Heheh, it was the same in 1999, when I backpacked China for a month. But I've been back a few times, and it's really changing fast. The food is still incredible and cheap, but a lot of the crummy things are getting less and less crummy. Take another look!
Thanks for the link! I am thinking switching out of the SLA ghetto into cogsci since most of my research questions (regarding L2 vocab acquisition) ultimately seem better suited to that field. Got any other great seminal links you'd like to pass to a newbie?
This is the fundamental problem with most pro-Linux people/discussions, and I say it every time it comes up. Computer people like Linux. A home user who doesn't do anything but type and check email and look at web pages would be fine with Linux. However, people who have actual jobs to do with computers (i.e. the computer is not the job) cannot really hope to get their jobs done with Linux.
Why? Simple. There is virtually no software available for it. "What? No software? Just take a look at SourceForge! There's a nearly endless supply, and the vast majority of it is free!" Yeah, and look at download.com. And Best Buy. And Wal-Mart. In comparison, there is no software available for Linux.
For some reason, IT people seem to think that the rest of the world just uses MS Office for everything they do, and therefore will be fine with OO.org or Crossover, and therefore should move to Linux AND FAST! This is because IT people are some of the most clueless morons on the planet. Their knowledge and experience is so narrow that taking advice from them on general business matters will nearly always end in frustration, if not outright disaster.
Most people and businesses have a number of specialized applications that are required for the jobs they do. They aren't available on Linux. What about clones of those products? Those are no good either. When you have a job, a lot of the work you do requires you to trade data with other people at other companies. If you're using weird crap designed by some guy in his basement, this makes your life very difficult. Software gains value with the number of people who use it. This is why Windows reigns supreme. Very few people actually like it, but that's just what you use.
Windows is the QWERTY keyboard of the OS world. It's stupid and clumsy, but it's what we're used to, and anyone who walks up to your computer can type on it. Linux is the Dvorak keyboard. It's arguably more efficient, rational, and better, but really, who the hell wants to use it and toss all that experience and interoperability? I'll tell you who. Geeks and losers.
And that pretty much sums up the Linux demographic.
Um, yeah. I work with a lot of Aussies and one of the things we teach (here in Japan) is WWII history, since it's mostly stricken from the Japanese education system. They all seem teach that the Americans pushed the Japanese back after the Brits abandoned them.
On a related note, I also work with a fair number of Canadians, and most of them never met a piece of erroneous US-bashing misinformation they didn't like. Even things demonstrably false. I can never really figure this out because, I mean, and I say this as an American, it's not like you need to make things up to bash the US. We've done enough real stuff to complain about without resorting to fabrication. I suspect the problem is that the majority of crappy things we've done has also done a lot to help our neighbors to the north, so they don't really like to mention them.
Yeah, I hear electronic devices, too. I took an Epson printer back for repairs, and then again after repairs, because it had a faulty power manager. I knew this because years in tech support had taught me that when you've got weird power-related stuff and you hear a high-pitched squeal, you have a bad power manager. Until that printer, however, I honestly didn't know that other people couldn't hear it! The rep at the store really gave her all, trying to hear what I was talking about, and finally just giving me this look of disbelief and pity. I found out how actually crazy people must feel all day.
Anyway, in the case of hardware troubleshooting, my ability to spot bad power managers in most computer hardware has really saved me a lot of time, but the sensitivity has had pretty bad effects as well. I've spent a small fortune silencing my PC and encasing it in sound-dampening materials so I don't hear this otherwise nice Asus mobo I'm using now (and that's after I've de-fanned most of it--there's a squeal that I think just has to be electronic). I can't work with a lot of noise (I wrote vast sections of my master's thesis with active noise-canceling headphones--I can sit down and write for 8 hours straight with them on, but otherwise, I get distracted every half an hour or so!). The rice cooker makes me close up the kitchen and hide in my office until it's done (my wife doesn't hear a thing), and I, too, have had a few TVs that I had to pass along because their standby drove me nuts.
Luckily, however, these sounds usually aren't painful. And thank god that I can't hear wi-fi. My life would really suck without it!
