I prefer to see a movie in a theatre, but only when the experience is pleasant, which it rarely is anymore. To really enjoy a movie at a theatre I need the following:
- Not having my earsdrums crushed for the first twenty minutes of every movie, until enough people have complained about speakers crackling under the strain that the management makes the projectionist turn the volume down. - Not having to listen to every bang and boom in the theatre next door which is too loud for the cheap walls - although I admit this problem isn't as bad in theatres built in the last several years. - Not having to watch "The 2wenty" followed by another half-hour of commercials and trailers. - Not getting there 30 minutes before the movie and not being able to get a decent seat because management will let one or two teenagers hold a dozen seats for friends who won't arrive until halfway through the trailer. - Not being interrupted by repeatedly by the same assholes using cellular phones during movies.
Of course, since none of this is likely to change any time soon, I'm just going to keep watching most of my movies via Netflix and HBO.
Because the men and women who create those early games in a series are usually not the people who create the sequels. Once they hit on something big, they often immediately move onto to a big producer role, take a better paying job at another company, or just choose to keep developing new ideas instead of refining old ones. Add-on the constraints of developing followup games within pre-established guidelines and on a strict schedule designed to work within a marketing scheme designed to take advantage of the brand, and it isn't hard to see why later games in a series often suck.
Here's to hoping that this time around they don't make supersonic travel a $5000 luxury like the Concord. Perhaps if supersonic travel is made affordable it might catch on this time around.
Guess what? You and your kooky Linux zealot friends don't make up enough of a market share to even come close to justifying the expense of writing, editing, proofreading, and translating full hardware documentation.
OpenOffice Write being faster than Word isn't likely to encourage anyone to switch, because, when it comes to word processors, speed isn't really a big deal. So what if it takes three times as long to load up a document in Word - if I'm going to be working on that document for the next several hours, those extra seconds of load time are essentially meaningless.
What OpenOffice really needs to beat Microsoft are: 1 - A better interface - Which IMHO OpenOffice does have, but without some usability studies to show managers it doesn't matter. 2 - Complete compatibility with Office documents and Office DRM, which will be essential for interacting with the large corporations and Governments of the world that will be using the DRM features of Office to control the dissemination of information.
"All of which makes me wonder, do evangelical users and press help or hurt the popularity of a platform."
To answer that question, simply look at the extremely slow adoption rate of desktop Linux, which has more crazed zealots than any OS ever has or likely ever will.
Everything you just ranted about is exactly why I quit doing sysadmin work to go back to art school. After five years in IT I realized that the better I got, the more useful work I would be able to do, and thus I would be expected to either sit on my ass when management had gotten stuff backed up or try not to go insane under pressure during crazy crunch times. It's hard to be happy with all the money a good sysadmin can make if you're too stressed out or busy to enjoy it.
I would LOVE to just lounge back on the couch and burn through some time playing cool indy games - it just makes it more fun than playing them at my desk on one of my computers.
"So if x86, with all it's hacks and kludges, is still faster and more efficient than these so called "clean" designs, what the heck is the point of having a clean design?"
It gives the engineers with the clean designs an excuse to act superior.
I agree wholeheartedly. PPC was always a really elegant concept, but the companies manufacturing the chips have never been able to produce smaller, faster, cheaper chips the way AMD and Intel have.
Kudos to Apple for having the sense to move to CPUs that, while maybe not a better option theoretically, make more sense in the real world.
Nobody seems to think that the PPC970 is underpowered - it's just that the majority of computer users have already realized what Apple is now dealing with - that IBM has been unable to live up to its promises to shrink the size of the CPU, lower the power consumption, reduce heat output, increase the clockspeed, and lower prices. Two years ago the G5 was a great idea, now it's just what people expect to get from Apple - half the performance for several times the price.
"It's the popularity of the x86 architecture that's attractive rather than Intel itself."
Wrong! The vast majority of computer users have no idea what the hell an x86 architecture is. All they know is that if all those computer people keep putting those "intel inside" stickers on everything, that intel thing must be good, and well, if you don't have it in there then your computer will crash more. Intel has a great marketing team, which is why no matter how many times AMD bests Intel in terms of technical superiority, Intel will still be king of the hill in the CPU sales contest.
Require the manufacturers to handle recycling and make collection service reasonably available to consumers. This way the fee can be built into the price of products, which ensures that manufacturers keep the process efficient to prevent negative impact on the bottom line. It will also ensure that the process doesn't get lost in government bureacracy, which is what I feel prevents a lot of recycling from happening now. I honestly have no clue how the hell to get a computer recycled in my city, but I'm sure that if Dell, Sony, Microsoft, Samsung, etc. all banded together and hired a contractor to get it done, it would happen a lot sooner than it would with the local government in charge.
So how much longer is this going to delay the Longhorn release? I'm guessing that Microsoft will need to spend at least six months rewriting hard-coded kernel performance enhancements that refer to the "My" folders. A similar amount of time will be needed to fix all the occurances of "My" folders in the Internet Explorer codebase.
