Maybe you happily live in a rural area. I live in a moderately rural area, but my county appears to be run by city people. City people do not govern rural areas well. There are a ton of regulations to follow. Theoretically, I cannot even repair drywall in my house without getting a permit.
Yes, I'm definitely joking and sarcastically referring to the hype around "creating jobs"... to the extent that people forget that jobs sometimes get "created" due to a need that shows up when a business goes out of business. I'm not necessarily saying it was good or bad, but using an example of the auto bailout thing: if GM or Chrysler had gone totally under and "a million" jobs were lost, who is to say that the now missing car production would not be filled by a new company that hires the number of workers required to produce that many cars? In other words... yes, maybe X jobs were lost, but what about the Y jobs that are created when a new company is formed to fill the void?
The "jobs" craze - not that jobs aren't important, but the way people talk about them can sure get pretty silly sometimes - could be applied to the IRS and tax code. You could "logically" argue that a confusing tax codes creates jobs by necessitating people to interpret said tax code, thus complex tax codes are good for the economy!
What that ignores is what may be lost because of the complexity that necessitates creating the "interpreter" jobs. It's a silly argument that just completely ignores things, and it seems many people like using those kinds of arguments... especially right now when making policies.
I agree with you though. More efficiency is not bad; and if your job is cut because something else got more efficient, that doesn't mean you are forever out of a job. For some reason, the current politicians seem to think that a job lost is permanent.
(I am not saying job loss is something light, I know it's hard... I'm saying the way politicians talk about it, they seem to think we need to preserve the exact same companies currently in existence because if they go away *gasp* we'll lose *gasp* thousands of jobs [implication: they won't be replaced with other companies/jobs...]. In fact, it seems to be a very socialistic/government-centered way of looking at it. If the government cuts a program out... then it may very well be that job is gone - until the government replaces it with something. But with individual companies, someone else may WANT to fill the void that an out-of-business company used to fulfill. Politicians do not appear to understand this, I guess.
(I do not claim to know if the auto bailout was good or bad. it appears to have worked to some extent; perhaps it was not the best or only method, but perhaps it did work.)
Our anecdotal evidence differs in the latter part of your post. I've had problems with having people use Linux. Certain functionality just doesn't work smoothly, at least with the distros I tried some people out on; specifically: sound, video (both DVDs and flash-based), and printing. The printing issue is primarily just a driver issue, granted, but that's hard to explain that the need to buy a new printer;) I did get it working after a while. The DVDs and flash-based thing? That took some time to find the right libraries that needed to be installed (libdvdcss2... but had some quirks for whatever reason), and flash video was very jerky if full screen. That could be a video driver issue... which is another issue:P
It's depended a lot on hardware.
Right now, I am trying out Ubuntu 10.04 on a laptop as a "test drive," and after configuring (which took a LONG while on my connection at home... to get all the required packages to do normal things like watch a DVD or a Flash-based online video [e.g., hulu]). It's working out far, far better than 9.04 was.
Yes, I know there are other distros than Ubuntu. I use a variety:) But at the moment, 10.04 has worked pretty well...
Bottom line, for me, so far: it's still getting better, but I'd say it's not quite ready for most of the people I know, anyways.
And there's always the issue if iPods. sigh. Or my Env3 for that matter - I was not able to use that with Ubuntu.
That is not true. Granted, they don't have many but they do offer... three... but that includes a desktop system with Ubuntu 10.04. Which was released pretty recently. Which means they are still actively doing stuff with Ubuntu over there at Dell.
. You can debate the responsibility of the site if they are actively encouraging infringment, but that's a discussion for another time.
I guess so. I think there's a big problem with the argument that the site isn't doing anything bad when the vast majority of torrents are pirated content. If your entire business, pretty much, is based on anonymously providing access to pirated content... I would argue you're beginning to get really close to willingly encouraging said pirating content and you are making advertising revenue off of it.
To me, that's kinda like a fence/pawn broker saying he can't be held liable because he only deals with anonymous sales. If it turns out that said pawn broker's goods were almost all stolen and he knew it, would that not be a problem?
