I'm one of the people who might give Lion Server a try.... but here's the thing. I'm *not* talking about using it in a corporate setting. I'm simply one of those enthusiasts/power users/whatever label you prefer who has a LAN at home of 6 or 7 machines, and I've got a small computer-related business of my own that I run, as well as working in I.T. as my day job. I've already got a Mac Pro tower I've been using for years in several server functions. (I have my own ftp site, as well as it acting as my media server.) With an upgrade from Lion to Lion server as inexpensive as it is to buy/download now, it's not a big deal to purchase a copy just to play around with it. I don't run my own mail server at home yet, but it's something I might tinker with, especially with the capability being an integral part of Lion Server already. It'd potentially give me a lot more control over junk mail coming in, for one thing.
I think Apple is focusing the Lion Server product on folks like me, right now, as well as those who already standardized on the Mac for a workgroup or small business. If all of your workstations run OS X in the first place, why not put the same thing on the back end too? Most of these scenarios are places where they don't need rack-mount gear anyway. (EG. A big dentist's office by me where they all use Macs. The server is a tower they stuck in a small coat closet.)
Trying to argue that people will switch to open-source solutions in large numbers because of the economic crisis is futile. For the typical home user, a computer system purchase revolves around getting the best deal they can find on something (typically via a local retailer), and chances are very good those machines are still bundled with Microsoft Windows. Alternately, a growing minority of users are making the trek to an Apple store, where they can buy a commercial alternative to Windows with a new machine for a little bit more money up front (but a promise of better resale value down the road).
From what I've seen, most of these people have more motivation to stick with a commercial OS rather than try Linux because they want to re-use some existing software they bought previously. The idea of saving money with open-source software in the future doesn't do much for them, really. (Most of the time, they're not really sure what's out there for an OS like Linux or BSD in the first place. Being free, open-source software, the developers obviously aren't spending any money on advertising on TV or in the print media to tell people about their programs.)
For small business users, a computer and related software purchases are usually a tax write-off anyway - so they're not real motivated to switch to and learn to use something totally new/different either.
The *few* people I know who did purchase a new computer with Linux pre-installed keep running into headaches when they need to call for technical support. EG. One lady with a Netbook running Ubuntu had problems recently when she signed up for AT&T U-Verse. Nobody on their support line could walk her through the steps needed to connect her wireless card to their wireless router they supplied, and despite telling them she was using "Ubuntu" - they insisted that was just "some program running on top of Windows", and she "probably has Windows 7".
Unlike taxes, nobody forces anyone to play the lottery, OR to spend any specific amount of money doing so!
Your pessimistic view could just as easily be reversed to say, "The government wants to use a lottery so it can get additional funding without resorting to raising taxes to do so." The people most interested in having a (albeit very SMALL) shot at instant wealth are most likely the ones who have very little money to begin with, so obviously yes, you see more of the poor and the uneducated playing lotteries. At least it puts the ball squarely in THEIR court to decide how much money they wish to spend on such a thing, vs. having govt. come along and forcibly take money from their paychecks every week.
Exactly, and that was the one part of the article's assertions I disagree with. With all of the on-site service calls I've done over the last few years, I've very RARELY found a PC that was still running XP at SP2 or earlier. To accomplish that, you have to knowingly prevent the automatic security update from happening (which is pretty persistent unless you go in and manually de-select the SP3 update from being offered again). I'm sure, especially in poorer nations where the price of a Windows license is equal to weeks or months of pay, things are different. But by and large? I'd say people aren't trying to run counterfeit or hacked versions of XP that complain about being pirated if the latest update patches are applied to them. (It's pretty trivial to find a copy of XP that will install properly with a valid key anyway. Just call up and have the key reset if it initially says it was activated too many times.)
The only case I can think of where I know a customer of mine is still on SP2 with XP is an older woman using an old Gateway tower with a BIOS that won't allow SP3 to work. The screen goes black on boot as soon as SP3 is applied, and Gateway never did release a newer BIOS for her particular model of machine to address that.
As far as I've been able to tell, the "extra security" Microsoft added by way of SP3 doesn't amount to much anyway. Initially, it seemed to break a lot of existing spyware/malware simply because it changed the way the networking stack interfaced with things (breaking a lot of VPN software for Windows in the process, until they released SP3 compatible updates!). Once the malware authors learned how to rewrite their code to latch back onto the TCP/IP stack to intercept it - SP3 no longer posed much of a barrier.
I read an article about this earlier today (I think it was on BoingBoing?) and despite trying to follow several govt. web site links to read the actual bill's contents, I wasn't able to view the whole thing anyplace?
If I visit the link the EFF suggests, for example, and click the link claiming to offer the "text of legislation" (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.1981:), I get what seems to only be notes about changes made throughout it? Under "Section 4" though, it appears this was put in:
`(h) Retention of Certain Records- A provider of an electronic communication service or remote computing service shall retain for a period of at least 18 months the temporarily assigned network addresses the service assigns to each account, unless that address is transmitted by radio communication (as defined in section 3 of the Communications Act of 1934).'.
That makes it sound like they're simply wanting to collect the IP addresses issued via DHCP of all the customers, not anything else?
IMHO, it's not even remotely reasonable to start making political decisions and implementing laws or policies based on climate information, if that information isn't freely available.
Just because someone sold the numbers to someone else doesn't mean it's automatically part of a protected class of information the general public shouldn't be allowed to see. It only makes sense that the most interested parties would be the ones to foot the bill to get the initial information collected up and bundled for their use -- but this content can't be treated like a copyrighted work you can't redistribute without permission!
This is good news (except for Poland, who for SOME reason is holding out on releasing their numbers).
As someone who works in corporate I.T. myself, I *really* don't get the nonsense about Lion's "download only" nature being an impediment to I.T. managers conscious of "conserving resources"?
1. It's VERY clear that once you download a copy of Lion from the Apple App Store the first time, you can create an installable image from it that you place on a share-point on your local network, OR can burn to a bootable DVD, OR can even make into a bootable USB memory stick (as long as it's an 8GB stick or larger). That means, a mass upgrade or installation of Lion would be NO different than any other operating system, *except* it may technically prove to be EASIER than a Windows installation if your company didn't happen to have a volume license key to use for all of the Windows PCs.
2. If you've ever really looked at the size of the regular update and security patches that get downloaded for a modern OS, it's clear that sufficient Internet bandwidth is a basic REQUIREMENT for a smooth functioning corporate network. If you can't handle the 4GB download of Lion (and a little bit more to add the Server component to it, if needed) - you have FAR bigger problems than OS X using up "too much bandwidth"!
The REAL impediments to large businesses doing mass migrations to the Mac and OS X are far more financial in nature. And by that, I don't mean the tired old "Macs cost more than comparable PCs!" line. You can argue that one 'till you're blue in the face, but the reality is - things like the OS itself have a lot of value to some people, easily justifying whatever premium price Apple puts on the hardware/OS bundle's initial purchase. (And secondarily, Apple doesn't do product upgrade cycles as regularly as most Windows PC vendors. A given Dell or HP model will be replaced with another variant by the next time you go to the store looking at the things. A given Mac tends to stick around for a full year or so before getting a major refresh. So when you compare a Mac near the end of its "cycle" to a "just released" PC equivalent, the Mac can look like a poor deal, cost-wise. Yet in another month when it DOES get refreshed, it may offer market-leading value again. A lot of factors are at play.) What I'm referring to is a different problem. Apple isn't very Enterprise-friendly in handling sales and service. Their sales model revolves around retail stores aimed at consumers, coupled with online web-based purchasing that expects payment with a major credit card. If you work for a place that demands "3 price quotes" before a purchase is approved for the lowest priced bid, and expects to pay with a purchase order on "NET 30" or "NET 60" terms? Apple presents a few more hurdles to overcome. If one of the Macs breaks down while under warranty, same issue. You might indeed have your extended "AppleCare" purchased on the system, but that doesn't mean a tech. will appear on-site the next business day in a "guaranteed 4 hours window" and swap out whatever broke. Most of the PC competitors sell their machines with such contracts as a matter of course to their corporate customers.
