Yeah, it's the "getting shit done" aspect of the Mac that made me switch at work, first, and now at home, too. I have a few stats programs that are Windows-only, but with Fusion, it's no problem to run them, so there was no longer any reason to suffer under Windows.
I hate that "Hi, I'm a Mac" commercial (maybe we only have it here in Japan--but most of them are just translated from the English) where the PC asks if he can have a cool nickname like "Mac" and the Mac says, "how 'bout 'work?'"
I work on the Mac. I play on Windows. It's totally backwards. OSX is well organized and reliable, and has great network support. This was actually the biggie for me. It worked so much more easily and reliably on the Windows 2003 network at work that I put my work PC away the first day I tried it. I could just find things and log into them. It had a sort of Gnome-like interface (I almost switched to Ubuntu because of the interface, actually). You can map key commands for damn near anything.
My MacBook's HDD died about a month ago (there may have been a bit of abuse that triggered it--I don't put my backpack on the passenger seat anymore) and after troubleshooting it, called it in. The tech didn't waste my time with stupid crap; he just asked a couple questions and sent me a box. It got there Friday evening after work.
Sunday morning, before I had even made coffee, it was back with an upgraded HDD, no questions asked.
I missed one day of work with it. I was back at work on Monday, ready to go.
I was an Apple fanboy back in tha day, then I was a mean vilifier of the Mac, and now I have sold all my PCs and have a 100% Mac house.
You don't notice how bad the user experience on Windows (or even worse: Linux) is until you notice that your computer hasn't done anything remotely annoying for a week--and that you never turn it off, just put it to sleep.
Granted, naysayers will point out that it's a proprietary system that you can't just get any old hardware for, but that's actually its strength. MS can't keep up with the driver issue, and Linux developers most certainly can't. But I still can throw any SATA HDD or PATA DVD drive in my Mac Pro, and I just put a fanless cooler on my video card today. I run all my Windows-only stats stuff under Fusion with no noticeable performance hit, and the thing works like a UNIX machine on a network (i.e. correctly and easily).
I am not a fanboy, I don't think. I made an educated decision to buy a Mac, and it has been really nice. Not perfect. Far from it. I can't stand Apple Stores (pretentious, my god, pretentious). But I am really glad I switched.
I finally had it with MS last summer and I wanted so so much to just switch to Linux. But something got in the way:
Nothing I need runs on Linux.
Most of what I need runs on the Mac.
The specialty stuff I need runs on Windows under VMware Fusion, which I bought for $40 because I was in the beta.
Now I've got a MacBook as my main work machine (university lecturer / researcher), and a new Mac Pro at home (I really wanted to just build a Hackintosh, but I didn't want to worry about when it would be bricked).
This is what I think a lot of Linux people don't seem to get: People don't need MS Office compatibility, they need MS Office. And it has to run perfectly. Until there is an Office version for Linux, Linux will never take off. And since MS knows this, there will never be a version of Office for Linux.
People use the platform that solves their problems. Linux solves a lot of people's problems, to be sure. But not most people's. The Mac, with the addition of Fusion or Parallels, solves a lot of people's problems, and provides a great user experience to boot.
I just watched it last weekend. Just want to add to the "good movie" pile. It left quite an impression on me, and I don't usually like fantasy movies at all (I don't get why anyone would like the LotR movies, for example--cheesy, IMO). It was remarkable. I can still feel it a week later.
I'm just sayin'. The overlap is remarkable. You can infer what you will from that. You, for example, have inferred that the poster is not intelligent enough to understand. Is that what I implied, or did you impose that reading on my comment of your own accord?
Of course, the implication of this post is that I didn't imply what you inferred, which may or may not be the case.
Y'know, I've noticed over the years that there is a high degree of overlap between people who deny human-caused global warming and those who cannot spell.
Huh? How does he make atheists look bad? No "modern," widespread religions believe that the body is anything other than rotting meat. The soul is eternal, not the body.
Christians talk about being really physically resurrected when Jesus comes back in their "resurrection bodies."
I don't believe in heaven (anymore), but even if I did (and even when I did, in my evangelical Christian upbringing), I wouldn't really care about my body after death--my soul would be with Jesus, etc. Just not even a concern.