While I can't address all situations, I will tell you this:
I worked seasonal at BB one holiday season, including the day-after-Thanksgiving insanity (I had no idea people could be so blatantly, overpoweringly greedy! My supervisor built a wall of 21" monitors for me to work behind, which I couldn't figure out at first, but I actually needed them or I would have been mauled for the surplus printers we were offloading for $50 a pop) and I can tell you this: That truck arrived that afternoon because otherwise the store would just have been empty the next day. I know; I helped unload it.
Um, Northern California is one of the world's most-renowned wine regions. And the American microbrew explosion has been producing international-awards-earning beers for well over a decade. And pizza IS American food (as in, it is not the same as the original Italian food from which it is derived). And there is a growing number of excellent cheese companies in America. I'd be the first to admit that American-made chocolate (as in, they MADE the chocolate, from scratch, instead of just buying it from France and repackaging it--cough No-Ka cough) is nothing to write home about (unless the text of the missive was "It sucks."), but seriously, American gourmet has come a very long way in recent decades. Just, you know, to be clear... I know it was a joke and all, but... You know.
I, too, would mod parent up if I had points. Amen. It is every person's responsibility to defend themselves. If someone with a gun tells you to do something you know to not be in your best interest, kill him.
With the exception of SPSS, I've never heard of anything you mentioned, and probably never would.
Yeah, that was kind of my point. You only know one industry. Ask anyone in insurance about the first two, and they'll know what they are (well, probably not salespeople, but they usually don't know much of anything). Ask any psychometrician about my list, and they'll know what they are.
As for the "heavy-duty" *NIX apps, well, of course there are. I'd be a moron to claim otherwise. But I would only be surprised if any of them were used outside of IT or other computer-related industries. That is what I was trying to point out.
I don't work in IT anymore. And I don't see *NIX of any flavor anymore. Ever. A bunch of CS types sitting around waxing rhapsodic about Linux and berating others for not sharing in the light of their infinite wisdom only highlights how little they know.
Okay, once more, with feeling: Linux is a toy. A powerful toy. An-almost-infinitely-customizable toy. But a toy nonetheless. I say this not as a troll or as flamebait; I say this because the people who use it, use it because they enjoy fiddling around with config files. Even if they actually like using it--and of course they do--using it requires one to fiddle with config files in ways that one would only know how to do if he enjoyed learning about such things. I'm sorry, but that is a tiny subset of the computer-using public. Most people don't want to fiddle with things to get them to work or use weird, off-brand knockoff software developed by groups of people who do it as a hobby. It is a toy.
Invariably, this comment upsets a lot of people and there's the obligatory "It runs the internet!" and "dont be rediculous i use it for my business!" (sic) replies. But none of that means it's not a toy. OpenOffice or Crossover Office do not a real computer--as most people actually use them--make. Most businesses do more than type and make spreadsheets.
Here is a quick list of software my parents' company, for whom I do IT from time to time, uses. These are industry-standard applications:
Do you see a single item in that list with Linux compatibility? Most of them don't even have Mac versions. Most of these are heavy-duty software packages designed to handle specific tasks for business and/or research, and they are mostly only available for Windows. I'm sure that in the case of the stats packages, I could find something that could limp along and provide most of the functionality under Linux, but why would I do that? Everyone uses these packages, and that means if I send my SPSS.sav file over to a research partner in another country, he'll be able to open it and see if he sees what I see in the data.
None of these packages are a hassle to install. All of them work on virtually any Windows system. Windows is not a toy. It works well with little fuss, it has unrivaled developer support, and you can play Battlefield 2 on it.
Don't get me wrong; I like Linux. I have Ubuntu running on my laptop here at home. I love installing software off the net. I like some of the FOSS apps better than their proprietary counterparts. I enjoy that sense of calm you get from knowing that, if you ever get wifi to work without getting a new PCMCIA card that has better driver support and have it hanging off the side (banging into everything all the time), you could use this thing forever, free of all the problems associated with having software on your computer--because you'll never really have any. Until the argument for Linux isn't centered on how little you'll miss Windows, and goes to all the really great software available for it, Linux will remain as it is--a toy.