To be honest, I've never even delved REAL deeply into the options Apple makes available to large business customers. I know, second-hand, that they work special arrangements out with area schools that decide to deploy Macs (dedicated account reps. assigned to the school, and exchanges or returns expedited, plus special pricing) -- so I'm sure a big enough corporate or govt. customer can get the same treatment. But the fact remains it's not openly advertised or obvious that such options exist. And if you're just trying to get started moving to the Mac in a big business, chances are your boss wants specifics on pricing BEFORE they'll agree to do it. Apple wants you to commit before they'll reveal the "secret, special pricing discounts" they'll offer you.
I was actually expecting someone to bring that up.... I never intended to imply that the Linux kernel authors enjoyed the same financial status as big corporate C.E.O.'s, or that Linux itself constituted a business. I'm talking about all the commercial businesses out there though, and that definitely includes Microsoft. And as I said, MS consists of a lot of developers who probably have nothing but respect and admiration for the developers of the Linux kernel and drivers. So my point is, regardless of where the Linux guys stand on the issue - it's not really THAT surprising (or indicative of hidden motives) to see some of the people at MS sending some congrats. their way.
Yeah, when I last looked into this, I believe I found that Sony's implementation for their bluetooth controllers requires an additional step of the controller being "initialized" by the PS3 via USB port before it will allow pairing up over BT with it. Once a controller is initialized, it remembers it, so PS3 owners aren't stuck having to attach their controllers via USB cable before disconnecting them again, every time they turn on the PS3 and want to play a game. But you'll notice that if you let the battery in a controller run down all the way, it forgets that USB initialization info and requires it be re-inserted into the PS3 again, for at least a moment, before it'll start working again.
(I know this because I have one of those AC power adapters that lets me charge up to 2 PS3 controllers directly from it. If I have a controller with a totally dead battery and I recharge it with the AC adapter? It won't work with the PS3 at all after it's charged up, until I attach it via USB first and press the PS button to make it re-initialize.)
They did succeed in writing drivers for computers to connect PS3 game controllers via USB. I remember seeing a project for OS X to do this, in fact. But the project author talked about having to write special code to get around the initialization problem. (It may even be that they require you briefly attach the PS3 controller to the Mac or PC via USB so the driver can pretend it's a PS3 and do the initialization step.)
The bottom line is, these are all big BUSINESSES, with an unwavering goal of maximizing profits for their shareholders. When you see all of this "back and forth" between competitors, where one month they're bashing each other and the next, their CEOs are on TV together acting friendly? Remember that NONE of it really means much.
I'm pretty sure that on a personal level, almost all of these tech company "higher ups" have mutual respect for each other. After all, people in similar income brackets tend to have a lot of common interests. (A Bill Gates type isn't likely to have a lot of fun going on the same discounted vacation cruises that your typical family signs up for in the summer, etc. Your idea of a "nice hotel" and his probably aren't the same, nor are your typical "good, yet affordable" restaurant choices, right?) And they share a common interest in furthering high-tech products or services for the masses in SOME manner, even if they differ on the details of exactly HOW they think the future should unfold with them.
By the same token, most of the employees of these firms are just software developers, systems administrators and Q.A. testers trying to earn a paycheck in their field of interest. Guys I knew who coded apps for Microsoft often used Linux or a Mac at home, even if they really liked what Microsoft was doing. (Hey, if nothing else, it's refreshing to come home to something different than what you've got to use at work all day long!)
I'm pretty sure a lot of this animosity we hear of between competitors is cooked up by P.R. and marketing/advertising types. If you've got a product you can get people to rally behind, it's very profitable to pretend you're at "war" with the competition -- even if the C.E.O. of the main competitor is one of your company's C.E.O.'s drinking buddies and they negotiate co-operative deals in the background on a regular basis.
Great summary, Bill! I completely agree with you on all of this, and truthfully, these are the realistic facts about the situation that neither political party has much interest in the public knowing. Everyone involved is too busy spreading F.U.D. so they can manipulate it to further their respective agendas!
The only reason I can see for the "Debt Limit Law" at all is to ensure that the topic comes up for debate and in the news media every time the "magic number" is hit that they set. Legislation governing what they plan to spend or save is already passed anyway.
I don't think I'm in denial at all. I have no doubt the balance of power is shifting (and really, HAS shifted in many ways already). Since the 1980's, the USA gave up most of the raw manufacturing capability that made us great in the 1950's and 60's. The plan was, essentially, to get the majority of our population doing less labor-intensive work, substituting use of our brains for equal or better pay. But this was somewhat foolish in hindsight, because despite the U.S. still having a big lead in supplying such things as Hollywood movie entertainment and considerable success with computer software products, there's no denying that everyone needs numerous "hard goods" which we now constantly import.
It's unfair to compare what the U.S. government says/does with the thought processes of the general public over here. I find a BIG disconnect between the two.
But that said? China's enormous population doesn't really guarantee them any advantages over other nations, prosperity-wise. For every one of the benefits China can obtain with those numbers (larger workforce and more people to collect taxes from on income, etc.), they have an equal penalty working against them. (The larger population means more people consuming resources at a faster rate and creating more waste/trash to dispose of.) I don't claim to know the actual math or anything - but I strongly suspect there's a "sweet spot" for the optimal population of a nation. Beyond that, I imagine you see diminishing returns on additional populace equating to a "better country".
Certainly, you see this with businesses. A small business needs growth in their number of employees to succeed and prosper. But once you reach a certain size, you become much less agile. Historically, it's these "mega corps" that usually wind up getting toppled by a small, agile start-up type of company (think IBM, for example, up until Microsoft came along and knocked them down).
The funny thing with the trend towards "globalization" is, all the major players' economies become intertwined, to the point where one can't really afford to let another fail. The "rising tide lifts all ships" theory about the economy has a lot of truth to it, but I think people often forget the reverse is equally true. If the "water" around your nation drops enough, it affects more than just your OWN ships! Therefore, I like that Josh Wheaton theory (Firefly) a lot... that in the long-run, we may simply see the USA *and* China as major "superpowers", even if the U.S. never again sees a situation where they're the "most prosperous" nation.
Might be worth mentioning that at least one owner of an older Macbook that used to only run with 32-bit mode in OS X can now run Lion in 64-bit mode on it without problems.....
I'd have to argue the exact opposite about OS X and wi-fi issues, actually.
Wireless is *always* going to be fraught with issues, because there are so many variables involved. Is a given machine in a given location simply picking up a reflected signal better than other machines do in the same location, perhaps simply because of the shape or position of its antenna? Are you fighting a compatibility issue between different vendors' chipsets? Is it really a problem due to interference from other devices in the area that share the 2.4ghz spectrum (cordless phones or microwave ovens -- maybe owned by someone next-door to you, if not yourself)?