My still-very-Christian family also in no way goes for all this funereal hokum, and even rebukes it as un-Christian, because it fixates on the transient physical existence which is simply the first step of an eternal one. Because they believe in souls, the idea that a fuss would be made over the vehicle is blasphemous and ignorant. This view is shared by fundamentalist Muslims, and as an atheist, I have to agree that it is the proper way of looking at things.
Dressing up a piece of meat and pretending it's your dead mother is sick, IMO. Your mother was made of her actions, words, thoughts... Not her arms and legs. Your mother is gone. Let it go.
Finally, you seem to be overlooking the fact that these are products that are sold to people when they are emotionally fragile and vulnerable and oftentimes in denial about the death. The funeral industry is vile and evil. These are products that no one in their right mind would buy, but that's just fine because no one in their right mind is ever offered them! It's cruel.
Burn 'em up, grind the bones, and dump it somewhere that reminds you of them, or that they asked to be dumped at. That's what my family does, both for religious and atheistic reasons.
Indeed. I was really looking forward to Longhorn. It really looked like a great upgrade. But one by one the cool features were stripped off, leaving... Well, virtually nothing, to be honest. Toss on top of that the fact that it doesn't work very well, and what happens?
I switch to the Mac.
Now I run UNIX with a UI that hasn't changed in years and years and years and which works on a Windows 2003 network better than XP did. Best of all, for $80 I retain the ability to run any of my Windows (or Linux!) software with VMware Fusion.
I honestly loved XP. It's starting to show its age, to be sure, but overall it was/is a great product. But to get more out of my computing experience, an upgrade was necessary, and MS wasn't really offering one. A disaster for MS, I think, because everyone I know (in multiple industries, I might add) who can switch has. Everyone from coders to traders to researchers... We're all on the Mac now. I didn't know anyone who was using a Mac this time last year. I don't know how a product could backfire as badly as Vista has.
Nah, sorry, the UI is totally different. There's very little difference from Office 2004 to Office 2008. Sit down for awhile with 2007. It's a bleedin' nightmare.
The only big changes I see in 2008 (which is what I mainly use these days) are the stupid Gallery that you can't get rid of (but can minimize), and the screwed-up way it deals with toolbars (which you can fix--I like the new one for Word, but have Excel running the way it used to). There are still menus, for crying out loud. Whose idea was it at MS to ditch 24 years of menubars???
All that being said, every time I do some work in Excel 2003 (Windows), I think, "damn, they nailed the UI right here." You can make buttons for virtually anything you use often (but not often enough to have the shortcut--if it exists--memorized), it takes up the whole screen by default, and it has the formula bar prominently displayed. It's just a breeze to use, and really defines the Platonic ideal of spreadsheetiness.
But that seems to be the MS strategy these days: Take a product that, though not perfect, people like using and that fulfills its functions reliably, and then screw it all up and piss everyone off. It's a pity, too, because when they're not screwing people over and screwing products up, they really can do some good work.
Yeah, because if they don't do something quick, everyone's going to forget Apple ever even existed!
Why, just the other day, I stopped, um, every single person I saw, and asked them who made that MP3 player they were carrying, and they were all, "I dunno; some company... There's a mark here on the back... What is that? A screaming head with a flame on top? Oh yeah, 'Burning Screaming Head.' That's who made it."
Steve Jobs, if you're reading this: Get out now before the whole thing caves in on you! Don't be the hero! You don't have to go down with the ship!!!
This is the thing I have hit time and again, not just with Linux (I don't use Linux that much for other reasons that always result in a cacaphony of "nuh-UH"s from the Slashdot readership), but even with Windows. For proof of this, just try helping a total newbie build their first computer.
Now, for you or me, building your own PC is like this:
1) Put parts together.
2) Install OS.
3) Install drivers, updates.
4) Install other software.
