapons like the needler and gauss gun, jetpacks!, etc)
While this is a blantent rip off of how G-mail works, it's still a really good system for tracking correspondances.
Allow an option to track e-mails by sender, but rather then simply list all messages from that sender from most to least recent, have each indivudal exchange with that sender have it's own 'folder' you can browse through, which also inclues your replys to those e-mails.
For instance- let's say I was talking to my friend #2 (and for this excersize, I am #1), over a period of 6 mothes, over two different topics(a, and b respectively, and all we did with those topics was use the reply function (making it easy to process), and we had last talked about topic a, but started talking about topic b first; it would look something like this
Then clicking on b or a would open all of the correspondance we had sent each other with respect to that e-mail, both there e-mails and my replies to those e-mails.
I think this would be phenominally useful, for some e-mailers (myself included)
I think many of the people replying to your post should spend special attention to the last line of it.
I ALMOST made the same mistake- but figured; hey I should read everything he has to say before responding; and what do you know- his post is sarcastic, and brilliantly so!
Cheers on a post which is causing a lot of the clueless to respond in anger.
I don't know about your bank- but my bank sent out a letter saying that they were no longer going to circulate paper in any means, unless requested, in order to cut costs.
All my banking is done online, and the last thing I had mailed to me was a copy of a cashed cheque that I specifically requested, and I got it via e-mail.
I'd like all of my financial transactions to go that way.
YEA, now all my devices can choke miserabally as they are constantly broadcasting identification and status flags to eveyone else in the network!
Seriously though- the apple protocol is nice for SMALL networks (no more then lets say 5 devices), and dose make things braindead easy to set up, but there is a cost in that it gets really slow when you start getting lots of devices using it. So if you like it, use it, but be wary of the costs of it's use.
I'm betting this will come down to- you say there's something wrong with your laptop, they swap your hard disk into another refirbished laptop of your model and send it back- it still dosen't work; they try it one more time, then you loose the hard drive.
Somewhere along the line a tech will look at all the 'dead' laptops and find the working ones, as well as fix easy to repair ones, and lable them refirbished for other people to get on exchange.
But all UPS will be doing is swapping hard disks- you grandmother, while drunk, could do that.
still better then having the powder room hit where dozens of bags of compressed explosives used in firing conventional rounds are stored; but it is going to be messy.
If the market would not bear any price for PS2s, but there was a significant market for free PS2s, then sony would most likely release them, and then recoup the costs of the item in the form of advertising on/in the unit, and by charging developers more per disk.
Much like how at one point it was costing microsoft money to sell the X-box (not the case any more I imagine), so they passed on the cost to the devlopers instead; since lots of people were buying X-boxs, because they were superior hardware that was competitively prices, lots of developers were willing to pay there pound of flesh to get in on the X-box market, but many were not; hence X-box gets all the big titles; but misses a lot of the 'cool' alternative games that you'll see released to but one platform.
While I too enjoyed voyager; I would have to say that in the grand scheme of blunders, selfishness, and generaly stuboorness endangering the 'crew'- janeway was the worst captain. Examples:
1-On my; something is attacking and killing the borg, we'd better give the borg weapons that will help them kill these things before trying to make first contact with them and finding out that they just don't like the borg and the rest of the galaxy is fine
2-Hey Q, you say you'll send the whole ship home, and all I have to do is have sex with you, once? Naw, I think I'll let crew members die over the umpteen years it's going to take us, instead of sacrificing my dignity for the good of the many
3-Lets mess with the timeline in order to get the crew home, 'ahead of schedule' even though it completely anhialates a future that diden't seem so bad.
It's funny, because I watched voyager the first time, and the glaring problems with the janeway charecter did not stand out to me; only upon watching replays did I start to realise what an assanine charecter she was.
The Akamai attack, while huge is all speculation- there's nothing really 'concrete' to report; save that it happened, or seemed to happen... Also the attack only lasted two hours, those were all probabally contributing factors to an Akami story not being accepted (and maby, just maby, all the submitters made really bad posts!).
