I'm a windows user (yeah yeah, recoil and condemn) but I've wanted to try Linux for a very long time. Here's my problem: I need to set up a network and share a printer. With Windows, almost everything is auto-detected. If I don't know how to do something, it's pretty easy to learn how. Up and running in 20 minutes.
With Linux, well... I once read a guy's explanation of how "easy" it was to do on Linux. it was something to the effect of:
I kid you not. The commands were total gibberish to me -- something I'd probably end up banging out in frustration with my fists (like, when trying to set up a network and printer on linux). Now, it's only a couple of commands, yes, but ***learning the proper commands*** and which ones to use would probably take days or weeks to do. And if anything goes wrong a year later, I'd have forgotten it all and would have to study all over again. Versus 20 minutes on Windows.
Having school + work takes up enough time already. And I don't think I'm lazy: I like exploring and learning, and computers are no exception. But you know how you always somehow procrastinate studying for exams? Well, what if you never even had to take the exam if you didn't want? What if you could always run into the arms of Microsoft?
Linux Lords: please make Linux easier to use! I'm not trolling here. I'm trying to provide feedback to where the Linux l33t gather:/. Really, what counts is not so much how easy it is to do per se, but how easy it is to learn how to do, i.e. how easy is it for a total noob? That's the real barrier. If you assume they know anything at all, you've already overlooked the real barrier to Linux's adoption.
Anyway, yeah: not ease of use, but ease of learning how to use is what's blocking Linux from this typical computer user. My $0.02.
This has been noted before by Carl Jung (see his little-known theories of "uncanniness", can't find a link) and by a robot designer in Japan (can't find link to story on/., can't find anything today!) When something vaguely resembles a human it's amusing and cute, but when it reaches a certain threshold of similarity (which is to say it looks too much like a real human) people suddenly and severely dislike it.
If you want people to like it, you have to keep pushing the similarity until people can't tell the difference anymore. Otherwise, it's like you're talking to a slightly defective human, which is very very unnerving. Imagine talking to a robot that's in every way exactly like a human, except that it stares at you and never blinks. Or every now and then it turns it's head 360 to look out the window, or bends its elbows backwards to pick something up off the ground. Freaky!
But as for me, I'm an American. I'll take free markets, decentralization, chaos, and entrepreneurship, thankyouverymuch. I prefer the invisible hand to authority.
Don't need to drag politics into this. Even worse, don't romanticize your own position.
It's not like "all Americans" = anti-authority and "everyone else on earth" = subservient slaves and worshippers of homogeneity with no independent thought.
To believe this is true is a rather dangerously simplified view of the world -- one which the authorities you profess to reject would love to maintain.
You can buy Ford, Toyota, Honda, Volks, Nissan, Pontiac, Chevy, etc. etc. etc.
You can buy Microsoft, Microsoft, Microsoft, etc.
What if all the Microsoft cars came with the same "Microsoft" pieca shit CD player, and they messed up the wires so only Microsoft CD players ran well but CD players others were hard to install and use?
It's a rock the size of a football field moving at over ***36 000 km/hr***. How do you stop something like that, besides blocking it with the earth?
And if you do, but the rock contains frozen organisms (bacteria, virus, or think Aliens) which we release, then the gift horse has become a Trojan horse!
People are accepting terrorism as the problem, rather than a symptom of the problem. They are forgetting that terrorism is not an end, but a means.
We have yet recieved an explanation of Al Quaida's intentions, except for "they hate freedom" or "they're fundamentalists" (like that explains anything at all). Al Quaida must have clearly stated their responsibility, and just as importantly *their demands*, but we haven't been told it. Maybe it was about something classified, like CIA doing something naughty in the middle east and nobody is supposed to know about it.
I think labels like that do more harm than healing. It just creates a stigma around the person.
He's just a regular guy that likes to buy stuff. That's it. He's not "suffering" anything. He said he likes it. It relieves daily stress for him, etc. Why should he need any counselling, much less medication? That's almost freaky: a personal hobby is seen as "abnormal behaviour", so pills are given to him to "cure" him of said behaviour?
Even if he *were* suffering and admitted it and said he couldn't stop himself, such labels would nevertheless do nothing. It's like observing that some guy that likes to steal and you label him a "kleptomaniac".
Well, why's he considered a 'kleptomaniac"? Because he compulsively steals.
Well, why does he compulsively steal? Because he's a kleptomaniac.
That's why I changed my major from Psychology. imho, it's still too young of a field trying to make up names and labels to develop itself, but is going a bit too far too fast to make itself important.
Yeah. If he's a spammer, he's probably trying to soften the anti-spam movement and make an impression on the public's mind: hey! some people don't mind spam! let's live with it! He's just being a crafty shrewd spam-businessman.
many car manufacturers *want* you to hear the engine noise. They actually have "sound engineers" that listen to car engines, and make recommendations on how a car should sound (engine sound is an important aspect of marketing a car).
