Nope, neither did I get into any detail with regards to the constitution. I see both as results of the thoughts and discussions that went around in the early days of the USA.
> The Bill of Rights is very much about freedom and individualism. Of course, it did not come right away, but I still think it needs to considered a core part of the founding of the U.S.A.
I completely agree.
And yeah, it came later, but as they say, Rome wasn't built in a day, and I think the same applies to the USA, its government and political system:)
> You mean House of Representatives and Senate. The two together comprise the Congress.
Thanks for the clarification.
> I'm sorry, but it does. You mentioned a "coalition government." There's no such thing in the US system; there can't be. The government isn't dependent for its existence on one party or another having a majority in Congress.
And I think you misunderstand how a multi party system and coalition governments work.
First of all, wanting majority support in parliament is desirable but not a requirement in most multi party systems. The problem is that if you do not have a majority in parliament supporting your ideas, you won't get anywhere.
That is a practical requirement, comparable to the compromising needed in the American system but it more directly reflects the current political preferences of the population. Wanting a coalition to get a majority support for a government is a practical solution, but doesnt guarantee such a government will automatically be able to pass any law, representatives are allowed to vote outside the party line.
At any rate, it is quite possible to have a minority government, and there are quite a few examples (the Netherlands has had minority governments, so has Israel for example)
Anyway, I realize why a coalition government is not possible in the current political situation in the USA, and is not needed if the current system works as it was intended.
When you think multi party system, you have to realize that he same basic checks and balances are there, but they are implemented in a very different way and hence a lot of things that are related ae also implemented in a different way.
> I would note that the effect was not just to keep the dumb commoners from making the decisions. It was more to prevent the dumb commoners from making knee-jerk decisions.
Yep, which is one of the differences between the traditional republics of ancient greece and the modern republic. In old Sparta there was no indirect form of democracy, the 'dumb commoners' were kept out of the loop mostly when it came to politics. The system that the USA has gets them involved but only indirectly.
Because of this, I prefer to refer to such a system as indirect or representative democracy, not as a republic (tho it has many things in common with a republic, a system similar to that of the USA can in theory be implemented usign a monarchy as well)
> They have to make these choices every day, whether they're buying jeans, a cellphone plan or a car. Why should Linux on the desktop be any different?
You'd be surprised at how many people let themselves be guided by something called fashion and just take the first pair of jeans that fit their price range and body and that are within current fashion. No choices really.
Cellphone plan? yeah, peopel get quite clueless when confronted with those, hence most peopel are not on what would be the best plan for them, they just dont really know, and trust the sales person of whomever they are gonna get their plan from.
They are often willing to gather the info needed for making the choice still, but rather leave the actual choice to 'someoen who knows'.
> For most people, the car they drive isn't important as long as it gets them to work. But they still have to choose one. There's no "default car" but many people still manage to buy one that fits their needs.
True, but for many peopel that comes down to money, required features and maybe a taste for colour. Its pretty rare that actual technical details matter unless you are talkign about people who have a general interest in technology already.
Often, just like when buying a computer, buzzwords are important... peopel hear them and think they must have those for the product to be usefull.
> It only gets in the way when they don't know how to say "that doesn't matter" when making their decisions. Having 65 million choices won't hurt you if you can eliminate most of them with one decision, and bring it down to three or four with two or three decisions. But they have to know what they want. If what they want is to not have to know what they want, then I can't help them. Nobody can.
This all assumes that: 1. people want that choice (I know you do, and I do want choice as well, but we are not all people) 2. people are actually able to exclude invalid options. You probably are, so am I, but we both know what we are dealing with. Many people don't know and don't want to know. It just has to work.
> Making decisions from available choices is part of everyday life and to believe that software choice should somehow be immune to this is ridiculous. They only need to know what questions to ask and the very first one is "What do I need it to do?" Nobody can answer that but them.
Oh, but in many cases there is an answer to that still. This is the whole reason why integrated packages like OO and Office exist. You don't know what the user want, so give them enough of everything so it kindof will do all that the user wants.
