If you've ever used Keynote, you'll know why this is a reasonable question. It's so effortlessly superior to Powerpoint that people who use it can produce better presentations. To choose Powerpoint in preference baffles me as much as it does your parent poster.
You can be forgiven for thinking that Powerpoint is adequate, maybe even good, but once you've used Keynote you soon realise it's not. Ditto MS Visio compared with Omnigraffle.
Microsoft did that because it's a self-perpetuating money-spinner. Every time they make a new version of an application, they ensure it's just different enough that a significant proportion of users come back to retrain on it. And once people have invested in training for your software, they're more likely to keep using it. This practice doesn't make Microsoft unique or evil, everybody does it, including Open Source vendors.
Windows administrators are cheaper because there are just more of them.
There isn't an alternative. There are simply too many people. If we don't control the population, the Earth will control it for us, and we won't like them.
People really need to face up to this. It's at the heart of every single problem we face.
And if it works when you're sitting down, it won't when you're standing up.
Last week I was looking after my friend's six-year-old son for the evening. I was going through London Bridge train station with him, and Sky had set up demo TVs on the concourse. I thought the young fella might enjoy checking them out, so in we went. The screen was at adult eye height. We stood and watched, but it didn't seem to be thrilling him. I realised why when I crouched down to his height and it didn't work at all - the screen was just a blurry mess. So I picked him up so he could see what was going on.
The whole thing's a terrible idea. It basically eliminates watching TV as a passive, background activity, which is how most people watch it most of the time - it's going on in the background while they're chatting, doing the ironing, going in and out to the kitchen, whatever. And they want me to wear glasses while I do those things? No. It's just not worth it.
I mean, Bill Bryson talks about it at some length in his eminently readable Short History Of Nearly Everything. As well as being into alchemy, he "spent endless hours studying the floor plan of the lost temple of King Solomon in Jerusalem (teaching himself Hebrew in the process, the better to scan original texts) in the belief that it held mathematical clues to the second coming of Christ and the end of the world."
Bryson also reports that John Maynard Keynes bought a load of his papers at auction, only to find that the great majority of them were about alchemy, rather than optics or astronomy.
How vain of God to create a species just so he could say "Hey, look what I did, isn't it cool?" How vain of humans to think they were created for this reason.
Yeah, we're special. But so's every other living creature. We're no better.
So what was stopping a colour display from showing the black-and-white documents in black-and-white, thereby keeping everything WYSIWYG, but allowing for colour in places where it was useful?
For a generally forward-thinking company, Apple are amazingly prone to this kind of stubbornness. I mean, here we are in 2010 and there's STILL no way to change the size of a window apart from the bottom right-hand corner.
...And the remaining proportion seems to be sent by the sort of people who think that sending every email as Highest priority will make people pay more attention to them, as opposed to write them off as jumped-up blowhards with no sense of perspective.
I have to say I just don't get services like this.
Facebook, like many other websites, tries to strike a balance with its users. In exchange for offering me a range of services, I provide them with data of various kinds which they then use in an attempt to make money from me. I've found it a useful means of keeping in touch with people, sharing photos, and so on, and I've been happy enough to give them what they've asked for thus far as payment for it. It's generally nothing secret - I don't care who knows my age or what town I live in, and if I write a status update, I do it voluntarily because I want people to read it. They can do what they like with it.
But now they want me to get into the habit of telling them where I am. In return for... What, exactly? Geographically targeted ads I don't want? The occasional discount, if I'm lucky? Sorry, this deal's biased too far in their favour. I'm not playing.
I'm increasingly getting the feeling that Facebook's over the hill. Empires rise and fall very quickly on the Internet, because it's so easy to desert something and move on. Facebook, in their arrogance, think they've built a site so sticky that their users won't be able to bring themselves to desert it, no matter how hostile they become towards them. I think they're going to start to find out that, like everybody else before them, they're wrong.
I don't think it ever even got near the evaluation stage. What I've seen of it wasn't even a tech demo, it was a concept, an animation. As far as I'm aware it never existed in any kind of tangible form. I could be wrong.
Still, it was an interesting concept and they really should've pursued it further. If they had, Ballmer might not be standing around admitting they were blindsided by the success of the iPad, and might be somewhere near to having a response.
I imagine this thing's going to be astronomically expensive. Because the truth is they don't really want people to buy it. It exists so that they can meet the EU requirements for average fuel efficiency across the range. This car's so much more economical than all the others that it pulls their range up to the required level.
It's a problem all niche manufacturers are facing. Aston Martin are getting round it by reskinning the tiny Toyota iQ and calling it the Cygnet. It's only for sale to those who already own an Aston, because again, they don't really want anybody to buy one, it's just a way round the regulations.
And half of them broke because of a design flaw, costing the company an astronomical amount of money. I love how TFA glosses over this factor because it rather gets in the way of his point.
And of course turning them on and off, with all the heating and cooling of the filaments it entails, probably shortens rather than lengthens their lifespan. Ho hum.
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If you've ever used Keynote, you'll know why this is a reasonable question. It's so effortlessly superior to Powerpoint that people who use it can produce better presentations. To choose Powerpoint in preference baffles me as much as it does your parent poster.
You can be forgiven for thinking that Powerpoint is adequate, maybe even good, but once you've used Keynote you soon realise it's not. Ditto MS Visio compared with Omnigraffle.