See, you don't install Linux to get things done; you install Linux to install Linux. It is an end in and of itself. That is not true for installations of Windows, and not as true for installs of MacOS. Those OSes are for people who have something other than codemonkeying to do; Linux is for the codemonkeys who do most of their work in a text editor anyway so why bother having access to anything else? Further, th
Yeah, the "toy" comment got me into some trouble, but I stand by it. That doesn't mean that it isn't powerful. I mean that it doesn't do what consumers--which, if you'll look at what I wrote more closely, you'll see I was limiting my argument to--want it to do without tinkering. People who like to tinker can get it to do it, but tinkering with Linux is their hobby. In that sense, Linux is a toy.
What is a NASCAR car but a toy? Powerful? Drives an industry? Yes. But suitable for everyday consumer use? No.
MS Office compatibility is huge. Why? Because MS Office is frickin' great, that's why. OpenOffice ain't shabby, but, once again, every time I've tried to switch, I've found something that it just won't do, or won't do easily, and I'm back to MS Office. And, once again, that's true of everyone I know. Basically, I give up the first time a.doc export doesn't show up the same in Word. I don't have time to screw around reformatting things.
Tables. I'm a university lecturer. I write research articles. Those articles have lost of tables of stats. OpenOffice's table implementation is convoluted and irritating, and is the first thing to crap out in a.doc export.
Tables of contents. Word actually links the table of contents page to the appropriate section and keeps it updated. That is no small feature when you're writing a 100-page document.
Tabs/indents. And this is what killed it last time I tried. The tab/indent arrows don't "snap" to sane distances; they mush around and you end up having to set them in the actual dialog. Not a big deal if you mostly write business letters, huge deal if you have many format styles within the same document.
Spreadsheet. Okay, I'll admit, I've done very little with it in OO, but that is because when I'm completing a year-long, funded research project, I really don't have time to be wrong about something. Everyone uses Excel. My research assistant can take the data home and do data entry on her PowerBook; I can throw that document into the external consultant's Windows or Mac laptops and be certain that it's the same. I know that all my formulas still work. I do not have to think about that. I do not have to gamble.
Developer support. If I had a business, I would be tempted to go Linux because I'm cheap, but really, if you want software that is designed for specific purposes, Windows has it, the Mac has some of it. My parents are independent claims adjusters. Try finding property or auto estimating software for Linux. For me, try finding SPSS, BILOG, RUMM2020, or DIFPack for Linux. They don't exist. Hell, even Micrograde, which I use for grading the classes I teach, doesn't have a Linux version. And what about my hobbies? Where is ProTools for Linux? Basically, all the arguments against buying a Mac go double for Linux. There are probably similar products for Linux for some of these packages, but let's call them what they really are: off-brand knockoffs.
Linux is now, and probably will be for a long time, little more than a toy on the desktop. For hackers and hobbyists. I stand by that, and it's not a troll.
I have tried to switch to Linux 3 times now, and every time, within a week or so (longest I've made it being a little over a week, and yeah, that was with Ubuntu--the best so far!), I've given up. I know that if I'd read a few more manpages by illiterates and written a few more lines in some conf file I'd probably get things like wifi to work (well, basically work--might be some bugs), but you know what? I have things to do. I don't have time to hunt for drivers and then pray they work. Most people don't.
And that's even before you consider the fact that I even know what a driver is! My parents don't. Most people don't. They put Linux on their computers and something doesn't work, they're gonna call someone like you or me. You will fuss around and either get it to work or explain that it won't but you won't miss it (It's not Linux's fault! It's your hardware! And the vendors! And Microsoft!). I'll tell them to go back to Windows.
Of all my geeky friends, only two are using Linux as their main OS. Both of them are software engineers for HP. Everyone else, including the chip designers and web application developers, and our network admin, are using either Windows or MacOS (mostly the former--only the network guy uses a Mac). And those two people still maintain Windows volumes to boot to when they want to do something like play WoW with their friends (one of them got it to work under Linux, but gave up because of performance issues).
