If a 360 costs $199. Then you can buy an additional 4 games for the price split of a PS3.
Every 360 customer has a $100-$200 'game coupon' included with the console. That's bound to push a higher attach rate.
I don't really buy the theory that the difficult development makes for less attach rate theory though. I'm sure it's what developers wish but the PS2 was living proof that given a large enough customer base developers will tie themselves in knots to make an engine work.
Even if your console RRODs if 10 games are sold for every console sold who cares. That just means that customer 'on average' bought 20 games and replaced his/her console.
Same with Accessories. Look at controller sales. Unless controllers are also dieing in droves the number of controllers per console sold is another good indication. If 4.5 controllers per console is the average then you can deduce that a good number of console sales are going to rrods.
I don't know the latest numbers but Attach Rates for the 360 have been so far the highest. I think the PS3 has the second highest with the Wii dragging far behind (the Wii Sports syndrome).
There's nothing I enjoy more after installing an OS than finding and downloading 300 little patches and widgets that I frequently use!
There's a reason IE is bundled with Windows. There's a reason most people use IE. But I'm sure you're right. After installing Linux they'll happily go about downloading MP3 support, DVD support, gif support, thumbnail support... etc etc and not just complain and think less of the product.
Nope. I'm sure Grandma is going to go to all the "newbie" sites and read through the list of "missing features" that she can download off of a mirror of Sors Forg.
You drop $200 on something and it doesn't work. You get pissed. Not at the yourself. You get pissed at the person who has your money. People get pissed over Cheeseburgers with mayo "When I SPECIFICALLY SAID NO MAYO!"
Apple "doesn't support" a new motherboard Dell wants to sell So Dell goes behind Apple's back and writes their own driver. The driver ends up performing badly. Now Apple takes the blame. Suddenly Apple wants to support the driver too. But there aren't enough days in a year to write all the drivers for everybody who's going to potentially destroy the Apple reputation.
If I write software. It only has to perform well enough for my needs. I have little to no interest in apple's reputation. All I would care about is my software. If the system hangs-- it's "Apple's Fault". That's how the consumer thinks.
Avid tried to follow the "Fuck off" policy for their software. They still do. It "sort of" runs on most hardware. But only runs reasonably stable on a very narrow hardware list. People install it on their Pentium 3 and then complain. All the time. I read tons of bitching and moaning about how it won't start on their new computer. You have two choices 1) support everything or 2) forcefully limit your constomer's options. Everything else ends in ruin.
If you build a computer with the EXACT same hardware as Apple then YES you will get the same "Apple Experience".
I'm talking about my AMD Athlon XP 2600+. Which doesn't even have SSE3. Vista runs great on it (with 4GB of Ram). I would love to see you get OSX running smoothly on it. How about my Geforce 6600GT? How about my dell wireless keyboard? How about my onboard 7.1 audio?
I would like to see OSX run on my tablet PC.
A vast amount of instability comes from shoddy drivers. Apple is picky in what drivers are allowed into its walled garden. You start letting in the riffraff and you get Vista's release video card instability snafus x100.
Yes. But would OSX be OSX if it ran on someone else's hardware.
As soon as you allow Joe Schmoe to install OSX he's going to want to start making demands. "Why doesn't my 15 year old network card work?" "Why doesn't my printer work?" "Why does my computer keep crashing."
The reason Microsoft got into trouble with Vista was largely in part due to pressure from system builders pressuring them to include hardware that wasn't actually capable of running Vista smoothly, or had inadequate driver support.
Opening OSX would be like kicking a house cat out into the gutter and expecting it to fend for itself. It's just not ready for the rediculous diversity of hardware that Windows is obligated to support by running on commodity hardware. That smooth "just works" will be descend into the same brand tarnishing sludge that is compatibility.
There's an exception. You get a few months after "publishing" your work in which you can register your copyright *after* the offense and still sue for punative damages. I think it's like a 3 month window. So.. technically if OSX was released 3 months ago Apple could correct their mistake and still sue for punative damages.
This is correct. But I'm not certain you can claim "a copy of OSX" is the damage per infringement.
Psystar in this case is using legally purchased copies of OSX.