And of course, every change will add in a new security flaw.
This is like shooting fish in a barrel. Mocking Microsoft has just become too damned easy...
My thoughts exactly. Right now Washington is a mess of power struggles, attacks on the media, and attacks on the court. Buying the broadcast flag right now will cost a lot and create a lot of press, and there's a good chance any right-wing politicians that have to be bought off will go down along with Tom Delay and George Bush's approval ratings. The RIAA/MPAA are much better off to wait until 2006, buy their way in with the new blood, and get the law passed in 2007 when everyone is focusing on the 2008 presidential election.
"...despite the fact that 99.99% of people will just use it to anonymously pirate things."
If existing anonymous internet solutions have taught us anything, it's that pirates would much rather have extreme transfer speeds than anonymity. It's much more likely that Rodi will be used by pedophiles to swap child pornography too big for freenet.
"...while security fixes will still be available until 2010, I guess that means the only browsers with tabs for W2k will be Opera and Firefox."
Good luck finding any operating system released in 1999 that runs a tabbed browser other than an archaic version of Opera. Windows 2000 is already old, has been passed by, and people who are still using it aren't doing so because they're concerned about the latest news in web browsers.
How about just a nice continuation of Total Annihilation? I just want a wargame that plays slowly and tends to last for hours, instead of the current crop of *Craft games and their knockoffs where I just end up fighting off the latest rush tactic from Korea in games that rarely last more than thirty minutes.
And before anyone points it out, I do realize that there's an Open-Source remake in the works, but I'm looking for a big studio production.
That's why OS X gives those files to the root account, and will only delete them if the user has administrative access and provides a password to do it.
Because people who aren't technically skilled enough to keep a Windows box free of malware don't know what to do when a Linux install CD doesn't like the cheap hardware in their bargain PCs. They can, however, get a pre-loaded working Mac at Best Buy or Target.
Until some big retailer starts selling pre-loaded Linux systems, Linux will continue to be out of reach of most mainstream consumers.
That's what happens when you have a strong union and employers lack the courage to fight back against it. These actors aren't demanding money because they deserve or need it, they're demanding it because the union reps have nothing better to do, and know that there's a pretty good chance the game studios will cave in or at least come close with some sort of compromise.
It's a shame that more executives in this country aren't afraid to stand up to unions.
Slashdot Mirror
I prefer to see a movie in a theatre, but only when the experience is pleasant, which it rarely is anymore. To really enjoy a movie at a theatre I need the following:
- Not having my earsdrums crushed for the first twenty minutes of every movie, until enough people have complained about speakers crackling under the strain that the management makes the projectionist turn the volume down.
- Not having to listen to every bang and boom in the theatre next door which is too loud for the cheap walls - although I admit this problem isn't as bad in theatres built in the last several years.
- Not having to watch "The 2wenty" followed by another half-hour of commercials and trailers.
- Not getting there 30 minutes before the movie and not being able to get a decent seat because management will let one or two teenagers hold a dozen seats for friends who won't arrive until halfway through the trailer.
- Not being interrupted by repeatedly by the same assholes using cellular phones during movies.
Of course, since none of this is likely to change any time soon, I'm just going to keep watching most of my movies via Netflix and HBO.
Because the men and women who create those early games in a series are usually not the people who create the sequels. Once they hit on something big, they often immediately move onto to a big producer role, take a better paying job at another company, or just choose to keep developing new ideas instead of refining old ones. Add-on the constraints of developing followup games within pre-established guidelines and on a strict schedule designed to work within a marketing scheme designed to take advantage of the brand, and it isn't hard to see why later games in a series often suck.
Here's to hoping that this time around they don't make supersonic travel a $5000 luxury like the Concord. Perhaps if supersonic travel is made affordable it might catch on this time around.
Guess what? You and your kooky Linux zealot friends don't make up enough of a market share to even come close to justifying the expense of writing, editing, proofreading, and translating full hardware documentation.
OpenOffice Write being faster than Word isn't likely to encourage anyone to switch, because, when it comes to word processors, speed isn't really a big deal. So what if it takes three times as long to load up a document in Word - if I'm going to be working on that document for the next several hours, those extra seconds of load time are essentially meaningless.
What OpenOffice really needs to beat Microsoft are:
1 - A better interface - Which IMHO OpenOffice does have, but without some usability studies to show managers it doesn't matter.
2 - Complete compatibility with Office documents and Office DRM, which will be essential for interacting with the large corporations and Governments of the world that will be using the DRM features of Office to control the dissemination of information.
There is no good open-source calendaring. Do what all the other sane *nix nerds are doing and switch to OS X.
"All of which makes me wonder, do evangelical users and press help or hurt the popularity of a platform."
To answer that question, simply look at the extremely slow adoption rate of desktop Linux, which has more crazed zealots than any OS ever has or likely ever will.
Everything you just ranted about is exactly why I quit doing sysadmin work to go back to art school. After five years in IT I realized that the better I got, the more useful work I would be able to do, and thus I would be expected to either sit on my ass when management had gotten stuff backed up or try not to go insane under pressure during crazy crunch times. It's hard to be happy with all the money a good sysadmin can make if you're too stressed out or busy to enjoy it.