All in all though? I find that I can count on my Apple-branded devices to pretty reliably use a given wi-fi source with minimal hassles. By contrast, I've got a Lenovo Thinkpad running XP Pro sitting right next to me, here at work, that has all kinds of wireless problems. If it's not sitting VERY close to a source, it randomly connects and disconnects, and large file xfers freeze up intermittently.
I think ONE reason some Apple users keep reporting issues is simply because they don't understand the technologies they're using. With the dual-band wireless "n" standard Apple now employs on the Airport Extreme router (and some other companies use, as well), you can optionally connect to your wi-fi router's SSID either on a 2.4Ghz band, or on a 5Ghz band. The 5Ghz band claims to be more "interference free" and capable of transferring data faster, BUT it has a huge down-side of less usable range. I've got one of these at home myself, and if I'm upstairs in a bedroom of the house, the 5Ghz band is the optimal one to connect to and use, if a given Mac or iOS device supports it. But as soon as I go downstairs, the signal level drops off sharply and 5Ghz starts displaying connectivity problems. If I switch to the 2.4Ghz version of the wi-fi signal? It works great again.
I recently read over on MacRumors where a guy confirmed he was able to do a full install of OS X Lion's "gold master" from a removable drive, onto a Mac with a blank hard drive. A prerequisite of Snow Leopard is most likely stated simply because you'd need it on a machine to use the Apple App Store to BUY Lion in the first place.
Once you've got the files though, they can be arranged in such a way so they act as an installation point for new systems.
Why do we need "government" as the regulator of all of this? You act as though the pull of money has no effect on those in government?!
That's the real problem today... Government is always viewed and "sold" to people as the referee or watchdog that ensures "evil big business" doesn't stomp all over the "little guy" -- when in reality? Government colludes with big business constantly, because it helps BOTH the business-owners and those in political office benefit at the expense of the "little guy".
Your premise is completely flawed anyway. If I have 100 applicants and only one says 'I'll work for free!", I'm going to SERIOUSLY question that person's motives. Why is he/she willing to work for free? Is there something more to their story I'm not yet aware of, like a long criminal history, perhaps? Realistically, as a business-owner seeking new hires, I'm on a mission to make the decision that winds up being the best for my business in the long haul. Even IF I found a truly good employee who offered to work for nothing? I'd have serious concerns about them suddenly leaving without notice, or just starting to slack off and refuse to do what's requested at some point. If they aren't getting paid, they're just a "loose canon" in the company that I can't do much about. ("What are you going to do to me if you don't like the way I handle things? Dock my pay?!")
IMHO, we'd all be better off if government provided little to nothing in the way of "safety nets". I'm not saying safety nets shouldn't exist, mind you! I'm just saying we'd be better off letting charities and the places we work voluntarily provide such things - vs. the power structure we have now, where politicians (who can vote on their own pay raises, no less!) get to forcibly take percentages out of everyone's paychecks and forcibly add taxes on top of the goods or services we try to buy, all to pool together in funds they're largely unaccountable for, so THEY can dole them back out with social programs they run.
Yeah... I think you're basically correct. I'm also one of those who decided not to finish college, because I had work opportunities in I.T. available to me without needing to finish first.
The first job I took was essentially an unpaid internship, because I had agreed to help a guy I met at a party get his small computer store off the ground. We didn't really discuss pay at that point. We simply agreed it was a "great business idea" and he was the one who already got the money together for the physical store and its inventory. I was simply offering to step in and do my part to help make it into something profitable for both of us, somehow.
Looking back, it's easy to see how someone would judge that as completely foolish and tell me how he simply "conned me into a bunch of free labor". But it wasn't quite like that. I got to play around with pretty much anything he had in stock, assembling PCs from scratch (at a time when few people really knew a lot about it) and learning a lot about which components were better than others. I fried my share of parts too, learning what to do and not to do with things... but since I wasn't a paid employee, that wasn't a big issue. When I finally decided it was time to move on (because his business was still struggling and he seemed to lose some of his initial enthusiasm for the whole operation), I found all the hands-on experience and knowledge to be invaluable when I got hired elsewhere as a PC tech.
As "stupid" as you may think it is, there are probably deeply rooted reasons for this, backed by at least some sort of logic.
1. Govt. leaders realize they need generation after generation of individuals willing to fight and risk dying for their country, in time of war. If you get them acclimated to concepts of violence at an early age, they're prepared for that option. Heck, look how many of the popular video games today are actual simulations of war, complete with virtual clones of the exact weaponry and vehicles our military uses in real life!
2. "Normal sexuality" isn't so "normal" if you have kids experimenting with it at too young an age. That's the *real* reason most adults get uncomfortable with the idea of their kids viewing it in movies or print media. It's generally accepted that society (at least as we have it set up today, in the U.S.A.) works most smoothly if women don't get pregnant and have kids until they reach adulthood. (Sure, the law will ALLOW for "teen pregnancy" as long as the individuals involved are at least 16 or 17 years old or so, but we wouldn't even talk about "teen pregnancy" as a term if there wasn't some social stigma attached to it.) You can talk all you want about "sex education being the answer" and ensuring easy access to birth control, but the fact remains that the only 100% effective form of birth control is not having sex in the first place. That's pretty easy to accomplish with younger kids by simply not planting the seed in their head that it's even an option for them. Obviously, as you get older, hormones kick in and you figure out how things work -- so you can't simply hide it from a person any longer. But few people are arguing that a bare breast shouldn't ever be seen in a video game intended for 16-18 year olds to play.
I can understand the point people are trying to make when they say we've got things all backwards, if we're more ok showing acts of violence and death than we are acts of love. But how much sex on TV or in video games has much of anything to do with genuine love anyway?
As someone who's been kind of hooked on TF2 ever since they released the native OS X version (and gave me a good excuse to spend a lot of time in the game, as the Mac doesn't exactly have a plethora of other options!) -- I'm not sure the change in emphasis towards micropayments and inventory items is beneficial?
It's a great shooter with just the basic characters and default weapon choices, really. The ability to occasionally find a new, alternative weapon is good too, since it keeps the game-play "fresh". But lately, with the "Mann Co. store" being added, you've got this overly-commercial vibe starting to permeate the game. Every time some other new game is released, it seems like they're throwing in new hats or other items related to it -- even if said hats or items really feel a little "out of place" with the overall theme of TF2 itself. And I've seen more and more servers hosting "custom maps" that exist primarily or ONLY for people to sit around "leveling up" their characters or trying to exchange items. (There was some stupid server I joined recently that offered maps stuffed full of endless stationary bots that kept regenerating every 2 seconds when killed, so you could stand there as, say, a Pyro, hold down the button for the flamethrower, and generate hundreds and hundreds of kills for yourself.) I guess this always existed... but it seems like once the micropayments, limited-edition items and purchased items came about, it started attracting more of this crowd.
I did really like the concept of offering a few items that you had to donate to charity to receive, via their store. My characters wear one of those they sold for the Tsunami victims in Japan. That, IMO, is a really GOOD use of the technology. (Why not make it more fun to donate to a cause, by giving back something that has essentially a zero cost to provide, yet still has value for the gamers? Heck, for a large enough charitable donation, I wouldn't even mind people being able to buy some SERIOUS weapons that always give them an edge in the game. How can you *really* get mad at someone who beats you repeatedly in a game because he or she donated generously to a good real-life cause??)