Apple would be forced to disclose the ACTUAL *loss* that they sustain on each OS sale as the split between Retail and Development. So if every copy of OSX is sold at a $100 loss in order to push hardware sales they'd be forced to disclose that amount.
We have a render farm of 16 machines. 12 of them are effectively identical but despite all of our coaxing one of them always runs about 30% slower. It's maddening. But "What can you do?". Hardware is the same. We Ghost the systems so the boot data is exactly the same... and yet... slowness. It's just a handicapped system.
Wow! This is TOTALLY different from Microsoft's "I'm a PC". Campaign!
This is a great idea if you want to further reinforce the idea that Linux is just a low cost community funded Microsoft. (OpenOffice vs. Office XP, Windows vs Linux, Firefox vs IE, Android vs Windows Mobile etc etc). When Open Source and linux goes hunting for ideas they usually shamelessly clone Microsoft products... for better or worse. SO yeah.. let's reinforce that stereotype by cloning Microsoft's ad campaign for Vista.
Every kid will probably need to be computer savvy to be employable.
Not every kid needs to know the history of the baltic sea to be employed.
Laptops might not serve the greater educational needs... but it's a skill that needs to be learned.
We all sit on our laptops now poo pooing free laptops. "No kid needs a computer at school!" but we also all probably had a computer waiting for us at home. There are millions and millions of kids in low income households who have no access to a computer. They aren't going to get on the Internet. They aren't going to graduate with the skills necessary to be employable in a modern workforce.
Computer Science is a great subject to get a degree in. But if you barely understand the mouse/window/icon paradigm when you enter college you won't stand a chance.
Slashdot readers are by and large the product of self education. We're the people all students compete against in the workforce. The mere presence of a computer encouraged us to learn it. It's terribly hypocritical to question whether it benefits other students when we ourselves highly value our early and deep interaction with computer technology.
Being computer illiterate is as large of an impediment to employment as being unable to read. Just about everything is computer controlled now. Children need to feel comfortable and confident when working with computer technology. Even if that means they're a bit more distracted.
In Defense of America. I would like to add that as an American I can also say I've heard almost nothing about... Alabama, Arkansas, North Carolina, Maine, Florida, or Missouri. My indifference to places I have deemed inconsequential is not limited to foreign nations.:D
I think my total knowledge about Missouri constitutes probably 60 seconds of conversation... if that.
Americans get picked on but let's be honest. Why should I care who the president of New Zealand is? I like New Zealand. But the county I live in has as many people. My mayor is the administrator for a larger government than the nation of New Zealand.
The US government gets our attention and our education because it has exponentially more influence on the world stage than any other single power.
People learn what affects them. Kazakhstan doesn't play a large enough role to warrant my study. There is limited time in a day. I'm not defending the masses of people who are completely illiterate and oblivious to world affairs who should at least understand in vague terms the issues they vote on. But before Americans get mocked for their lack of knowledge on European or Asian specifics. I would ask them "Who is the governor of Texas? Texas' GDP rivals that of many nations. If Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn't governor of California how many Europeans would know who the governor was? The nation of Canada and the state of California have about the same population. The US is a VERY large place... and I can say I've never experienced social shock more strongly than the deep south. I've been to third world countries that felt more like home. We vaguely all speak the same language but I would say that most Americans understand the various cultural and ethnic divisions of Europe better than most Europeans understand the social and 'ethnic' divisions of the US.
Until 5 years ago it was possible for an American to drive for about a week all day every day and still not need a passport. That's why most Americans didn't have passports. Are Americans pretty Arrogant? Yes. Are Europeans pretty arrogant. Yes. And unlike Europe for the last 100 years or so our regional powers have managed to not go to war... twice. So I would say we've got a pretty good track record of multi-lateralism despite our recent escapades in the middle east. North America has been by and large spectacularly stable with only very minimal infighting./Rant
And I'd say you've got some seriously bogus expectations for a Service Pack. I suppose OSX was just BSD Service Pack 2 as well?
Windows 95 was just Windows 3.1 Service Pack 1.
The iphone... is just Newton Service pack 5.
I know Windows XP Service Pack 2 was a pretty big deal. But that's largely because it implemented large swaths of Windows Vista tech. Microsoft sacrificed the quality of Vista so that it could support its existing customers with XP Service Pack 2. They took a large portion of the Vista development team off of Vista to work on Service Pack 2.