Linux is a toy OS. That isn't to say that it can't do amazing things--of course it can, duh--but it is primarily used by people who don't need it to do all the little consumery things we like computers to do, or people who actually enjoy tinkering. Basically, for the home user, Linux is great for checking email and browsing the web. Granted, those are the main things people do with their computers, but it isn't all they do.
Until there are many, many more native games and a native MS Office, Linux is kind of a joke.
Compulsory car analogy: Every aspect of a NASCAR "stock" car is tinkered and tuned. And as a result, they go quite fast, even with ho-hum hardware. But we don't drive those cars to work every day. We drive real stock cars. I don't want to monitor a pile of gauges or have no seats or windows or any of that crap I'd have to deal with if I were driving a NASCAR car. I just want to hop in my Daihatsu, crank the KMFDM, and drive to work. I don't want to find special gasoline or have to search for someone to repair it. I just want it to work and leave me alone. Windows and the MacOS do that. Linux is a pain in the ass.
I understand the idea that "Hey, I'm doing it! It's easy!" But it isn't true. I have stopped telling people that building their own PCs is easy. It is only easy if you've been doing it for years and know the history of the process. Any new development is just some new fact to toss on top of a very large pile of information. People starting from scratch do crazy things you'd have never even considered, because it's second nature to you. You have to explain things that seem like common sense. And I think that is the same thing with Linux. If you've been involved with it for a long time and are comfortable with UNIX and know what compiling means (I do, but only on a conceptual "definition of the word" sense), then yeah, it's easy. But most people do not walk in with that skill set. Only when ignorance of any of that poses no problem whatsoever will Linux be a serious competitor to Windows or the MacOS.
Yes there is. It was written by William S. Burroughs as a weird homoerotic revolution nightmare romp. The studio owned rights to the name, but the "story" (you can, indeed purchase this "script"--it's tough reading, even if you're a huge WSB fan, like myself) just wasn't going to work as a movie. So they took the cooler name from WSB and some of the themes from Dick and produced the best SF movie ever made. IMO, anyway.
I really believe it's better to put on muscle when you're a teenager. My friend started lifting about then and even when he totally drops exercise for months at a time, he keeps that mass. Me, I didn't get started until he goaded me into it last year (at age 31). I was going 3 times a week for an hour a time for 9 months and barely added to my lifting weight in all that time. I did get a little mass, but it disappeared in the 3 months after that that I just couldn't go because of a crunch at work. I started again a couple weeks ago, but found that I was back at square one, and looking small and squishy again. He was back to buff in a week. Maybe genetics, maybe not, but I have to say the 19yr-olds in the gym just seem to pile the weight on and go up each time I see them. I can't help but think that that is when I should have been doing this.
Is it any wonder that India and Japan (I am sure there are others) are surpassing us in general academic, and therefore work, achievement?
Um, if you lived/worked here in Japan, you wouldn't say such a bizarre thing.
I have to say that the education system that I went through, in the US, prior to the "all children left behind" nonsense, is the best I have ever seen. Japanese schools are an utter waste of time. There is no homework. None.
I teach university here, and the hardest part of my job is trying to get my students used to the idea of doing homework. But in an education system that is hinged upon entrance--not exit--exams, there simply is no point to doing homework.
Plenty of kids go to "cram schools," but the West's moral outrage over those is slightly misplaced. We should be upset that they are cramming for tests instead of actually learning material, not that they are up until 9 or so working on school. You and I and people in Western countries all were as well--only we didn't have to pay for it!
Having worked in the Japanese education system at every level, and even studied at the university level, I am sick to death of hearing about how great it is from people who know nothing about it.
Please, just take my word: It's shit. Absolute and unadulterated shit. Japan is successful not because of some magic educational formula, but because the economy is propped up by the US government in the form of a free military and the fact that the US finagled Japan out of having to pay its war restitutions. They started after the war with capital to burn, and that continues to make up for the fact that the society and industry is a backward, idiotic mess.
Re:Does Vista have anything we need?
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Is Vista a Trap?
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Up until a few weeks ago, I would have flamed you into oblivion for such heresy.