But overall, I think it kind of detracts from the original point of the game... to just hop in, "run and gun", and have a good time. Now I'm made to feel like I'm supposed to be regularly managing my inventory "backpack" and thinking carefully about what I want to swap and what I'd be better off hanging onto. That's more the arena of an RPG, isn't it?
When I was back in grade-school and high-school, I was interested in coding. (Heck, back then, you pretty much HAD to be, since that came as part of the deal when you bought a new computer. You learned BASIC and started keying in programs from listings published in books of "50 great computer programs for your Timex Sinclair 1000" or whatever you were using, and kind of went from there. The owners' manual packaged with whatever computer you bought included a complete programming reference for it. It was just assumed that you were going to be inputting some code to make the computer do things, or else you wouldn't have bought it in the first place!)
As time passed and things progressed, though, I got sidetracked by the ever-increasing complexity of software people were making and distributing. It became a career path of its own just to learn to USE the stuff other people made, vs. writing your own code. Half the time, I couldn't even think of anything possible to write that hadn't already been done by somebody else -- and I didn't have much motivation to re-invent the wheel.
By the time I took another serious look at writing some code, so much had changed, I realized I had NO useful talents in that area anymore. Nobody coded in BASIC anymore.... years of knowledge and experience right out the proverbial window there. (In fact, I was repeatedly told that knowing BASIC was a DETRIMENT to being a good programmer, since it encouraged lots of "bad programming techniques" that were best avoided.) I took a stab at learning "C" in college, until I became completely disenchanted and befuddled by it. (No clean English-like syntax to be seen? All this mental gymnastics required to master recursion and keeping track of pointers to variables and such? Ick! Bleah!)
Since then, I've watched numerous languages come into vogue and vanish back into obscurity... and all in all, I think I'm pretty happy I stayed away from it. I'm pretty good at the hardware side of things and at doing support and network administration. It's more my "calling" than the software development side of things. I can put together a batch file when I need to, and decipher command line parameters -- and that gets me by just fine.
Part of me hopes my kid will take an interest in learning to code, because she didn't have to grow up with all this useless "legacy knowledge" that I had, and maybe she'll be fine using the latest and greatest languages and compilers. But so far, she loves the computer while not seeming to care a bit about creating her own new content for it. (She likes limited things like changing the clothing on an avatar in a game or decorating up her igloo in "Club Penguin" -- but doesn't even go so far as to like games like "Little Big Planet" that center on world building.)
At the end of the day, I'm just not sure too many kids today can get TOO excited about things like "coding their own game", when everything they've been exposed to is such a big production. People don't generally sit down and write their own game title from start to finish by themselves anymore. It's more like a movie, with art directors and musicians and code QA testers, script-writers, etc. etc. I wonder how many folks working at a company like EA even have much of an idea what a title will turn out like as they're paid to code their little component of it every day?
Well, yes and no. To be honest, this depends somewhat on your priorities. Since insurance is always a form of gambling, people find it hard to justify paying a big chunk of money for it vs. something where immediate and definite benefits are seen. (EG. If I buy a new car, I get to drive it home that day and immediately begin using it. If I buy healthcare, I just keep making payments but have nothing to show for them except the little paper card in my wallet, UNLESS I happen to get sick and need it. Even then, I don't know for sure how much I'll wind up paying and how much the insurance will pay until after it's all over.)
To say the majority of American families couldn't come up with $7,200 per year though? That's probably incorrect. More accurately, they wouldn't prioritize their health insurance so highly that they'd be willing to sacrifice what might be as much as 1/4th. of their total income for it.
All I can say is, their policies are GREAT for the "little guys" trying to compete with them, like myself. I do on-site service calls and consulting work for both Windows PCs and Macs as a side job (evenings and weekends, mostly). My total "advertising budget: probably averages around $800-1000/yr. since handing out business cards and word-of-mouth referrals are the most effective tool I have.
I'd say a good 50% of the calls I get are from people needing a virus or malware removed, and another 10%-20% are for other issues, but wind up involving some of that before everything's completed. (EG. User says their old PC was getting too slow, so they bought a new one, and now they want help getting all their stuff transferred over. Turns out the old machine WAS slow and needed replacing, BUT it also had some malware on it and the files really need to be virus scanned before moving them to the new system.)
Anyway, I currently bill at $75/hr. with a 1 hour minimum charge, and bill in 20 min. increments past the first hour. Most of the time, I can get a customer's machine all cleaned up within 1-2 hours or so, but that includes me running a full scan with a tool like "Malware Bytes" AND looking everything over manually -- checking things like the "Task Manager" to see which processes are running, and peering at what's in the "runonce" and "run" keys of the system registry. That also includes me verifying that everything is ok after everything appears to be removed, because automated removal tools don't always leave everything configured quite right after the malware is deleted. (Some malware will modify your Internet settings, for example. Perhaps the malware configured it to go through a proxy, and the trojan horse that USED to serve as that proxy is now gone -- so they just get "page not found" when launching IE....)
Other times I've had situations where the entire documents folder for the user appeared to be gone after the virus was cleaned up. It turned out the files were hidden and compressed up by the virus, and a command line tool had to be located that could unhide them and decompress them back to their original locations.
Point is... when doing this stuff, there's no substitute for hands-on interaction and observation of what the system is doing, by someone with a little knowledge about all of it. Even if the GeekSquad people run their automated tools and bill the customer $150 or so, vs. me billing that same $150 or so? My job is more thorough and less likely to result in complications for them afterwards.
Even in a "worst case" scenario where I wind up electing to do a backup, format/re-install, and restore for a customer? Yeah, my rates may wind up running them as high as $350-400... but again, it's not some sloppy Best Buy definition of a backup. (I actually go through and delete the junk they really never intended to keep in the first place, like all those.tmp files in folders, or the duplicates of files they accidentally made when they did a drag and drop by mistake and created a copy with a (1) at the end of the filename. And I make sure ALL the available updates patches are applied before I declare it "finished". Adobe Acrobat Reader or Java or iTunes has updates? Yep... I do them all for them.)
My goal is to give them back a computer that's in some way running BETTER than what they had before they encountered the problem that caused them to call for service. Most people have a LOT of junk on their machines they don't want, but didn't know how to remove. A little time spent in the Add/Remove Programs part of the Control Panel while talking with them can do wonders.
Who builds the operating system used on more personal computers than any other? Microsoft just previewed "Windows 8" and guess what? It has a UI that's a LOT more like what they're doing with their Windows Mobile phones.
So in that respect, it's not simply an "Apple thing" that they'd make their OS more and more like the one used in their mobile devices.
I don't think you can read into all of this that it's the END of the personal computer, or the end of an operating system like OS X.
What you DO have is a lot of demand for a new, easier way to interact with all of this stuff. People who traditionally found computers too hard or confusing to use are suddenly getting the hang of using things like the Apple iPad or their new smartphone, and finally joining the ranks of those of us who communicate regularly via email, Facebook, Twitter, IM, and so on. So rather than stay content with that "digital divide" -- they're trying to unify the environments. A full-blown computer will always be more capable than a stripped down environment made for smaller screens and very portable products -- but it can't hurt to put a front-end on both, so the typical user can actually get around and run software on EITHER one after only learning ONE way of doing it.