But when you walk someone through this, you realize things like this:
1) Put parts together.
a) Line up the new motherboard with the back of the case. Install risers where the screw holes are; remove any that you won't be using.
b) Line up the notch on the CPU with the part of the CPU socket with no pin holes, lower carefully, and lock into place.
c) Attach the CPU fan
d) Plug the CPU fan power cable into the power socket labeled "CPU_Fan" on the motherboard (yes, you have to read that thing)
e) Line up the RAM with the slots on the board--it'll only go in one way
f) Firmly but gently push straight down on the RAM until the little white flaps close
g) Check to make the flaps are in all the way
h) Carefully lower the motherboard with the CPU and RAM installed into the case, angling it through the port holes in the back of the case (Oh, I forgot to mention replacing the back plate!)
i) Carefully screw the motherboard into position
--And that's just the beginning! You will also have to explain the concept of master/slave on a PATA bus (just remember: No one was dumb enough to make the BLACK connector the SLAVE), the different power connectors, the difference between PCI-E and PCI, connecting all those damn little case pins, etc.
And when that's all done? Now you're explaining what a BIOS is, what CMOS is, "no, the computer doesn't just turn on; we need to install an OS now," "no, the sound isn't going to work until we get the drivers in... What's a driver, you ask?", "actually, Word is part of a software package called MS Office. It doesn't come with Windows" (Or worse--"No, Word isn't even available on this OS... You'll be using OpenOffice. It's almost as good...).
We take all these things for granted, but just try doing this with a real "average computer user." They don't know anything at all. Anything.
The same is true of Linux. All these people here talking about how easy it is are people who not only know everything I've already discussed, but know how a *NIX-type OS is designed. I kinda do, and can muddle through, but even I don't know that well. I know what a config file is, which will at least get me looking for something to edit. A real average user knows what an icon is. You click it. Twice.
I have never gotten wifi to work on a Linux machine, and until Ubuntu 7.10 I never got my nVidia card to spit out more than 640x480 (see my sig), despite following the misspelled-and-grammar-mistake-laden advice of several forum postings and manpages. And I am, by all accounts, an advanced computer user. Not compared to a lot of the Slashdot demographic, to be sure, but so far above the realy AVERAGE user that people's eyes just kind of glaze over when I say something like (this was the other day), "Oh, no prob. That drive just isn't initialized. Just partition and format it and you'll be good to go. You know... Kinda like a floppy? You don't remember formatting floppies? Uhhh... Okay. Let me do it."
Linux is not ready for the average user. It's only barely ready for me.
And even when I finally get it working, it still doesn't run the software I require to do my job.
I'll go one further. It's not just that they don't provide value for money, Creative actually makes the worst soundcards I have ever, ever used. They aren't as good as the onboard RealTeks that come with your mobo, and of course can't hold a candle to a proper M-Audio (I used to use a Delta 1010). Both of these options sound better and install with less fuss and operate with less trouble.
I can't find the quote now, but sometime during the Fahrenheit 911 days Moore was sitting with Quentin Tarantino and Tarantino complimented Moore and Moore said something to the effect of "that means a lot from you; I, like you, never wanted to do anything but make good movies."
That pretty much summed up the problem I have with him. His movies are entertaining and well-made, even at the expense of truth. People treat them like the Truth, but it's just historical fiction masquerading as documentary. He's a pile of shit and he does more to hurt the causes he ostensibly supports than he does to help them. He's a disgusting, lying scumbag, and we don't need him.
I have a 100Mbit connection (Japan) that runs at about 83Mbit, which is way above average.
I have noticed absolutely no difference in speed from when I had a 50Mbit ADSL line that actually only ran at 4Mbit. None.
BitTorrent is still slow as hell. My game ping is still on the highish end.
I think all this focus on the speed of one's connection is hogwash. ISPs throttle certain traffic, or the server you're connecting to doesn't have that much bandwidth for you, or you're limited by all the other, slower speeds of people in the swarm who are also on the other side of the planet.
After all the trouble I went to to finally get my apartment wired for fibre, I realize that I was in the same place with my 24Mbit connection that ran at 3Mbit and only cost $28/mo. with ISP.
Although it sounds like you mostly had issues with an OEM install, rather than Vista, I switched to the Mac because it worked so much better on the Windows 2003 network at work than XP. I'm sure Ubuntu would have done just as well, but I need to run a lot of specific software that isn't available on Linux.
