When it comes to crashing, Firefox does it more for me than IE. A LOT more. But I still use it because Firefox has great extensions. I know you're joking, but crashing isn't exactly much of a problem with Internet Explorer. There are many other things to complain about.
Oh, and there are no pop-ups in IE, either. I'm just sayin'.
No. Don't compare Linux of today with Windows of yesterday. Compare today's with today's and yesterday's with yesterday's. If you compare Win XP with nearly any X setup you'll find the X is more efficient.
Say what? Last I checked, Windows XP came out half a decade ago while the latest version of X came out this year. If you complain about these sorts of comparisons, then compare Windows XP to whatever version of X was released at the same time. And then let us compare again the CURRENT version of X to Vista (Avalon?). Otherwise you're being just as unfair as the poster you criticize.
The whole argument of modern-day Linux being superior to the much older XP is a lame cheap shot. This edge only exists because the two have different release schedules.
The problem is that a very large proportion of these telemarketing companies are dodgy, unprofessional, and sometimes illegal. Just like e-mail spam companies.
Most of the telemarketing phone calls I recieved had to do with me sending them $200 as an entrance fee for a contest for a trip to Jamaica, and things of that sort. Do you really think they'd take you off their "list"? Chances are they have no list at all.
Here's my personal opinion on what separates the geeks and the nerds:
A geek is socially well-adjusted, outgoing, usually has friends, and is characterized by his interest in things which most people don't care about: Science fiction, consumer electronics, and unpopular genres of music (goth rock, metal, electronica, etc).
In contrast, a nerd is a socially inept individual, often suffers from numerous personality disorders (avoidant, antisocial, obsessive-compulsive), has poor personal hygiene, and an OBSESSION for things which most people don't care about: Science fiction, homebrew electronics, and often no interest in any particular kind of music.
Basically the only similarity is that both geeks and nerds are interested in science. This similarity is enough to bring both geeks and nerds to Slashdot. However, that doesn't mean that the two groups are the same.
Heh, you seem to be apathetic about a lot of things.
But anyway, many people did buy the PS2 because it offered DVD playback. It's just, soon afterwards, the price of stand-alone players plumetted to very affordable levels. And, they had a remote control, as you said.
Sony would be stupid to not include a cheap little $10 remote control with the PS3. If they were to include one, WHY would anybody buy another player? They wouldn't. Thus, Blu-Ray wins. Therefore, the only thing that can give a competitive edge to HD-DVD is if there is no remote control shipping with the PS3.
I guess it'll come down to how cheap, near-sighted and stupid Sony executives really are.
In approximately three to four years, there will be 40 million households with Blue Ray players, thanks to the PS3. As the Xbox 360 does not ship with HD-DVD (and I'm assuming neither will the Revolution), the Blue Ray format will not be facing any significant competition for the next half a decade while growing the userbase exponentially.
The HD-DVD format simply cannot win. Even if a whole slew of non-game consumer electronics ship with HD-DVD drives, they will not be able to compete with the PS3 userbase, even collectively.
As soon as the PS3 launches, expect much of the Sony film library (which is sizable) to be released for Blue Ray. You will see a ton of advertising for films released in this format. Thus, there will be a player for these discs, and there will be a large film library to make use of this format.
Blue Ray is the future, whether you like it or not. If you're an investor, I would suggest to you right now to put as much money as you can into the companies that are supporting this format and dump stock is those who are backing HD-DVD.
Wrong. This is the best SAAB website:
http://www.cyberpursuits.com/heckifiknow/saab/defa ult.asp
They have one of the finest Multimedia sections I've ever seen for any show. Full downloads of the entire soundtrack, a HUNDRED video clips... this is just a motherload of content.
This show is everything that the new Battlestar Galactica is (#2 on their list). SAAB was truly ahead of it's time with it's long story arc, outstanding characters you really cared for, fantastic special effects, a realistic, gritty feel, and so many of the episodes were written like award-winning sci-fi short stories. Great, great show.