But I recently bought an Xbox360, and I have an HDTV coming in soon, and I gotta say... This is the life. Sitting on the couch, no carpal tunnel, and I can still play online with my friends while using VOIP. Nice.
That being said, things like BF2 will always need to stay on the PC, I think. They require too many kinds of controllers to litter your livingroom with. And too much horsepower.
But for single player or co-op games, the console has come into its own.
(Sigh) Every time this discussion comes up on Slashdot, I get the same response: "You must have crappy/old/whatever ones; mine display none of the negative characteristics basically inherent with the design of fluorescent lighting!"
I have a mixture of these and these, which I purchased here and here (two of the largest electronics store chains in Japan), within the calendar year 2006, at an average price of about US$14.
And yes, they take a long time to get to full, which I suspect has something to do with Japanese houses not being heated (and having something else to do with CFLs sucking?).
Couple that with the awful light they produce (to be fair, with some lamp shades they really look nice, but in places like bathrooms or kitchens where you're usually just dealing with a lightbulb, I think they are horrendous--And I've tried all three flavors), and I feel that I am justified in my criticisms.
I dunno. Maybe they just don't like Japan's 100V/50Hz AC? Aforementioned cold? Who knows?
Maybe I'll video record turning one on this evening and stick it up on YouTube for the next time I end up discussing this 'round here!;-)
Amen! I tried to go to all CFLs a few months ago, and I've been secretly switching them back to incandescents when the wife is at work (she doesn't like the idea of wasting all that money on bulbs we're not going to use). The worst thing is the time it takes before they get to full power. It's insane. You turn on the light and stumble around in the dark for a minute or so.
Amen. They make stuff well for little money, though, and they've correctly figured out that that is all that matters when corporations run the rest of the world.
Don't get me wrong. I have been to China a number of times (going again next month!), have a degree in Asian studies, and find Chinese people to be some of the easiest to deal with in Asia. I like China.
But it's time to start holding them to some higher standards.
That's an excellent point that I hadn't thought of. I am originally from NE Colorado, where there is 300 days of sunshine a year. The two years I lived in Toyama-ken, Japan, which is almost perpetually cloudy and often rainy, I was literally suicidal for a lot of it, despite being well-adjusted to Japan, having friends, speaking the language, etc... Finally one day one of my coworkers saw me cheerily enter the office and shout a happy "good morning" to everyone before sitting down and she said, "Must be a sunny day." She'd figured out before I did that my mood had a direct correlation to the sun. Sunny days=happy days. I then paid close attention to it, and yup, I get SAD (seasonal affective disorder) really badly.
So you're probably right; I'm probably just very sensitive to light color/brightness.
Now I can tell my wife that if we don't get rid of the CFLs, I'm going to kill myself. She's SURE to listen then!
There's light at the end of the tunnel... And it's incandescent!
Slashdot Mirror
Heheh, it was the same in 1999, when I backpacked China for a month. But I've been back a few times, and it's really changing fast. The food is still incredible and cheap, but a lot of the crummy things are getting less and less crummy. Take another look!
Wonderful post! (I don't have any mod points left.)
Thanks! I'll see if I can hit them from work. Probably not (Japanese university).
Thanks for the link! I am thinking switching out of the SLA ghetto into cogsci since most of my research questions (regarding L2 vocab acquisition) ultimately seem better suited to that field. Got any other great seminal links you'd like to pass to a newbie?
YES.
This is the fundamental problem with most pro-Linux people/discussions, and I say it every time it comes up. Computer people like Linux. A home user who doesn't do anything but type and check email and look at web pages would be fine with Linux. However, people who have actual jobs to do with computers (i.e. the computer is not the job) cannot really hope to get their jobs done with Linux.
Why? Simple. There is virtually no software available for it. "What? No software? Just take a look at SourceForge! There's a nearly endless supply, and the vast majority of it is free!" Yeah, and look at download.com. And Best Buy. And Wal-Mart. In comparison, there is no software available for Linux.
For some reason, IT people seem to think that the rest of the world just uses MS Office for everything they do, and therefore will be fine with OO.org or Crossover, and therefore should move to Linux AND FAST! This is because IT people are some of the most clueless morons on the planet. Their knowledge and experience is so narrow that taking advice from them on general business matters will nearly always end in frustration, if not outright disaster.