That said- I think an Akamai story should have made post. But Thief 3 is a great game in a lineage of great games, your ignorance to its existance is, I apologise, irrelivant. Its important to nerds, so it makes slashdot (as I agree that the Akamai story should have)
Background: The Thief engine was used sucessfuly in thief 1 and thief 2, which were first person shooters that focused NOT on combat, and killing (in fact your charecter would loose against individual opponents quite easily), but on stealth, guile and tricking the (very inteligent) AI. The same theif engine was used in System shock 1 and 2 (with some modifications to allow for level gaining), since you've never heard of thief I won't expect you to have heard of those either; they were one of the first FPS/RPG hybrid games, and focused on a very intence storyline; that was, damned horrifying to play- Another hallmark of both thief and system shock, perhaps an artifact of an eninge that dose not focuse on combat, is that they are SCARY to play- your heart beats faster, and you find yourself holding your breath, wondering if that enemy will miss you. Or in system shock, you turn the corner only to walk head on to some horrid mutant beastie that will drop you in a few seconds unless you think fast- NOW!
They are very good games, and thief three represents what could possibly represent a resurection of the 'thief type' engine, allowing for more 'thinking FPS' games. I kinda wish that the Bethsheda softworks guys would license the morrowind engine/editor for that same reason.
While these tests do indeed show that using Java is faster then GCC (which is largely not processor optimised) code written by a java expert with very littel understanding of GCC, it really dosen't 'prove' anything for several reasons.
1-GCC is not as optimised as other C compilers
2-He's a java expert, but a poor C programer
3-his implimentations as a result are better on Java, and worse on C
So, what I think needs to be done- is for somone to grab the most efficent implimentations (on java and C), send them to him, and ask him to run the test again, so that this way we skip the optimization problems
As for the GCC problem- I think that GCC is more 'ideal' due to the following scenario- code written in GCC is, at least in theroy, portable to multiple arcetectures- much like a java program; the dammage to performance for that factor should cancel out; IE- were testing two multi-plantform languages, not a platform specific one against a multi-platform.
These opinions are not my own- I have blatently copied them from others in the thread, but it should help people see what the argument is.
I can't imagine that all these new standards will work with many existing DVD players.
Of course the new disks won't play in your old player- they store about 5 times the data in the same ammount of space(20GB per side compared to 4.7GB per side)! That's the whole point, they needed a new recording format using a narrower laser beam to cram more data into the same space.
Thinkning that the old player shold be able to play that is like thinking that an old 4x CD player should be able to play DVDs
When you decide it's time for you, personally, to start purchasing HD-DVDs then you can buy a new HD-DVD player; probabally for around $120; until then only expand your collection in the existing DVD range that your player can play.
If america starts releasing specialised BSD software with the restriction that it can only be used in the USA; angry finnish programers will release all there code specifically that it cannot be used in the USA; it's not a good soluiton.
Having said that- I do think that a BSD styled release would be best- this way companies searching for a profit stream can use it as well; but have to at least admit that they did.
you must not have picked up a controller i the last- 10 years....
I can't think of a controller save for the orriginal nintendo, or the turbo graphix 16, that I felt was 'too small', specifically I think X-box controller are TOO BIG.
I can do a quick comparison- the button seperation on a keyboard (which you infer is comfortable by saying that a keyboard and mouse are a good way to play games), is roughly 2cm (from middel of button to middel of button); On a gamecube, button seperation is never less then 2.5cm (from middel of button to middel of button), PS2 has it's L/Rs seperated by 1.5cm, but there thumb buttons are all 3cm apart. X-box controllers, despite being huge, actually have buttonst aht are only spaced by ~3.5 cm. (working from memory on Xbox)
The span of my hands in a 'game arch' (word I just made up: let you hands go to naturally curved positions and put them together to form an 'M' with thumbs overtop) is literally half of the width of the PS2 controller, and Gamecube controller, and about 1/3 that of the Xbox controller (damn that thing is HUGE!)
So this leaves me to believe that:
either you just like to complain,
or you don't know how to hold a controller
Or you having held one since the early nintendo days
Slashdot Mirror
AHA, I see a fatal flaw in there plan, just use two large rotors, which when turned up to speed act as a flyweel that can be engauged with some gearing to spin a smaller rotor
Seriously though, this is a bloddy difficult contest, I think the best bet is burning dead bodies as mentioned earlier...
Beethoven was not paid for the dozens of times other performers played his works. However- because dozens and dozens of performers were playing his works, he was paid a very tidy sum to play live, at massive concerts.