Well, it's not available on OSX either, but VMware Fusion takes care of that.
Yup. My dad only even took us shooting maybe twice in my whole childhood, but once a year we'd do maintenance on the guns. He'd take them apart and show us how they worked and how to keep them clean and rust-free. I now know a lot more about how to take apart a gun than actually fire it, but I don't have that stupid irrational fear I see in a lot of people without any particular experience with guns.
They're just guns. Don't point them at people or anything else you don't want to kill. That's basically the only rule we had, and it worked very well. A lot of times when you introduce someone to guns the first time they fool around with them before the bullets are in and point them at you. When that has happened to me (a couple times), I instinctively hit the ground. Then I stand up and take the fucking thing away from them. I think a lot of adults who never really dealt with guns as children are dumber than little kids who have. What kind of moron points a gun at someone???
Here is a site partially created to praise the glory that is(n't) Linux, and I have written strongly against it on these very pages. I have been modded down accordingly. I have gone months without seeing a mod point.
But I have never been banned. Never even close.
You pay the price for going against the herd, to be sure, but ultimately, the fact that, despite feeling the need to kind of throw a bucket of cold reality on the Linux orgy (oh, let's be honest here--this is Slashdot--the Linux circle-jerk), I'm at least trying to do it fairly and even-handedly.
I'm sorry, but if you were really as vilified as you say, then you were either being a jerk or there was a glitch or something.
And I'm writing this from a Mac (which I switched to very recently, largely because VMware Fusion is so damned good that I can run Windows and Linux software I like on top of OSX with very very little trouble).
Um, yeah. You haven't lived here in Japan have you? People don't push back. They let companies plow them over and say nothing. There are no consumer rights in Japan. If they really do this and I lose my net access, that's it. I just lost my net access.
I'm already really throttled. I DL US TV slower now that I have FTTH than I did on ADSL. I have 83Mbit, but it only seems to work when I downloading something from a website or something.
This is going to do nothing to subscription rates. People get the fast service because it isn't much more expensive than the slow, and because the guys from SMAP are in the commercials. It has nothing to do with the speed, because, honestly, most Japanese people can barely even type.
True indeed. But finding Windows people is very easy. Not so much for Linux people. Not so much for MacOS people either (recently moved to Mac--for VMware Fusion as much as OSX!--but I don't think I would have if I didn't have a cadre of graphics, etc. friends to field my "hey, how do I..." questions).
I was just thinking about this last night as I was trying to set up Cinelerra on my Ubuntu virtual machine. It was a stupid hassle, because the instructions were different for each distro, and even for each version! I'm pretty awful at Linux, and only know very basic CLI commands, but even that is far, far beyond what most people can handle. Throw distro differences into the mix, and you have a nightmare for most people.
Then there was the other problem stymieing me last night: Terribly-written documentation. And by "documentation," I mean "forum postings and pages cobbled together by people on the project." They typically are written by and for people who are very familiar with the fundamentals of *NIX, and leave important details out. Just little things, to be sure, and obvious to people who are already used to using it, but which can cost hours for newbies. The trouble yesterday and the day before with Cinelerra was that I was supposed to look for the package directly in Synaptic, instead of in the Ubuntu Add/Remove Software tool, which I thought was Synaptic. Well, it wasn't. I had to go to a totally different part of the system to do it. Once I figured that out, it was easy-peasy, but the only reason I did figure that out is through tons of googling until I found someone's step-by-step on how to do it in Ubuntu 7.10. It's clear in hindsight, but it certainly wasn't for the last 2 days. I didn't even know you could install from there. Most people just stop when the official instructions are wrong.
Anyway, the point of the story is that the distro model is not very good for Linux uptake, as it muddies the waters of an already very opaque sea of confusion for most people.
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That's basically the call I made as well. It's like Linux, but without the sucky parts of Linux.
Yeah, it's the "getting shit done" aspect of the Mac that made me switch at work, first, and now at home, too. I have a few stats programs that are Windows-only, but with Fusion, it's no problem to run them, so there was no longer any reason to suffer under Windows.
