I was hearing the argument before there was an OSX. And the metaphor of comparing Win98 to WinXP doesn't help. Win98, an unstable insecure piece of crap. WinXP a bloated unstable insecure piece of crap. This would suggest that OSX is a bloated version of its predecessor. Its my understanding that its supposed to be a BSD variant. I'll give it a try when I can find one to borrow. May be a while since I don't know anybody with one.
My mother (in her 50's) doesn't get it, one button mouse or 5, and she could care less. My father, same age as my mother does.
My grandmother (80) uses a 4 button mouse (came with her box) like she was born with it. It took her all of one minute to understand. My great-grandmother (100), uses my grandmother's computer with no probs.
The whole age-ism in this issue is BS. The whole argument about the nuumber of buttons (like you stated) is also BS.
I've decided, from observation, that Apple ships one button mice because they think they look cool. That hockey-puck-thing on the iMacs is the classic example. Can't use it without accidentally clicking all over the place. Gives you tunnel-carpal if you use it for more than 5 seconds. But, it *looks cool* with an iMac. And how it looks is what must be really important.
This is the best argument I've heard. Of course, you are talking about application design.
Perhaps all apps should be designed to work with one button. However, providing shortcuts with other buttons could be a bonus.
For the record, my trackball has 5 buttons. And I like it.
If Windows has 90% of the market share and Windows crashes a lot, then at the very least crashing a lot is not an impediment to computer usability.
Or is not a sufficient enough impediment to computer usability.
You could add that qualifier to all of the statements. Proof: people keep using it.
OTH, it is a sufficient enough impediment to me, thus I chose not to use Windows, or a Mac for that matter.
On a side note, my experience with the Mac showed me that the "crashing less" statements to be pure BS. I used OS8.5 and OS9 on a G3 for work at an insurance company. The **** thing crashed at least 5-6 times a day. Not even **** WinNT did that.
I personally think all OS's suck. They just all suck in their own special way.
never hurt me or slowed me down
So, my understanding is instead of a right button you click and wait. So how is being forced to wait, not being slowed down ?.
I am really not trying to be a troll here. My Mac experience is small and painful (I was told,by a self proclaimed Mac expert, keyboard shortcuts required a third party program for $50). I'm a long term Unix geek so I've never really *gotten* the Mac UI. For me its always been unintuitive, especially the menu on the top thing. But, I'm probably not in their target market.
I'd really like to understand what they are doing.
Are they just building machines for those with the least computer experience and forget everyone else?
Again, I am trying to understand, not troll.
Or maybe this could explain the "jumps" in evolution that biologists have observed in the fossil record.
There seem to be certain periods in our history when evolution has occurred very rapidly on a global scale. This has always been a problem for those who theorize the slow random evolution. Perhaps the dark matter side effects can reconcile the two evolutionary camps.
Now you have me wondering why I don't just do this. I've got a hosted server to run apps and things. I've got a USB keychain and a copy of "Hacking Knoppix". Damn, now I'll have to get to work instead of hoping someone else does it for me.
This reminds me of the antenna boosters that were being sold a while back. They always had a claim of being used by the military and showed a HMMWV with one on the antenna. Even funnier was seeing cellphones with the stupid big balls on the antennas. I always laughed at those. Yes the Army put balls on the antennas, so they won't poke anybody in the eye.
Guys like these make Star Trek science sound good.
I seem to remember that his prediction that the dot com bubble (in the middle of it) was just that. When everyone was saying that dot coms "are different", that profits don't matter, that market share is everything even if you sell at a loss, he stood out and called bullsh*t. He predicted the demise of almost every dot com that died. Of course that would have been easy, predict they all fail and you'd be 99% right. He's like a pessimistic Cringely.
I mostly agree with you however, Google has been pretty good about doing ads in a way that people happily accept. I wouldn't be surprised if they found a way to provide some extra value or service to the desktop that made people feel ok about the ads. I don't think they'll abuse the users like those free internet services of the '90's. People will still have the option to not use them. The guys at Google are pretty smart. If they do go this route, it'll be interesting to see what happens. Also, with some serious competition, it'll be nice to see Microsoft be more inovative and customer friendly.