This is how things used to work; now- they stop anyone from touching the song unless they pay- which means that only certain songs/composers can rise to the top of there fields; and all the folk who would play a modern beethoven's work (because it's well known) have to make up there own stuff, further dividing the spectrum
As for how an artist can get compensated when you, or I download an MP3 try the following;
we download, we listen, we like, we give feedback- the artist is encouraged and sells sheet music (Since the public could just as eaily copy your music, matters well give them the oportunity to pay and copy it right!), cups, shirts, low price burned CD's from his/her website, and finally goes on tour in your neighborhood: You purchase just one of the above, and the artist most likely makes more money then they would have had you purchased ten of there CD's through the existing RIAA type consortiums. If you and 500 of your friends buy all of the above, the artist is doing well, and if you and 1000 others buy all of the above every year for 20 years, the artists has made a carrier and can retire, if it's 10000 others, they can retire in 2 years, or work for 20 and then be rich.
Scenario 2: You download, you listen, you don't like- you buy none of the artists crap; the artist has not lost anything: The RIAA is not charging him 40,000 a year for advertising; you tell your friends that you didne't like it- maby one of them tries it, and dose, above situation happens.
Why would they have to miss the romatic note in the cover?; if e-books are ever implimeted properly (IE; PS/html files, that you can add too) you'll be able to write in them, highlight things, etc.
Of course as mentioned elsewhere, the current e-book makers don't WANT it to work that way. In a few years however, the line between 'old tablet PC' and 'ebook reader' will blurr, and then they'll have no choice but to make them do everything least, they loose to old tablet PCs.
I have an old AMD-k6 running linux, right now; however it spent a few weeks shelved while I upgraded some things on my main computers and needed to canabalize parts.
While it was in storage my cat decided that the computers interior would make an ideal litter box, and he peed on the network card- when I finally came to turn the computer on I noticed the horrid smell, and fused shut with rust/salts network card.
My solution was to windex the computer throughly until the card was free, and the board was clean, then apply rubbing alcohol to evaporate the water in the windex, then apply a thin layre of WD-40 to the entire thing to drive off the water. I turned the computer on immediately to find it working.
following your link, there stock seems to be back up now...
It's called natural touch because it has the 'split' down the middel of the keys, allowing your hands to rest in a more 'natural' position while typing. I find that the natural touch (or ergonomic depending on who you talk to) setup dose really make there seem to be more space on the keybaord, because your hands are not crammed against each other while typing.
Much as you probabally don't want to hear the word microsoft: A microsoft natural touch keyboard will do exactly what you want it to do- it's FULL size (most modern keyboards have had there keys reduced in size by about 25%), just like the old IBM keyboards.
Another good option is a belkin natural touch; I have one of those too, the belkin is lighter and also opperates as a USB hub, which is nice, but the tactile responce on the microsoft keyboard is excelent, it makes a good and proper 'clikety-click' with each keypress, which I find allows me to type faster for whatever reason (possibly because with the very audable click of each key my brain dose not have to process weither or not it applied enough pressure.)
Outside of natural touch keyboards, the word of the day seems to be, smaller, cheaper, breaks easier...
emerge gaim .RPM, doubleclick .DEB, doubleclick
apt-get gaim
yum gaim
Download the gaim
Download the gaim
Somehow, this seems easier then
download AIM, Download ICQ, Download MSN, download yahoo, doubleclick all 4, go through 4 differnet click through agreements, then run 4 seperate programs
Download Trillian, doubleclick, go through click-through agreement.
as for a printer, on linux:
install cups (see above, replace GAIM with CUPS) plug printer in, open web browser, type 127.0.0.1:631, click printers, click add printer, print.
On windows:
plug printer in, insert install disk, follow on screen instructions, restart computer, print.
In this resepct, windows dose have the advantage, however, most printer companies (though no fault of windows personally) like to install 'monitor software' (keeping track of how much ink you have left, and how many pages you've printed...) which eats computer resources that you'd rather use for anything else when your not printing things.
This is great news, bethsheda's existing games have allwase been very interesting, and had top of the line push the modern graphics card but don't obsolete it, graphics; having them do a fallout would be amazing.
Now, I've seen some negatives to this concept, but I think they SHOULD just use the morrowind engine, with some updates (espically in hit location based dammage; though that could be as simple as assigning a hit location and then taking a negative to hit, but positive to dammage and other effects on a hit), and a new graphic set, there terribly in depth magic system could easily be changed to reflect a 'build-technology' ability, with 'magic' being replcaed by 'battery power' for your myrad of interesting devices (no need for fireballs since there will be guns; I'm more thinking of light sources, battery opperated weapons like the needler and gauss gun, jetpacks!, etc)
While this is a blantent rip off of how G-mail works, it's still a really good system for tracking correspondances.
