Better to just follow the original instructions and indeed, fill the time with something that looks like work. With a PC on your desk that shouldn't be all that hard to do.
I've found that nothing looks like work more than a giant page of text. When things are slow around her I just read e-books on my computer. It lets me read a lot more than I otherwise would and nobody EVER questions what you're doing:).
I can't say that I really mind. I like to try to use mostly GTK based apps but it still falls down to the quality of the app. I use qBittorrent as my Torrent client because it works better than Deluge or any other GTK client I've found. Particularly when set to the same theme QT is just fine.
I think in the process though Ubuntu has killed what draws a lot of people to it.
I'm no OSS hippie. I'm cool with binary graphics drivers and even full programs where necessary. However, one thing that was always great about Linux was that the direction generally felt like it was following what the community wanted. We won't change things simply to release a new version we can charge for. We won't do stupid things to make shareholders happy. Its never been simply that it was "free" (because pirated Windows has always been "free" too, and I'm far less caring about the $100 cost of an OS these days than I once was) - it's been that I truly liked the way things were handled.
Ubuntu has now destroyed that feeling. It might still be free of charge, but it now feels like a software project from a big commercial company that is going to do what it wants regardless of how the userbase feels and if they don't like it they can stick it. I just don't want to use that type of computer.
Thankfully there are other distros that have stepped in to fill their shoes, as Microsoft has gone just as crazy and Apple though they make a great OS is tied to their own hardware.
I can attest that for the most part it works just fine. My completely computer illiterate dad uses it on a machine at home - he didn't know how to use Windows when he joined a fantasy football league that required use of the computer, so I started him on Linux and he's fine there. On the odd chance he has a question I ssh into his machine and tunnel into VNC over that to look at anything that needs to be done.
My sister also uses it just fine. Her laptop died so I've lent her mine since I mostly use my desktop. Its got Linux Mint on there and once I gave her a login and password she figured everything out without having to really ask anything. Her previous computer was a Mac so she was sort of used to using a computer that wasn't the assumed "default", but she's far from a techie and has had no issues.
Granted, I did the setup work on both those machines myself - I don't think they could have done the install, but many people can't install Windows either. As long as the system is up and running already though I don't think its too complicated for most people to use.
I agree. I've been an off-and-on user of Linux since 1998 when I was in high school. I downloaded and dual-booted an old version of Mandrake back then, and it was a neat toy.
Then when I got into college I got a 2nd system just for Linux (and started using Slackware, then later Gentoo) and used a KVM, but I mostly just did my CompSci homework on my Linux system. I still didn't like actually doing my day to day browsing and general computer usage in Linux.
That continued after I got out of school until eventually Ubuntu 9.04 when Ubuntu finally managed to get things polished enough that I felt comfortable enough to spend the vast majority of my time in Linux. All was well for about 2 years. Then Unity happened and Ubuntu went crazy.
Thankfully I've managed to find alternatives - I'm actually using Linux Mint with XFCE as my desktop, but Ubuntu just seemed to build themselves up into such a force just to run their rep straight into the ground.
At age 4 I was allowed to go outside and play unsupervised. Living in a rural area my "roaming range" was about a 3 sq mile area.
At age 7 I was allowed to go hunting (yes, with a real shotgun) by myself.
At age 11 I was given a computer with a modem. The internet wasn't really common for households yet, but I spent a ton of time on BBS systems. Admittedly, like any curious kid I did find a bit of porn on there, but it didn't scar me for life or anything. It was actually a shocker as like many kids playing games and such I'd seen girls my age naked, but a grown woman looked quite a bit different. Looking back it was actually somewhat educational.
At age 13, given how far out we lived and the complete lack of cops to check a license, my dad actually started letting me take the truck up to the local store (about 4 miles up the road) to pick up stuff.
By the age of 15 I had an evening job at that store that I continued till I got out of high school.