Large trucks, mustangs and generally most other cars that are usually bought for image's sakes have sound engineers. Having a quiet engine wouldn't match the cocky arrogant attitude these cars are trying to sell (apologies to owners of these cars).
I wouldn't expect quiet engines from these cars because they wouldn't do it even if they could.
Well, as with all wave dynamics, if you hit a wave with it's opposite, it cancels. Quite simple to think of why with sound. You have a high pressure peak and an equal low pressure peak that collide. The net effect is zero pressure (in relation to ambient atmospheric pressure).
Maybe not all wave dynamics. Water waves can go right through one another and not slow down or be diminished!
This new proposal of mine, of which I've already prepared seven previous ones, moves binary digits, or just "bits", along the "information super-highway" at more than a GAJILLION times the current speed.
*pinky to mouth, dramatic closeup, music swells*
That is, assuming mini-me stops humping the prototype, which I call Preparation H.
Data are collected at a remote location and need to be shipped to labs where scientists can perform analyses and create high-performance visualizations of the data.
Visualizations of the data? So what, are they gonna all smoke up and watch Rabbit-Hole or Smear while "analysing" the data?
Sonique use to have a Star Trek skin (can't find it anymore). It had all the rounded-square coloured buttons and feel of the tv series. Very very well done.
in both cultural and economic influence. People are now less Japanese, American or whatever. They are now either Nike jocks, generic GAP citizens, Gucci and Holt Renfrew cosmopolitans, etc.
There's a great sci-fi book called 'He, She & It' where people live in fortresses/countries, with each one being a corporation. You didn't just live in a place, you worked and "belonged to" that corporation, which had it's own laws and police force. Nations were a thing of the past. Scary.
Oh yeah, there will likely never be the possibility to "elect" a CEO, because a CEO writes the company laws, and will never undermine his own standing when he can have total power and make gazillions he's never be able to spend. They're mostly powerhungry greedy people who will not fall from being CEO, which is the top. THey wanna stay king of the hill.
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Yes, you've hit the nail on the head.
/. Really, what counts is not so much how easy it is to do per se, but how easy it is to learn how to do, i.e. how easy is it for a total noob? That's the real barrier. If you assume they know anything at all, you've already overlooked the real barrier to Linux's adoption.
I'm a windows user (yeah yeah, recoil and condemn) but I've wanted to try Linux for a very long time. Here's my problem: I need to set up a network and share a printer. With Windows, almost everything is auto-detected. If I don't know how to do something, it's pretty easy to learn how. Up and running in 20 minutes.
With Linux, well... I once read a guy's explanation of how "easy" it was to do on Linux. it was something to the effect of:
1) aslj -asdlk =as jolak [o09al
2) -"ksu9ej 23 4 89032
3) iornl ayrl pi oiulhgg
4) 3lk- -ks lsl "8hlgy"
5) l8h' a'siu[0jag
6) 463oi 9 -nlaf
7) Done! So easy!
I kid you not. The commands were total gibberish to me -- something I'd probably end up banging out in frustration with my fists (like, when trying to set up a network and printer on linux). Now, it's only a couple of commands, yes, but ***learning the proper commands*** and which ones to use would probably take days or weeks to do. And if anything goes wrong a year later, I'd have forgotten it all and would have to study all over again. Versus 20 minutes on Windows.
Having school + work takes up enough time already. And I don't think I'm lazy: I like exploring and learning, and computers are no exception. But you know how you always somehow procrastinate studying for exams? Well, what if you never even had to take the exam if you didn't want? What if you could always run into the arms of Microsoft?
Linux Lords: please make Linux easier to use! I'm not trolling here. I'm trying to provide feedback to where the Linux l33t gather:
Anyway, yeah: not ease of use, but ease of learning how to use is what's blocking Linux from this typical computer user.
My $0.02.
May my prayers be heard!
the self-parallel parking car.
This has been noted before by Carl Jung (see his little-known theories of "uncanniness", can't find a link) and by a robot designer in Japan (can't find link to story on /., can't find anything today!) When something vaguely resembles a human it's amusing and cute, but when it reaches a certain threshold of similarity (which is to say it looks too much like a real human) people suddenly and severely dislike it.
If you want people to like it, you have to keep pushing the similarity until people can't tell the difference anymore. Otherwise, it's like you're talking to a slightly defective human, which is very very unnerving. Imagine talking to a robot that's in every way exactly like a human, except that it stares at you and never blinks. Or every now and then it turns it's head 360 to look out the window, or bends its elbows backwards to pick something up off the ground. Freaky!
A lot of the in-game systems like alchemy and such seem ripped off of The Elder Scrolls, the latest of which is Morrowind.
because they're developing Internet2 and Internet3 at the same time. They'll release one per Christmas.