Most people and businesses have a number of specialized applications that are required for the jobs they do. They aren't available on Linux. What about clones of those products? Those are no good either. When you have a job, a lot of the work you do requires you to trade data with other people at other companies. If you're using weird crap designed by some guy in his basement, this makes your life very difficult. Software gains value with the number of people who use it. This is why Windows reigns supreme. Very few people actually like it, but that's just what you use.
Windows is the QWERTY keyboard of the OS world. It's stupid and clumsy, but it's what we're used to, and anyone who walks up to your computer can type on it. Linux is the Dvorak keyboard. It's arguably more efficient, rational, and better, but really, who the hell wants to use it and toss all that experience and interoperability? I'll tell you who. Geeks and losers.
And that pretty much sums up the Linux demographic.
Okay, I'm kidding.
...But I'm kidding on the square.
Oops, sorry.
Um, yeah. I work with a lot of Aussies and one of the things we teach (here in Japan) is WWII history, since it's mostly stricken from the Japanese education system. They all seem teach that the Americans pushed the Japanese back after the Brits abandoned them.
On a related note, I also work with a fair number of Canadians, and most of them never met a piece of erroneous US-bashing misinformation they didn't like. Even things demonstrably false. I can never really figure this out because, I mean, and I say this as an American, it's not like you need to make things up to bash the US. We've done enough real stuff to complain about without resorting to fabrication. I suspect the problem is that the majority of crappy things we've done has also done a lot to help our neighbors to the north, so they don't really like to mention them.
Yeah, I hear electronic devices, too. I took an Epson printer back for repairs, and then again after repairs, because it had a faulty power manager. I knew this because years in tech support had taught me that when you've got weird power-related stuff and you hear a high-pitched squeal, you have a bad power manager. Until that printer, however, I honestly didn't know that other people couldn't hear it! The rep at the store really gave her all, trying to hear what I was talking about, and finally just giving me this look of disbelief and pity. I found out how actually crazy people must feel all day.
Anyway, in the case of hardware troubleshooting, my ability to spot bad power managers in most computer hardware has really saved me a lot of time, but the sensitivity has had pretty bad effects as well. I've spent a small fortune silencing my PC and encasing it in sound-dampening materials so I don't hear this otherwise nice Asus mobo I'm using now (and that's after I've de-fanned most of it--there's a squeal that I think just has to be electronic). I can't work with a lot of noise (I wrote vast sections of my master's thesis with active noise-canceling headphones--I can sit down and write for 8 hours straight with them on, but otherwise, I get distracted every half an hour or so!). The rice cooker makes me close up the kitchen and hide in my office until it's done (my wife doesn't hear a thing), and I, too, have had a few TVs that I had to pass along because their standby drove me nuts.
Luckily, however, these sounds usually aren't painful. And thank god that I can't hear wi-fi. My life would really suck without it!
While I can't address all situations, I will tell you this:
I worked seasonal at BB one holiday season, including the day-after-Thanksgiving insanity (I had no idea people could be so blatantly, overpoweringly greedy! My supervisor built a wall of 21" monitors for me to work behind, which I couldn't figure out at first, but I actually needed them or I would have been mauled for the surplus printers we were offloading for $50 a pop) and I can tell you this: That truck arrived that afternoon because otherwise the store would just have been empty the next day. I know; I helped unload it.
God bless you. You nailed it.
Um, Northern California is one of the world's most-renowned wine regions. And the American microbrew explosion has been producing international-awards-earning beers for well over a decade. And pizza IS American food (as in, it is not the same as the original Italian food from which it is derived). And there is a growing number of excellent cheese companies in America. I'd be the first to admit that American-made chocolate (as in, they MADE the chocolate, from scratch, instead of just buying it from France and repackaging it--cough No-Ka cough) is nothing to write home about (unless the text of the missive was "It sucks."), but seriously, American gourmet has come a very long way in recent decades. Just, you know, to be clear... I know it was a joke and all, but... You know.