I know, pirated content != stolen goods and all that, but the principle I'm going for is when you knowingly aid in something illegal and are making money off it - and in fact, it's driving your main source of revenue.
Torrent trackers could probably relatively easily ban torrents if they wanted to. It's not hard to figure out the pirated material. Like "Age of Empires II Full CD with Crack by [cracker signature name]" torrents.
If we didn't cause it, and we try to fix it, we may just make it worse and destroy lots of other stuff in the process, no?
Volcanos mess up a lot of humanity and environments and animal life, too, but we don't try to stop them from blowing up. We'd probably end up making things worse.
So, pirating sites that use pirated "images" (ISOs are images;) ) to generate revenue, in the form of ads, should be sued because they are using the images commercially and violating the license the images are under? Right?
It could be that you'll agree with me. But many do seem to have a double standard. You may not. If not, grats:)
Maybe you should look up what percentage of Afghans want the NATO troups to leave. You'll be surprised.
In my mind, polls like that seem like they would have a large margin of error. Furthermore, it's a loaded question, depending on how you ask it.
Margin of error: if you lived in an oppressive regime that would kill you for dissenting, you may think twice about openly supporting getting rid of that regime... especially if said regime goes into hiding and has no problem murdering you.
Loaded question: of course the Afghans want the US to leave. The real question is, do they want the US to help get rid of the oppressive [faction of the] Taliban government or do they actually want the US/NATO to leave RIGHT NOW? Nobody wants a permanent foreign military presence, but they may want temporary military help and then have it leave.
As for the track record... well, I'm not going to argue FOR bad things that we have done. On the other hand, I'm not sure about the interpretation of history, either. For example, Vietnam. Why didn't that work? That's a big question that I'm not sure has been closed. As for killing kids and bombing villages, I certainly will not say that those are good things.
I would probably tend to agree with your last paragraph though. I would argue that many politicians are definitely not very historical aware (except about things that they want to leverage for campaigns or legislation or whatever), as well.
It seems like politicians simply can't think straight. Maybe that has to do with making a career out of it.
Ok, so you have even more supposed facts that I do.
So what do we do? Interpret the facts and leave out the ones that we deem will be misunderstood by the public... thus pushing our own viewpoint?
Furthermore, your first point - that the forces that don't allow girls' schools have been empowered by US militarism... er, what? Do you mean in the past? If so, then you're arguing against doing something good because of previous bad actions? If you are arguing for the present... what? Building girls' schools where they were previously disallowed empowers the regimes that disallow them?
Roads we build - they are MOSTLY for that purpose meaning the poor CANNOT use them, or meaning they weren't built with the poor specifically in mind? If the former, you're right - that's a problem. If the latter, you're basically saying that it's a fact not worth mentioning because of the motive?
Also, you leave out some choice definitions. "Assuming that we have best interests in mind" - who is we? The US government? The military? Afghanistan? Pakistan? NATO? The UN?
Assuming that we have best interests in mind is what you're "supposed" to believe as a good citizen. Congratulation. Unfortunately, the good citizen is a bad one as far as "informed" and unbiased goes.
Did I assume that? I was arguing for including as many facts as possible as opposed to trying to skew them towards one viewpoint. You are advocating a distinct viewpoint, and because of your viewpoint, you want to color certain facts in a different light - or simply leave them out altogether... because of your viewpoint/bias. And somehow, you have decided that my wanting the facts to make up my own mind has made me an uninformed citizen, and you have also decided that I assume "we" have "best interests in mind." I did not give my viewpoint in my post; you assumed it because I did not assume a negative viewpoint of the war. I don't think I assumed a positive one, either. My entire point was that the negative viewpoint of the GP was showing based on the facts he chose to include in his list... or at least, I thought it was. Darkness404 can disagree if my perception is wrong there.
And this is why, as my last statement in my previous post implies, we can't seem to have informed discussions on these topics, because as soon as person B brings up something that does not fit into persons A's negative or positive viewpoint of the war, person A automatically assumes a lot about person B.
