There's a problem with your thesis: Wouldn't those two reasons be precisely why such people should be ignored? I mean, if the Internet has a low barrier to entry for the "crazies", and most of them speak their blather anonymously, you would imagine that the rational person would not put much credence in their pronouncements.
The fact that this isn't the case means that the problem may not lie in the medium, but on the gullible and uninformed masses, reacting to everything they read.
>> I bet you're the first to say it. And heck, after only what, a dozen or so games?
And I bet you made a snarky comment to each and every one. Hurry up, I think someone is posting funny reference right now; go get'em!
I, on the other hand, saw the appeal of the Lego Star Wars game, and of the Guitar Hero--I always thought it was self-evident. I also like both of them. However, Lego Hero? Whatever.
Wow! Which LEGO games are those? I've played all Star Wars LEGO games and found them extremely easy to play. They do get challenging if you try to unlock every single "secret" area and prize, and this is a good thing, but the main game play is simple and easy: - There is virtually no penalty for dying (you lose some of the "stud" coins you pick up, but continue where you left off). - There are no life limits. - Almost every other enemy killed drops a health "heart", mitigating your chances of dying (even furniture and other inanimate objects drop health "hearts" when you smack them!) - Empire enemies' aim is worth spit (I guess this makes for a simulation closer to the movies!) - Cooperative gaming means that there are now two of you playing the exact same game designed to be playable by a single player, lowering the difficulty level. - Almost everything gives you points ("studs"), even hitting wall ornaments and flowers. - You don't have to read any instructions or complete any tutorials to understand the game; just go in and start firing (or swinging your lightsaber).
I really liked the games, and I would say they are great for the entire family; but even my 6 year-old nephews would not consider them "hard".
As for LEGO Guitar Hero? Well, let's not speak of it, and leave it at that.
As a matter of fact, I am. Not only that, but my wife shares my fondness for walking. We both agree that it is ridiculous to circle the parking lot for half an hour to avoid the extra few steps it takes to walk to the door. We don't even try, we just enter the lot and go for the first spot we see, even if it's on the farthest side. That's when we go to the mall at all.
Not only that, but it just happens that we learned this from our own respective parents. My father--with a car full of kids (we were four), and a wife--would go to the mall and park on the farthest end of the lot. He would make it into a sort of game, he would say something like "look at that! today we get to walk from this end of the lot, that's great!", or something like that. He tried to impart this lifestyle on us: he would walk to anywhere there were sidewalks, even for fun. I don't remember him ever even trying to aim for the spots close to the entrance; like my wife and I now, he understood that others would fight and compete for those, and it was not worth it at all to get into that contest.
But then again, from my father, my siblings and I also learned to enjoy drinking water instead of soft drinks, to eat fresh fruits and vegetables with almost every meal, and to use the dictionary and the encyclopaedia to look up words and information when we had questions.
Well, the problem could be in sub-standard medical care. Although I know that price alone is not a determinant of quality, if that is mainly what the Federal Government is using to discriminate, then it's bound to attract the lower scale.
Bad analogy. The ocean is a natural resource, the roads had to be built and paid for by someone.
One of the reasons the government invests more money on the interstate highway system is not necessarily because commuters use it to go to work--heck, they could build trains and bus systems for that cheaper than it takes to build and maintain suspension bridges--but because a large part of the economy depends on the transportation system as it is. That is, interstate commerce, trucks, rely on it, so there is ample pressure put by lobbyists and state officials to keep it up. So, in a sense, it is the opposite of what you suspect: the cars just happen to use the interstate highway system, while the trucks are first citizens there. This is to the detriment of the railway system, which then gets treated as a sub-standard money hole, which nobody has the insentive to use, therefore entering a downward spiral of losses and service cuts.
It is true, trains need expensive, specially built tracks, but trucks need expensive and specially built highways and bridges. It depends on where you put your money and which infrastructure you support: either one can ferry along commuters. Some will argue that in the long run, it is more sustainable and economic to focus on a rail transportation system for interstate travel and commerce.
>> That's funny, didn't we build the interstate system for precisely the same reason we're suggesting building a high-speed rail system? To quickly and efficiently move people from one city to another?