> They are perfectly free to choose to let someone else make that decision for them. But don't pretend that it's the software's fault for having too many choices instead of acknowledging that they didn't want to make the decision.
It is not the software's fault, it is a matter of wrong marketing if the aim is to reach a large group of users.
Either way, it is not helpfull for the acceptance of things like Linux when peopel get lost in choices before they get to use it, which doesn't mean that the choices have to be removed, but they could be taken out of a novice install and hidden behind an 'advanced user' mode.
That idea has been in use for decades, and it works really well.
I am quite aware that the head of government and head of state are one person, but that has nothing to do with the 2 party system I was talkign about, it is an entirely different issue.
When you have a non elected head of state like the UK or the Netherlands, then obviously that person cannot be head of government at the same time if you want an elected government in oen form or another.
You may find that in countries like Russia and France, they do seperate the functions in theory, but in practise the president is also head of the government sicne in both cases he appoints the government and can send them away as (s)he desires. The syetm the USA has formalizes that.
Also, the USA does have somethign that compares very well to a parliament, the combination of senate and congress. It is not 100% identical, but let me tell you something, many countries that have a parliamentary system have slightly different implementationsresulting in slightly different but very comparable roles for their parliaments. That it has a different name in the USA and that the way it is elected is slightly different is an implementation issue, it doesnt make it an entirely different system.
Anyway, what I was talking about is a system that favors 2 oposing parties instead of favoring multiple smaller parties. This seems to be Brittish heritage in the American political system.
It is possible tho, and is one of the reasons why archaic formats like tif and (a)iff survive till today. They are tagged formats and can be used by programs that only understand a subset of the features. The technology is sortof proven if you count the 18 years that iff is around now.
That said, MS never started with a tagged format, and untill they have changed, they will end up having to make changes to their file format every now and then.... and its a welcome thing for them since it keeps competition at a disadvantage.
One rather relevant difference between Word 6.0 and 97 on one side, and 2k/2k3 on the other side is that the later 2 can have embeded links in documents while older versions cannot. This caused a somewhat valid change to the file format.
Having said that, yeah, MS has a change stuff so we break stuff for competitors attiitude but in this specific case they had a sortof valid reason.
> But, you probably assume microsoft cares about home users. Not very much. Look at any major software or hardware company and ask how much of their revenues come from home users versus corporate purchasing.
I guess that that explains why something like Windows 2000 professional has all kinds of entertainment features, support for gamepads and all those other features that are overly usefull for office workers....
> In commercial software development, corporate purchasing will make or break your marketshare.
That depends a lot.
Are you making some specialized software? then you are definitely right.
Are you a comercial gaem developer? I'd really not count on business going to do much for market share or profit.
For commodity software like most of the stuff MS produces the home users dictate market share, but the corporate users get you the profit.
Skip one side of it, and you end up in the fringes of the market or you go bankrupt due to lack of cashstream (depending on which side you ignore)
A system of checks and balances was one of the important things lacking in the ancient democratic system while it was present in republics like sparta.
The twist the founders of the USA gave to it all is very interesting, and imho was a big step forward at the time.
I do also believe that what it turned into needs a bit of a correction, either it should go back a bit to its original intentions, or it should modernize and adapt to the current reality.
The current 2 + a little bit party system simply offers little in the way of choice and results in needless polarization. Polarization on a specific issue is no problem, but when it causes a faultline in the population there is a problem. A situation where people are forced to cooperate with the balance of power based on the outcome of elections, you can only compete on merrits, mudslinging will just close doors and give you a very big chance of ending up as the biggest party but findign a majrity coalition opposing you still, so it is useless.
That or a far less presidential election would imho solve a lot of the current problems as I see them.. but then, I am an outside observer sicne I am not an American myself.
> I trained people in using various word processors, did technical writing, translation and layout.
So did I. I think I was trainign a different kind of users then you tho from what follows..