To the extent that simply bringing up a fact that on the face of it, appears to disagree with person A's opinion, person A immediately tries to color said fact as biased, worthless, or whatever. So we end up with both sides trying to prove their opinion using selective facts, and not trying to come to an informed opinion using as broad a view of the facts as possible.
Why is it that the mainstream media doesn't use -facts- to prove their points. Things like "For every day of war we spend XXXXX dollars, we kill XX civilians, XX terrorists, and destroy XXXX worth of infrastructure" would be a great way for people to know if they want to continue this war. Without that though we have the two extremes, extreme pacifism and extreme militarism.
What about how much we spend building infrastructure and how many civilians we liberate from oppressive regimes?
Or are those facts too biased to be mentioned?
It could just be oversight on your part:) But it seems that the prevailing view about the war is that the only stats that really count are deaths and destruction... nothing about the entire military engineers that are building... say... roads. Girls' schools that were not allowed previously. Some people view those facts as propaganda for "excusing" the war in some way. I say that leaving out those facts is propaganda for dismissing the war as entirely bad and thus should not be continued.
Unfortunately, as soon as someone SUPPORTS a war, people automatically assume that they support killing innocent civilians... and as soon as someone DOES NOT SUPPORT the war, people assume they do not support the "troops" or think they agree with the oppressive regimes/governments.
In other words, everybody seems to think everybody else either supports everything that goes on or does not support everything that goes on, and misrepresents facts in order to "prove" that the other person does this.
Citing only death and destruction as figures to decide on the war is biased towards ending the war. Citing only good things that happen (rebuilding or even building things that weren't there to begin with, for example) and hiding the other is biased towards continuing the war.
I disagree. A lot of RPG's have had extremely successful single-player campaigns, but the graphics were not all that great, even when the game first came out... and many continue replaying it. Why? Not graphics or challenge, but story. "Hey, what happens to the story if I do it this way instead" or "use this character" or "how does this class follow the story path"... etc.
Or, say, Oblivion. Not a hard game. Not amazing graphics (at least, anymore), but generically nice. Not multiplayer at all. It was pretty successful. It had a more or less simple and somewhat interesting main storyline, but what made it fun was the rather free world it presented.
Your example of "Tom Clancy: Press A" with moving dialogues (basically, a book) is a bit oversimplified. When the GP was talking about "story," I'm pretty sure he's talking about story interaction, not just the flat linear telling of a story. It's the placing of the game player into the story that people like, not simply being told the story itself. It's BEING the protagonist - or someone in the story, anyways - that's fun.
Just like actually controlling the exploration of a world is a lot different than having a guided tour of the world. Who would want a guided tour of Oblivion, a hands-off experience? That'd be boring.
Many non-RPG games appear to be putting RPG elements in, as well. FPS's with a lot of storyline (e.g., Half-Life). FPS's with characters gaining levels/experience ("Action-RPG"). Heavy story RTS games with small "experience"-based leveling type things, such as World in Conflict.
It doesn't matter if they don't know what a browser is... what matters is that most people do distinguish between two products.
Nobody buys a Chevy S1500 over a BMW 3 because the BMW 3 was clearly inferior due to its "model number."
Computer literacy has nothing to do with this. If they are given the option to download Chrome X vs Internet Explorer X, they probably will chose the one they recognize - brand or program name - not based on comparing the numbers.
Ok, so there are probably some people that do think the proverbially idiotic way, but I doubt it's a very large portion of people. And I doubt those are the people that are even going to be looking at a choice between Chrome vs. IE. They'll just use whatever their computer was set up with.
Maybe some do. I sure didn't. As a kid, I loved science, and I wanted to be an astronaut. I also mucked about with BASIC on our IBM PC a *lot*. Now I'm a software engineer because it's something I've always done, always enjoyed, and pays well. I also play various types of guitar and do martial arts - the first two reasons apply to those as well. My university had a computerised aptitude test that told me I should be a museum curator - essentially a bureaucrat.