Not really. It was intended as a means to transport military equipment and troops from one end of the country to the other. During the first World War, Eisenhower admired how the Germans were able to take advantage of their Autobahn to move their troops around Europe, and realized that we had no such comprehensive system in place in the Continental USA.
Of course, the major automobile manufacturers of the time took the opportunity to lobby greatly for the government to subsidized what would have ended up being their own infrastruture.
The whole indepence and adventure spirit of the "American Dream", was mainly a marketing strategy to sell more cars. It seems to have worked, though.
Wow, in which model city do you live? Just about any city I've been to in the USA, I see people circling the parking lot looking for that "perfect spot" close to the entrance. I am also an American, and see this all the time. At the movie theater, at the mall, at the stadium--anywhere.
I always aim for the farthest spots (I enjoy walking and am not in a hurry), so I avoid the contention; but I can see, for example, some person in their car waiting for a little old lady to finish packing her bags in the trunk of her car and pull out so that they can take her parking space--while just a few yards away, there's a bunch of empty spots, which happen to be a bit farther from the door. They'll even honk the horn if the little old lady takes too long! I pressume they are in a hurry.
The funniest thing is that, sometimes, they are still waiting for that perfect spot by the time I park my car in the farther end of the lot, walk in, and reach the entrance.
As others have mentioned, I too compare on more than price. To me the usage experience and the software included is part of the criteria. For example, I used GarageBand (until I "graduated" to Logic) to compose music, and my wife uses iMovie and iDvd to create home videos of our trips. We find that the iLife package included with a new Mac computer is more than appropriate for consumer-grade production of such things. In fact, we actually enjoy using those applications, and find them easy and powerful.
We also haven't found anything comparable that is just as stable, intuitive and easy to use for Windows. I'm sure there are applications like that, but they do not come in a comprehensive package such as iLife, and they do not come bundled free with a new PC. You are more likely to get a "30 day trial" of some third program, which is not going to be supported by Dell or HP directly.
For back-ups, we use Time-Machine, and more than once it has saved my skin by allowing me to retrieve an older version of a file. Have you ever seen Time-Machine? It seems almost magical. Instead of having to wade through directories of timestamped archives to figure out what I need from whence, it provides me with a nice and intuitive interface to recover files. For example, I can open the Finder, engage the Time-Machine, and browse my files as they were on various dates. I just move a slider to change the date, and the Finder window automatically shows the state of the file system at that time; I just browse and use it as normal. Sure, it may be more pretty and glitzy than it needs to be, but let me tell you that it makes recovering files a much less painful experience than it typically is. Not only that, but other supported applications (such as Mail, Contacts, etc.) do the same thing: work normally showing you their state during those dates so that you may recover lost or changed items such as e-mail messages or telephone numbers.
Then there's Automator. Not only do you get a very powerful system scripting language in AppleScript, but a dummy-friendly interface to automate various functions on your system without having to write a single line of code or opening up a command console.
Then there are little things such as compressed archive support built-in, without requiring additional software installed; generating PDF files from absolutely anything displayed, and even "print-to-PDF" functionality built-in without any Adobe third-party add-on; customizable virtual desktops to organize my work spaces; a dictionary built-in and integrated with the operating system itself, so that it is accessible from any application displaying text.
There's also a Migration Assistant application--included with the OS--that aids you in importing all your programs and/or settings from a previous installation. I've used this before without any problems whatsoever.
And let's not forget the comprehensive keyboard-shortcut customization, which allows you to map any combination of keys to just about any menu entry--at the OS or application level--on a centralized panel.
All these things, in my opinion (and my wife's) offer a better daily usage experience than Windows on a PC, and enhance the value than the mere hardware specifications. We come from a Windows and Linux background, and switched about five years ago. We haven't regretted it ever since.
Actually, C# has a completely different lineage than VB.NET. And as the parent poster said, VB.NET was the result of a "C-sharpification" of VisualBasic, in order to move all those entrenched Windows developers using exclusively VB into the.NET platform. You see,.NET is an object oriented platform, while VisualBasic, up to that point, didn't even offer proper polymorphism or inheritance.