I think I can try to answer WHY it collapsed, having lived through it.
The fact of the matter is, most people in the Soviet Union didn't really like Communism. Even people in government. It was a self-perpetuating political party. The status quo. You had to obey, because you knew you'd be punished. And the people who did the punishing had to do their job because that's just how it worked. It was their job.
When the perestroika and glastnost came about in the early 80s, there were significant advancements in freedom of speech. By this point, I don't believe anyone would've been sent to prison for political speech, unless they did something stupid like advocating imprisonment or execution of the politicians. If they just criticized or mocked the system of Communism, they were left untouched. Several very popular motion picture comedies were made in the 80s that mocked and made fun of the Soviet government and how it resulted in poverty, and these films were shown without opposition in movie theaters across the country. This kind of freedom made everybody realize that they were not alone in thinking Communism isn't working. For the first time, they could publically admit they wanted Democracy and Capitalism and find a ton of people who agreed with them.
When the Berlin Wall fell, a bunch of politicians in the Baltic states realized that they, too, can break away. I actually went to school with the son of the #1 guy who was behind this new movement. What happened was that they realized that if they announce independence, no one will REALLY try to stop them because, at this point, there were very few true believers in Communism left. They knew that if they announce independence, there will be little opposition. Although there was some risk, they realized that probability of success was high. They were right.
Of course there were some holdouts who believed in Communism (it's hard to erase decades of propaganda), and they're still in government, and there is still a Communist Party in Russia that still wins in some local and terretorial elections. And of course there are still people who are angered by the collapse of the Soviet Union and, especially with the Baltic States, refuse to accept their complete independence (Russian government strongly opposed Latvia's entry into NATO and the EU). However, by and large, these issues are likely to be resolved in the years to come.
Microsoft isn't in direct competition with Nintendo. The people who buy Xboxes are looking for and expecting a different type of game from Nintendo's offerings. What's wrong with that? Nintendo makes awesome platformers and cartoon-style adveture games, and Sony and Microsoft gamers prefer realistic war games and MTV-style presentations. To each their own.
Umm... if you care about this stuff, this software is obviously not for you. It's for grandmas who don't want their children filling up their "recipe computers" with thousands of songs and then face the possibility of being brought to court over it.
I'm sure that if someone with your sorts of complaints wants to perform the tasks that this program is meant to accomplish, you could do it faster and easier on your own. For the people who might want to use this program, they simply won't care about the things you do.
Huh? There are no menus, there's just the ribbon. It's dynamic based on what you're doing. If you're entering text, it shows tools for that. If you're drawing/editing a table, it creates a tab with tools for tables. There are no menus, there is no hiding.
The whole point of this ribbon interface is to eliminate the need to MEMORIZE things. Memorization with the pull-down menu system and shortcuts is the ONLY way to achieve efficiency under that type of interface. The "ribbon" provides a method to do the same thing WITHOUT memorizing a damn thing. Isn't that PROGRESS?
There are some people that don't want to memorize shortcuts or locations of features within the menus in order to access 80% of the features of Office that most people never use. This is a great way to let people know that those features exist, and gives them quick and easy access to them. Why memorize when it's stuck right in your face?
Please explain to me how having the most useful features GIVEN to you on the top of the screen for the specific task you're doing is LESS intuitive than a system of pull-down menus and submenus where you go looking for (and often don't find) the feature you need.
Just because you memorized where things can be located within the menus does not mean that this is more intuitive than just being shown the possible tasks in a graphically organized, dynamic manner.
And incase nobody has seen this yet, here is video of the Office 12 GUI in action. I don't know about you, but this kind of a dynamic graphical approach seems to me to be FAR more user-friendly than a system of menu memorizations needed for previous Office verions.
Thank you for pointing out the obvious, I've been waiting for someone in the Slashdot community to notice this fact: The next MS Office is at LEAST half a decade more advanced than OpenOffice.