> What I found is, the vast majority of people still layout with spaces and returns, and redo everything all the time. I help them make a letter template, and they end up using it for everything.
So far so good..
> For these people, LaTeX with a simple help program would be vastly superior. Just type in the text, pick a style, and hit "print". It would save immeasurable work hours.
And that is where we differ, or our users do at least.
Yes, a letter template is what my users end up using as well when they have a decent one.
They will be adapting it slightly every now and then (for example because the envelopes they used are no longer available, and the new ones have the window at a slightly different position), and make small temporary changes to it for a specific letter.
They are empowered to do this all by themselves instead of havign to call an 'IT guru' each and every time they need a change.
Have you considered the time and money saved by that?
There are many environments where that doesn't happen, and for such environments, LaTeX may be a very good solution. The more standarized your documents/letters, the more suitable it gets.
That is however not what works for the home and small bsuiness user. For the first one, time spent is not that big a part of the argument, but their perception of how they spend the time is very important. For small business users it is often not acceptable to have to wait 1 or 2 days for a tech to showup to slightly change their template to meet their current requriements.
> These tools exist. I use them every day. But people like you are the reason they're not catching on more. You continue to eat and promote the dog food, and it'll continue to be what people think they should use.
You need to look at 2 different situations.
Corporate environments where management and IT staff decides on what is used and how. For such an environment, the tools you propose are quite suitable, likely more so then a generic office suite. The knowhow for setting up the tools correctly, creatign templates that match the requirements on a timely manner etc etc are available there.
End users who do not have an IT staff to support them and will have to make their own choices and do a little bit of basic IT stuff themselves. This is by far the largest group, and for those people there is no support staff to quickly get them the template they need, let alone to install and properly configure those tools.
What you suggest works well for an environment where there is little need for variation in letter/document templates and where the skills for making them is readily available. In all other cases, it is not going to work ever.
Lyx with a large set of templates preinstalled might just do tho it will still produce annoyance for the average user due to not offering the flexibility that they think they need (and do use)
You may disagree with them needing the functionality, but who are you to tell people what they need really?
I'm no fan of MS Office btw, and I have not been using it from the day OpenOffice became usable enough. As mentioned before, I have used LaTeX, so its not like I don't know what it is, and I know it can be a very usefull tool. I also know however that I can type my letters and hit print in OO, don't have to fiddle with anything if all I need is a letter following the standard template, so in that case there is not a single difference with LaTeX + help program whatsoever, and no time is lost.
On another note, your 'dogfood' opinion like you express it is a lot more likely to scare people away from what you advice then convincing them it is something they should look at.
> Honestly though, I don't care. I save tons of time by using LyX and
> They have to determine what they need, what they don't need and what they don't care about. Then they have to make an effort to find out what meets those needs.
ANd the simple fact that they have to do that before it will be usable means that Linux has no chance on the desktop.
I dislike lack of choice, but the simple fact that Windows comes with about everythign the average non poweruser is going to need without them havign to put any thought into it whatsoever is one of the biggest reasons of its success.
> If they're not willing to do that, fine, that's their choice. But don't limit my choices because some people are too lazy to make one.
Choice is good when you want it, bad when it gets in the way of more important things. Hate to tell you, but for most people, the software they use is not terribly important, the work they do with it may be.
Man.. I had tears in my eyes from laughing when I was just halfway...
It so much reminds me of old IBM when I started workign there in the late 80s.. you ahd to order every freaking piece of plastic for a computer seperately...
IQ tests have been a game for me ever since I encountered the first one consiously at around age 5 or 6 or so.
A game to beat the people who thought up the test, and to play with the outcome. If you know how they are made and have a decent understanding of the basic elements of the test it is possible to manipulate the outcome to be whatever you want it to be.
When the USA was founded, freedom was an important argument, but it should be seen in the settings of the late 18th century.
I have been reading a lot about the early days of the USA and the following is my recolelction of what I read about the discussions regarding the exact form of government that the USA got at the time.