Service pack 2 was an enigma the likes of which I doubt we'll ever see again from any software company. I would wager that people would have a lot less complaints about Vista's inadequacies if Service Pack 2 were never released. They could have just left us hanging and strongly encouraged Vista adoption but they instead took features from their new product and gave them away for free./Rant.
When did Microsoft "Never count on the internet"? 1995? I've got an anti-trust case that suggests microsoft was very very much counting on the internet. To the degree that they were willing to risk enormous lawsuits.
I remember Microsoft being very optimistic about the internet. They just weren't pushing it very hard because it was a difficult sell. "Get on the internet and... browse usenet groups!" Sure we slashdotters saw the possibilities. But we see the possibilites in most things long before they become commercially viable.
My mom is a speech therapist who teaches kids to rea--who for one reason or another got left behind by the system.
What does she recommend kids read? The internet. Comic books. Magazines. ANYTHING that interests them.
I read *maybe 4 books a year. But I am reading half my waking hours at home. Because I was encouraged as a kid to read whatever I could. I wasn't corked into some reading program reading books my teachers thought I would like.
The internet is also like real life. You don't get a text book with all the answers. You have to go research. Maybe wikipedia is right... maybe it's wrong. I know a lot of my textbooks had errors or misleading passages. You should trust any one source. The internet teaches you that too. Teaching kids research abilities is far more important than teaching them when Columbus made land fall in the Carribean.
Also our means of teaching kids to read is archaic and completely outdated. Our schools are also severely understaffed. How do you teach a kid to read if they have a minor learning ability when you have 30 other students?
Will internet solve all our problems in the educational system? No. But it will solve some.
The reason american schools struggle is because WE TAKE EVERYBODY.
If you're a vegetable who can't feed yourself. You go to school. If you can't read by the age of 12 you go to school. If you are incapable of speaking to another classmate. You go to school.
In every other country they take you out of school and put you into programs not called 'school'. So when the testing people come around lo and behold the students test better.
We don't cream our our results like most other countries. Also I would hardly call the retirement benefits of the school system "exorbitant". Most teachers retire well into their 60s. And most teachers make less money and receive substantially less retirement benefits than a plumber.
Teachers are often masters degree holders. They're the most highly educated and under payed segment of our population.
So let's standardize... How? States rights advocates don't want the government nosing into their curriculums. And do you really think that a government mandated school curriculum with government designed tests and government assigned work is going to create a great education system?
How do we hold teachers accountable? So much of it is dependent on the abilities of the students. So much of it is constrained by politics and emotion. I would love to hear how to make teachers accountable. What's your idea? I went to a private school and half the teachers were terrible a few were great. They were fully 'accountable' and ununionized. That's just the way the world is. Some are good some are bad. Good luck finding an empirical way to determine the "goodness" of a teacher.
It's the somewhat recent unacknowledged moral relativism of the religious right.
XYZ is a Sin. Why? Because it's Bad. Why? Because sin causes you pain by commiting it. Why because of God? No that would be evil if it were God. It's the natural consequences of your actions which he allows to happen. What if we remove the natural consequences and make it safe? *Pause* It's a sin so you shouldn't do it.
Gluttony is not inherently sinful. If our metabolism was setup such that we could eat 30,000 calories a day and be perfectly healthy then we would have no problem with 'extreme' eaters. We're addicted to breathing. But it's healthy. There's nothing which makes any number of activities from smoking to gluttony being made 'consequence free' with sufficient technology.
The list could go on but the morality of many sins is based upon natural consequences. "Homosexuality is evil because the people who practice it are miserable and shunned by society." You stop shunning homosexuals and any 'natural consequences' evaporates. "AIDS is a natural consequence of immoral and unnatural sexual activity." Or you can get it from your mother at birth. Or married heterosexual couples can get it...
Every time society attempts to actually make measureable strides in reducing a problem that's viewed as 'sin' the religious steps in and attemps to stop all progress by ensuring that the 'natural consequences' aren't removed from the equation.