I'm not a Microsoft fanboy by any stretch of the word, and I REALLY cringe when some PR bozo starts spouting words like "innovation" to describe their company's products. Having said that, MS Office 12 is the DEFINITION of innovation. Yes, I just cringed at myself, but it's true. If you watch that video, you simply cannot deny the truth in this.
Linux may be one of the more advanced operating systems in the world, and a bunch of open source software may be the best in their field by leaps and bounds. However, OpenOffice is really going to be in trouble, saved only by the fact that it's "free".
In fact, looking at the differences between Office 12 and OO brings up a very obvious point about open source software: VERY few OSS developers are willing to innovate (with notable exceptions, of course). Look at KDE copying Windows, for example, with a start button and all that crap. You find this in most popular OSS projects, they copy the look, feel, and functionality of commercial products without really doing any innovation (yes, that silly term again). This is the biggest weakness of OSS, by far. They look like clones of existing commercial software (with usually just a handful of improvements). This is a weakness because when a commercial company like Microsoft releases a completely redesigned product like Office 12, the OSS competition is immediately cut off at the knees.
Having said all this, I wish the OO.org development community a lot of luck. They've been busily trying to clone what is essentially the 1997 version of MS Office, and perhaps this will be their wake-up call. I'm sure that one of the next releases, perhaps two or three years from now, will be similar to Office 12. But perhaps, given this sudden jolt of REAL competition from Microsoft, they'll design something even BETTER. And if that happens, we will all benefit.
Yes, developers are on board. On board to make games that take specific advantage of this controller (as you quoted), because that'll be the only practical reason to make games for the console at all. What does this mean? Puzzle and party games, as I've said. Things like MonkeyBall and stuff like that. AND, because making games specifically designed for this controller means that they'll ONLY work on this console, the game will be impossible (or at least VERY hard) to port to the other consoles, which means the developer will not give the game as big a budget since the profits are limited to one console only.
Likewise, games NOT designed specifically for this controller (most games on PlayStations and Xboxes) will likely not be ported to the Nintendo console. Why would they be? They need a completely different way for the gamer to interact with it now.
Here's the problem: The controller is far too exotic, which means 3rd party developers will not make any big-budget games for it. Do you really think you can play fighting games with this thing? Sports games? NO! There will be few, if any, ports of popular games on the other platforms. The only games you're going to see on this new Nintendo console will either be Nintendo originals or an assortment of puzzle and party games. This will be a MAJOR reason for why many people would not be buying this console. People don't just want to play these "unique" types of games, they want to play games like Grand Theft Auto. Popular franchises. There'll be few, if any, of them on the console BECAUSE of this controller.
What Nintendo has accomplished by creating this controller is they carved out a very specific niche for their new console. It'll be popular among people who want to try something new, without particularly caring about the games they're playing. It's a NOVELTY console. This is how most non-Nintendo-fanboy gamers will look at it, and this is how developers will look at it.
Along with this controller announcement, Nintendo shares fell by 2.5% today. I wonder if it's related.
If a lock company designs a lock that can be broken with a well-placed hammer strike, and then some kid goes around door to door in the middle of the night, using his hammer to strike at random locks until he happens upon this one particular lock with it's flaw. The kid busts the door open, goes up to the bedroom and takes copies of the person's photo album (complete with naked images) and copies of their address book. Then he runs off and staples these copies to all the trees in the neighborhood. Should this kid NOT be punished? I mean, all he did was "mess around", right? No prison time for this, right? It's all the lock company's fault, yes?
You just can't compare. There are less than half a dozen fanboy-inticing Xbox exclusives, like Halo. On Nintendo's consoles, EVERYTHING that Nintendo puts out is automatically embraced by the fanboy community.
Slashdot Mirror
How exactly can I do something "wrong" with a web browser?
When it comes to crashing, Firefox does it more for me than IE. A LOT more. But I still use it because Firefox has great extensions. I know you're joking, but crashing isn't exactly much of a problem with Internet Explorer. There are many other things to complain about.