Microsoft did that because it's a self-perpetuating money-spinner. Every time they make a new version of an application, they ensure it's just different enough that a significant proportion of users come back to retrain on it. And once people have invested in training for your software, they're more likely to keep using it. This practice doesn't make Microsoft unique or evil, everybody does it, including Open Source vendors.
Windows administrators are cheaper because there are just more of them.
There isn't an alternative. There are simply too many people. If we don't control the population, the Earth will control it for us, and we won't like them.
People really need to face up to this. It's at the heart of every single problem we face.
Millions of us - billions, even - ARE starving.
And if it works when you're sitting down, it won't when you're standing up.
Last week I was looking after my friend's six-year-old son for the evening. I was going through London Bridge train station with him, and Sky had set up demo TVs on the concourse. I thought the young fella might enjoy checking them out, so in we went. The screen was at adult eye height. We stood and watched, but it didn't seem to be thrilling him. I realised why when I crouched down to his height and it didn't work at all - the screen was just a blurry mess. So I picked him up so he could see what was going on.
The whole thing's a terrible idea. It basically eliminates watching TV as a passive, background activity, which is how most people watch it most of the time - it's going on in the background while they're chatting, doing the ironing, going in and out to the kitchen, whatever. And they want me to wear glasses while I do those things? No. It's just not worth it.
I mean, Bill Bryson talks about it at some length in his eminently readable Short History Of Nearly Everything. As well as being into alchemy, he "spent endless hours studying the floor plan of the lost temple of King Solomon in Jerusalem (teaching himself Hebrew in the process, the better to scan original texts) in the belief that it held mathematical clues to the second coming of Christ and the end of the world."
Bryson also reports that John Maynard Keynes bought a load of his papers at auction, only to find that the great majority of them were about alchemy, rather than optics or astronomy.
And we're busily killing them off.
Yep. In fact, when the release date was announced, Mark Shuttleworth peppered the speech with Hitchhiker's Guide references, to general bafflement.
How vain of God to create a species just so he could say "Hey, look what I did, isn't it cool?"
How vain of humans to think they were created for this reason.
Yeah, we're special. But so's every other living creature. We're no better.
So what was stopping a colour display from showing the black-and-white documents in black-and-white, thereby keeping everything WYSIWYG, but allowing for colour in places where it was useful?
For a generally forward-thinking company, Apple are amazingly prone to this kind of stubbornness. I mean, here we are in 2010 and there's STILL no way to change the size of a window apart from the bottom right-hand corner.
Yo dawg, I heard you like movies, so I put a Boxee Box in your Boxee Box Box so you can ... oh, forget it...
Not sure how many Aboriginals would agree that immigration has done nothing but help Australia...
...And the remaining proportion seems to be sent by the sort of people who think that sending every email as Highest priority will make people pay more attention to them, as opposed to write them off as jumped-up blowhards with no sense of perspective.
I'll decide what I do as a result of emails I receive, thanks. I won't appreciate other people presuming to take that decision for me.
I have to say I just don't get services like this.
Facebook, like many other websites, tries to strike a balance with its users. In exchange for offering me a range of services, I provide them with data of various kinds which they then use in an attempt to make money from me. I've found it a useful means of keeping in touch with people, sharing photos, and so on, and I've been happy enough to give them what they've asked for thus far as payment for it. It's generally nothing secret - I don't care who knows my age or what town I live in, and if I write a status update, I do it voluntarily because I want people to read it. They can do what they like with it.
But now they want me to get into the habit of telling them where I am. In return for... What, exactly? Geographically targeted ads I don't want? The occasional discount, if I'm lucky? Sorry, this deal's biased too far in their favour. I'm not playing.
I'm increasingly getting the feeling that Facebook's over the hill. Empires rise and fall very quickly on the Internet, because it's so easy to desert something and move on. Facebook, in their arrogance, think they've built a site so sticky that their users won't be able to bring themselves to desert it, no matter how hostile they become towards them. I think they're going to start to find out that, like everybody else before them, they're wrong.
I'll have a pint of whatever you're drinking.
I don't think it ever even got near the evaluation stage. What I've seen of it wasn't even a tech demo, it was a concept, an animation. As far as I'm aware it never existed in any kind of tangible form. I could be wrong.
Still, it was an interesting concept and they really should've pursued it further. If they had, Ballmer might not be standing around admitting they were blindsided by the success of the iPad, and might be somewhere near to having a response.
They killed the genuinely interesting-looking Courier before it ever got anywhere near production.
Can't think why the vultures are circling over Ballmer, can you?
I imagine this thing's going to be astronomically expensive. Because the truth is they don't really want people to buy it. It exists so that they can meet the EU requirements for average fuel efficiency across the range. This car's so much more economical than all the others that it pulls their range up to the required level.
It's a problem all niche manufacturers are facing. Aston Martin are getting round it by reskinning the tiny Toyota iQ and calling it the Cygnet. It's only for sale to those who already own an Aston, because again, they don't really want anybody to buy one, it's just a way round the regulations.
The millions of failures as a direct result of deciding to do the design in-house? The enormous amount of resultant red ink on the balance sheet?
And half of them broke because of a design flaw, costing the company an astronomical amount of money. I love how TFA glosses over this factor because it rather gets in the way of his point.
Oh yeah, having to replace half of them because they overheated themselves to death has just done wonders for their bottom line.
Just look how well designing the XBox 360 without the requisite expertise worked out for them...
I think you'd be most at home with ktorrent.
And of course turning them on and off, with all the heating and cooling of the filaments it entails, probably shortens rather than lengthens their lifespan. Ho hum.