I, too, would mod parent up if I had points. Amen. It is every person's responsibility to defend themselves. If someone with a gun tells you to do something you know to not be in your best interest, kill him.
Yeah, that was kind of my point. You only know one industry. Ask anyone in insurance about the first two, and they'll know what they are (well, probably not salespeople, but they usually don't know much of anything). Ask any psychometrician about my list, and they'll know what they are.
As for the "heavy-duty" *NIX apps, well, of course there are. I'd be a moron to claim otherwise. But I would only be surprised if any of them were used outside of IT or other computer-related industries. That is what I was trying to point out.
I don't work in IT anymore. And I don't see *NIX of any flavor anymore. Ever. A bunch of CS types sitting around waxing rhapsodic about Linux and berating others for not sharing in the light of their infinite wisdom only highlights how little they know.
Okay, once more, with feeling: Linux is a toy. A powerful toy. An-almost-infinitely-customizable toy. But a toy nonetheless. I say this not as a troll or as flamebait; I say this because the people who use it, use it because they enjoy fiddling around with config files. Even if they actually like using it--and of course they do--using it requires one to fiddle with config files in ways that one would only know how to do if he enjoyed learning about such things. I'm sorry, but that is a tiny subset of the computer-using public. Most people don't want to fiddle with things to get them to work or use weird, off-brand knockoff software developed by groups of people who do it as a hobby. It is a toy.
Invariably, this comment upsets a lot of people and there's the obligatory "It runs the internet!" and "dont be rediculous i use it for my business!" (sic) replies. But none of that means it's not a toy. OpenOffice or Crossover Office do not a real computer--as most people actually use them--make. Most businesses do more than type and make spreadsheets.
Here is a quick list of software my parents' company, for whom I do IT from time to time, uses. These are industry-standard applications:
PowerClaim
Xactimate
Internet Explorer (for dealing with the head office)
Without these, their business does not run.
Now, let's go to the applications I use for my job (university lecturer / researcher):
SPSS
RUMM 2020
BILOG MG
Facets
DIFPack
Micrograde
Do you see a single item in that list with Linux compatibility? Most of them don't even have Mac versions. Most of these are heavy-duty software packages designed to handle specific tasks for business and/or research, and they are mostly only available for Windows. I'm sure that in the case of the stats packages, I could find something that could limp along and provide most of the functionality under Linux, but why would I do that? Everyone uses these packages, and that means if I send my SPSS .sav file over to a research partner in another country, he'll be able to open it and see if he sees what I see in the data.
None of these packages are a hassle to install. All of them work on virtually any Windows system. Windows is not a toy. It works well with little fuss, it has unrivaled developer support, and you can play Battlefield 2 on it.
Don't get me wrong; I like Linux. I have Ubuntu running on my laptop here at home. I love installing software off the net. I like some of the FOSS apps better than their proprietary counterparts. I enjoy that sense of calm you get from knowing that, if you ever get wifi to work without getting a new PCMCIA card that has better driver support and have it hanging off the side (banging into everything all the time), you could use this thing forever, free of all the problems associated with having software on your computer--because you'll never really have any. Until the argument for Linux isn't centered on how little you'll miss Windows, and goes to all the really great software available for it, Linux will remain as it is--a toy.
See, you don't install Linux to get things done; you install Linux to install Linux. It is an end in and of itself. That is not true for installations of Windows, and not as true for installs of MacOS. Those OSes are for people who have something other than codemonkeying to do; Linux is for the codemonkeys who do most of their work in a text editor anyway so why bother having access to anything else? Further, th
Yeah, the "toy" comment got me into some trouble, but I stand by it. That doesn't mean that it isn't powerful. I mean that it doesn't do what consumers--which, if you'll look at what I wrote more closely, you'll see I was limiting my argument to--want it to do without tinkering. People who like to tinker can get it to do it, but tinkering with Linux is their hobby. In that sense, Linux is a toy.
What is a NASCAR car but a toy? Powerful? Drives an industry? Yes. But suitable for everyday consumer use? No.