Allow an option to track e-mails by sender, but rather then simply list all messages from that sender from most to least recent, have each indivudal exchange with that sender have it's own 'folder' you can browse through, which also inclues your replys to those e-mails.
For instance- let's say I was talking to my friend #2 (and for this excersize, I am #1), over a period of 6 mothes, over two different topics(a, and b respectively, and all we did with those topics was use the reply function (making it easy to process), and we had last talked about topic a, but started talking about topic b first; it would look something like this
#2
----b (2/2/2001), (8/8/2004)
----a (4/4/2002), (9/9/2004)
Then clicking on b or a would open all of the correspondance we had sent each other with respect to that e-mail, both there e-mails and my replies to those e-mails.
I think this would be phenominally useful, for some e-mailers (myself included)
I think many of the people replying to your post should spend special attention to the last line of it.
I ALMOST made the same mistake- but figured; hey I should read everything he has to say before responding; and what do you know- his post is sarcastic, and brilliantly so!
Cheers on a post which is causing a lot of the clueless to respond in anger.
I don't know about your bank- but my bank sent out a letter saying that they were no longer going to circulate paper in any means, unless requested, in order to cut costs.
All my banking is done online, and the last thing I had mailed to me was a copy of a cashed cheque that I specifically requested, and I got it via e-mail.
I'd like all of my financial transactions to go that way.
YEA, now all my devices can choke miserabally as they are constantly broadcasting identification and status flags to eveyone else in the network!
Seriously though- the apple protocol is nice for SMALL networks (no more then lets say 5 devices), and dose make things braindead easy to set up, but there is a cost in that it gets really slow when you start getting lots of devices using it. So if you like it, use it, but be wary of the costs of it's use.
I'm betting this will come down to- you say there's something wrong with your laptop, they swap your hard disk into another refirbished laptop of your model and send it back- it still dosen't work; they try it one more time, then you loose the hard drive.
Somewhere along the line a tech will look at all the 'dead' laptops and find the working ones, as well as fix easy to repair ones, and lable them refirbished for other people to get on exchange.
But all UPS will be doing is swapping hard disks- you grandmother, while drunk, could do that.
I ran google.ca through the validator and got 37 errors, so I dbought the effectiveness of this utility.
still better then having the powder room hit where dozens of bags of compressed explosives used in firing conventional rounds are stored; but it is going to be messy.
yes/no
If the market would not bear any price for PS2s, but there was a significant market for free PS2s, then sony would most likely release them, and then recoup the costs of the item in the form of advertising on/in the unit, and by charging developers more per disk.
Much like how at one point it was costing microsoft money to sell the X-box (not the case any more I imagine), so they passed on the cost to the devlopers instead; since lots of people were buying X-boxs, because they were superior hardware that was competitively prices, lots of developers were willing to pay there pound of flesh to get in on the X-box market, but many were not; hence X-box gets all the big titles; but misses a lot of the 'cool' alternative games that you'll see released to but one platform.
Say as long as nice people are handing out G-mail invites under the guise of testing, can I get one too?
strider_starslayer@hotmail.com
While I too enjoyed voyager; I would have to say that in the grand scheme of blunders, selfishness, and generaly stuboorness endangering the 'crew'- janeway was the worst captain. Examples:
1-On my; something is attacking and killing the borg, we'd better give the borg weapons that will help them kill these things before trying to make first contact with them and finding out that they just don't like the borg and the rest of the galaxy is fine
2-Hey Q, you say you'll send the whole ship home, and all I have to do is have sex with you, once? Naw, I think I'll let crew members die over the umpteen years it's going to take us, instead of sacrificing my dignity for the good of the many
3-Lets mess with the timeline in order to get the crew home, 'ahead of schedule' even though it completely anhialates a future that diden't seem so bad.
It's funny, because I watched voyager the first time, and the glaring problems with the janeway charecter did not stand out to me; only upon watching replays did I start to realise what an assanine charecter she was.
It has been licensed for use in some non-US prisons for riot control.
So now we know how else the iraqie prisoners are being tortured, electro-shock delivered by water-cannon.