Imagine if instead of selling an "appliance" they sell a USB keychain a-la bootable (stripped down) live linux with firefox. Or instead of selling the USB drive, you just download an image into any commodity USB drive.
Most of your stuff is on-line. Your "computer" is online + on your keychain.
They won't need to sell hardware, you won't need an OS on your computer (except for games), you won't think about virii anymore.
Of course, this is all pure speculation. OTH, John Dvorak has been right a hella-lot-more than he's been wrong. He may be on to something.
I tend to put this into the problem with retail in the US. Most retail workers are paid minimum wage or slightly more. It has to be hard to get a significant pool of trustworthy applicants when the pay is so far below poverty. For someone making $5.15/hour and risking their lives to do it, the temptation to do this is probably pretty high.
For the consumers, we get crappy service and a higher risk of getting ripped off (as you related). We are of course addicted to the convenience of plastic (I am).
I don't think we'll see anything change at the retail level in the near future. The liability to the companies with these employees is too low for them to care so they have little incentive to offer more money to get/keep higher quality employees.
Considering the question was about the broadest support...
Players supporting MPEG1&2 are available on every OS that I can think of (even Plan9).
The RealPlayer or Helix player is available for most platforms (Win, Mac, *nix). Note: the RealPlayer is really only bloated on Windows. You can get Real's Enterprise player if you want a stripped down version. There's also RealAlternative (for Win); MPlayer and Xine support the older Real Codecs.
AVI can be a problem because of the Codecs. Since its basically a wrapper format (as is the RealMedia format btw), some codecs may not be available on all platforms (as many a Linux user will attest).
A side note: The RealMedia format is also just a wrapper (similar to AVI or QT) for other codecs. The reason I place it above AVI is because of the multiplatform player supports *most* of the codecs that would be used with the Real/Helix Producer. And there is decent documentation of the rm file format on the helix website.
Disclaimer (should have been in my first post): I am an ex-employee of Real.
By this I mean take care of the people on your team.
Represent them well to your superiors. Put your people in for raises. Make sure your management knows that you have the best team in the company. Take responsibility for your team. If someone screws up, don't tell your boss that is so and so's fault. Say, "I am the manager, its my responsibility." Give credit to team members when they do good things. Fight for the resources your team needs to accomplish their tasks. Let your team know you apprciate their efforts.
If you do these simple (though difficult) tasks you will very quickly have the best team in your company. If you do them well, you will also have the best paid team (deservidly, is that a word?) in the company. Your team will be in the role of what everyone else aspires to.
Bill Gates being worth 50 billion is not the same as earning 50 billion/year (which he doesn't).
So, he gave 1.53% of his worth, not his income. Never mind the fact that he could never turn that 50 billion into cash. The act of him selling any significant portion of those MS shares would drive the value of them into the ground.
Companies are starting to hire people who make a name for themselves while working on open source projects. This makes sense on several levels.
The developer has proven themselves in an environment where capability is obvious, transparent, and peer reviewed. Try getting that out of a resume. They are hiring a known. The company gets to use that person's *fame*/name as a marketing tool. The developer is probably more willing to put in the extra hours because they must enjoy coding to spend so much spare time doing it.
This helps the open source movement a well. If new developers get out and try to earn a name, they'll probably start putting more effort if they think their code might get them a good job. They might take the peer review more seriously.
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I was hearing the argument before there was an OSX.
And the metaphor of comparing Win98 to WinXP doesn't help.
Win98, an unstable insecure piece of crap. WinXP a bloated unstable insecure piece of crap. This would suggest that OSX is a bloated version of its predecessor. Its my understanding that its supposed to be a BSD variant. I'll give it a try when I can find one to borrow. May be a while since I don't know anybody with one.
My mother (in her 50's) doesn't get it, one button mouse or 5, and she could care less. My father, same age as my mother does.
My grandmother (80) uses a 4 button mouse (came with her box) like she was born with it. It took her all of one minute to understand. My great-grandmother (100), uses my grandmother's computer with no probs.