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I'm one of the people who might give Lion Server a try.... but here's the thing. I'm *not* talking about using it in a corporate setting. I'm simply one of those enthusiasts/power users/whatever label you prefer who has a LAN at home of 6 or 7 machines, and I've got a small computer-related business of my own that I run, as well as working in I.T. as my day job. I've already got a Mac Pro tower I've been using for years in several server functions. (I have my own ftp site, as well as it acting as my media server.) With an upgrade from Lion to Lion server as inexpensive as it is to buy/download now, it's not a big deal to purchase a copy just to play around with it. I don't run my own mail server at home yet, but it's something I might tinker with, especially with the capability being an integral part of Lion Server already. It'd potentially give me a lot more control over junk mail coming in, for one thing.
I think Apple is focusing the Lion Server product on folks like me, right now, as well as those who already standardized on the Mac for a workgroup or small business. If all of your workstations run OS X in the first place, why not put the same thing on the back end too? Most of these scenarios are places where they don't need rack-mount gear anyway. (EG. A big dentist's office by me where they all use Macs. The server is a tower they stuck in a small coat closet.)
Trying to argue that people will switch to open-source solutions in large numbers because of the economic crisis is futile. For the typical home user, a computer system purchase revolves around getting the best deal they can find on something (typically via a local retailer), and chances are very good those machines are still bundled with Microsoft Windows. Alternately, a growing minority of users are making the trek to an Apple store, where they can buy a commercial alternative to Windows with a new machine for a little bit more money up front (but a promise of better resale value down the road).
From what I've seen, most of these people have more motivation to stick with a commercial OS rather than try Linux because they want to re-use some existing software they bought previously. The idea of saving money with open-source software in the future doesn't do much for them, really. (Most of the time, they're not really sure what's out there for an OS like Linux or BSD in the first place. Being free, open-source software, the developers obviously aren't spending any money on advertising on TV or in the print media to tell people about their programs.)
For small business users, a computer and related software purchases are usually a tax write-off anyway - so they're not real motivated to switch to and learn to use something totally new/different either.
The *few* people I know who did purchase a new computer with Linux pre-installed keep running into headaches when they need to call for technical support. EG. One lady with a Netbook running Ubuntu had problems recently when she signed up for AT&T U-Verse. Nobody on their support line could walk her through the steps needed to connect her wireless card to their wireless router they supplied, and despite telling them she was using "Ubuntu" - they insisted that was just "some program running on top of Windows", and she "probably has Windows 7".
Unlike taxes, nobody forces anyone to play the lottery, OR to spend any specific amount of money doing so!
Your pessimistic view could just as easily be reversed to say, "The government wants to use a lottery so it can get additional funding without resorting to raising taxes to do so." The people most interested in having a (albeit very SMALL) shot at instant wealth are most likely the ones who have very little money to begin with, so obviously yes, you see more of the poor and the uneducated playing lotteries. At least it puts the ball squarely in THEIR court to decide how much money they wish to spend on such a thing, vs. having govt. come along and forcibly take money from their paychecks every week.
Exactly, and that was the one part of the article's assertions I disagree with. With all of the on-site service calls I've done over the last few years, I've very RARELY found a PC that was still running XP at SP2 or earlier. To accomplish that, you have to knowingly prevent the automatic security update from happening (which is pretty persistent unless you go in and manually de-select the SP3 update from being offered again). I'm sure, especially in poorer nations where the price of a Windows license is equal to weeks or months of pay, things are different. But by and large? I'd say people aren't trying to run counterfeit or hacked versions of XP that complain about being pirated if the latest update patches are applied to them. (It's pretty trivial to find a copy of XP that will install properly with a valid key anyway. Just call up and have the key reset if it initially says it was activated too many times.)
The only case I can think of where I know a customer of mine is still on SP2 with XP is an older woman using an old Gateway tower with a BIOS that won't allow SP3 to work. The screen goes black on boot as soon as SP3 is applied, and Gateway never did release a newer BIOS for her particular model of machine to address that.
As far as I've been able to tell, the "extra security" Microsoft added by way of SP3 doesn't amount to much anyway. Initially, it seemed to break a lot of existing spyware/malware simply because it changed the way the networking stack interfaced with things (breaking a lot of VPN software for Windows in the process, until they released SP3 compatible updates!). Once the malware authors learned how to rewrite their code to latch back onto the TCP/IP stack to intercept it - SP3 no longer posed much of a barrier.
I read an article about this earlier today (I think it was on BoingBoing?) and despite trying to follow several govt. web site links to read the actual bill's contents, I wasn't able to view the whole thing anyplace?
If I visit the link the EFF suggests, for example, and click the link claiming to offer the "text of legislation" (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.1981:), I get what seems to only be notes about changes made throughout it? Under "Section 4" though, it appears this was put in:
`(h) Retention of Certain Records- A provider of an electronic communication service or remote computing service shall retain for a period of at least 18 months the temporarily assigned network addresses the service assigns to each account, unless that address is transmitted by radio communication (as defined in section 3 of the Communications Act of 1934).'.
That makes it sound like they're simply wanting to collect the IP addresses issued via DHCP of all the customers, not anything else?
IMHO, it's not even remotely reasonable to start making political decisions and implementing laws or policies based on climate information, if that information isn't freely available.
Just because someone sold the numbers to someone else doesn't mean it's automatically part of a protected class of information the general public shouldn't be allowed to see. It only makes sense that the most interested parties would be the ones to foot the bill to get the initial information collected up and bundled for their use -- but this content can't be treated like a copyrighted work you can't redistribute without permission!
This is good news (except for Poland, who for SOME reason is holding out on releasing their numbers).
As someone who works in corporate I.T. myself, I *really* don't get the nonsense about Lion's "download only" nature being an impediment to I.T. managers conscious of "conserving resources"?
1. It's VERY clear that once you download a copy of Lion from the Apple App Store the first time, you can create an installable image from it that you place on a share-point on your local network, OR can burn to a bootable DVD, OR can even make into a bootable USB memory stick (as long as it's an 8GB stick or larger). That means, a mass upgrade or installation of Lion would be NO different than any other operating system, *except* it may technically prove to be EASIER than a Windows installation if your company didn't happen to have a volume license key to use for all of the Windows PCs.
2. If you've ever really looked at the size of the regular update and security patches that get downloaded for a modern OS, it's clear that sufficient Internet bandwidth is a basic REQUIREMENT for a smooth functioning corporate network. If you can't handle the 4GB download of Lion (and a little bit more to add the Server component to it, if needed) - you have FAR bigger problems than OS X using up "too much bandwidth"!
The REAL impediments to large businesses doing mass migrations to the Mac and OS X are far more financial in nature. And by that, I don't mean the tired old "Macs cost more than comparable PCs!" line. You can argue that one 'till you're blue in the face, but the reality is - things like the OS itself have a lot of value to some people, easily justifying whatever premium price Apple puts on the hardware/OS bundle's initial purchase. (And secondarily, Apple doesn't do product upgrade cycles as regularly as most Windows PC vendors. A given Dell or HP model will be replaced with another variant by the next time you go to the store looking at the things. A given Mac tends to stick around for a full year or so before getting a major refresh. So when you compare a Mac near the end of its "cycle" to a "just released" PC equivalent, the Mac can look like a poor deal, cost-wise. Yet in another month when it DOES get refreshed, it may offer market-leading value again. A lot of factors are at play.) What I'm referring to is a different problem. Apple isn't very Enterprise-friendly in handling sales and service. Their sales model revolves around retail stores aimed at consumers, coupled with online web-based purchasing that expects payment with a major credit card. If you work for a place that demands "3 price quotes" before a purchase is approved for the lowest priced bid, and expects to pay with a purchase order on "NET 30" or "NET 60" terms? Apple presents a few more hurdles to overcome. If one of the Macs breaks down while under warranty, same issue. You might indeed have your extended "AppleCare" purchased on the system, but that doesn't mean a tech. will appear on-site the next business day in a "guaranteed 4 hours window" and swap out whatever broke. Most of the PC competitors sell their machines with such contracts as a matter of course to their corporate customers.