Oh, and there are no pop-ups in IE, either. I'm just sayin'.
don't forget that XP SP2 considerably slowed down the speed of windows
No it didn't. What the hell?
No. Don't compare Linux of today with Windows of yesterday. Compare today's with today's and yesterday's with yesterday's. If you compare Win XP with nearly any X setup you'll find the X is more efficient.
Say what? Last I checked, Windows XP came out half a decade ago while the latest version of X came out this year. If you complain about these sorts of comparisons, then compare Windows XP to whatever version of X was released at the same time. And then let us compare again the CURRENT version of X to Vista (Avalon?). Otherwise you're being just as unfair as the poster you criticize.
The whole argument of modern-day Linux being superior to the much older XP is a lame cheap shot. This edge only exists because the two have different release schedules.
Eh? I thought the description, as well as Google's other services, would make their Office system a hell of a lot more similar to something like this:
http://www.numsum.com
No downloads or browser plug-ins required.
I look forward to reading your woefully unpublished novel "Gates of Borg".
The problem is that a very large proportion of these telemarketing companies are dodgy, unprofessional, and sometimes illegal. Just like e-mail spam companies.
Most of the telemarketing phone calls I recieved had to do with me sending them $200 as an entrance fee for a contest for a trip to Jamaica, and things of that sort. Do you really think they'd take you off their "list"? Chances are they have no list at all.
Here's my personal opinion on what separates the geeks and the nerds:
A geek is socially well-adjusted, outgoing, usually has friends, and is characterized by his interest in things which most people don't care about: Science fiction, consumer electronics, and unpopular genres of music (goth rock, metal, electronica, etc).
In contrast, a nerd is a socially inept individual, often suffers from numerous personality disorders (avoidant, antisocial, obsessive-compulsive), has poor personal hygiene, and an OBSESSION for things which most people don't care about: Science fiction, homebrew electronics, and often no interest in any particular kind of music.
Basically the only similarity is that both geeks and nerds are interested in science. This similarity is enough to bring both geeks and nerds to Slashdot. However, that doesn't mean that the two groups are the same.
Heh, you seem to be apathetic about a lot of things.
But anyway, many people did buy the PS2 because it offered DVD playback. It's just, soon afterwards, the price of stand-alone players plumetted to very affordable levels. And, they had a remote control, as you said.
Sony would be stupid to not include a cheap little $10 remote control with the PS3. If they were to include one, WHY would anybody buy another player? They wouldn't. Thus, Blu-Ray wins. Therefore, the only thing that can give a competitive edge to HD-DVD is if there is no remote control shipping with the PS3.
I guess it'll come down to how cheap, near-sighted and stupid Sony executives really are.
In approximately three to four years, there will be 40 million households with Blue Ray players, thanks to the PS3. As the Xbox 360 does not ship with HD-DVD (and I'm assuming neither will the Revolution), the Blue Ray format will not be facing any significant competition for the next half a decade while growing the userbase exponentially.
The HD-DVD format simply cannot win. Even if a whole slew of non-game consumer electronics ship with HD-DVD drives, they will not be able to compete with the PS3 userbase, even collectively.
As soon as the PS3 launches, expect much of the Sony film library (which is sizable) to be released for Blue Ray. You will see a ton of advertising for films released in this format. Thus, there will be a player for these discs, and there will be a large film library to make use of this format.
Blue Ray is the future, whether you like it or not. If you're an investor, I would suggest to you right now to put as much money as you can into the companies that are supporting this format and dump stock is those who are backing HD-DVD.
Wrong. This is the best SAAB website: http://www.cyberpursuits.com/heckifiknow/saab/defa ult.asp
They have one of the finest Multimedia sections I've ever seen for any show. Full downloads of the entire soundtrack, a HUNDRED video clips... this is just a motherload of content.
This show is everything that the new Battlestar Galactica is (#2 on their list). SAAB was truly ahead of it's time with it's long story arc, outstanding characters you really cared for, fantastic special effects, a realistic, gritty feel, and so many of the episodes were written like award-winning sci-fi short stories. Great, great show.