The whole age-ism in this issue is BS. The whole argument about the nuumber of buttons (like you stated) is also BS. I've decided, from observation, that Apple ships one button mice because they think they look cool. That hockey-puck-thing on the iMacs is the classic example. Can't use it without accidentally clicking all over the place. Gives you tunnel-carpal if you use it for more than 5 seconds. But, it *looks cool* with an iMac. And how it looks is what must be really important.
This is the best argument I've heard. Of course, you are talking about application design. Perhaps all apps should be designed to work with one button. However, providing shortcuts with other buttons could be a bonus.
For the record, my trackball has 5 buttons. And I like it.
Holding down the stylus brings up the right click menu
I seem to remember thats how the Macs do it too. But, I wonder, given the way a tablet PC is used, do you really use the contextual menu that often?
Or, don't buy a mac, keep using my Linux box, and my mouse works exactly like it's always worked. No driver install or reboot required.
:)
Sorry, that statement was just asking for it and I couldn't help myself. I'll show more restraint next time
If Windows has 90% of the market share and Windows crashes a lot, then at the very least crashing a lot is not an impediment to computer usability.
Or is not a sufficient enough impediment to computer usability.
You could add that qualifier to all of the statements. Proof: people keep using it.
OTH, it is a sufficient enough impediment to me, thus I chose not to use Windows, or a Mac for that matter.
On a side note, my experience with the Mac showed me that the "crashing less" statements to be pure BS. I used OS8.5 and OS9 on a G3 for work at an insurance company. The **** thing crashed at least 5-6 times a day. Not even **** WinNT did that.
I personally think all OS's suck. They just all suck in their own special way.
never hurt me or slowed me down
So, my understanding is instead of a right button you click and wait. So how is being forced to wait, not being slowed down ?.
I am really not trying to be a troll here. My Mac experience is small and painful (I was told,by a self proclaimed Mac expert, keyboard shortcuts required a third party program for $50). I'm a long term Unix geek so I've never really *gotten* the Mac UI. For me its always been unintuitive, especially the menu on the top thing. But, I'm probably not in their target market.
I'd really like to understand what they are doing. Are they just building machines for those with the least computer experience and forget everyone else?
Again, I am trying to understand, not troll.
Or maybe this could explain the "jumps" in evolution that biologists have observed in the fossil record.
There seem to be certain periods in our history when evolution has occurred very rapidly on a global scale. This has always been a problem for those who theorize the slow random evolution. Perhaps the dark matter side effects can reconcile the two evolutionary camps.
How about using a scanner (or O-scope) to listen to the higher frequency signals.
Now you have me wondering why I don't just do this.
I've got a hosted server to run apps and things. I've got a USB keychain and a copy of "Hacking Knoppix".
Damn, now I'll have to get to work instead of hoping someone else does it for me.
This reminds me of the antenna boosters that were being sold a while back. They always had a claim of being used by the military and showed a HMMWV with one on the antenna. Even funnier was seeing cellphones with the stupid big balls on the antennas.
I always laughed at those. Yes the Army put balls on the antennas, so they won't poke anybody in the eye.
Guys like these make Star Trek science sound good.
I seem to remember that his prediction that the dot com bubble (in the middle of it) was just that.
When everyone was saying that dot coms "are different", that profits don't matter, that market share is everything even if you sell at a loss, he stood out and called bullsh*t. He predicted the demise of almost every dot com that died. Of course that would have been easy, predict they all fail and you'd be 99% right.
He's like a pessimistic Cringely.
I mostly agree with you however, Google has been pretty good about doing ads in a way that people happily accept.
I wouldn't be surprised if they found a way to provide some extra value or service to the desktop that made people feel ok about the ads.
I don't think they'll abuse the users like those free internet services of the '90's. People will still have the option to not use them.
The guys at Google are pretty smart. If they do go this route, it'll be interesting to see what happens. Also, with some serious competition, it'll be nice to see Microsoft be more inovative and customer friendly.