To be honest, I've never even delved REAL deeply into the options Apple makes available to large business customers. I know, second-hand, that they work special arrangements out with area schools that decide to deploy Macs (dedicated account reps. assigned to the school, and exchanges or returns expedited, plus special pricing) -- so I'm sure a big enough corporate or govt. customer can get the same treatment. But the fact remains it's not openly advertised or obvious that such options exist. And if you're just trying to get started moving to the Mac in a big business, chances are your boss wants specifics on pricing BEFORE they'll agree to do it. Apple wants you to commit before they'll reveal the "secret, special pricing discounts" they'll offer you.
I was actually expecting someone to bring that up.... I never intended to imply that the Linux kernel authors enjoyed the same financial status as big corporate C.E.O.'s, or that Linux itself constituted a business. I'm talking about all the commercial businesses out there though, and that definitely includes Microsoft. And as I said, MS consists of a lot of developers who probably have nothing but respect and admiration for the developers of the Linux kernel and drivers. So my point is, regardless of where the Linux guys stand on the issue - it's not really THAT surprising (or indicative of hidden motives) to see some of the people at MS sending some congrats. their way.
Yeah, when I last looked into this, I believe I found that Sony's implementation for their bluetooth controllers requires an additional step of the controller being "initialized" by the PS3 via USB port before it will allow pairing up over BT with it. Once a controller is initialized, it remembers it, so PS3 owners aren't stuck having to attach their controllers via USB cable before disconnecting them again, every time they turn on the PS3 and want to play a game. But you'll notice that if you let the battery in a controller run down all the way, it forgets that USB initialization info and requires it be re-inserted into the PS3 again, for at least a moment, before it'll start working again.
(I know this because I have one of those AC power adapters that lets me charge up to 2 PS3 controllers directly from it. If I have a controller with a totally dead battery and I recharge it with the AC adapter? It won't work with the PS3 at all after it's charged up, until I attach it via USB first and press the PS button to make it re-initialize.)
They did succeed in writing drivers for computers to connect PS3 game controllers via USB. I remember seeing a project for OS X to do this, in fact. But the project author talked about having to write special code to get around the initialization problem. (It may even be that they require you briefly attach the PS3 controller to the Mac or PC via USB so the driver can pretend it's a PS3 and do the initialization step.)
The bottom line is, these are all big BUSINESSES, with an unwavering goal of maximizing profits for their shareholders. When you see all of this "back and forth" between competitors, where one month they're bashing each other and the next, their CEOs are on TV together acting friendly? Remember that NONE of it really means much.
I'm pretty sure that on a personal level, almost all of these tech company "higher ups" have mutual respect for each other. After all, people in similar income brackets tend to have a lot of common interests. (A Bill Gates type isn't likely to have a lot of fun going on the same discounted vacation cruises that your typical family signs up for in the summer, etc. Your idea of a "nice hotel" and his probably aren't the same, nor are your typical "good, yet affordable" restaurant choices, right?) And they share a common interest in furthering high-tech products or services for the masses in SOME manner, even if they differ on the details of exactly HOW they think the future should unfold with them.
By the same token, most of the employees of these firms are just software developers, systems administrators and Q.A. testers trying to earn a paycheck in their field of interest. Guys I knew who coded apps for Microsoft often used Linux or a Mac at home, even if they really liked what Microsoft was doing. (Hey, if nothing else, it's refreshing to come home to something different than what you've got to use at work all day long!)
I'm pretty sure a lot of this animosity we hear of between competitors is cooked up by P.R. and marketing/advertising types. If you've got a product you can get people to rally behind, it's very profitable to pretend you're at "war" with the competition -- even if the C.E.O. of the main competitor is one of your company's C.E.O.'s drinking buddies and they negotiate co-operative deals in the background on a regular basis.
Great summary, Bill! I completely agree with you on all of this, and truthfully, these are the realistic facts about the situation that neither political party has much interest in the public knowing. Everyone involved is too busy spreading F.U.D. so they can manipulate it to further their respective agendas!
The only reason I can see for the "Debt Limit Law" at all is to ensure that the topic comes up for debate and in the news media every time the "magic number" is hit that they set. Legislation governing what they plan to spend or save is already passed anyway.
I don't think I'm in denial at all. I have no doubt the balance of power is shifting (and really, HAS shifted in many ways already). Since the 1980's, the USA gave up most of the raw manufacturing capability that made us great in the 1950's and 60's. The plan was, essentially, to get the majority of our population doing less labor-intensive work, substituting use of our brains for equal or better pay. But this was somewhat foolish in hindsight, because despite the U.S. still having a big lead in supplying such things as Hollywood movie entertainment and considerable success with computer software products, there's no denying that everyone needs numerous "hard goods" which we now constantly import.
It's unfair to compare what the U.S. government says/does with the thought processes of the general public over here. I find a BIG disconnect between the two.
But that said? China's enormous population doesn't really guarantee them any advantages over other nations, prosperity-wise. For every one of the benefits China can obtain with those numbers (larger workforce and more people to collect taxes from on income, etc.), they have an equal penalty working against them. (The larger population means more people consuming resources at a faster rate and creating more waste/trash to dispose of.) I don't claim to know the actual math or anything - but I strongly suspect there's a "sweet spot" for the optimal population of a nation. Beyond that, I imagine you see diminishing returns on additional populace equating to a "better country".
Certainly, you see this with businesses. A small business needs growth in their number of employees to succeed and prosper. But once you reach a certain size, you become much less agile. Historically, it's these "mega corps" that usually wind up getting toppled by a small, agile start-up type of company (think IBM, for example, up until Microsoft came along and knocked them down).
The funny thing with the trend towards "globalization" is, all the major players' economies become intertwined, to the point where one can't really afford to let another fail. The "rising tide lifts all ships" theory about the economy has a lot of truth to it, but I think people often forget the reverse is equally true. If the "water" around your nation drops enough, it affects more than just your OWN ships! Therefore, I like that Josh Wheaton theory (Firefly) a lot ... that in the long-run, we may simply see the USA *and* China as major "superpowers", even if the U.S. never again sees a situation where they're the "most prosperous" nation.
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1104342
(So that's at least hope for some aluminum Macbook owners out there.)
Might be worth mentioning that at least one owner of an older Macbook that used to only run with 32-bit mode in OS X can now run Lion in 64-bit mode on it without problems.....
I'd have to argue the exact opposite about OS X and wi-fi issues, actually.
Wireless is *always* going to be fraught with issues, because there are so many variables involved. Is a given machine in a given location simply picking up a reflected signal better than other machines do in the same location, perhaps simply because of the shape or position of its antenna? Are you fighting a compatibility issue between different vendors' chipsets? Is it really a problem due to interference from other devices in the area that share the 2.4ghz spectrum (cordless phones or microwave ovens -- maybe owned by someone next-door to you, if not yourself)?