I personally turned out just fine. Eventually graduated 2nd in my high school class, was the first person in my family to get a college degree, and now have a pretty good job as a programmer (getting me that computer when I was young paid off).
Helicopter parenting isn't always necessary, nor even recommended.
I actually kind of agree with you. Micro USB just doesn't seem to firmly hold into slots - particularly as a device gets a bit older.
Still, its just awesome to have a collection of a dozen or more chargers and cables from previous devices that I don't have to throw away when I get a new phone. I keep 4 chargers in various rooms in my house, another at the office, and another in the car (plus an extra that I keep in my laptop bag). I'd never both to keep that many if I thought they'd not work on future devices.
I have done this - several times. Once - ironically, getting a vaccination, another time when I was diagnosed with a disease (went out while speaking with the doctor), and another time right before I was about to be put under anesthesia for a wisdom tooth removal (its really odd to faint, regain consciousness, and then be immediately put back out).
Even with that, I still say you can get over your fear. Such responses are generally triggered by stress and/or fear. You simply need to learn to not fear the needle so much. I'm at the point now where while I still don't like it, I'm generally OK if I don't watch it go in.
Even if you do that tablet and phone OS's don't work great. Everything runs full screen all the time. One of the perks of having a big full screen is having enough room to work with multiple windows.
The simple reality is that the windowed application concept is incredibly useful, mature, and powerful. I can understand why it doesn't work on small mobile devices and why they don't use it there, but its foolish to hobble a desktop system by making it match the design choices of a mobile platform. Particularly when those design choices were made because of limitations that don't exist on the desktop.
I don't get it - Blackberry has basically failed. These guys obviously made a lot of money when it WAS successful in order to even have the capital to attempt this - why not just let it go and retire. When you have more money than any one person could likely ever spend doing normal day-to-day living, why risk it just for the chance to make even more money that you can't spend fast enough?
You mean to tell me that someone is going to decide not to go on a shooting spree for fear of the paperwork afterwards?
Here's a hint: if you do something wrong with a gun here in the United States you get arrested too. What they're always saying is that the AVAILABILITY of the guns are the problem, and having to "account" for bullet usage doesn't decrease that availability.
[1]: The main reason the US's murder rate is so high is the availability of firearms.
Switzerland has just as many guns and far less murders. Mexico has less and far more murders.
Realistically the US's murder rate is heavily influenced by many cultural factors and has a lot to do with gang and drug related violence. When you take those out the US isn't all that different. Plus while actual murders are higher in the US if you look at other violent crime (rape, muggings, etc) the US is ahead of many European countries.
Overall this issue is far more complex than the simple minded "Guns are bad, mmmkay." response.
Just a hardwired CO2 and Smoke alarm is around half this.
I'm guessing you mean carbon monoxide rather than CO2, but most people seem to get by fine with regular old smoke alarms, which can generally be found for $8 to $12 for basic models.
As a matter of fact the majority of the smoke alarms in my house (they're in every room) are in the $20 range with 2 of them that were missing when I moved in being $10 units and they've worked absolutely fine. They've never given a false alarm and the only time they actually have gone off was when I left something in the oven and they were supposed to.
I can actually understand the thermostat - its premise is built around being energy efficient and saving you money in the long run. The smoke detector I see less appeal for. Existing ones work fine, are mostly ignored until needed, and this doesn't really work in any way to save any amount of energy (if anything a "smart" smoke detector probably uses more power).
Really only relevant for this very brief period where things are taking off and rapidly advancing in mobile data. Once things stabilize it won't really be an issue.
If you take a data connection on the PC for example (a more mature platform), then 10 years ago we were just adopting 802.11g for wireless and for wired gigabit ethernet had been around for a few years. Neither is the fastest available anymore, but nor are they particularly a problem even today either. Cellular is starting to hit that "good enough" point too. While I'm sure something faster will be available in 10 years I'm betting that 4G will still be completely serviceable for these types of needs in 10 years.
And worse case scenario if something does become outdated is you do exactly what you mostly have to do now anyways: use your phone for these things.