In that time, there has been a lot of discussion in the USA and France about the different models of government without monarch.
There is a choice between a few systems there, and 2 of them were discussed a lot in detail: - The republic of Sparta - The democracy of Athens.
What they ended with is somethign that looks a lot more like the republic of Sparta then the democracy of Athens.
Bottomline, an elite is in charge of the country, however, this elte is elected.
This means that people cannot make direct choices in matters that concern the country as a whole, but they can appoint those who can make those choices.
At the time, people were afraid that the purely democratic way would result in chaos and unlimited individualism. The Spartan system didn't provide for the freedom that people demanded and was too much of a tirany.
In the end, it did end up folowing the Spartan model, but with an elected elite.
What this tells me is that the founders were actually looking for a way to limit individualism at least to the point where peopel would not act against the common good, and in the hope that peopel would contribute to the common good, while at the same time trying to maintain as much freedom as possible.
I believe it is a bit simplistic to say that Freedom is THE thing the USA was founded on, it was an important aspect, but in the end, balance to get a state that worked for as big a part of its citizens as possible, and finding the right balance between individualism and the common good were at least as important if not more important.
It seems to me that the way political parties function in the USA is pretty much a continuation of English tradition. A rather substantial part of the representative democracies in the world have more then 2 major parties, and do indeed need coalition governments. Few of those have the problems that we have seen for decades in Italy where a government wouldn't last more then a few months, in fact, Germany, The Netherlands and Belgium are 3 examples of countries with very stable governments while having many political parties.
A basicly 2 party system (with all respect for the man, I'll skip Nadar, untill some major change happens to how the US population percieves politics, I am afraid he has little chance whatsoever) makes life easy.
Political views can be put into a black/white perspective, and there is no need for cooperation since one side will end up beign in power while the other side will have to wait and watch untill the next elections (yeah yeah, I know it is a bit more complex then that due to the way the senate and congress work in the USA where you can have a republican president with a democratic congress for example).
The black/white choice makes it easy because people don't have to think too much about things of which they often don't see the direct relation to their daily life.
Most people want simple choices if any at all for things that they are not really interested in but want huge variety of choice once they are interested.
Hmm.. it actually looks very similar to the google interface I was getting on my palm for a long tiem already.. its lackign the 'full interface' button tho.
> Am pretty sure it does. It might be just like in games on less "multimedia"-capable computers where moving your (non-sprite) 'avatar' over background objects will cause its colour to bleed into the underlying character-sized rectangle.
The problem is very rare on the C64 because any programmer with a bit of a clue would be using a sprite to prevent this.
By default, the VIC-II chip could produce upto 8 sprites, but with a bit of trickery, 64 sprites was no real problem.
Those sprites could be used in 2 ways, either for making 'moving' things like your avatar, or for producing an overlay that could be moved independent from the background.
Also, it did not take long before the hires mode allowd 2 pens/8 pixels instead of 2 pens/8x8 square. This was done by using multiple memory ranges for colour information and thenm switichign between them at the right moment using the raster interupt.
Later this kind of trick was combined with some interlacing trickery to allow a lot more colours then the 16 default ones.
Entirely correct, tho there was also a hires mode that allowed more then 2 pens/char pos with some other limitation... damn.. now I have to go look for my C64 documentation...
Slashdot Mirror
> You did not mention the Bill of Rights.
:)
Nope, neither did I get into any detail with regards to the constitution. I see both as results of the thoughts and discussions that went around in the early days of the USA.
> The Bill of Rights is very much about freedom and individualism. Of course, it did not come right away, but I still think it needs to considered a core part of the founding of the U.S.A.
I completely agree.
And yeah, it came later, but as they say, Rome wasn't built in a day, and I think the same applies to the USA, its government and political system
> You mean House of Representatives and Senate. The two together comprise the Congress.
Thanks for the clarification.
> I'm sorry, but it does. You mentioned a "coalition government." There's no such thing in the US system; there can't be. The government isn't dependent for its existence on one party or another having a majority in Congress.