You think the anti-abortion debate is really about the life of the unborn? No. It's another smoke screen to ensure 'natural consequences' remain for an act that they disapprove of. What's the difference between 'murdering' an unborn child from incestual rape and unprotected sex? One of them wasn't concieved in sin by the mother. A true pro-life advocate wouldn't approve of killing a baby under any situation and yet a large number of 'pro-life' advocates do approve of abortions in which the mother is at risk. That's inconsistent.
While I appreciate the religious factions begrudgingly adopting a more relativistic view of morality to reflect reality. I'm extremely displeased with their efforts to artificially maintain the status quo of consequences.
People on both sides of the lines have a thorough understanding of the anatomy involved.
This is more akin to someone texting the wiring pattern for a foreign network cable. You might have done cable wiring before... you just need to know which order this particular operation is done in.
We're a VFX company. We have 3 servers for every person. We each have a top of the line workstation in addition with 8GB of RAM, quad core processors etc. And every single computer except for our fileserver and my workstation run windows vista x64. The only reason I haven't switched is because reinstalling apps is a hastle and I was the first to 'test' the waters with XP x64. I can't work without 64 bit. I mean that literally. I would be unable to deliver some projects without a 64 bit operating system. That means no OSX. That means Windows or Linux. Honestly we've had 1 problem with one piece of beta software that got fixed in the next build. That's been the extent of our Vista problems.
I have Vista on my personal tablet I have had 0 problems with it. I use it every day. I like it better than XP.
The reason we switched to Vista was because.... drum roll please... some apps ran better on it. I know it's shocking. Also the search works better than in XP x64 which sounds like a small thing but when every project generates hundreds of thousands of files... it's a pretty big selling point.
I've had a nightmare with compatibility with XP x64. It's even worse than Vista x64. You say Windows ME. I say improved XP x64. And we have a renderfarm that's running much more smoothly than it did on XP to prove it.
Slashdot Mirror
You can also look at the "Cost of Ownership".
If a 360 costs $199. Then you can buy an additional 4 games for the price split of a PS3.
Every 360 customer has a $100-$200 'game coupon' included with the console. That's bound to push a higher attach rate.
I don't really buy the theory that the difficult development makes for less attach rate theory though. I'm sure it's what developers wish but the PS2 was living proof that given a large enough customer base developers will tie themselves in knots to make an engine work.
There is good data. It's called the Attach rate.
Even if your console RRODs if 10 games are sold for every console sold who cares. That just means that customer 'on average' bought 20 games and replaced his/her console.
Same with Accessories. Look at controller sales. Unless controllers are also dieing in droves the number of controllers per console sold is another good indication. If 4.5 controllers per console is the average then you can deduce that a good number of console sales are going to rrods.
I don't know the latest numbers but Attach Rates for the 360 have been so far the highest. I think the PS3 has the second highest with the Wii dragging far behind (the Wii Sports syndrome).
Braid is also another great and innovative example of no-save mechanics working great while also being a part of the plot.
There's nothing I enjoy more after installing an OS than finding and downloading 300 little patches and widgets that I frequently use!
There's a reason IE is bundled with Windows. There's a reason most people use IE. But I'm sure you're right. After installing Linux they'll happily go about downloading MP3 support, DVD support, gif support, thumbnail support... etc etc and not just complain and think less of the product.
Nope. I'm sure Grandma is going to go to all the "newbie" sites and read through the list of "missing features" that she can download off of a mirror of Sors Forg.
Have you ever met a consumer? In person?
You drop $200 on something and it doesn't work. You get pissed. Not at the yourself. You get pissed at the person who has your money. People get pissed over Cheeseburgers with mayo "When I SPECIFICALLY SAID NO MAYO!"
Apple "doesn't support" a new motherboard Dell wants to sell So Dell goes behind Apple's back and writes their own driver. The driver ends up performing badly. Now Apple takes the blame. Suddenly Apple wants to support the driver too. But there aren't enough days in a year to write all the drivers for everybody who's going to potentially destroy the Apple reputation.
If I write software. It only has to perform well enough for my needs. I have little to no interest in apple's reputation. All I would care about is my software. If the system hangs-- it's "Apple's Fault". That's how the consumer thinks.
Avid tried to follow the "Fuck off" policy for their software. They still do. It "sort of" runs on most hardware. But only runs reasonably stable on a very narrow hardware list. People install it on their Pentium 3 and then complain. All the time. I read tons of bitching and moaning about how it won't start on their new computer. You have two choices 1) support everything or 2) forcefully limit your constomer's options. Everything else ends in ruin.