Technically while I don't think one should have to rely on a phone for this (see my comment on this thread), such adapters already exist. Virtually all modern cars have an ODB II port for which you can buy a bluetooth device that'll transmit to a phone app (the one that I use is called Torque).
Most people just don't seem to care that much to check, but I was able to use mine to effectively diagnose a misfiring issue I had with my car as a bad spark plug. Saved a lot of money versus taking it to a mechanic.
I don't know about you but I've grown tired of effectively connecting a dongle to my car in order to do things like GPS navigation. The main problem as to why phones are better than the built-in stuff is because its updated when the built-in stuff stagnates.
Processing power is cheap - dirt cheap (a Raspberry Pi, Beaglebone Black, etc is less than $50 and contains more brains than most in-dash systems need). In today's age when so little data is actually stored locally on the devices anyways it makes far more sense to build an open system that can access the same profiles (ie, synced data from things like Google accounts) than to force users into connecting their phone to their car.
You decide that what they're offering really IS what your time and skills are worth and take a job at the salary range offered?
If you think you're worth $60k per year but you've been to "200 interviews" and none are offering more than $25k per year then the problem isn't theirs - you're overvaluing your labor. You need to either settle for what you're worth or endeavor (through school, training, etc) to make yourself worth more.
SteamOS is just a standard Linux distro that boots directly into the Steam client. The Steam client is closed source, as are pretty much all the games. The OS itself is still standard Linux.
"Standard Linux" isn't really a thing. I'm guessing they'll be stripping out most of the more mundane general purpose stuff on the system, but what form it'll take will ultimately be a mystery. Given the incredibly limited number of actual apps that SteamOS needs to run (their client and games) its still not even clear if it'll be using x.org or Wayland or something else.
Honestly though its a bit too early in the game to be making any assumptions about it except that it indeed will be running a Linux kernel.
It's crazy that companies go through all this trouble to protect a revenue stream from something as inexpensive and generic as a DVI to HDMI adapter.
Not only that, but I wouldn't even know where to start to find a their branded version except in the box of a graphics card (and typically all those things when I get them just get tossed into a drawer - of the umpteen bazillion of them in there I doubt I know which goes with which).
My guess though is that the actual sales they're trying to protect here are those to the card makers rather than end users. If the companies making cards using their chips have to buy the adapters from AMD instead whatever the cheapest source in Hong Kong is, then I'm guessing it adds up. The end-user is just collateral damage.
An arrest doesn't mean you're guilty. It doesn't mean you even had anything to do with what happened.
You go out in an Old Navy T-shirt and jeans one day and someone wearing the same clothes snatches an old lady's purse. You could very well get arrested because you match the description. Even if you prove that you're innocent of everything but similar fashion choices as a criminal, you still have an arrest record (no conviction, but an arrest). A lot of places will discriminate on that arrest record - even when found innocent. That is not fair, and is by no means an accurate way to gauge the trustworthiness of potential employees.
Guess what? Most federal employees don't get paid monthly.
Not only "most Federal employees" but by far most people in the country aren't paid monthly. Seems like virtually everyone is biweekly with some paid weekly and a VERY small minority paid monthly.
I kinda took it differently. When they announced this an Alienware equivalent doesn't come to mind. Instead I get the same picture as the $300-400 budget gaming PC's that I've always built. When the parts are bought in bulk I'm willing to bet that an OEM could assemble a small equivalent set-top box for even cheaper and have a fairly capable system to compete with the $400-500 Sony and MS offerings.
I'm kinda envisioning the Steambox being offered at more of a $250-300 price point. If you want a monster rig you can still build it yourself and run SteamOS.
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Better to just follow the original instructions and indeed, fill the time with something that looks like work. With a PC on your desk that shouldn't be all that hard to do.
I've found that nothing looks like work more than a giant page of text. When things are slow around her I just read e-books on my computer. It lets me read a lot more than I otherwise would and nobody EVER questions what you're doing :).