And I think you misunderstand how a multi party system and coalition governments work.
First of all, wanting majority support in parliament is desirable but not a requirement in most multi party systems. The problem is that if you do not have a majority in parliament supporting your ideas, you won't get anywhere.
That is a practical requirement, comparable to the compromising needed in the American system but it more directly reflects the current political preferences of the population. Wanting a coalition to get a majority support for a government is a practical solution, but doesnt guarantee such a government will automatically be able to pass any law, representatives are allowed to vote outside the party line.
At any rate, it is quite possible to have a minority government, and there are quite a few examples (the Netherlands has had minority governments, so has Israel for example)
Anyway, I realize why a coalition government is not possible in the current political situation in the USA, and is not needed if the current system works as it was intended.
When you think multi party system, you have to realize that he same basic checks and balances are there, but they are implemented in a very different way and hence a lot of things that are related ae also implemented in a different way.
> I would note that the effect was not just to keep the dumb commoners from making the decisions. It was more to prevent the dumb commoners from making knee-jerk decisions.
Yep, which is one of the differences between the traditional republics of ancient greece and the modern republic. In old Sparta there was no indirect form of democracy, the 'dumb commoners' were kept out of the loop mostly when it came to politics. The system that the USA has gets them involved but only indirectly.
Because of this, I prefer to refer to such a system as indirect or representative democracy, not as a republic (tho it has many things in common with a republic, a system similar to that of the USA can in theory be implemented usign a monarchy as well)
> They have to make these choices every day, whether they're buying jeans, a cellphone plan or a car. Why should Linux on the desktop be any different?
You'd be surprised at how many people let themselves be guided by something called fashion and just take the first pair of jeans that fit their price range and body and that are within current fashion. No choices really.
Cellphone plan? yeah, peopel get quite clueless when confronted with those, hence most peopel are not on what would be the best plan for them, they just dont really know, and trust the sales person of whomever they are gonna get their plan from.
They are often willing to gather the info needed for making the choice still, but rather leave the actual choice to 'someoen who knows'.
> For most people, the car they drive isn't important as long as it gets them to work. But they still have to choose one. There's no "default car" but many people still manage to buy one that fits their needs.
True, but for many peopel that comes down to money, required features and maybe a taste for colour. Its pretty rare that actual technical details matter unless you are talkign about people who have a general interest in technology already.
Often, just like when buying a computer, buzzwords are important... peopel hear them and think they must have those for the product to be usefull.
> It only gets in the way when they don't know how to say "that doesn't matter" when making their decisions. Having 65 million choices won't hurt you if you can eliminate most of them with one decision, and bring it down to three or four with two or three decisions. But they have to know what they want. If what they want is to not have to know what they want, then I can't help them. Nobody can.
This all assumes that:
1. people want that choice (I know you do, and I do want choice as well, but we are not all people)
2. people are actually able to exclude invalid options. You probably are, so am I, but we both know what we are dealing with. Many people don't know and don't want to know. It just has to work.
> Making decisions from available choices is part of everyday life and to believe that software choice should somehow be immune to this is ridiculous. They only need to know what questions to ask and the very first one is "What do I need it to do?" Nobody can answer that but them.
Oh, but in many cases there is an answer to that still. This is the whole reason why integrated packages like OO and Office exist. You don't know what the user want, so give them enough of everything so it kindof will do all that the user wants.
> They are perfectly free to choose to let someone else make that decision for them. But don't pretend that it's the software's fault for having too many choices instead of acknowledging that they didn't want to make the decision.
It is not the software's fault, it is a matter of wrong marketing if the aim is to reach a large group of users.
Either way, it is not helpfull for the acceptance of things like Linux when peopel get lost in choices before they get to use it, which doesn't mean that the choices have to be removed, but they could be taken out of a novice install and hidden behind an 'advanced user' mode.
That idea has been in use for decades, and it works really well.