Exactly. No, you did not go into what you "really really wanted to do" or "dreamed about" but you didn't end up doing - or trying to do - something that you actually did not like or had no interest in. You were interested in some stuff that software engineers do, and you ended up doing it... even though you apparently also enjoy music and physical activity.
I think I'm pretty similar, in that I still do things I enjoy but did not major in nor get a job in... but what I did major in and what I did get a job related to were things that I also enjoyed.
I think the real problem is assuming that someone only enjoys a couple things or is only good at a couple things... that wasn't my point. People definitely like a variety of things, and quite possibly something they enjoy doing can, in fact, make money for them.
You misunderstood, or I was unclear. I did not mean that I could not do things that did not interest me; what I said was that things that interested me were things I could do. Just because A is in set B does not mean B ONLY consists of set A.:)
As for enjoyment... no, they may not always line up, I understand that. And to be fair, my current vocation, while in a field I did study - computers - was not in my primary field of study (I was a double major) - music. Music, at the moment, is a hobby/amateur thing, not my actual profession. But I did enjoy (and still do) both.
Aptitude tests and mental ability tests are helpful in choosing vocation? Really?
Maybe I'm just weird, but I did not take any aptitude nor ability tests to pick my vocation. I studied what interested me. Typically, things that interested me were things that I could actually do - I didn't have much of an interest in things I couldn't do...
Do people actually choose their vocation (and included in that, I assume, would be education choices) based on what tests appear to show they are "good" at rather than what actually interests them - and what they have found out they can do by actually TRYING it?
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe you happily live in a rural area. I live in a moderately rural area, but my county appears to be run by city people. City people do not govern rural areas well. There are a ton of regulations to follow. Theoretically, I cannot even repair drywall in my house without getting a permit.
Yes, I'm definitely joking and sarcastically referring to the hype around "creating jobs" ... to the extent that people forget that jobs sometimes get "created" due to a need that shows up when a business goes out of business. I'm not necessarily saying it was good or bad, but using an example of the auto bailout thing: if GM or Chrysler had gone totally under and "a million" jobs were lost, who is to say that the now missing car production would not be filled by a new company that hires the number of workers required to produce that many cars? In other words... yes, maybe X jobs were lost, but what about the Y jobs that are created when a new company is formed to fill the void?
The "jobs" craze - not that jobs aren't important, but the way people talk about them can sure get pretty silly sometimes - could be applied to the IRS and tax code. You could "logically" argue that a confusing tax codes creates jobs by necessitating people to interpret said tax code, thus complex tax codes are good for the economy!
What that ignores is what may be lost because of the complexity that necessitates creating the "interpreter" jobs. It's a silly argument that just completely ignores things, and it seems many people like using those kinds of arguments... especially right now when making policies.
I agree with you though. More efficiency is not bad; and if your job is cut because something else got more efficient, that doesn't mean you are forever out of a job. For some reason, the current politicians seem to think that a job lost is permanent.
(I am not saying job loss is something light, I know it's hard... I'm saying the way politicians talk about it, they seem to think we need to preserve the exact same companies currently in existence because if they go away *gasp* we'll lose *gasp* thousands of jobs [implication: they won't be replaced with other companies/jobs...]. In fact, it seems to be a very socialistic/government-centered way of looking at it. If the government cuts a program out... then it may very well be that job is gone - until the government replaces it with something. But with individual companies, someone else may WANT to fill the void that an out-of-business company used to fulfill. Politicians do not appear to understand this, I guess.
(I do not claim to know if the auto bailout was good or bad. it appears to have worked to some extent; perhaps it was not the best or only method, but perhaps it did work.)
"A 2% business tax increase for fishing businesses earning over $100,000 a year with 12 or more employees."
Yeah, I agree... that's some pretty fish business there
Complicated tax codes creates jobs. Clearly, it's a good thing and good for the economy, because it creates jobs. Did I mention it creates jobs? .. ;)
And the music videos. The Weezer one was funny :)
Our anecdotal evidence differs in the latter part of your post. I've had problems with having people use Linux. Certain functionality just doesn't work smoothly, at least with the distros I tried some people out on; specifically: sound, video (both DVDs and flash-based), and printing. The printing issue is primarily just a driver issue, granted, but that's hard to explain that the need to buy a new printer ;) I did get it working after a while. The DVDs and flash-based thing? That took some time to find the right libraries that needed to be installed (libdvdcss2 ... but had some quirks for whatever reason), and flash video was very jerky if full screen. That could be a video driver issue ... which is another issue :P
It's depended a lot on hardware.