I can't say that I really mind. I like to try to use mostly GTK based apps but it still falls down to the quality of the app. I use qBittorrent as my Torrent client because it works better than Deluge or any other GTK client I've found. Particularly when set to the same theme QT is just fine.
The $99 upfront isn't bad, but 25% royalty to the engine company is HUGE.
Compare to Unity which is $1500 upfront and done and it just doesn't compare.
I think in the process though Ubuntu has killed what draws a lot of people to it.
I'm no OSS hippie. I'm cool with binary graphics drivers and even full programs where necessary. However, one thing that was always great about Linux was that the direction generally felt like it was following what the community wanted. We won't change things simply to release a new version we can charge for. We won't do stupid things to make shareholders happy. Its never been simply that it was "free" (because pirated Windows has always been "free" too, and I'm far less caring about the $100 cost of an OS these days than I once was) - it's been that I truly liked the way things were handled.
Ubuntu has now destroyed that feeling. It might still be free of charge, but it now feels like a software project from a big commercial company that is going to do what it wants regardless of how the userbase feels and if they don't like it they can stick it. I just don't want to use that type of computer.
Thankfully there are other distros that have stepped in to fill their shoes, as Microsoft has gone just as crazy and Apple though they make a great OS is tied to their own hardware.
Precisely what issues have you seen Linux cause?
I can attest that for the most part it works just fine. My completely computer illiterate dad uses it on a machine at home - he didn't know how to use Windows when he joined a fantasy football league that required use of the computer, so I started him on Linux and he's fine there. On the odd chance he has a question I ssh into his machine and tunnel into VNC over that to look at anything that needs to be done.
My sister also uses it just fine. Her laptop died so I've lent her mine since I mostly use my desktop. Its got Linux Mint on there and once I gave her a login and password she figured everything out without having to really ask anything. Her previous computer was a Mac so she was sort of used to using a computer that wasn't the assumed "default", but she's far from a techie and has had no issues.
Granted, I did the setup work on both those machines myself - I don't think they could have done the install, but many people can't install Windows either. As long as the system is up and running already though I don't think its too complicated for most people to use.
I agree. I've been an off-and-on user of Linux since 1998 when I was in high school. I downloaded and dual-booted an old version of Mandrake back then, and it was a neat toy.
Then when I got into college I got a 2nd system just for Linux (and started using Slackware, then later Gentoo) and used a KVM, but I mostly just did my CompSci homework on my Linux system. I still didn't like actually doing my day to day browsing and general computer usage in Linux.
That continued after I got out of school until eventually Ubuntu 9.04 when Ubuntu finally managed to get things polished enough that I felt comfortable enough to spend the vast majority of my time in Linux. All was well for about 2 years. Then Unity happened and Ubuntu went crazy.
Thankfully I've managed to find alternatives - I'm actually using Linux Mint with XFCE as my desktop, but Ubuntu just seemed to build themselves up into such a force just to run their rep straight into the ground.
Different people turn out differently.
At age 4 I was allowed to go outside and play unsupervised. Living in a rural area my "roaming range" was about a 3 sq mile area.
At age 7 I was allowed to go hunting (yes, with a real shotgun) by myself.
At age 11 I was given a computer with a modem. The internet wasn't really common for households yet, but I spent a ton of time on BBS systems. Admittedly, like any curious kid I did find a bit of porn on there, but it didn't scar me for life or anything. It was actually a shocker as like many kids playing games and such I'd seen girls my age naked, but a grown woman looked quite a bit different. Looking back it was actually somewhat educational.
At age 13, given how far out we lived and the complete lack of cops to check a license, my dad actually started letting me take the truck up to the local store (about 4 miles up the road) to pick up stuff.
By the age of 15 I had an evening job at that store that I continued till I got out of high school.
I personally turned out just fine. Eventually graduated 2nd in my high school class, was the first person in my family to get a college degree, and now have a pretty good job as a programmer (getting me that computer when I was young paid off).