I am quite aware that the head of government and head of state are one person, but that has nothing to do with the 2 party system I was talkign about, it is an entirely different issue.
When you have a non elected head of state like the UK or the Netherlands, then obviously that person cannot be head of government at the same time if you want an elected government in oen form or another.
You may find that in countries like Russia and France, they do seperate the functions in theory, but in practise the president is also head of the government sicne in both cases he appoints the government and can send them away as (s)he desires. The syetm the USA has formalizes that.
Also, the USA does have somethign that compares very well to a parliament, the combination of senate and congress. It is not 100% identical, but let me tell you something, many countries that have a parliamentary system have slightly different implementationsresulting in slightly different but very comparable roles for their parliaments. That it has a different name in the USA and that the way it is elected is slightly different is an implementation issue, it doesnt make it an entirely different system.
Anyway, what I was talking about is a system that favors 2 oposing parties instead of favoring multiple smaller parties. This seems to be Brittish heritage in the American political system.
It is possible tho, and is one of the reasons why archaic formats like tif and (a)iff survive till today. They are tagged formats and can be used by programs that only understand a subset of the features. The technology is sortof proven if you count the 18 years that iff is around now.
That said, MS never started with a tagged format, and untill they have changed, they will end up having to make changes to their file format every now and then.... and its a welcome thing for them since it keeps competition at a disadvantage.
One rather relevant difference between Word 6.0 and 97 on one side, and 2k/2k3 on the other side is that the later 2 can have embeded links in documents while older versions cannot. This caused a somewhat valid change to the file format.
Having said that, yeah, MS has a change stuff so we break stuff for competitors attiitude but in this specific case they had a sortof valid reason.
Hmm... the SCO option... I have rather good legal insurance, so I might just manage to bankrupt them overhere ;P
> But, you probably assume microsoft cares about home users. Not very much. Look at any major software or hardware company and ask how much of their revenues come from home users versus corporate purchasing.
I guess that that explains why something like Windows 2000 professional has all kinds of entertainment features, support for gamepads and all those other features that are overly usefull for office workers....
> In commercial software development, corporate purchasing will make or break your marketshare.
That depends a lot.
Are you making some specialized software? then you are definitely right.
Are you a comercial gaem developer? I'd really not count on business going to do much for market share or profit.
For commodity software like most of the stuff MS produces the home users dictate market share, but the corporate users get you the profit.
Skip one side of it, and you end up in the fringes of the market or you go bankrupt due to lack of cashstream (depending on which side you ignore)
Uh.. that last line should read:
That or a far less direct presidential election.
And I'd like to add to that, the people already have a say and a directly elected representative through congress and the senate.
Yep, I fully agree.
A system of checks and balances was one of the important things lacking in the ancient democratic system while it was present in republics like sparta.
The twist the founders of the USA gave to it all is very interesting, and imho was a big step forward at the time.
I do also believe that what it turned into needs a bit of a correction, either it should go back a bit to its original intentions, or it should modernize and adapt to the current reality.
The current 2 + a little bit party system simply offers little in the way of choice and results in needless polarization. Polarization on a specific issue is no problem, but when it causes a faultline in the population there is a problem. A situation where people are forced to cooperate with the balance of power based on the outcome of elections, you can only compete on merrits, mudslinging will just close doors and give you a very big chance of ending up as the biggest party but findign a majrity coalition opposing you still, so it is useless.
That or a far less presidential election would imho solve a lot of the current problems as I see them.. but then, I am an outside observer sicne I am not an American myself.
So did I. I think I was trainign a different kind of users then you tho from what follows..
> What I found is, the vast majority of people still layout with spaces and returns, and redo everything all the time. I help them make a letter template, and they end up using it for everything.
So far so good..
> For these people, LaTeX with a simple help program would be vastly superior. Just type in the text, pick a style, and hit "print". It would save immeasurable work hours.
And that is where we differ, or our users do at least.