If you build a computer with the EXACT same hardware as Apple then YES you will get the same "Apple Experience".
I'm talking about my AMD Athlon XP 2600+. Which doesn't even have SSE3. Vista runs great on it (with 4GB of Ram). I would love to see you get OSX running smoothly on it. How about my Geforce 6600GT? How about my dell wireless keyboard? How about my onboard 7.1 audio?
I would like to see OSX run on my tablet PC.
A vast amount of instability comes from shoddy drivers. Apple is picky in what drivers are allowed into its walled garden. You start letting in the riffraff and you get Vista's release video card instability snafus x100.
Yes. But would OSX be OSX if it ran on someone else's hardware.
As soon as you allow Joe Schmoe to install OSX he's going to want to start making demands. "Why doesn't my 15 year old network card work?" "Why doesn't my printer work?" "Why does my computer keep crashing."
The reason Microsoft got into trouble with Vista was largely in part due to pressure from system builders pressuring them to include hardware that wasn't actually capable of running Vista smoothly, or had inadequate driver support.
Opening OSX would be like kicking a house cat out into the gutter and expecting it to fend for itself. It's just not ready for the rediculous diversity of hardware that Windows is obligated to support by running on commodity hardware. That smooth "just works" will be descend into the same brand tarnishing sludge that is compatibility.
There's an exception. You get a few months after "publishing" your work in which you can register your copyright *after* the offense and still sue for punative damages. I think it's like a 3 month window. So.. technically if OSX was released 3 months ago Apple could correct their mistake and still sue for punative damages.
The Berne Convention will be out the window if we ever pass the Orphan Works bill that Corbis keeps trying to push down our throats.
This is correct. But I'm not certain you can claim "a copy of OSX" is the damage per infringement.
Psystar in this case is using legally purchased copies of OSX.
Apple would be forced to disclose the ACTUAL *loss* that they sustain on each OS sale as the split between Retail and Development. So if every copy of OSX is sold at a $100 loss in order to push hardware sales they'd be forced to disclose that amount.
We have this problem at work.
We have a render farm of 16 machines. 12 of them are effectively identical but despite all of our coaxing one of them always runs about 30% slower. It's maddening. But "What can you do?". Hardware is the same. We Ghost the systems so the boot data is exactly the same... and yet... slowness. It's just a handicapped system.
Wow! This is TOTALLY different from Microsoft's "I'm a PC". Campaign!
This is a great idea if you want to further reinforce the idea that Linux is just a low cost community funded Microsoft. (OpenOffice vs. Office XP, Windows vs Linux, Firefox vs IE, Android vs Windows Mobile etc etc). When Open Source and linux goes hunting for ideas they usually shamelessly clone Microsoft products... for better or worse. SO yeah.. let's reinforce that stereotype by cloning Microsoft's ad campaign for Vista.
Guildwars has done this for years. I think WOW does as well.
It's great if you're at school or work or grandma's or somewhere else. Just stream in the content you need for the region/quest you're in.
Every kid will probably need to be computer savvy to be employable.
Not every kid needs to know the history of the baltic sea to be employed.
Laptops might not serve the greater educational needs... but it's a skill that needs to be learned.
We all sit on our laptops now poo pooing free laptops. "No kid needs a computer at school!" but we also all probably had a computer waiting for us at home. There are millions and millions of kids in low income households who have no access to a computer. They aren't going to get on the Internet. They aren't going to graduate with the skills necessary to be employable in a modern workforce.
Computer Science is a great subject to get a degree in. But if you barely understand the mouse/window/icon paradigm when you enter college you won't stand a chance.
Slashdot readers are by and large the product of self education. We're the people all students compete against in the workforce. The mere presence of a computer encouraged us to learn it. It's terribly hypocritical to question whether it benefits other students when we ourselves highly value our early and deep interaction with computer technology.
Being computer illiterate is as large of an impediment to employment as being unable to read. Just about everything is computer controlled now. Children need to feel comfortable and confident when working with computer technology. Even if that means they're a bit more distracted.