Helicopter parenting isn't always necessary, nor even recommended.
If you'd read the article you'd see that they DID take her to get medical and psychological attention.
I actually kind of agree with you. Micro USB just doesn't seem to firmly hold into slots - particularly as a device gets a bit older.
Still, its just awesome to have a collection of a dozen or more chargers and cables from previous devices that I don't have to throw away when I get a new phone. I keep 4 chargers in various rooms in my house, another at the office, and another in the car (plus an extra that I keep in my laptop bag). I'd never both to keep that many if I thought they'd not work on future devices.
I have done this - several times. Once - ironically, getting a vaccination, another time when I was diagnosed with a disease (went out while speaking with the doctor), and another time right before I was about to be put under anesthesia for a wisdom tooth removal (its really odd to faint, regain consciousness, and then be immediately put back out).
Even with that, I still say you can get over your fear. Such responses are generally triggered by stress and/or fear. You simply need to learn to not fear the needle so much. I'm at the point now where while I still don't like it, I'm generally OK if I don't watch it go in.
Even if you do that tablet and phone OS's don't work great. Everything runs full screen all the time. One of the perks of having a big full screen is having enough room to work with multiple windows.
The simple reality is that the windowed application concept is incredibly useful, mature, and powerful. I can understand why it doesn't work on small mobile devices and why they don't use it there, but its foolish to hobble a desktop system by making it match the design choices of a mobile platform. Particularly when those design choices were made because of limitations that don't exist on the desktop.
I don't get it - Blackberry has basically failed. These guys obviously made a lot of money when it WAS successful in order to even have the capital to attempt this - why not just let it go and retire. When you have more money than any one person could likely ever spend doing normal day-to-day living, why risk it just for the chance to make even more money that you can't spend fast enough?
You mean to tell me that someone is going to decide not to go on a shooting spree for fear of the paperwork afterwards?
Here's a hint: if you do something wrong with a gun here in the United States you get arrested too. What they're always saying is that the AVAILABILITY of the guns are the problem, and having to "account" for bullet usage doesn't decrease that availability.
[1]: The main reason the US's murder rate is so high is the availability of firearms.
Switzerland has just as many guns and far less murders. Mexico has less and far more murders.
Realistically the US's murder rate is heavily influenced by many cultural factors and has a lot to do with gang and drug related violence. When you take those out the US isn't all that different. Plus while actual murders are higher in the US if you look at other violent crime (rape, muggings, etc) the US is ahead of many European countries.
Overall this issue is far more complex than the simple minded "Guns are bad, mmmkay." response.
Just a hardwired CO2 and Smoke alarm is around half this.
I'm guessing you mean carbon monoxide rather than CO2, but most people seem to get by fine with regular old smoke alarms, which can generally be found for $8 to $12 for basic models.
As a matter of fact the majority of the smoke alarms in my house (they're in every room) are in the $20 range with 2 of them that were missing when I moved in being $10 units and they've worked absolutely fine. They've never given a false alarm and the only time they actually have gone off was when I left something in the oven and they were supposed to.
I can actually understand the thermostat - its premise is built around being energy efficient and saving you money in the long run. The smoke detector I see less appeal for. Existing ones work fine, are mostly ignored until needed, and this doesn't really work in any way to save any amount of energy (if anything a "smart" smoke detector probably uses more power).
Really only relevant for this very brief period where things are taking off and rapidly advancing in mobile data. Once things stabilize it won't really be an issue.
If you take a data connection on the PC for example (a more mature platform), then 10 years ago we were just adopting 802.11g for wireless and for wired gigabit ethernet had been around for a few years. Neither is the fastest available anymore, but nor are they particularly a problem even today either. Cellular is starting to hit that "good enough" point too. While I'm sure something faster will be available in 10 years I'm betting that 4G will still be completely serviceable for these types of needs in 10 years.