Right now, I am trying out Ubuntu 10.04 on a laptop as a "test drive," and after configuring (which took a LONG while on my connection at home ... to get all the required packages to do normal things like watch a DVD or a Flash-based online video [e.g., hulu]). It's working out far, far better than 9.04 was.
Yes, I know there are other distros than Ubuntu. I use a variety :) But at the moment, 10.04 has worked pretty well...
Bottom line, for me, so far: it's still getting better, but I'd say it's not quite ready for most of the people I know, anyways.
And there's always the issue if iPods. sigh. Or my Env3 for that matter - I was not able to use that with Ubuntu.
Drivers and firmware *are* software.
Well, it's not many, but they do offer some Ubuntu systems.
That is not true. Granted, they don't have many but they do offer ... three... but that includes a desktop system with Ubuntu 10.04. Which was released pretty recently. Which means they are still actively doing stuff with Ubuntu over there at Dell.
Yeah... that's a bit expensive.
You keep posting that. Clearly, because your evidence does not match my evidence, yours is wrong and you are a denier.
[/sarcasm]
Ozone hole. Acid rain. Plastic Gyre. Rain Fores destruction. Species extinction. Desertification of large areas by agricultural practices.
Clearly, none of those have happened before humans did it, either.
. You can debate the responsibility of the site if they are actively encouraging infringment, but that's a discussion for another time.
I guess so. I think there's a big problem with the argument that the site isn't doing anything bad when the vast majority of torrents are pirated content. If your entire business, pretty much, is based on anonymously providing access to pirated content ... I would argue you're beginning to get really close to willingly encouraging said pirating content and you are making advertising revenue off of it.
To me, that's kinda like a fence/pawn broker saying he can't be held liable because he only deals with anonymous sales. If it turns out that said pawn broker's goods were almost all stolen and he knew it, would that not be a problem?
I know, pirated content != stolen goods and all that, but the principle I'm going for is when you knowingly aid in something illegal and are making money off it - and in fact, it's driving your main source of revenue.
Torrent trackers could probably relatively easily ban torrents if they wanted to. It's not hard to figure out the pirated material. Like "Age of Empires II Full CD with Crack by [cracker signature name]" torrents.
but let's find a way to halt/fix it, shall we?
If we didn't cause it, and we try to fix it, we may just make it worse and destroy lots of other stuff in the process, no?
Volcanos mess up a lot of humanity and environments and animal life, too, but we don't try to stop them from blowing up. We'd probably end up making things worse.
The real title should be "Enterprise Software Breaks when Oracle Changes Name."
Thick-client software that relies on a branding for string comparisons or regular expressions (I don't know which it is)? Hum.
(I say "thick-client" because "thin-client" ... or, hosted ... is a lot easier to push updates for :) )
So, pirating sites that use pirated "images" (ISOs are images ;) ) to generate revenue, in the form of ads, should be sued because they are using the images commercially and violating the license the images are under? Right?
It could be that you'll agree with me. But many do seem to have a double standard. You may not. If not, grats :)
Maybe you should look up what percentage of Afghans want the NATO troups to leave. You'll be surprised.
In my mind, polls like that seem like they would have a large margin of error. Furthermore, it's a loaded question, depending on how you ask it.
Margin of error: if you lived in an oppressive regime that would kill you for dissenting, you may think twice about openly supporting getting rid of that regime ... especially if said regime goes into hiding and has no problem murdering you.
Loaded question: of course the Afghans want the US to leave. The real question is, do they want the US to help get rid of the oppressive [faction of the] Taliban government or do they actually want the US/NATO to leave RIGHT NOW? Nobody wants a permanent foreign military presence, but they may want temporary military help and then have it leave.