- the telephone company gave her her own area code! - she has little fat women orbiting around her! - her blood types Ragu! - etc.
What they reveal are suggestive.
What they hide are critical.
Point taken and gladly conceded. I mean, you just can't argue with that! ;D
sorry, just had to get that out...
Don't need to drag politics into this. Even worse, don't romanticize your own position.
It's not like "all Americans" = anti-authority and "everyone else on earth" = subservient slaves and worshippers of homogeneity with no independent thought.
To believe this is true is a rather dangerously simplified view of the world -- one which the authorities you profess to reject would love to maintain.
You can buy Ford, Toyota, Honda, Volks, Nissan, Pontiac, Chevy, etc. etc. etc.
You can buy Microsoft, Microsoft, Microsoft, etc.
What if all the Microsoft cars came with the same "Microsoft" pieca shit CD player, and they messed up the wires so only Microsoft CD players ran well but CD players others were hard to install and use?
It's a rock the size of a football field moving at over ***36 000 km/hr***. How do you stop something like that, besides blocking it with the earth? And if you do, but the rock contains frozen organisms (bacteria, virus, or think Aliens) which we release, then the gift horse has become a Trojan horse!
because of another metric conversion error! :(
People are accepting terrorism as the problem, rather than a symptom of the problem. They are forgetting that terrorism is not an end, but a means.
We have yet recieved an explanation of Al Quaida's intentions, except for "they hate freedom" or "they're fundamentalists" (like that explains anything at all). Al Quaida must have clearly stated their responsibility, and just as importantly *their demands*, but we haven't been told it. Maybe it was about something classified, like CIA doing something naughty in the middle east and nobody is supposed to know about it.
you could end up incriminating yourself!
oh wait...
I think labels like that do more harm than healing. It just creates a stigma around the person.
He's just a regular guy that likes to buy stuff. That's it. He's not "suffering" anything. He said he likes it. It relieves daily stress for him, etc. Why should he need any counselling, much less medication? That's almost freaky: a personal hobby is seen as "abnormal behaviour", so pills are given to him to "cure" him of said behaviour?
Even if he *were* suffering and admitted it and said he couldn't stop himself, such labels would nevertheless do nothing. It's like observing that some guy that likes to steal and you label him a "kleptomaniac".
Well, why's he considered a 'kleptomaniac"?
Because he compulsively steals.
Well, why does he compulsively steal?
Because he's a kleptomaniac.
That's why I changed my major from Psychology. imho, it's still too young of a field trying to make up names and labels to develop itself, but is going a bit too far too fast to make itself important.
Yeah. If he's a spammer, he's probably trying to soften the anti-spam movement and make an impression on the public's mind: hey! some people don't mind spam! let's live with it! He's just being a crafty shrewd spam-businessman.
Three pounds of pure bacteria. mmm..... makes a nice light snack!
many car manufacturers *want* you to hear the engine noise. They actually have "sound engineers" that listen to car engines, and make recommendations on how a car should sound (engine sound is an important aspect of marketing a car).
Large trucks, mustangs and generally most other cars that are usually bought for image's sakes have sound engineers. Having a quiet engine wouldn't match the cocky arrogant attitude these cars are trying to sell (apologies to owners of these cars).
I wouldn't expect quiet engines from these cars because they wouldn't do it even if they could.
Maybe not all wave dynamics. Water waves can go right through one another and not slow down or be diminished!
This new proposal of mine, of which I've already prepared seven previous ones, moves binary digits, or just "bits", along the "information super-highway" at more than a GAJILLION times the current speed.
*pinky to mouth, dramatic closeup, music swells*
That is, assuming mini-me stops humping the prototype, which I call Preparation H.
References:
[1] Long live Dr. Evil jokes.
To be more exact, it's the bonfire system they used in Return of the King to signal to Rohan to come to Gondor.
It's called the Bonfire-Utilizing Light System Hardware Infrastructure Technology (aka BULSHIT).
Visualizations of the data? So what, are they gonna all smoke up and watch Rabbit-Hole or Smear while "analysing" the data?
Sonique use to have a Star Trek skin (can't find it anymore). It had all the rounded-square coloured buttons and feel of the tv series. Very very well done.
in both cultural and economic influence. People are now less Japanese, American or whatever. They are now either Nike jocks, generic GAP citizens, Gucci and Holt Renfrew cosmopolitans, etc.
There's a great sci-fi book called 'He, She & It' where people live in fortresses/countries, with each one being a corporation. You didn't just live in a place, you worked and "belonged to" that corporation, which had it's own laws and police force. Nations were a thing of the past. Scary.
Oh yeah, there will likely never be the possibility to "elect" a CEO, because a CEO writes the company laws, and will never undermine his own standing when he can have total power and make gazillions he's never be able to spend. They're mostly powerhungry greedy people who will not fall from being CEO, which is the top. THey wanna stay king of the hill.