I would LOVE to just lounge back on the couch and burn through some time playing cool indy games - it just makes it more fun than playing them at my desk on one of my computers.
"So if x86, with all it's hacks and kludges, is still faster and more efficient than these so called "clean" designs, what the heck is the point of having a clean design?"
It gives the engineers with the clean designs an excuse to act superior.
/clap
I agree wholeheartedly. PPC was always a really elegant concept, but the companies manufacturing the chips have never been able to produce smaller, faster, cheaper chips the way AMD and Intel have.
Kudos to Apple for having the sense to move to CPUs that, while maybe not a better option theoretically, make more sense in the real world.
"The PPC970 is not underpowered..."
Nobody seems to think that the PPC970 is underpowered - it's just that the majority of computer users have already realized what Apple is now dealing with - that IBM has been unable to live up to its promises to shrink the size of the CPU, lower the power consumption, reduce heat output, increase the clockspeed, and lower prices. Two years ago the G5 was a great idea, now it's just what people expect to get from Apple - half the performance for several times the price.
"It's the popularity of the x86 architecture that's attractive rather than Intel itself."
Wrong! The vast majority of computer users have no idea what the hell an x86 architecture is. All they know is that if all those computer people keep putting those "intel inside" stickers on everything, that intel thing must be good, and well, if you don't have it in there then your computer will crash more. Intel has a great marketing team, which is why no matter how many times AMD bests Intel in terms of technical superiority, Intel will still be king of the hill in the CPU sales contest.
http://taspring.clan-sy.com/
Require the manufacturers to handle recycling and make collection service reasonably available to consumers. This way the fee can be built into the price of products, which ensures that manufacturers keep the process efficient to prevent negative impact on the bottom line. It will also ensure that the process doesn't get lost in government bureacracy, which is what I feel prevents a lot of recycling from happening now. I honestly have no clue how the hell to get a computer recycled in my city, but I'm sure that if Dell, Sony, Microsoft, Samsung, etc. all banded together and hired a contractor to get it done, it would happen a lot sooner than it would with the local government in charge.
So how much longer is this going to delay the Longhorn release? I'm guessing that Microsoft will need to spend at least six months rewriting hard-coded kernel performance enhancements that refer to the "My" folders. A similar amount of time will be needed to fix all the occurances of "My" folders in the Internet Explorer codebase.
And of course, every change will add in a new security flaw.
This is like shooting fish in a barrel. Mocking Microsoft has just become too damned easy...
"It'll happen sooner or later..."
My thoughts exactly. Right now Washington is a mess of power struggles, attacks on the media, and attacks on the court. Buying the broadcast flag right now will cost a lot and create a lot of press, and there's a good chance any right-wing politicians that have to be bought off will go down along with Tom Delay and George Bush's approval ratings. The RIAA/MPAA are much better off to wait until 2006, buy their way in with the new blood, and get the law passed in 2007 when everyone is focusing on the 2008 presidential election.
"...despite the fact that 99.99% of people will just use it to anonymously pirate things."
If existing anonymous internet solutions have taught us anything, it's that pirates would much rather have extreme transfer speeds than anonymity. It's much more likely that Rodi will be used by pedophiles to swap child pornography too big for freenet.
I'm pretty sure that they're referring to things like OpenBSD on Motorolla 68000 series processors and ancient Sun hardware.
"...while security fixes will still be available until 2010, I guess that means the only browsers with tabs for W2k will be Opera and Firefox."
Good luck finding any operating system released in 1999 that runs a tabbed browser other than an archaic version of Opera. Windows 2000 is already old, has been passed by, and people who are still using it aren't doing so because they're concerned about the latest news in web browsers.
Handing out free Linux CDs? Damn those Indian nerds are behind! They need to get with the picture and start handing out Powerbooks running OS X.
How about just a nice continuation of Total Annihilation? I just want a wargame that plays slowly and tends to last for hours, instead of the current crop of *Craft games and their knockoffs where I just end up fighting off the latest rush tactic from Korea in games that rarely last more than thirty minutes.
And before anyone points it out, I do realize that there's an Open-Source remake in the works, but I'm looking for a big studio production.
That's why OS X gives those files to the root account, and will only delete them if the user has administrative access and provides a password to do it.
Because people who aren't technically skilled enough to keep a Windows box free of malware don't know what to do when a Linux install CD doesn't like the cheap hardware in their bargain PCs. They can, however, get a pre-loaded working Mac at Best Buy or Target.
Until some big retailer starts selling pre-loaded Linux systems, Linux will continue to be out of reach of most mainstream consumers.
That's what happens when you have a strong union and employers lack the courage to fight back against it. These actors aren't demanding money because they deserve or need it, they're demanding it because the union reps have nothing better to do, and know that there's a pretty good chance the game studios will cave in or at least come close with some sort of compromise.
It's a shame that more executives in this country aren't afraid to stand up to unions.