I think I can try to answer WHY it collapsed, having lived through it.
The fact of the matter is, most people in the Soviet Union didn't really like Communism. Even people in government. It was a self-perpetuating political party. The status quo. You had to obey, because you knew you'd be punished. And the people who did the punishing had to do their job because that's just how it worked. It was their job.
When the perestroika and glastnost came about in the early 80s, there were significant advancements in freedom of speech. By this point, I don't believe anyone would've been sent to prison for political speech, unless they did something stupid like advocating imprisonment or execution of the politicians. If they just criticized or mocked the system of Communism, they were left untouched. Several very popular motion picture comedies were made in the 80s that mocked and made fun of the Soviet government and how it resulted in poverty, and these films were shown without opposition in movie theaters across the country. This kind of freedom made everybody realize that they were not alone in thinking Communism isn't working. For the first time, they could publically admit they wanted Democracy and Capitalism and find a ton of people who agreed with them.
When the Berlin Wall fell, a bunch of politicians in the Baltic states realized that they, too, can break away. I actually went to school with the son of the #1 guy who was behind this new movement. What happened was that they realized that if they announce independence, no one will REALLY try to stop them because, at this point, there were very few true believers in Communism left. They knew that if they announce independence, there will be little opposition. Although there was some risk, they realized that probability of success was high. They were right.
Of course there were some holdouts who believed in Communism (it's hard to erase decades of propaganda), and they're still in government, and there is still a Communist Party in Russia that still wins in some local and terretorial elections. And of course there are still people who are angered by the collapse of the Soviet Union and, especially with the Baltic States, refuse to accept their complete independence (Russian government strongly opposed Latvia's entry into NATO and the EU). However, by and large, these issues are likely to be resolved in the years to come.
Microsoft isn't in direct competition with Nintendo. The people who buy Xboxes are looking for and expecting a different type of game from Nintendo's offerings. What's wrong with that? Nintendo makes awesome platformers and cartoon-style adveture games, and Sony and Microsoft gamers prefer realistic war games and MTV-style presentations. To each their own.
Umm... if you care about this stuff, this software is obviously not for you. It's for grandmas who don't want their children filling up their "recipe computers" with thousands of songs and then face the possibility of being brought to court over it.
I'm sure that if someone with your sorts of complaints wants to perform the tasks that this program is meant to accomplish, you could do it faster and easier on your own. For the people who might want to use this program, they simply won't care about the things you do.
Huh? There are no menus, there's just the ribbon. It's dynamic based on what you're doing. If you're entering text, it shows tools for that. If you're drawing/editing a table, it creates a tab with tools for tables. There are no menus, there is no hiding.
The whole point of this ribbon interface is to eliminate the need to MEMORIZE things. Memorization with the pull-down menu system and shortcuts is the ONLY way to achieve efficiency under that type of interface. The "ribbon" provides a method to do the same thing WITHOUT memorizing a damn thing. Isn't that PROGRESS?
There are some people that don't want to memorize shortcuts or locations of features within the menus in order to access 80% of the features of Office that most people never use. This is a great way to let people know that those features exist, and gives them quick and easy access to them. Why memorize when it's stuck right in your face?
Please explain to me how having the most useful features GIVEN to you on the top of the screen for the specific task you're doing is LESS intuitive than a system of pull-down menus and submenus where you go looking for (and often don't find) the feature you need.
Just because you memorized where things can be located within the menus does not mean that this is more intuitive than just being shown the possible tasks in a graphically organized, dynamic manner.
And incase nobody has seen this yet, here is video of the Office 12 GUI in action. I don't know about you, but this kind of a dynamic graphical approach seems to me to be FAR more user-friendly than a system of menu memorizations needed for previous Office verions.
Thank you for pointing out the obvious, I've been waiting for someone in the Slashdot community to notice this fact: The next MS Office is at LEAST half a decade more advanced than OpenOffice.
