The reason that the electoral college was created was because the politicians at the time thought that the general populace could to easily be swayed by someone with too much 'charisma'; read that as: they thought that the general populace is too gullible and too stupid to actually deserve to choose who leads the country. Now this may or may not be true, but as they were SUPPOSED to be forming a democracy 'for the people, by the people', I think that it runs contrary in it's entirety. That thinking has not changed. There was an attempt to abolish the electoral college (I think it was in the 60's possibly 70's) but it failed miserably when it went to vote (in congress I might add, not to the general public). They, (meaning politicians) do not know, or care to know what actually goes on in the real world. If you think that they do, then you are just as gullible and stupid as they think you are. The politicians live in their own realm, completely outside of reality. They grow up as politicians, they are raised in a life of excess and power. They inherently cannot understand what it is to have a divorced mother, who works 50+ hours a week, to be a latch-key kid. To have an alcoholic father who beats you. They can be told about it, they can even be outraged. But they do not understand, so they cannot understand how out of touch their version of reality is for 90% of the populace. This is true for Democrats as well as Republicans (though I personally feel that the RNC is even more out of touch, reverting to ideals that were outdated even in the early 60's). We cannot vote a candidate in who will make much of a difference because we will not see them. Because he or she will not be a politician. It is a horrible paradox, a corner that we have painted ourselves into. the whole thing is just depressing. I vote, and I sometimes really have to wonder why. I liked Clinton, because I thought he was at least a bit more human. That he had a bit more awareness of what is truly important in life. Carter did too, but he was much more subtle about it. Kennedy, a well intentioned guy, but really out of touch with the populace as well. To much privelage again. Say what you want, but don't blame the mechanics, it isn't there fault that we have lousy choices.
E-
I didn't say it was an iPod killer... I think the zen is garbage, but what I was saying is that the lyra fits what I need it to do, and does it simpler, without any proprietary connectors, drivers or anything. I DON'T think that it is a flat-out superior product, it is clunky by comparison to the iPod as a music player, but it plays music well, and does a lot of other stuff I need it to. Mine uses a STANDARD mini usb type 1 connector, uses no special software (except for profiling, but that is normal for all of them) Most importantly, it is supported under windows CE devices, (which I STRONGLY suspect is not the case with the iPod, or Zen, and I DO connect this to embedded CE devices for my work).
if you have the dock, but as an IT administrator, I don't want to run around with the dock, or install firewire cards in everyones computer (not always an option) when I can use a STANDARD usb cable that fits in my pocket. besides that, my rca was 20% cheaper, and had twice the capacity... (40g which iPods at the time i bought it, only went up to 20g)
you are dead on in this regard. the original playstation won because of this exact reason: they went after people that can afford to buy the games themselves. Sony at some point realized that the people that grew up with video games had grown up, and still wanted to play video games. So they made them for them. Everything about the PSP says that is exactly who they are going for with this... music, movies, modular storage, the idea is that they are going to replace everything but your cel phone with this device. No laptops, no mp3 players, no portable dvd players. This device is supposed to handle it all. And, uptime is supposed to be closer to 4 hours BTW. which, for this age group is usually more than enough.
you know, for simple music storage the ipod is tough to beat. but for people like me (geeks who use it for a lot more) I use a harddrive jukebox (RCA's Lyra Jukebox). and the biggest reason I like it has nothing to do with it's capabilities, (though it has the highest volume of any of them, big bonus!) it has to do with the fact that it shows up on almost any computer as an external drive WITH NO SPECIAL DRIVERS OR SOFTWARE!!!! which means I can use it to back up data, carry emergency recovery disks with me, contact information, resumes etc and can access them anywhere. You cannot do it with an iPod OR Zen Jukebox (my friend has one, it annoys the piss out of me). so screw them both. Besides that, I have already disassembled my unit and found out that I could upgrade the HD in it with just a little soldering (antistatic/grounding straps are soldered to the drive chssis).
Liksang.com reports that the PSP games are going to be region-free.... meaning you could actually buy an import unit from liksang.com in december and play your US games when they get released.
-In Absentia
as far as server technology goes we all know that most of the backend of the internet is served to us on some POSIX (linux, unix, sun etc...) unit or cluster. So we know that the community has won that war. The things that Linux needs to do to win the DESKTOP war is this:
1. easy install features (automated installers) RPM's are close, but dependencies can be a nightmare.
2. games. you are all going to bitch about this one I know, but the reality is that the game industry has now SURPASSED the movie industry in profitability... now tell me games are not important to desktop applications. Look at how much business TransGaming does just simply by retuning Wine to run games...
Slashdot Mirror
Final Fantasy XI (1.5 million worldwide) as of Euro launch last month...