As for the track record... well, I'm not going to argue FOR bad things that we have done. On the other hand, I'm not sure about the interpretation of history, either. For example, Vietnam. Why didn't that work? That's a big question that I'm not sure has been closed. As for killing kids and bombing villages, I certainly will not say that those are good things.
I would probably tend to agree with your last paragraph though. I would argue that many politicians are definitely not very historical aware (except about things that they want to leverage for campaigns or legislation or whatever), as well.
It seems like politicians simply can't think straight. Maybe that has to do with making a career out of it.
Ok, so you have even more supposed facts that I do.
So what do we do? Interpret the facts and leave out the ones that we deem will be misunderstood by the public ... thus pushing our own viewpoint?
Furthermore, your first point - that the forces that don't allow girls' schools have been empowered by US militarism... er, what? Do you mean in the past? If so, then you're arguing against doing something good because of previous bad actions? If you are arguing for the present ... what? Building girls' schools where they were previously disallowed empowers the regimes that disallow them?
Roads we build - they are MOSTLY for that purpose meaning the poor CANNOT use them, or meaning they weren't built with the poor specifically in mind? If the former, you're right - that's a problem. If the latter, you're basically saying that it's a fact not worth mentioning because of the motive?
Also, you leave out some choice definitions. "Assuming that we have best interests in mind" - who is we? The US government? The military? Afghanistan? Pakistan? NATO? The UN?
Assuming that we have best interests in mind is what you're "supposed" to believe as a good citizen. Congratulation. Unfortunately, the good citizen is a bad one as far as "informed" and unbiased goes.
Did I assume that? I was arguing for including as many facts as possible as opposed to trying to skew them towards one viewpoint. You are advocating a distinct viewpoint, and because of your viewpoint, you want to color certain facts in a different light - or simply leave them out altogether ... because of your viewpoint/bias. And somehow, you have decided that my wanting the facts to make up my own mind has made me an uninformed citizen, and you have also decided that I assume "we" have "best interests in mind." I did not give my viewpoint in my post; you assumed it because I did not assume a negative viewpoint of the war. I don't think I assumed a positive one, either. My entire point was that the negative viewpoint of the GP was showing based on the facts he chose to include in his list... or at least, I thought it was. Darkness404 can disagree if my perception is wrong there.
And this is why, as my last statement in my previous post implies, we can't seem to have informed discussions on these topics, because as soon as person B brings up something that does not fit into persons A's negative or positive viewpoint of the war, person A automatically assumes a lot about person B.
To the extent that simply bringing up a fact that on the face of it, appears to disagree with person A's opinion, person A immediately tries to color said fact as biased, worthless, or whatever. So we end up with both sides trying to prove their opinion using selective facts, and not trying to come to an informed opinion using as broad a view of the facts as possible.
Why is it that the mainstream media doesn't use -facts- to prove their points. Things like "For every day of war we spend XXXXX dollars, we kill XX civilians, XX terrorists, and destroy XXXX worth of infrastructure" would be a great way for people to know if they want to continue this war. Without that though we have the two extremes, extreme pacifism and extreme militarism.
What about how much we spend building infrastructure and how many civilians we liberate from oppressive regimes?
Or are those facts too biased to be mentioned?
It could just be oversight on your part :) But it seems that the prevailing view about the war is that the only stats that really count are deaths and destruction... nothing about the entire military engineers that are building ... say ... roads. Girls' schools that were not allowed previously. Some people view those facts as propaganda for "excusing" the war in some way. I say that leaving out those facts is propaganda for dismissing the war as entirely bad and thus should not be continued.
Unfortunately, as soon as someone SUPPORTS a war, people automatically assume that they support killing innocent civilians ... and as soon as someone DOES NOT SUPPORT the war, people assume they do not support the "troops" or think they agree with the oppressive regimes/governments.
In other words, everybody seems to think everybody else either supports everything that goes on or does not support everything that goes on, and misrepresents facts in order to "prove" that the other person does this.