I hate that "Hi, I'm a Mac" commercial (maybe we only have it here in Japan--but most of them are just translated from the English) where the PC asks if he can have a cool nickname like "Mac" and the Mac says, "how 'bout 'work?'"
I work on the Mac. I play on Windows. It's totally backwards. OSX is well organized and reliable, and has great network support. This was actually the biggie for me. It worked so much more easily and reliably on the Windows 2003 network at work that I put my work PC away the first day I tried it. I could just find things and log into them. It had a sort of Gnome-like interface (I almost switched to Ubuntu because of the interface, actually). You can map key commands for damn near anything.
It is just very convenient to use.
My MacBook's HDD died about a month ago (there may have been a bit of abuse that triggered it--I don't put my backpack on the passenger seat anymore) and after troubleshooting it, called it in. The tech didn't waste my time with stupid crap; he just asked a couple questions and sent me a box. It got there Friday evening after work.
Sunday morning, before I had even made coffee, it was back with an upgraded HDD, no questions asked.
I missed one day of work with it. I was back at work on Monday, ready to go.
I was an Apple fanboy back in tha day, then I was a mean vilifier of the Mac, and now I have sold all my PCs and have a 100% Mac house.
You don't notice how bad the user experience on Windows (or even worse: Linux) is until you notice that your computer hasn't done anything remotely annoying for a week--and that you never turn it off, just put it to sleep.
Granted, naysayers will point out that it's a proprietary system that you can't just get any old hardware for, but that's actually its strength. MS can't keep up with the driver issue, and Linux developers most certainly can't. But I still can throw any SATA HDD or PATA DVD drive in my Mac Pro, and I just put a fanless cooler on my video card today. I run all my Windows-only stats stuff under Fusion with no noticeable performance hit, and the thing works like a UNIX machine on a network (i.e. correctly and easily).
I am not a fanboy, I don't think. I made an educated decision to buy a Mac, and it has been really nice. Not perfect. Far from it. I can't stand Apple Stores (pretentious, my god, pretentious). But I am really glad I switched.
I finally had it with MS last summer and I wanted so so much to just switch to Linux. But something got in the way:
Nothing I need runs on Linux.
Most of what I need runs on the Mac.
The specialty stuff I need runs on Windows under VMware Fusion, which I bought for $40 because I was in the beta.
Now I've got a MacBook as my main work machine (university lecturer / researcher), and a new Mac Pro at home (I really wanted to just build a Hackintosh, but I didn't want to worry about when it would be bricked).
This is what I think a lot of Linux people don't seem to get: People don't need MS Office compatibility, they need MS Office. And it has to run perfectly. Until there is an Office version for Linux, Linux will never take off. And since MS knows this, there will never be a version of Office for Linux.
People use the platform that solves their problems. Linux solves a lot of people's problems, to be sure. But not most people's. The Mac, with the addition of Fusion or Parallels, solves a lot of people's problems, and provides a great user experience to boot.
I just watched it last weekend. Just want to add to the "good movie" pile. It left quite an impression on me, and I don't usually like fantasy movies at all (I don't get why anyone would like the LotR movies, for example--cheesy, IMO). It was remarkable. I can still feel it a week later.
I'm just sayin'. The overlap is remarkable. You can infer what you will from that. You, for example, have inferred that the poster is not intelligent enough to understand. Is that what I implied, or did you impose that reading on my comment of your own accord?
Of course, the implication of this post is that I didn't imply what you inferred, which may or may not be the case.
Vote for me!
Well-played! Well-played!
And I realized just now I got modded down for that comment. Pity. I thought it was pretty funny.
Y'know, I've noticed over the years that there is a high degree of overlap between people who deny human-caused global warming and those who cannot spell.
Huh? How does he make atheists look bad? No "modern," widespread religions believe that the body is anything other than rotting meat. The soul is eternal, not the body.
Christians talk about being really physically resurrected when Jesus comes back in their "resurrection bodies."
I don't believe in heaven (anymore), but even if I did (and even when I did, in my evangelical Christian upbringing), I wouldn't really care about my body after death--my soul would be with Jesus, etc. Just not even a concern.