The C# language was designed by the Anders Hejlsberg, the designer of other languages and compilers, such as Turbo Pascal, Object Pascal and Delphi. The language is based more on SmallTalk than on any other. Like Java, it has a C-ish syntax, but this is more an accident of history. Hejlsberg has also said that it also "borrows" liberally from Delphi, because he thought that things such as explicit virtual methods were done right in Delphi. If you've ever used Delphi, you'll recognize its influence immediately when you use C#; I know I did. It's one of the reasons it tends to resemble less of Java, contrary to what many think.
If you are talking purely about the code editor, then I'll grant you that it is useful. However, as an integrated debugger and inspector, it is slow and buggy. The debugger has a knack of crashing in spectacular ways (often bringing the entire computer to its knees) by the mere action of attempting to inspect memory locations or local objects.
Personally, I find the editor too bloated and imposing, and the customization level lacking--sometimes I just want to write code in my own way and don't want so many bells and whistles. But that's a matter of opinion.
I agree that Eclipse has been bloated and buggy in the past, but it has gotten better; much better. In any case, if your development experience in modern environments is using VisualStudio and Eclipse, then you are in a position to compare both, but hardly in a position to say that VisualStudio is "second to none". There are many other development tools out there that have much more to offer.
Slashdot Mirror
Can we also keep the LOLCATZ? I'm rather fond of that.
I mean, separated from the pr0n. Well, most of it at least; to each his own, I say.
-dZ.
There's a problem with your thesis: Wouldn't those two reasons be precisely why such people should be ignored? I mean, if the Internet has a low barrier to entry for the "crazies", and most of them speak their blather anonymously, you would imagine that the rational person would not put much credence in their pronouncements.
The fact that this isn't the case means that the problem may not lie in the medium, but on the gullible and uninformed masses, reacting to everything they read.
-dZ.
Ok then, here's the /.-ism:
I'm autistic, you insensitive clod!
Feel better?
-dZ.
If darkness is what you seek, how about a nice drive out to the countryside, or somewhere outside the city?
-dZ.
>> I bet you're the first to say it. And heck, after only what, a dozen or so games?
And I bet you made a snarky comment to each and every one. Hurry up, I think someone is posting funny reference right now; go get'em!
I, on the other hand, saw the appeal of the Lego Star Wars game, and of the Guitar Hero--I always thought it was self-evident. I also like both of them. However, Lego Hero? Whatever.
-dZ.
Actually, I read that press release. The game is called "Civil War of Warcraft".
-dZ.
Wow! Which LEGO games are those? I've played all Star Wars LEGO games and found them extremely easy to play. They do get challenging if you try to unlock every single "secret" area and prize, and this is a good thing, but the main game play is simple and easy:
- There is virtually no penalty for dying (you lose some of the "stud" coins you pick up, but continue where you left off).
- There are no life limits.
- Almost every other enemy killed drops a health "heart", mitigating your chances of dying (even furniture and other inanimate objects drop health "hearts" when you smack them!)
- Empire enemies' aim is worth spit (I guess this makes for a simulation closer to the movies!)
- Cooperative gaming means that there are now two of you playing the exact same game designed to be playable by a single player, lowering the difficulty level.
- Almost everything gives you points ("studs"), even hitting wall ornaments and flowers.
- You don't have to read any instructions or complete any tutorials to understand the game; just go in and start firing (or swinging your lightsaber).
I really liked the games, and I would say they are great for the entire family; but even my 6 year-old nephews would not consider them "hard".
As for LEGO Guitar Hero? Well, let's not speak of it, and leave it at that.
-dZ.
...meet thine jumper.
-dZ.
Wow, dude, you should really turn off the tv and 'puter once in a while. You'll see that you don't need a special occasion for nights like that.
-dZ.
As a matter of fact, I am. Not only that, but my wife shares my fondness for walking. We both agree that it is ridiculous to circle the parking lot for half an hour to avoid the extra few steps it takes to walk to the door. We don't even try, we just enter the lot and go for the first spot we see, even if it's on the farthest side. That's when we go to the mall at all.