Citing only death and destruction as figures to decide on the war is biased towards ending the war. Citing only good things that happen (rebuilding or even building things that weren't there to begin with, for example) and hiding the other is biased towards continuing the war.
Another reason I don't like multiplayer is there's no
Me too.
I disagree. A lot of RPG's have had extremely successful single-player campaigns, but the graphics were not all that great, even when the game first came out ... and many continue replaying it. Why? Not graphics or challenge, but story. "Hey, what happens to the story if I do it this way instead" or "use this character" or "how does this class follow the story path" ... etc.
Or, say, Oblivion. Not a hard game. Not amazing graphics (at least, anymore), but generically nice. Not multiplayer at all. It was pretty successful. It had a more or less simple and somewhat interesting main storyline, but what made it fun was the rather free world it presented.
Your example of "Tom Clancy: Press A" with moving dialogues (basically, a book) is a bit oversimplified. When the GP was talking about "story," I'm pretty sure he's talking about story interaction, not just the flat linear telling of a story. It's the placing of the game player into the story that people like, not simply being told the story itself. It's BEING the protagonist - or someone in the story, anyways - that's fun.
Just like actually controlling the exploration of a world is a lot different than having a guided tour of the world. Who would want a guided tour of Oblivion, a hands-off experience? That'd be boring.
Many non-RPG games appear to be putting RPG elements in, as well. FPS's with a lot of storyline (e.g., Half-Life). FPS's with characters gaining levels/experience ("Action-RPG"). Heavy story RTS games with small "experience"-based leveling type things, such as World in Conflict.
It doesn't matter if they don't know what a browser is... what matters is that most people do distinguish between two products.
Nobody buys a Chevy S1500 over a BMW 3 because the BMW 3 was clearly inferior due to its "model number."
Computer literacy has nothing to do with this. If they are given the option to download Chrome X vs Internet Explorer X, they probably will chose the one they recognize - brand or program name - not based on comparing the numbers.
Ok, so there are probably some people that do think the proverbially idiotic way, but I doubt it's a very large portion of people. And I doubt those are the people that are even going to be looking at a choice between Chrome vs. IE. They'll just use whatever their computer was set up with.
Maybe some do. I sure didn't. As a kid, I loved science, and I wanted to be an astronaut. I also mucked about with BASIC on our IBM PC a *lot*. Now I'm a software engineer because it's something I've always done, always enjoyed, and pays well. I also play various types of guitar and do martial arts - the first two reasons apply to those as well. My university had a computerised aptitude test that told me I should be a museum curator - essentially a bureaucrat.
Exactly. No, you did not go into what you "really really wanted to do" or "dreamed about" but you didn't end up doing - or trying to do - something that you actually did not like or had no interest in. You were interested in some stuff that software engineers do, and you ended up doing it ... even though you apparently also enjoy music and physical activity.
I think I'm pretty similar, in that I still do things I enjoy but did not major in nor get a job in... but what I did major in and what I did get a job related to were things that I also enjoyed.
I think the real problem is assuming that someone only enjoys a couple things or is only good at a couple things... that wasn't my point. People definitely like a variety of things, and quite possibly something they enjoy doing can, in fact, make money for them.
You misunderstood, or I was unclear. I did not mean that I could not do things that did not interest me; what I said was that things that interested me were things I could do. Just because A is in set B does not mean B ONLY consists of set A. :)
As for enjoyment ... no, they may not always line up, I understand that. And to be fair, my current vocation, while in a field I did study - computers - was not in my primary field of study (I was a double major) - music. Music, at the moment, is a hobby/amateur thing, not my actual profession. But I did enjoy (and still do) both.
Aptitude tests and mental ability tests are helpful in choosing vocation? Really?
Maybe I'm just weird, but I did not take any aptitude nor ability tests to pick my vocation. I studied what interested me. Typically, things that interested me were things that I could actually do - I didn't have much of an interest in things I couldn't do...
Do people actually choose their vocation (and included in that, I assume, would be education choices) based on what tests appear to show they are "good" at rather than what actually interests them - and what they have found out they can do by actually TRYING it?