All in all though? I find that I can count on my Apple-branded devices to pretty reliably use a given wi-fi source with minimal hassles. By contrast, I've got a Lenovo Thinkpad running XP Pro sitting right next to me, here at work, that has all kinds of wireless problems. If it's not sitting VERY close to a source, it randomly connects and disconnects, and large file xfers freeze up intermittently.
I think ONE reason some Apple users keep reporting issues is simply because they don't understand the technologies they're using. With the dual-band wireless "n" standard Apple now employs on the Airport Extreme router (and some other companies use, as well), you can optionally connect to your wi-fi router's SSID either on a 2.4Ghz band, or on a 5Ghz band. The 5Ghz band claims to be more "interference free" and capable of transferring data faster, BUT it has a huge down-side of less usable range. I've got one of these at home myself, and if I'm upstairs in a bedroom of the house, the 5Ghz band is the optimal one to connect to and use, if a given Mac or iOS device supports it. But as soon as I go downstairs, the signal level drops off sharply and 5Ghz starts displaying connectivity problems. If I switch to the 2.4Ghz version of the wi-fi signal? It works great again.
Not necessarily correct!
I recently read over on MacRumors where a guy confirmed he was able to do a full install of OS X Lion's "gold master" from a removable drive, onto a Mac with a blank hard drive. A prerequisite of Snow Leopard is most likely stated simply because you'd need it on a machine to use the Apple App Store to BUY Lion in the first place.
Once you've got the files though, they can be arranged in such a way so they act as an installation point for new systems.
Why do we need "government" as the regulator of all of this? You act as though the pull of money has no effect on those in government?!
That's the real problem today... Government is always viewed and "sold" to people as the referee or watchdog that ensures "evil big business" doesn't stomp all over the "little guy" -- when in reality? Government colludes with big business constantly, because it helps BOTH the business-owners and those in political office benefit at the expense of the "little guy".
Your premise is completely flawed anyway. If I have 100 applicants and only one says 'I'll work for free!", I'm going to SERIOUSLY question that person's motives. Why is he/she willing to work for free? Is there something more to their story I'm not yet aware of, like a long criminal history, perhaps? Realistically, as a business-owner seeking new hires, I'm on a mission to make the decision that winds up being the best for my business in the long haul. Even IF I found a truly good employee who offered to work for nothing? I'd have serious concerns about them suddenly leaving without notice, or just starting to slack off and refuse to do what's requested at some point. If they aren't getting paid, they're just a "loose canon" in the company that I can't do much about. ("What are you going to do to me if you don't like the way I handle things? Dock my pay?!")
IMHO, we'd all be better off if government provided little to nothing in the way of "safety nets". I'm not saying safety nets shouldn't exist, mind you! I'm just saying we'd be better off letting charities and the places we work voluntarily provide such things - vs. the power structure we have now, where politicians (who can vote on their own pay raises, no less!) get to forcibly take percentages out of everyone's paychecks and forcibly add taxes on top of the goods or services we try to buy, all to pool together in funds they're largely unaccountable for, so THEY can dole them back out with social programs they run.
Yeah... I think you're basically correct. I'm also one of those who decided not to finish college, because I had work opportunities in I.T. available to me without needing to finish first.
The first job I took was essentially an unpaid internship, because I had agreed to help a guy I met at a party get his small computer store off the ground. We didn't really discuss pay at that point. We simply agreed it was a "great business idea" and he was the one who already got the money together for the physical store and its inventory. I was simply offering to step in and do my part to help make it into something profitable for both of us, somehow.
Looking back, it's easy to see how someone would judge that as completely foolish and tell me how he simply "conned me into a bunch of free labor". But it wasn't quite like that. I got to play around with pretty much anything he had in stock, assembling PCs from scratch (at a time when few people really knew a lot about it) and learning a lot about which components were better than others. I fried my share of parts too, learning what to do and not to do with things ... but since I wasn't a paid employee, that wasn't a big issue. When I finally decided it was time to move on (because his business was still struggling and he seemed to lose some of his initial enthusiasm for the whole operation), I found all the hands-on experience and knowledge to be invaluable when I got hired elsewhere as a PC tech.
As "stupid" as you may think it is, there are probably deeply rooted reasons for this, backed by at least some sort of logic.
1. Govt. leaders realize they need generation after generation of individuals willing to fight and risk dying for their country, in time of war. If you get them acclimated to concepts of violence at an early age, they're prepared for that option. Heck, look how many of the popular video games today are actual simulations of war, complete with virtual clones of the exact weaponry and vehicles our military uses in real life!
2. "Normal sexuality" isn't so "normal" if you have kids experimenting with it at too young an age. That's the *real* reason most adults get uncomfortable with the idea of their kids viewing it in movies or print media. It's generally accepted that society (at least as we have it set up today, in the U.S.A.) works most smoothly if women don't get pregnant and have kids until they reach adulthood. (Sure, the law will ALLOW for "teen pregnancy" as long as the individuals involved are at least 16 or 17 years old or so, but we wouldn't even talk about "teen pregnancy" as a term if there wasn't some social stigma attached to it.) You can talk all you want about "sex education being the answer" and ensuring easy access to birth control, but the fact remains that the only 100% effective form of birth control is not having sex in the first place. That's pretty easy to accomplish with younger kids by simply not planting the seed in their head that it's even an option for them. Obviously, as you get older, hormones kick in and you figure out how things work -- so you can't simply hide it from a person any longer. But few people are arguing that a bare breast shouldn't ever be seen in a video game intended for 16-18 year olds to play.
I can understand the point people are trying to make when they say we've got things all backwards, if we're more ok showing acts of violence and death than we are acts of love. But how much sex on TV or in video games has much of anything to do with genuine love anyway?
As someone who's been kind of hooked on TF2 ever since they released the native OS X version (and gave me a good excuse to spend a lot of time in the game, as the Mac doesn't exactly have a plethora of other options!) -- I'm not sure the change in emphasis towards micropayments and inventory items is beneficial?
It's a great shooter with just the basic characters and default weapon choices, really. The ability to occasionally find a new, alternative weapon is good too, since it keeps the game-play "fresh". But lately, with the "Mann Co. store" being added, you've got this overly-commercial vibe starting to permeate the game. Every time some other new game is released, it seems like they're throwing in new hats or other items related to it -- even if said hats or items really feel a little "out of place" with the overall theme of TF2 itself. And I've seen more and more servers hosting "custom maps" that exist primarily or ONLY for people to sit around "leveling up" their characters or trying to exchange items. (There was some stupid server I joined recently that offered maps stuffed full of endless stationary bots that kept regenerating every 2 seconds when killed, so you could stand there as, say, a Pyro, hold down the button for the flamethrower, and generate hundreds and hundreds of kills for yourself.) I guess this always existed ... but it seems like once the micropayments, limited-edition items and purchased items came about, it started attracting more of this crowd.
I did really like the concept of offering a few items that you had to donate to charity to receive, via their store. My characters wear one of those they sold for the Tsunami victims in Japan. That, IMO, is a really GOOD use of the technology. (Why not make it more fun to donate to a cause, by giving back something that has essentially a zero cost to provide, yet still has value for the gamers? Heck, for a large enough charitable donation, I wouldn't even mind people being able to buy some SERIOUS weapons that always give them an edge in the game. How can you *really* get mad at someone who beats you repeatedly in a game because he or she donated generously to a good real-life cause??)