In Defense of America. I would like to add that as an American I can also say I've heard almost nothing about... Alabama, Arkansas, North Carolina, Maine, Florida, or Missouri. My indifference to places I have deemed inconsequential is not limited to foreign nations. :D
I think my total knowledge about Missouri constitutes probably 60 seconds of conversation... if that.
Americans get picked on but let's be honest. Why should I care who the president of New Zealand is? I like New Zealand. But the county I live in has as many people. My mayor is the administrator for a larger government than the nation of New Zealand.
The US government gets our attention and our education because it has exponentially more influence on the world stage than any other single power.
People learn what affects them. Kazakhstan doesn't play a large enough role to warrant my study. There is limited time in a day. I'm not defending the masses of people who are completely illiterate and oblivious to world affairs who should at least understand in vague terms the issues they vote on. But before Americans get mocked for their lack of knowledge on European or Asian specifics. I would ask them "Who is the governor of Texas? Texas' GDP rivals that of many nations. If Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn't governor of California how many Europeans would know who the governor was? The nation of Canada and the state of California have about the same population. The US is a VERY large place... and I can say I've never experienced social shock more strongly than the deep south. I've been to third world countries that felt more like home. We vaguely all speak the same language but I would say that most Americans understand the various cultural and ethnic divisions of Europe better than most Europeans understand the social and 'ethnic' divisions of the US.
Until 5 years ago it was possible for an American to drive for about a week all day every day and still not need a passport. That's why most Americans didn't have passports. Are Americans pretty Arrogant? Yes. Are Europeans pretty arrogant. Yes. And unlike Europe for the last 100 years or so our regional powers have managed to not go to war... twice. So I would say we've got a pretty good track record of multi-lateralism despite our recent escapades in the middle east. North America has been by and large spectacularly stable with only very minimal infighting. /Rant
I'd say that Windows7 is "Vista Service Pack 3",
And I'd say you've got some seriously bogus expectations for a Service Pack. I suppose OSX was just BSD Service Pack 2 as well?
Windows 95 was just Windows 3.1 Service Pack 1.
The iphone... is just Newton Service pack 5.
I know Windows XP Service Pack 2 was a pretty big deal. But that's largely because it implemented large swaths of Windows Vista tech. Microsoft sacrificed the quality of Vista so that it could support its existing customers with XP Service Pack 2. They took a large portion of the Vista development team off of Vista to work on Service Pack 2.
Service pack 2 was an enigma the likes of which I doubt we'll ever see again from any software company. I would wager that people would have a lot less complaints about Vista's inadequacies if Service Pack 2 were never released. They could have just left us hanging and strongly encouraged Vista adoption but they instead took features from their new product and gave them away for free. /Rant.
When did Microsoft "Never count on the internet"? 1995? I've got an anti-trust case that suggests microsoft was very very much counting on the internet. To the degree that they were willing to risk enormous lawsuits.
I remember Microsoft being very optimistic about the internet. They just weren't pushing it very hard because it was a difficult sell. "Get on the internet and... browse usenet groups!" Sure we slashdotters saw the possibilities. But we see the possibilites in most things long before they become commercially viable.
My mom is a speech therapist who teaches kids to rea--who for one reason or another got left behind by the system.
What does she recommend kids read? The internet. Comic books. Magazines. ANYTHING that interests them.
I read *maybe 4 books a year. But I am reading half my waking hours at home. Because I was encouraged as a kid to read whatever I could. I wasn't corked into some reading program reading books my teachers thought I would like.
The internet is also like real life. You don't get a text book with all the answers. You have to go research. Maybe wikipedia is right... maybe it's wrong. I know a lot of my textbooks had errors or misleading passages. You should trust any one source. The internet teaches you that too. Teaching kids research abilities is far more important than teaching them when Columbus made land fall in the Carribean.
Also our means of teaching kids to read is archaic and completely outdated. Our schools are also severely understaffed. How do you teach a kid to read if they have a minor learning ability when you have 30 other students?
Will internet solve all our problems in the educational system? No. But it will solve some.
The reason american schools struggle is because WE TAKE EVERYBODY.
If you're a vegetable who can't feed yourself. You go to school.
If you can't read by the age of 12 you go to school.
If you are incapable of speaking to another classmate. You go to school.
In every other country they take you out of school and put you into programs not called 'school'. So when the testing people come around lo and behold the students test better.