Not only that, but it just happens that we learned this from our own respective parents. My father--with a car full of kids (we were four), and a wife--would go to the mall and park on the farthest end of the lot. He would make it into a sort of game, he would say something like "look at that! today we get to walk from this end of the lot, that's great!", or something like that. He tried to impart this lifestyle on us: he would walk to anywhere there were sidewalks, even for fun. I don't remember him ever even trying to aim for the spots close to the entrance; like my wife and I now, he understood that others would fight and compete for those, and it was not worth it at all to get into that contest.
But then again, from my father, my siblings and I also learned to enjoy drinking water instead of soft drinks, to eat fresh fruits and vegetables with almost every meal, and to use the dictionary and the encyclopaedia to look up words and information when we had questions.
-dZ.
I think he already made his choice to sit around and bitch--on Slashdot.
-dZ.
Well, the problem could be in sub-standard medical care. Although I know that price alone is not a determinant of quality, if that is mainly what the Federal Government is using to discriminate, then it's bound to attract the lower scale.
>> The IRS?
Ha, ha, ha! Funny!
No, really, name one.
-dZ.
Yeah, my favorite is Town of Warcraft.
But that's only after completing Clubhouse of Warcraft at level 50.
I'll stop now, I promise.
-dZ.
Bad analogy. The ocean is a natural resource, the roads had to be built and paid for by someone.
One of the reasons the government invests more money on the interstate highway system is not necessarily because commuters use it to go to work--heck, they could build trains and bus systems for that cheaper than it takes to build and maintain suspension bridges--but because a large part of the economy depends on the transportation system as it is. That is, interstate commerce, trucks, rely on it, so there is ample pressure put by lobbyists and state officials to keep it up. So, in a sense, it is the opposite of what you suspect: the cars just happen to use the interstate highway system, while the trucks are first citizens there. This is to the detriment of the railway system, which then gets treated as a sub-standard money hole, which nobody has the insentive to use, therefore entering a downward spiral of losses and service cuts.
It is true, trains need expensive, specially built tracks, but trucks need expensive and specially built highways and bridges. It depends on where you put your money and which infrastructure you support: either one can ferry along commuters. Some will argue that in the long run, it is more sustainable and economic to focus on a rail transportation system for interstate travel and commerce.
-dZ.
...or sell cars...
>> That's funny, didn't we build the interstate system for precisely the same reason we're suggesting building a high-speed rail system? To quickly and efficiently move people from one city to another?
Not really. It was intended as a means to transport military equipment and troops from one end of the country to the other. During the first World War, Eisenhower admired how the Germans were able to take advantage of their Autobahn to move their troops around Europe, and realized that we had no such comprehensive system in place in the Continental USA.
Of course, the major automobile manufacturers of the time took the opportunity to lobby greatly for the government to subsidized what would have ended up being their own infrastruture.
The whole indepence and adventure spirit of the "American Dream", was mainly a marketing strategy to sell more cars. It seems to have worked, though.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System#History
-dZ.
>> That means lots of driving, carrying around a bunch of gear.
Or... taking the bus.
-dZ.
Wow, in which model city do you live? Just about any city I've been to in the USA, I see people circling the parking lot looking for that "perfect spot" close to the entrance. I am also an American, and see this all the time. At the movie theater, at the mall, at the stadium--anywhere.
I always aim for the farthest spots (I enjoy walking and am not in a hurry), so I avoid the contention; but I can see, for example, some person in their car waiting for a little old lady to finish packing her bags in the trunk of her car and pull out so that they can take her parking space--while just a few yards away, there's a bunch of empty spots, which happen to be a bit farther from the door. They'll even honk the horn if the little old lady takes too long! I pressume they are in a hurry.
The funniest thing is that, sometimes, they are still waiting for that perfect spot by the time I park my car in the farther end of the lot, walk in, and reach the entrance.
-dZ.
As others have mentioned, I too compare on more than price. To me the usage experience and the software included is part of the criteria. For example, I used GarageBand (until I "graduated" to Logic) to compose music, and my wife uses iMovie and iDvd to create home videos of our trips. We find that the iLife package included with a new Mac computer is more than appropriate for consumer-grade production of such things. In fact, we actually enjoy using those applications, and find them easy and powerful.