But overall, I think it kind of detracts from the original point of the game ... to just hop in, "run and gun", and have a good time. Now I'm made to feel like I'm supposed to be regularly managing my inventory "backpack" and thinking carefully about what I want to swap and what I'd be better off hanging onto. That's more the arena of an RPG, isn't it?
When I was back in grade-school and high-school, I was interested in coding. (Heck, back then, you pretty much HAD to be, since that came as part of the deal when you bought a new computer. You learned BASIC and started keying in programs from listings published in books of "50 great computer programs for your Timex Sinclair 1000" or whatever you were using, and kind of went from there. The owners' manual packaged with whatever computer you bought included a complete programming reference for it. It was just assumed that you were going to be inputting some code to make the computer do things, or else you wouldn't have bought it in the first place!)
As time passed and things progressed, though, I got sidetracked by the ever-increasing complexity of software people were making and distributing. It became a career path of its own just to learn to USE the stuff other people made, vs. writing your own code. Half the time, I couldn't even think of anything possible to write that hadn't already been done by somebody else -- and I didn't have much motivation to re-invent the wheel.
By the time I took another serious look at writing some code, so much had changed, I realized I had NO useful talents in that area anymore. Nobody coded in BASIC anymore .... years of knowledge and experience right out the proverbial window there. (In fact, I was repeatedly told that knowing BASIC was a DETRIMENT to being a good programmer, since it encouraged lots of "bad programming techniques" that were best avoided.) I took a stab at learning "C" in college, until I became completely disenchanted and befuddled by it. (No clean English-like syntax to be seen? All this mental gymnastics required to master recursion and keeping track of pointers to variables and such? Ick! Bleah!)
Since then, I've watched numerous languages come into vogue and vanish back into obscurity ... and all in all, I think I'm pretty happy I stayed away from it. I'm pretty good at the hardware side of things and at doing support and network administration. It's more my "calling" than the software development side of things. I can put together a batch file when I need to, and decipher command line parameters -- and that gets me by just fine.
Part of me hopes my kid will take an interest in learning to code, because she didn't have to grow up with all this useless "legacy knowledge" that I had, and maybe she'll be fine using the latest and greatest languages and compilers. But so far, she loves the computer while not seeming to care a bit about creating her own new content for it. (She likes limited things like changing the clothing on an avatar in a game or decorating up her igloo in "Club Penguin" -- but doesn't even go so far as to like games like "Little Big Planet" that center on world building.)
At the end of the day, I'm just not sure too many kids today can get TOO excited about things like "coding their own game", when everything they've been exposed to is such a big production. People don't generally sit down and write their own game title from start to finish by themselves anymore. It's more like a movie, with art directors and musicians and code QA testers, script-writers, etc. etc. I wonder how many folks working at a company like EA even have much of an idea what a title will turn out like as they're paid to code their little component of it every day?
Well, yes and no. To be honest, this depends somewhat on your priorities. Since insurance is always a form of gambling, people find it hard to justify paying a big chunk of money for it vs. something where immediate and definite benefits are seen. (EG. If I buy a new car, I get to drive it home that day and immediately begin using it. If I buy healthcare, I just keep making payments but have nothing to show for them except the little paper card in my wallet, UNLESS I happen to get sick and need it. Even then, I don't know for sure how much I'll wind up paying and how much the insurance will pay until after it's all over.)
To say the majority of American families couldn't come up with $7,200 per year though? That's probably incorrect. More accurately, they wouldn't prioritize their health insurance so highly that they'd be willing to sacrifice what might be as much as 1/4th. of their total income for it.
Precisely ... but IMO, at least in concept, a virtual fiat currency like this could work well for items in a virtual "fiat world", no?
All I can say is, their policies are GREAT for the "little guys" trying to compete with them, like myself. I do on-site service calls and consulting work for both Windows PCs and Macs as a side job (evenings and weekends, mostly). My total "advertising budget: probably averages around $800-1000/yr. since handing out business cards and word-of-mouth referrals are the most effective tool I have.
I'd say a good 50% of the calls I get are from people needing a virus or malware removed, and another 10%-20% are for other issues, but wind up involving some of that before everything's completed. (EG. User says their old PC was getting too slow, so they bought a new one, and now they want help getting all their stuff transferred over. Turns out the old machine WAS slow and needed replacing, BUT it also had some malware on it and the files really need to be virus scanned before moving them to the new system.)
Anyway, I currently bill at $75/hr. with a 1 hour minimum charge, and bill in 20 min. increments past the first hour. Most of the time, I can get a customer's machine all cleaned up within 1-2 hours or so, but that includes me running a full scan with a tool like "Malware Bytes" AND looking everything over manually -- checking things like the "Task Manager" to see which processes are running, and peering at what's in the "runonce" and "run" keys of the system registry. That also includes me verifying that everything is ok after everything appears to be removed, because automated removal tools don't always leave everything configured quite right after the malware is deleted. (Some malware will modify your Internet settings, for example. Perhaps the malware configured it to go through a proxy, and the trojan horse that USED to serve as that proxy is now gone -- so they just get "page not found" when launching IE....)
Other times I've had situations where the entire documents folder for the user appeared to be gone after the virus was cleaned up. It turned out the files were hidden and compressed up by the virus, and a command line tool had to be located that could unhide them and decompress them back to their original locations.
Point is ... when doing this stuff, there's no substitute for hands-on interaction and observation of what the system is doing, by someone with a little knowledge about all of it. Even if the GeekSquad people run their automated tools and bill the customer $150 or so, vs. me billing that same $150 or so? My job is more thorough and less likely to result in complications for them afterwards.
Even in a "worst case" scenario where I wind up electing to do a backup, format/re-install, and restore for a customer? Yeah, my rates may wind up running them as high as $350-400 ... but again, it's not some sloppy Best Buy definition of a backup. (I actually go through and delete the junk they really never intended to keep in the first place, like all those .tmp files in folders, or the duplicates of files they accidentally made when they did a drag and drop by mistake and created a copy with a (1) at the end of the filename. And I make sure ALL the available updates patches are applied before I declare it "finished". Adobe Acrobat Reader or Java or iTunes has updates? Yep... I do them all for them.)
My goal is to give them back a computer that's in some way running BETTER than what they had before they encountered the problem that caused them to call for service. Most people have a LOT of junk on their machines they don't want, but didn't know how to remove. A little time spent in the Add/Remove Programs part of the Control Panel while talking with them can do wonders.
Who builds the operating system used on more personal computers than any other? Microsoft just previewed "Windows 8" and guess what? It has a UI that's a LOT more like what they're doing with their Windows Mobile phones.
So in that respect, it's not simply an "Apple thing" that they'd make their OS more and more like the one used in their mobile devices.
I don't think you can read into all of this that it's the END of the personal computer, or the end of an operating system like OS X.
What you DO have is a lot of demand for a new, easier way to interact with all of this stuff. People who traditionally found computers too hard or confusing to use are suddenly getting the hang of using things like the Apple iPad or their new smartphone, and finally joining the ranks of those of us who communicate regularly via email, Facebook, Twitter, IM, and so on. So rather than stay content with that "digital divide" -- they're trying to unify the environments. A full-blown computer will always be more capable than a stripped down environment made for smaller screens and very portable products -- but it can't hurt to put a front-end on both, so the typical user can actually get around and run software on EITHER one after only learning ONE way of doing it.