My still-very-Christian family also in no way goes for all this funereal hokum, and even rebukes it as un-Christian, because it fixates on the transient physical existence which is simply the first step of an eternal one. Because they believe in souls, the idea that a fuss would be made over the vehicle is blasphemous and ignorant. This view is shared by fundamentalist Muslims, and as an atheist, I have to agree that it is the proper way of looking at things.
Dressing up a piece of meat and pretending it's your dead mother is sick, IMO. Your mother was made of her actions, words, thoughts... Not her arms and legs. Your mother is gone. Let it go.
Finally, you seem to be overlooking the fact that these are products that are sold to people when they are emotionally fragile and vulnerable and oftentimes in denial about the death. The funeral industry is vile and evil. These are products that no one in their right mind would buy, but that's just fine because no one in their right mind is ever offered them! It's cruel.
Burn 'em up, grind the bones, and dump it somewhere that reminds you of them, or that they asked to be dumped at. That's what my family does, both for religious and atheistic reasons.
Good on ya.
Indeed. I was really looking forward to Longhorn. It really looked like a great upgrade. But one by one the cool features were stripped off, leaving... Well, virtually nothing, to be honest. Toss on top of that the fact that it doesn't work very well, and what happens?
I switch to the Mac.
Now I run UNIX with a UI that hasn't changed in years and years and years and which works on a Windows 2003 network better than XP did. Best of all, for $80 I retain the ability to run any of my Windows (or Linux!) software with VMware Fusion.
I honestly loved XP. It's starting to show its age, to be sure, but overall it was/is a great product. But to get more out of my computing experience, an upgrade was necessary, and MS wasn't really offering one. A disaster for MS, I think, because everyone I know (in multiple industries, I might add) who can switch has. Everyone from coders to traders to researchers... We're all on the Mac now. I didn't know anyone who was using a Mac this time last year. I don't know how a product could backfire as badly as Vista has.
Nah, sorry, the UI is totally different. There's very little difference from Office 2004 to Office 2008. Sit down for awhile with 2007. It's a bleedin' nightmare.
The only big changes I see in 2008 (which is what I mainly use these days) are the stupid Gallery that you can't get rid of (but can minimize), and the screwed-up way it deals with toolbars (which you can fix--I like the new one for Word, but have Excel running the way it used to). There are still menus, for crying out loud. Whose idea was it at MS to ditch 24 years of menubars???
All that being said, every time I do some work in Excel 2003 (Windows), I think, "damn, they nailed the UI right here." You can make buttons for virtually anything you use often (but not often enough to have the shortcut--if it exists--memorized), it takes up the whole screen by default, and it has the formula bar prominently displayed. It's just a breeze to use, and really defines the Platonic ideal of spreadsheetiness.
But that seems to be the MS strategy these days: Take a product that, though not perfect, people like using and that fulfills its functions reliably, and then screw it all up and piss everyone off. It's a pity, too, because when they're not screwing people over and screwing products up, they really can do some good work.
Yeah, because if they don't do something quick, everyone's going to forget Apple ever even existed!
Why, just the other day, I stopped, um, every single person I saw, and asked them who made that MP3 player they were carrying, and they were all, "I dunno; some company... There's a mark here on the back... What is that? A screaming head with a flame on top? Oh yeah, 'Burning Screaming Head.' That's who made it."
Steve Jobs, if you're reading this: Get out now before the whole thing caves in on you! Don't be the hero! You don't have to go down with the ship!!!
Yes.
This is the thing I have hit time and again, not just with Linux (I don't use Linux that much for other reasons that always result in a cacaphony of "nuh-UH"s from the Slashdot readership), but even with Windows. For proof of this, just try helping a total newbie build their first computer.
Now, for you or me, building your own PC is like this:
1) Put parts together.
2) Install OS.
3) Install drivers, updates.
4) Install other software.