Yes, a letter template is what my users end up using as well when they have a decent one. They will be adapting it slightly every now and then (for example because the envelopes they used are no longer available, and the new ones have the window at a slightly different position), and make small temporary changes to it for a specific letter.
They are empowered to do this all by themselves instead of havign to call an 'IT guru' each and every time they need a change.
Have you considered the time and money saved by that?
There are many environments where that doesn't happen, and for such environments, LaTeX may be a very good solution. The more standarized your documents/letters, the more suitable it gets.
That is however not what works for the home and small bsuiness user. For the first one, time spent is not that big a part of the argument, but their perception of how they spend the time is very important. For small business users it is often not acceptable to have to wait 1 or 2 days for a tech to showup to slightly change their template to meet their current requriements.
> These tools exist. I use them every day. But people like you are the reason they're not catching on more. You continue to eat and promote the dog food, and it'll continue to be what people think they should use.
You need to look at 2 different situations.
What you suggest works well for an environment where there is little need for variation in letter/document templates and where the skills for making them is readily available. In all other cases, it is not going to work ever.
Lyx with a large set of templates preinstalled might just do tho it will still produce annoyance for the average user due to not offering the flexibility that they think they need (and do use)
You may disagree with them needing the functionality, but who are you to tell people what they need really?
I'm no fan of MS Office btw, and I have not been using it from the day OpenOffice became usable enough. As mentioned before, I have used LaTeX, so its not like I don't know what it is, and I know it can be a very usefull tool. I also know however that I can type my letters and hit print in OO, don't have to fiddle with anything if all I need is a letter following the standard template, so in that case there is not a single difference with LaTeX + help program whatsoever, and no time is lost.
On another note, your 'dogfood' opinion like you express it is a lot more likely to scare people away from what you advice then convincing them it is something they should look at.
> Honestly though, I don't care. I save tons of time by using LyX and
> They have to determine what they need, what they don't need and what they don't care about. Then they have to make an effort to find out what meets those needs.
ANd the simple fact that they have to do that before it will be usable means that Linux has no chance on the desktop.
I dislike lack of choice, but the simple fact that Windows comes with about everythign the average non poweruser is going to need without them havign to put any thought into it whatsoever is one of the biggest reasons of its success.
> If they're not willing to do that, fine, that's their choice. But don't limit my choices because some people are too lazy to make one.
Choice is good when you want it, bad when it gets in the way of more important things. Hate to tell you, but for most people, the software they use is not terribly important, the work they do with it may be.
Man.. I had tears in my eyes from laughing when I was just halfway...
It so much reminds me of old IBM when I started workign there in the late 80s.. you ahd to order every freaking piece of plastic for a computer seperately...
IQ tests have been a game for me ever since I encountered the first one consiously at around age 5 or 6 or so.
A game to beat the people who thought up the test, and to play with the outcome. If you know how they are made and have a decent understanding of the basic elements of the test it is possible to manipulate the outcome to be whatever you want it to be.
It is limited freedom.
When the USA was founded, freedom was an important argument, but it should be seen in the settings of the late 18th century.
I have been reading a lot about the early days of the USA and the following is my recolelction of what I read about the discussions regarding the exact form of government that the USA got at the time.
In that time, there has been a lot of discussion in the USA and France about the different models of government without monarch.
There is a choice between a few systems there, and 2 of them were discussed a lot in detail:
- The republic of Sparta
- The democracy of Athens.
What they ended with is somethign that looks a lot more like the republic of Sparta then the democracy of Athens.
Bottomline, an elite is in charge of the country, however, this elte is elected.
This means that people cannot make direct choices in matters that concern the country as a whole, but they can appoint those who can make those choices.
At the time, people were afraid that the purely democratic way would result in chaos and unlimited individualism. The Spartan system didn't provide for the freedom that people demanded and was too much of a tirany.
In the end, it did end up folowing the Spartan model, but with an elected elite.