The reason that the electoral college was created was because the politicians at the time thought that the general populace could to easily be swayed by someone with too much 'charisma'; read that as: they thought that the general populace is too gullible and too stupid to actually deserve to choose who leads the country. Now this may or may not be true, but as they were SUPPOSED to be forming a democracy 'for the people, by the people', I think that it runs contrary in it's entirety. That thinking has not changed. There was an attempt to abolish the electoral college (I think it was in the 60's possibly 70's) but it failed miserably when it went to vote (in congress I might add, not to the general public). They, (meaning politicians) do not know, or care to know what actually goes on in the real world. If you think that they do, then you are just as gullible and stupid as they think you are. The politicians live in their own realm, completely outside of reality. They grow up as politicians, they are raised in a life of excess and power. They inherently cannot understand what it is to have a divorced mother, who works 50+ hours a week, to be a latch-key kid. To have an alcoholic father who beats you. They can be told about it, they can even be outraged. But they do not understand, so they cannot understand how out of touch their version of reality is for 90% of the populace. This is true for Democrats as well as Republicans (though I personally feel that the RNC is even more out of touch, reverting to ideals that were outdated even in the early 60's). We cannot vote a candidate in who will make much of a difference because we will not see them. Because he or she will not be a politician. It is a horrible paradox, a corner that we have painted ourselves into. the whole thing is just depressing. I vote, and I sometimes really have to wonder why. I liked Clinton, because I thought he was at least a bit more human. That he had a bit more awareness of what is truly important in life. Carter did too, but he was much more subtle about it. Kennedy, a well intentioned guy, but really out of touch with the populace as well. To much privelage again. Say what you want, but don't blame the mechanics, it isn't there fault that we have lousy choices. E-
I didn't say it was an iPod killer... I think the zen is garbage, but what I was saying is that the lyra fits what I need it to do, and does it simpler, without any proprietary connectors, drivers or anything. I DON'T think that it is a flat-out superior product, it is clunky by comparison to the iPod as a music player, but it plays music well, and does a lot of other stuff I need it to. Mine uses a STANDARD mini usb type 1 connector, uses no special software (except for profiling, but that is normal for all of them) Most importantly, it is supported under windows CE devices, (which I STRONGLY suspect is not the case with the iPod, or Zen, and I DO connect this to embedded CE devices for my work).
if you have the dock, but as an IT administrator, I don't want to run around with the dock, or install firewire cards in everyones computer (not always an option) when I can use a STANDARD usb cable that fits in my pocket. besides that, my rca was 20% cheaper, and had twice the capacity... (40g which iPods at the time i bought it, only went up to 20g)
you are dead on in this regard. the original playstation won because of this exact reason: they went after people that can afford to buy the games themselves. Sony at some point realized that the people that grew up with video games had grown up, and still wanted to play video games. So they made them for them. Everything about the PSP says that is exactly who they are going for with this... music, movies, modular storage, the idea is that they are going to replace everything but your cel phone with this device. No laptops, no mp3 players, no portable dvd players. This device is supposed to handle it all. And, uptime is supposed to be closer to 4 hours BTW. which, for this age group is usually more than enough.
except you have to have a firewire port... which unless EVERYONE has macs or sony's isn't a reality...
you know, for simple music storage the ipod is tough to beat. but for people like me (geeks who use it for a lot more) I use a harddrive jukebox (RCA's Lyra Jukebox). and the biggest reason I like it has nothing to do with it's capabilities, (though it has the highest volume of any of them, big bonus!) it has to do with the fact that it shows up on almost any computer as an external drive WITH NO SPECIAL DRIVERS OR SOFTWARE!!!! which means I can use it to back up data, carry emergency recovery disks with me, contact information, resumes etc and can access them anywhere. You cannot do it with an iPod OR Zen Jukebox (my friend has one, it annoys the piss out of me). so screw them both. Besides that, I have already disassembled my unit and found out that I could upgrade the HD in it with just a little soldering (antistatic/grounding straps are soldered to the drive chssis).
Liksang.com reports that the PSP games are going to be region-free.... meaning you could actually buy an import unit from liksang.com in december and play your US games when they get released. -In Absentia
as far as server technology goes we all know that most of the backend of the internet is served to us on some POSIX (linux, unix, sun etc...) unit or cluster. So we know that the community has won that war. The things that Linux needs to do to win the DESKTOP war is this: 1. easy install features (automated installers) RPM's are close, but dependencies can be a nightmare. 2. games. you are all going to bitch about this one I know, but the reality is that the game industry has now SURPASSED the movie industry in profitability... now tell me games are not important to desktop applications. Look at how much business TransGaming does just simply by retuning Wine to run games...