The Akamai attack, while huge is all speculation- there's nothing really 'concrete' to report; save that it happened, or seemed to happen... Also the attack only lasted two hours, those were all probabally contributing factors to an Akami story not being accepted (and maby, just maby, all the submitters made really bad posts!).
That said- I think an Akamai story should have made post. But Thief 3 is a great game in a lineage of great games, your ignorance to its existance is, I apologise, irrelivant. Its important to nerds, so it makes slashdot (as I agree that the Akamai story should have)
Background: The Thief engine was used sucessfuly in thief 1 and thief 2, which were first person shooters that focused NOT on combat, and killing (in fact your charecter would loose against individual opponents quite easily), but on stealth, guile and tricking the (very inteligent) AI. The same theif engine was used in System shock 1 and 2 (with some modifications to allow for level gaining), since you've never heard of thief I won't expect you to have heard of those either; they were one of the first FPS/RPG hybrid games, and focused on a very intence storyline; that was, damned horrifying to play- Another hallmark of both thief and system shock, perhaps an artifact of an eninge that dose not focuse on combat, is that they are SCARY to play- your heart beats faster, and you find yourself holding your breath, wondering if that enemy will miss you. Or in system shock, you turn the corner only to walk head on to some horrid mutant beastie that will drop you in a few seconds unless you think fast- NOW!
They are very good games, and thief three represents what could possibly represent a resurection of the 'thief type' engine, allowing for more 'thinking FPS' games. I kinda wish that the Bethsheda softworks guys would license the morrowind engine/editor for that same reason.
While these tests do indeed show that using Java is faster then GCC (which is largely not processor optimised) code written by a java expert with very littel understanding of GCC, it really dosen't 'prove' anything for several reasons.
1-GCC is not as optimised as other C compilers
2-He's a java expert, but a poor C programer
3-his implimentations as a result are better on Java, and worse on C
So, what I think needs to be done- is for somone to grab the most efficent implimentations (on java and C), send them to him, and ask him to run the test again, so that this way we skip the optimization problems
As for the GCC problem- I think that GCC is more 'ideal' due to the following scenario- code written in GCC is, at least in theroy, portable to multiple arcetectures- much like a java program; the dammage to performance for that factor should cancel out; IE- were testing two multi-plantform languages, not a platform specific one against a multi-platform.
These opinions are not my own- I have blatently copied them from others in the thread, but it should help people see what the argument is.
I can't imagine that all these new standards will work with many existing DVD players.
Of course the new disks won't play in your old player- they store about 5 times the data in the same ammount of space(20GB per side compared to 4.7GB per side)! That's the whole point, they needed a new recording format using a narrower laser beam to cram more data into the same space.
Thinkning that the old player shold be able to play that is like thinking that an old 4x CD player should be able to play DVDs
When you decide it's time for you, personally, to start purchasing HD-DVDs then you can buy a new HD-DVD player; probabally for around $120; until then only expand your collection in the existing DVD range that your player can play.
If america starts releasing specialised BSD software with the restriction that it can only be used in the USA; angry finnish programers will release all there code specifically that it cannot be used in the USA; it's not a good soluiton.
Having said that- I do think that a BSD styled release would be best- this way companies searching for a profit stream can use it as well; but have to at least admit that they did.
you must not have picked up a controller i the last- 10 years....
I can't think of a controller save for the orriginal nintendo, or the turbo graphix 16, that I felt was 'too small', specifically I think X-box controller are TOO BIG.
I can do a quick comparison- the button seperation on a keyboard (which you infer is comfortable by saying that a keyboard and mouse are a good way to play games), is roughly 2cm (from middel of button to middel of button); On a gamecube, button seperation is never less then 2.5cm (from middel of button to middel of button), PS2 has it's L/Rs seperated by 1.5cm, but there thumb buttons are all 3cm apart. X-box controllers, despite being huge, actually have buttonst aht are only spaced by ~3.5 cm. (working from memory on Xbox)
The span of my hands in a 'game arch' (word I just made up: let you hands go to naturally curved positions and put them together to form an 'M' with thumbs overtop) is literally half of the width of the PS2 controller, and Gamecube controller, and about 1/3 that of the Xbox controller (damn that thing is HUGE!)
So this leaves me to believe that:
either you just like to complain,
or you don't know how to hold a controller
Or you having held one since the early nintendo days