But when you walk someone through this, you realize things like this:
1) Put parts together.
a) Line up the new motherboard with the back of the case. Install risers where the screw holes are; remove any that you won't be using.
b) Line up the notch on the CPU with the part of the CPU socket with no pin holes, lower carefully, and lock into place.
c) Attach the CPU fan
d) Plug the CPU fan power cable into the power socket labeled "CPU_Fan" on the motherboard (yes, you have to read that thing)
e) Line up the RAM with the slots on the board--it'll only go in one way
f) Firmly but gently push straight down on the RAM until the little white flaps close
g) Check to make the flaps are in all the way
h) Carefully lower the motherboard with the CPU and RAM installed into the case, angling it through the port holes in the back of the case (Oh, I forgot to mention replacing the back plate!)
i) Carefully screw the motherboard into position
--And that's just the beginning! You will also have to explain the concept of master/slave on a PATA bus (just remember: No one was dumb enough to make the BLACK connector the SLAVE), the different power connectors, the difference between PCI-E and PCI, connecting all those damn little case pins, etc.
And when that's all done? Now you're explaining what a BIOS is, what CMOS is, "no, the computer doesn't just turn on; we need to install an OS now," "no, the sound isn't going to work until we get the drivers in... What's a driver, you ask?", "actually, Word is part of a software package called MS Office. It doesn't come with Windows" (Or worse--"No, Word isn't even available on this OS... You'll be using OpenOffice. It's almost as good...).
We take all these things for granted, but just try doing this with a real "average computer user." They don't know anything at all. Anything.
The same is true of Linux. All these people here talking about how easy it is are people who not only know everything I've already discussed, but know how a *NIX-type OS is designed. I kinda do, and can muddle through, but even I don't know that well. I know what a config file is, which will at least get me looking for something to edit. A real average user knows what an icon is. You click it. Twice.
I have never gotten wifi to work on a Linux machine, and until Ubuntu 7.10 I never got my nVidia card to spit out more than 640x480 (see my sig), despite following the misspelled-and-grammar-mistake-laden advice of several forum postings and manpages. And I am, by all accounts, an advanced computer user. Not compared to a lot of the Slashdot demographic, to be sure, but so far above the realy AVERAGE user that people's eyes just kind of glaze over when I say something like (this was the other day), "Oh, no prob. That drive just isn't initialized. Just partition and format it and you'll be good to go. You know... Kinda like a floppy? You don't remember formatting floppies? Uhhh... Okay. Let me do it."
Linux is not ready for the average user. It's only barely ready for me.
And even when I finally get it working, it still doesn't run the software I require to do my job.
Preach it!
I'll go one further. It's not just that they don't provide value for money, Creative actually makes the worst soundcards I have ever, ever used. They aren't as good as the onboard RealTeks that come with your mobo, and of course can't hold a candle to a proper M-Audio (I used to use a Delta 1010). Both of these options sound better and install with less fuss and operate with less trouble.
To hell with Creative!
I can't find the quote now, but sometime during the Fahrenheit 911 days Moore was sitting with Quentin Tarantino and Tarantino complimented Moore and Moore said something to the effect of "that means a lot from you; I, like you, never wanted to do anything but make good movies."
That pretty much summed up the problem I have with him. His movies are entertaining and well-made, even at the expense of truth. People treat them like the Truth, but it's just historical fiction masquerading as documentary. He's a pile of shit and he does more to hurt the causes he ostensibly supports than he does to help them. He's a disgusting, lying scumbag, and we don't need him.
I have a 100Mbit connection (Japan) that runs at about 83Mbit, which is way above average.
I have noticed absolutely no difference in speed from when I had a 50Mbit ADSL line that actually only ran at 4Mbit. None.
BitTorrent is still slow as hell. My game ping is still on the highish end.
I think all this focus on the speed of one's connection is hogwash. ISPs throttle certain traffic, or the server you're connecting to doesn't have that much bandwidth for you, or you're limited by all the other, slower speeds of people in the swarm who are also on the other side of the planet.
After all the trouble I went to to finally get my apartment wired for fibre, I realize that I was in the same place with my 24Mbit connection that ran at 3Mbit and only cost $28/mo. with ISP.
I am not impressed by fast connections anymore.
Although it sounds like you mostly had issues with an OEM install, rather than Vista, I switched to the Mac because it worked so much better on the Windows 2003 network at work than XP. I'm sure Ubuntu would have done just as well, but I need to run a lot of specific software that isn't available on Linux.