I'm not a Microsoft fanboy by any stretch of the word, and I REALLY cringe when some PR bozo starts spouting words like "innovation" to describe their company's products. Having said that, MS Office 12 is the DEFINITION of innovation. Yes, I just cringed at myself, but it's true. If you watch that video, you simply cannot deny the truth in this.
Linux may be one of the more advanced operating systems in the world, and a bunch of open source software may be the best in their field by leaps and bounds. However, OpenOffice is really going to be in trouble, saved only by the fact that it's "free".
In fact, looking at the differences between Office 12 and OO brings up a very obvious point about open source software: VERY few OSS developers are willing to innovate (with notable exceptions, of course). Look at KDE copying Windows, for example, with a start button and all that crap. You find this in most popular OSS projects, they copy the look, feel, and functionality of commercial products without really doing any innovation (yes, that silly term again). This is the biggest weakness of OSS, by far. They look like clones of existing commercial software (with usually just a handful of improvements). This is a weakness because when a commercial company like Microsoft releases a completely redesigned product like Office 12, the OSS competition is immediately cut off at the knees.
Having said all this, I wish the OO.org development community a lot of luck. They've been busily trying to clone what is essentially the 1997 version of MS Office, and perhaps this will be their wake-up call. I'm sure that one of the next releases, perhaps two or three years from now, will be similar to Office 12. But perhaps, given this sudden jolt of REAL competition from Microsoft, they'll design something even BETTER. And if that happens, we will all benefit.
How many games released on any platform require you to purchase a secondary controller? Very few, and there's an obvious reason behind that.
Yes, developers are on board. On board to make games that take specific advantage of this controller (as you quoted), because that'll be the only practical reason to make games for the console at all. What does this mean? Puzzle and party games, as I've said. Things like MonkeyBall and stuff like that. AND, because making games specifically designed for this controller means that they'll ONLY work on this console, the game will be impossible (or at least VERY hard) to port to the other consoles, which means the developer will not give the game as big a budget since the profits are limited to one console only.
Likewise, games NOT designed specifically for this controller (most games on PlayStations and Xboxes) will likely not be ported to the Nintendo console. Why would they be? They need a completely different way for the gamer to interact with it now.
Here's the problem: The controller is far too exotic, which means 3rd party developers will not make any big-budget games for it. Do you really think you can play fighting games with this thing? Sports games? NO! There will be few, if any, ports of popular games on the other platforms. The only games you're going to see on this new Nintendo console will either be Nintendo originals or an assortment of puzzle and party games. This will be a MAJOR reason for why many people would not be buying this console. People don't just want to play these "unique" types of games, they want to play games like Grand Theft Auto. Popular franchises. There'll be few, if any, of them on the console BECAUSE of this controller.
What Nintendo has accomplished by creating this controller is they carved out a very specific niche for their new console. It'll be popular among people who want to try something new, without particularly caring about the games they're playing. It's a NOVELTY console. This is how most non-Nintendo-fanboy gamers will look at it, and this is how developers will look at it.
Along with this controller announcement, Nintendo shares fell by 2.5% today. I wonder if it's related.
If a lock company designs a lock that can be broken with a well-placed hammer strike, and then some kid goes around door to door in the middle of the night, using his hammer to strike at random locks until he happens upon this one particular lock with it's flaw. The kid busts the door open, goes up to the bedroom and takes copies of the person's photo album (complete with naked images) and copies of their address book. Then he runs off and staples these copies to all the trees in the neighborhood. Should this kid NOT be punished? I mean, all he did was "mess around", right? No prison time for this, right? It's all the lock company's fault, yes?
TiVo isn't a rental service.
As an indirect swipe at all the different flavors of Linux, I found your satirical comment absolutely hillarious! Well played.
You just can't compare. There are less than half a dozen fanboy-inticing Xbox exclusives, like Halo. On Nintendo's consoles, EVERYTHING that Nintendo puts out is automatically embraced by the fanboy community.