We also haven't found anything comparable that is just as stable, intuitive and easy to use for Windows. I'm sure there are applications like that, but they do not come in a comprehensive package such as iLife, and they do not come bundled free with a new PC. You are more likely to get a "30 day trial" of some third program, which is not going to be supported by Dell or HP directly.
For back-ups, we use Time-Machine, and more than once it has saved my skin by allowing me to retrieve an older version of a file. Have you ever seen Time-Machine? It seems almost magical. Instead of having to wade through directories of timestamped archives to figure out what I need from whence, it provides me with a nice and intuitive interface to recover files. For example, I can open the Finder, engage the Time-Machine, and browse my files as they were on various dates. I just move a slider to change the date, and the Finder window automatically shows the state of the file system at that time; I just browse and use it as normal. Sure, it may be more pretty and glitzy than it needs to be, but let me tell you that it makes recovering files a much less painful experience than it typically is. Not only that, but other supported applications (such as Mail, Contacts, etc.) do the same thing: work normally showing you their state during those dates so that you may recover lost or changed items such as e-mail messages or telephone numbers.
Then there's Automator. Not only do you get a very powerful system scripting language in AppleScript, but a dummy-friendly interface to automate various functions on your system without having to write a single line of code or opening up a command console.
Then there are little things such as compressed archive support built-in, without requiring additional software installed; generating PDF files from absolutely anything displayed, and even "print-to-PDF" functionality built-in without any Adobe third-party add-on; customizable virtual desktops to organize my work spaces; a dictionary built-in and integrated with the operating system itself, so that it is accessible from any application displaying text.
There's also a Migration Assistant application--included with the OS--that aids you in importing all your programs and/or settings from a previous installation. I've used this before without any problems whatsoever.
And let's not forget the comprehensive keyboard-shortcut customization, which allows you to map any combination of keys to just about any menu entry--at the OS or application level--on a centralized panel.
All these things, in my opinion (and my wife's) offer a better daily usage experience than Windows on a PC, and enhance the value than the mere hardware specifications. We come from a Windows and Linux background, and switched about five years ago. We haven't regretted it ever since.
-dZ.
On a side note, its pleasing to meet a fellow EditPlus user. You, sir, are a man of taste.
-dZ.
And our contention is that buying a Mac and sticking Windows on it will probably not offer those difficulties, but be much easier.
-dZ.
Actually, C# has a completely different lineage than VB.NET. And as the parent poster said, VB.NET was the result of a "C-sharpification" of VisualBasic, in order to move all those entrenched Windows developers using exclusively VB into the .NET platform. You see, .NET is an object oriented platform, while VisualBasic, up to that point, didn't even offer proper polymorphism or inheritance.
The C# language was designed by the Anders Hejlsberg, the designer of other languages and compilers, such as Turbo Pascal, Object Pascal and Delphi. The language is based more on SmallTalk than on any other. Like Java, it has a C-ish syntax, but this is more an accident of history. Hejlsberg has also said that it also "borrows" liberally from Delphi, because he thought that things such as explicit virtual methods were done right in Delphi. If you've ever used Delphi, you'll recognize its influence immediately when you use C#; I know I did. It's one of the reasons it tends to resemble less of Java, contrary to what many think.
-dZ.
If you are talking purely about the code editor, then I'll grant you that it is useful. However, as an integrated debugger and inspector, it is slow and buggy. The debugger has a knack of crashing in spectacular ways (often bringing the entire computer to its knees) by the mere action of attempting to inspect memory locations or local objects.
Personally, I find the editor too bloated and imposing, and the customization level lacking--sometimes I just want to write code in my own way and don't want so many bells and whistles. But that's a matter of opinion.
I agree that Eclipse has been bloated and buggy in the past, but it has gotten better; much better. In any case, if your development experience in modern environments is using VisualStudio and Eclipse, then you are in a position to compare both, but hardly in a position to say that VisualStudio is "second to none". There are many other development tools out there that have much more to offer.
-dZ.
Second to none? Have you ever tried using XCode and Interface Builder? I find VisualStudio bloated, slow and buggy.
-dZ.