Imagine if instead of selling an "appliance" they sell a USB keychain a-la bootable (stripped down) live linux with firefox. Or instead of selling the USB drive, you just download an image into any commodity USB drive.
Most of your stuff is on-line. Your "computer" is online + on your keychain.
They won't need to sell hardware, you won't need an OS on your computer (except for games), you won't think about virii anymore.
Of course, this is all pure speculation. OTH, John Dvorak has been right a hella-lot-more than he's been wrong. He may be on to something.
I tend to put this into the problem with retail in the US.
Most retail workers are paid minimum wage or slightly more. It has to be hard to get a significant pool of trustworthy applicants when the pay is so far below poverty. For someone making $5.15/hour and risking their lives to do it, the temptation to do this is probably pretty high.
For the consumers, we get crappy service and a higher risk of getting ripped off (as you related). We are of course addicted to the convenience of plastic (I am).
I don't think we'll see anything change at the retail level in the near future. The liability to the companies with these employees is too low for them to care so they have little incentive to offer more money to get/keep higher quality employees.
Considering the question was about the broadest support...
Players supporting MPEG1&2 are available on every OS that I can think of (even Plan9).
The RealPlayer or Helix player is available for most platforms (Win, Mac, *nix). Note: the RealPlayer is really only bloated on Windows. You can get Real's Enterprise player if you want a stripped down version. There's also RealAlternative (for Win); MPlayer and Xine support the older Real Codecs.
AVI can be a problem because of the Codecs. Since its basically a wrapper format (as is the RealMedia format btw), some codecs may not be available on all platforms (as many a Linux user will attest).
A side note: The RealMedia format is also just a wrapper (similar to AVI or QT) for other codecs. The reason I place it above AVI is because of the multiplatform player supports *most* of the codecs that would be used with the Real/Helix Producer. And there is decent documentation of the rm file format on the helix website.
Disclaimer (should have been in my first post): I am an ex-employee of Real.
I've got both of those and no such luck (plus Totem and Kaffeine).
:(
Maybe the sites I've visited are using codecs that aren't supported.
I've never been able to get Quicktime files to play on Linux. Is there a secret I'm missing?
I'd say
1. MPEG
2. RM (Real Media)
3. AVI
in that order with a strong pref for MPEG.
I can't believe I haven't seen the response:
This could mean cheaper more ubiquitous locating devices for everyone and everything.....
Track everyone cheaper.
Where are the paranoids?
This is how we keep all the beaurocrats off welfare.
Next thing you'll suggest that we ship off all of the public telephone sanitizers on ship "B".
By this I mean take care of the people on your team.
Represent them well to your superiors. Put your people in for raises. Make sure your management knows that you have the best team in the company.
Take responsibility for your team. If someone screws up, don't tell your boss that is so and so's fault. Say, "I am the manager, its my responsibility."
Give credit to team members when they do good things.
Fight for the resources your team needs to accomplish their tasks.
Let your team know you apprciate their efforts.
If you do these simple (though difficult) tasks you will very quickly have the best team in your company. If you do them well, you will also have the best paid team (deservidly, is that a word?) in the company. Your team will be in the role of what everyone else aspires to.
You gave 2.5% of your "discretionary income".
Bill Gates being worth 50 billion is not the same as earning 50 billion/year (which he doesn't).
So, he gave 1.53% of his worth, not his income. Never mind the fact that he could never turn that 50 billion into cash. The act of him selling any significant portion of those MS shares would drive the value of them into the ground.
That said, you are both to be commended.
This is an example of an interesting trend.
Companies are starting to hire people who make a name for themselves while working on open source projects. This makes sense on several levels.
The developer has proven themselves in an environment where capability is obvious, transparent, and peer reviewed. Try getting that out of a resume. They are hiring a known.
The company gets to use that person's *fame*/name as a marketing tool.
The developer is probably more willing to put in the extra hours because they must enjoy coding to spend so much spare time doing it.
This helps the open source movement a well. If new developers get out and try to earn a name, they'll probably start putting more effort if they think their code might get them a good job. They might take the peer review more seriously.
as well, I'll keep dreaming...