What this tells me is that the founders were actually looking for a way to limit individualism at least to the point where peopel would not act against the common good, and in the hope that peopel would contribute to the common good, while at the same time trying to maintain as much freedom as possible.
I believe it is a bit simplistic to say that Freedom is THE thing the USA was founded on, it was an important aspect, but in the end, balance to get a state that worked for as big a part of its citizens as possible, and finding the right balance between individualism and the common good were at least as important if not more important.
It seems to me that the way political parties function in the USA is pretty much a continuation of English tradition. A rather substantial part of the representative democracies in the world have more then 2 major parties, and do indeed need coalition governments. Few of those have the problems that we have seen for decades in Italy where a government wouldn't last more then a few months, in fact, Germany, The Netherlands and Belgium are 3 examples of countries with very stable governments while having many political parties.
A basicly 2 party system (with all respect for the man, I'll skip Nadar, untill some major change happens to how the US population percieves politics, I am afraid he has little chance whatsoever) makes life easy.
Political views can be put into a black/white perspective, and there is no need for cooperation since one side will end up beign in power while the other side will have to wait and watch untill the next elections (yeah yeah, I know it is a bit more complex then that due to the way the senate and congress work in the USA where you can have a republican president with a democratic congress for example).
The black/white choice makes it easy because people don't have to think too much about things of which they often don't see the direct relation to their daily life.
Most people want simple choices if any at all for things that they are not really interested in but want huge variety of choice once they are interested.
Hmm.. it actually looks very similar to the google interface I was getting on my palm for a long tiem already.. its lackign the 'full interface' button tho.
Heh, and I somehow missed that when readign your post. You wree of course correct there as well ;)
> Am pretty sure it does. It might be just like in games on less "multimedia"-capable computers where moving your (non-sprite) 'avatar' over background objects will cause its colour to bleed into the underlying character-sized rectangle.
The problem is very rare on the C64 because any programmer with a bit of a clue would be using a sprite to prevent this.
By default, the VIC-II chip could produce upto 8 sprites, but with a bit of trickery, 64 sprites was no real problem.
Those sprites could be used in 2 ways, either for making 'moving' things like your avatar, or for producing an overlay that could be moved independent from the background.
Also, it did not take long before the hires mode allowd 2 pens/8 pixels instead of 2 pens/8x8 square. This was done by using multiple memory ranges for colour information and thenm switichign between them at the right moment using the raster interupt.
Later this kind of trick was combined with some interlacing trickery to allow a lot more colours then the 16 default ones.
Heh, you moderators never fail to amaze me with what you consider interesting ;P
Ah well, guess a +1 delightfull option is lacking eh?
I guess the nanocom 6800 (yes, 6800, not 68000) kit computer will do for that? ;)
Loader? I had to use a set of switches to get it into ram... how do you mean rom??
Entirely correct, tho there was also a hires mode that allowed more then 2 pens/char pos with some other limitation... damn.. now I have to go look for my C64 documentation...
> We used to diss the C-64 because it didn't have extended BASIC commands to put sprites on the screen, make sounds etc.
Which was a matter of sticking in the Simons basic cartridge (or load a cracked version from tape or disk)..
But the standard basic was limited and if you wanted to do anything usefull on a C64, assembler was a must..
Even with an extended basic, assembler was still a must if you wanted any performance.
So hmm.. it may have helped a bit, but not that much I think.. It helped the availability of assemblers/monitors and linkers quite a bit tho I think.
> Just wondering if any gamers actually own a PET.
;P
My girlfriend has one, the old one with the calculator style keyboard (and its not a recent buy, she got it when that machine was 'hot')
I'll have to do with a collection of VIC20s, C64s and Amigas
Its a nice collection but we are lacking a C128 still (not interested in the C16/Plus 4, tho I have a Plus 4 somewhere I think)
> No one could ever accuse him of being unoriginal
Attack of the mutant camels was a direct clone of the AT-AT walker game on for example the Atari 2600 console.
There are a few more examples of his games not being original in concept I think.. He usually came up with rather twisted variations tho.