We don't cream our our results like most other countries. Also I would hardly call the retirement benefits of the school system "exorbitant". Most teachers retire well into their 60s. And most teachers make less money and receive substantially less retirement benefits than a plumber.
Teachers are often masters degree holders. They're the most highly educated and under payed segment of our population.
So let's standardize... How? States rights advocates don't want the government nosing into their curriculums. And do you really think that a government mandated school curriculum with government designed tests and government assigned work is going to create a great education system?
How do we hold teachers accountable? So much of it is dependent on the abilities of the students. So much of it is constrained by politics and emotion. I would love to hear how to make teachers accountable. What's your idea? I went to a private school and half the teachers were terrible a few were great. They were fully 'accountable' and ununionized. That's just the way the world is. Some are good some are bad. Good luck finding an empirical way to determine the "goodness" of a teacher.
It's the somewhat recent unacknowledged moral relativism of the religious right.
XYZ is a Sin.
Why? Because it's Bad.
Why? Because sin causes you pain by commiting it.
Why because of God? No that would be evil if it were God. It's the natural consequences of your actions which he allows to happen.
What if we remove the natural consequences and make it safe? *Pause* It's a sin so you shouldn't do it.
Gluttony is not inherently sinful. If our metabolism was setup such that we could eat 30,000 calories a day and be perfectly healthy then we would have no problem with 'extreme' eaters. We're addicted to breathing. But it's healthy. There's nothing which makes any number of activities from smoking to gluttony being made 'consequence free' with sufficient technology.
The list could go on but the morality of many sins is based upon natural consequences. "Homosexuality is evil because the people who practice it are miserable and shunned by society." You stop shunning homosexuals and any 'natural consequences' evaporates. "AIDS is a natural consequence of immoral and unnatural sexual activity." Or you can get it from your mother at birth. Or married heterosexual couples can get it...
Every time society attempts to actually make measureable strides in reducing a problem that's viewed as 'sin' the religious steps in and attemps to stop all progress by ensuring that the 'natural consequences' aren't removed from the equation.
You think the anti-abortion debate is really about the life of the unborn? No. It's another smoke screen to ensure 'natural consequences' remain for an act that they disapprove of. What's the difference between 'murdering' an unborn child from incestual rape and unprotected sex? One of them wasn't concieved in sin by the mother. A true pro-life advocate wouldn't approve of killing a baby under any situation and yet a large number of 'pro-life' advocates do approve of abortions in which the mother is at risk. That's inconsistent.
While I appreciate the religious factions begrudgingly adopting a more relativistic view of morality to reflect reality. I'm extremely displeased with their efforts to artificially maintain the status quo of consequences.
Hmmmm... I guess that means Linux + Wine == Windows then.
...if you're a mechanic.
People on both sides of the lines have a thorough understanding of the anatomy involved.
This is more akin to someone texting the wiring pattern for a foreign network cable. You might have done cable wiring before... you just need to know which order this particular operation is done in.
Yeah really creepy. I had previously only suspected people so out of touch with reality were living amongst us.
Guess I have 88 days to see if I'm one of them.
We're a VFX company. We have 3 servers for every person. We each have a top of the line workstation in addition with 8GB of RAM, quad core processors etc. And every single computer except for our fileserver and my workstation run windows vista x64. The only reason I haven't switched is because reinstalling apps is a hastle and I was the first to 'test' the waters with XP x64. I can't work without 64 bit. I mean that literally. I would be unable to deliver some projects without a 64 bit operating system. That means no OSX. That means Windows or Linux. Honestly we've had 1 problem with one piece of beta software that got fixed in the next build. That's been the extent of our Vista problems.
I have Vista on my personal tablet I have had 0 problems with it. I use it every day. I like it better than XP.
The reason we switched to Vista was because.... drum roll please... some apps ran better on it. I know it's shocking. Also the search works better than in XP x64 which sounds like a small thing but when every project generates hundreds of thousands of files... it's a pretty big selling point.
I've had a nightmare with compatibility with XP x64. It's even worse than Vista x64. You say Windows ME. I say improved XP x64. And we have a renderfarm that's running much more smoothly than it did on XP to prove it.
Also let the record state that I cannot sync my newton with Vista. At All.