Well, it's not available on OSX either, but VMware Fusion takes care of that.
Indeed, that was more of a rant against OEM crap than Vista, and you'll find no love for OEM crap anywhere on Slashdot.
It should not have been modded up.
Yup. My dad only even took us shooting maybe twice in my whole childhood, but once a year we'd do maintenance on the guns. He'd take them apart and show us how they worked and how to keep them clean and rust-free. I now know a lot more about how to take apart a gun than actually fire it, but I don't have that stupid irrational fear I see in a lot of people without any particular experience with guns.
They're just guns. Don't point them at people or anything else you don't want to kill. That's basically the only rule we had, and it worked very well. A lot of times when you introduce someone to guns the first time they fool around with them before the bullets are in and point them at you. When that has happened to me (a couple times), I instinctively hit the ground. Then I stand up and take the fucking thing away from them. I think a lot of adults who never really dealt with guns as children are dumber than little kids who have. What kind of moron points a gun at someone???
Sorry, but I'm calling BS on this one.
Here is a site partially created to praise the glory that is(n't) Linux, and I have written strongly against it on these very pages. I have been modded down accordingly. I have gone months without seeing a mod point.
But I have never been banned. Never even close.
You pay the price for going against the herd, to be sure, but ultimately, the fact that, despite feeling the need to kind of throw a bucket of cold reality on the Linux orgy (oh, let's be honest here--this is Slashdot--the Linux circle-jerk), I'm at least trying to do it fairly and even-handedly.
I'm sorry, but if you were really as vilified as you say, then you were either being a jerk or there was a glitch or something.
And I'm writing this from a Mac (which I switched to very recently, largely because VMware Fusion is so damned good that I can run Windows and Linux software I like on top of OSX with very very little trouble).
Um, yeah. You haven't lived here in Japan have you? People don't push back. They let companies plow them over and say nothing. There are no consumer rights in Japan. If they really do this and I lose my net access, that's it. I just lost my net access.
I'm already really throttled. I DL US TV slower now that I have FTTH than I did on ADSL. I have 83Mbit, but it only seems to work when I downloading something from a website or something.
This is going to do nothing to subscription rates. People get the fast service because it isn't much more expensive than the slow, and because the guys from SMAP are in the commercials. It has nothing to do with the speed, because, honestly, most Japanese people can barely even type.
This is not a good development for me...
True indeed. But finding Windows people is very easy. Not so much for Linux people. Not so much for MacOS people either (recently moved to Mac--for VMware Fusion as much as OSX!--but I don't think I would have if I didn't have a cadre of graphics, etc. friends to field my "hey, how do I..." questions).
Okay, so your point is that, with the help of a very knowledgeable system administrator, anyone can use Linux comfortably?
I'm not really trying to be a jerk, but... Yes, that's exactly what you're saying, whether you realize it or not.
I was just thinking about this last night as I was trying to set up Cinelerra on my Ubuntu virtual machine. It was a stupid hassle, because the instructions were different for each distro, and even for each version! I'm pretty awful at Linux, and only know very basic CLI commands, but even that is far, far beyond what most people can handle. Throw distro differences into the mix, and you have a nightmare for most people.
Then there was the other problem stymieing me last night: Terribly-written documentation. And by "documentation," I mean "forum postings and pages cobbled together by people on the project." They typically are written by and for people who are very familiar with the fundamentals of *NIX, and leave important details out. Just little things, to be sure, and obvious to people who are already used to using it, but which can cost hours for newbies. The trouble yesterday and the day before with Cinelerra was that I was supposed to look for the package directly in Synaptic, instead of in the Ubuntu Add/Remove Software tool, which I thought was Synaptic. Well, it wasn't. I had to go to a totally different part of the system to do it. Once I figured that out, it was easy-peasy, but the only reason I did figure that out is through tons of googling until I found someone's step-by-step on how to do it in Ubuntu 7.10. It's clear in hindsight, but it certainly wasn't for the last 2 days. I didn't even know you could install from there. Most people just stop when the official instructions are wrong.
Anyway, the point of the story is that the distro model is not very good for Linux uptake, as it muddies the waters of an already very opaque sea of confusion for most people.