And worse case scenario if something does become outdated is you do exactly what you mostly have to do now anyways: use your phone for these things.
Technically while I don't think one should have to rely on a phone for this (see my comment on this thread), such adapters already exist. Virtually all modern cars have an ODB II port for which you can buy a bluetooth device that'll transmit to a phone app (the one that I use is called Torque).
They're literally less than $15:
http://www.amazon.com/Newest-Bluetooth-Diagnostic-Scanner-Adapter/dp/B009F4JHHO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1381342473&sr=8-1&keywords=bluetooth+auto+diagnostic
Most people just don't seem to care that much to check, but I was able to use mine to effectively diagnose a misfiring issue I had with my car as a bad spark plug. Saved a lot of money versus taking it to a mechanic.
I don't know about you but I've grown tired of effectively connecting a dongle to my car in order to do things like GPS navigation. The main problem as to why phones are better than the built-in stuff is because its updated when the built-in stuff stagnates.
Processing power is cheap - dirt cheap (a Raspberry Pi, Beaglebone Black, etc is less than $50 and contains more brains than most in-dash systems need). In today's age when so little data is actually stored locally on the devices anyways it makes far more sense to build an open system that can access the same profiles (ie, synced data from things like Google accounts) than to force users into connecting their phone to their car.
You decide that what they're offering really IS what your time and skills are worth and take a job at the salary range offered?
If you think you're worth $60k per year but you've been to "200 interviews" and none are offering more than $25k per year then the problem isn't theirs - you're overvaluing your labor. You need to either settle for what you're worth or endeavor (through school, training, etc) to make yourself worth more.
SteamOS is just a standard Linux distro that boots directly into the Steam client. The Steam client is closed source, as are pretty much all the games. The OS itself is still standard Linux.
"Standard Linux" isn't really a thing. I'm guessing they'll be stripping out most of the more mundane general purpose stuff on the system, but what form it'll take will ultimately be a mystery. Given the incredibly limited number of actual apps that SteamOS needs to run (their client and games) its still not even clear if it'll be using x.org or Wayland or something else.
Honestly though its a bit too early in the game to be making any assumptions about it except that it indeed will be running a Linux kernel.
It's crazy that companies go through all this trouble to protect a revenue stream from something as inexpensive and generic as a DVI to HDMI adapter.
Not only that, but I wouldn't even know where to start to find a their branded version except in the box of a graphics card (and typically all those things when I get them just get tossed into a drawer - of the umpteen bazillion of them in there I doubt I know which goes with which).
My guess though is that the actual sales they're trying to protect here are those to the card makers rather than end users. If the companies making cards using their chips have to buy the adapters from AMD instead whatever the cheapest source in Hong Kong is, then I'm guessing it adds up. The end-user is just collateral damage.
You still missed the point.
An arrest doesn't mean you're guilty. It doesn't mean you even had anything to do with what happened.
You go out in an Old Navy T-shirt and jeans one day and someone wearing the same clothes snatches an old lady's purse. You could very well get arrested because you match the description. Even if you prove that you're innocent of everything but similar fashion choices as a criminal, you still have an arrest record (no conviction, but an arrest). A lot of places will discriminate on that arrest record - even when found innocent. That is not fair, and is by no means an accurate way to gauge the trustworthiness of potential employees.
Guess what? Most federal employees don't get paid monthly.
Not only "most Federal employees" but by far most people in the country aren't paid monthly. Seems like virtually everyone is biweekly with some paid weekly and a VERY small minority paid monthly.
I kinda took it differently. When they announced this an Alienware equivalent doesn't come to mind. Instead I get the same picture as the $300-400 budget gaming PC's that I've always built. When the parts are bought in bulk I'm willing to bet that an OEM could assemble a small equivalent set-top box for even cheaper and have a fairly capable system to compete with the $400-500 Sony and MS offerings.
I'm kinda envisioning the Steambox being offered at more of a $250-300 price point. If you want a monster rig you can still build it yourself and run SteamOS.