MS Office compatibility is huge. Why? Because MS Office is frickin' great, that's why. OpenOffice ain't shabby, but, once again, every time I've tried to switch, I've found something that it just won't do, or won't do easily, and I'm back to MS Office. And, once again, that's true of everyone I know. Basically, I give up the first time a .doc export doesn't show up the same in Word. I don't have time to screw around reformatting things.
Tables. I'm a university lecturer. I write research articles. Those articles have lost of tables of stats. OpenOffice's table implementation is convoluted and irritating, and is the first thing to crap out in a .doc export.
Tables of contents. Word actually links the table of contents page to the appropriate section and keeps it updated. That is no small feature when you're writing a 100-page document.
Tabs/indents. And this is what killed it last time I tried. The tab/indent arrows don't "snap" to sane distances; they mush around and you end up having to set them in the actual dialog. Not a big deal if you mostly write business letters, huge deal if you have many format styles within the same document.
Spreadsheet. Okay, I'll admit, I've done very little with it in OO, but that is because when I'm completing a year-long, funded research project, I really don't have time to be wrong about something. Everyone uses Excel. My research assistant can take the data home and do data entry on her PowerBook; I can throw that document into the external consultant's Windows or Mac laptops and be certain that it's the same. I know that all my formulas still work. I do not have to think about that. I do not have to gamble.
Developer support. If I had a business, I would be tempted to go Linux because I'm cheap, but really, if you want software that is designed for specific purposes, Windows has it, the Mac has some of it. My parents are independent claims adjusters. Try finding property or auto estimating software for Linux. For me, try finding SPSS, BILOG, RUMM2020, or DIFPack for Linux. They don't exist. Hell, even Micrograde, which I use for grading the classes I teach, doesn't have a Linux version. And what about my hobbies? Where is ProTools for Linux? Basically, all the arguments against buying a Mac go double for Linux. There are probably similar products for Linux for some of these packages, but let's call them what they really are: off-brand knockoffs.
Linux is now, and probably will be for a long time, little more than a toy on the desktop. For hackers and hobbyists. I stand by that, and it's not a troll.
No. You are just plain wrong.
I have tried to switch to Linux 3 times now, and every time, within a week or so (longest I've made it being a little over a week, and yeah, that was with Ubuntu--the best so far!), I've given up. I know that if I'd read a few more manpages by illiterates and written a few more lines in some conf file I'd probably get things like wifi to work (well, basically work--might be some bugs), but you know what? I have things to do. I don't have time to hunt for drivers and then pray they work. Most people don't.
And that's even before you consider the fact that I even know what a driver is! My parents don't. Most people don't. They put Linux on their computers and something doesn't work, they're gonna call someone like you or me. You will fuss around and either get it to work or explain that it won't but you won't miss it (It's not Linux's fault! It's your hardware! And the vendors! And Microsoft!). I'll tell them to go back to Windows.
Of all my geeky friends, only two are using Linux as their main OS. Both of them are software engineers for HP. Everyone else, including the chip designers and web application developers, and our network admin, are using either Windows or MacOS (mostly the former--only the network guy uses a Mac). And those two people still maintain Windows volumes to boot to when they want to do something like play WoW with their friends (one of them got it to work under Linux, but gave up because of performance issues).
Linux is a toy OS. That isn't to say that it can't do amazing things--of course it can, duh--but it is primarily used by people who don't need it to do all the little consumery things we like computers to do, or people who actually enjoy tinkering. Basically, for the home user, Linux is great for checking email and browsing the web. Granted, those are the main things people do with their computers, but it isn't all they do.
Until there are many, many more native games and a native MS Office, Linux is kind of a joke.
Compulsory car analogy: Every aspect of a NASCAR "stock" car is tinkered and tuned. And as a result, they go quite fast, even with ho-hum hardware. But we don't drive those cars to work every day. We drive real stock cars. I don't want to monitor a pile of gauges or have no seats or windows or any of that crap I'd have to deal with if I were driving a NASCAR car. I just want to hop in my Daihatsu, crank the KMFDM, and drive to work. I don't want to find special gasoline or have to search for someone to repair it. I just want it to work and leave me alone. Windows and the MacOS do that. Linux is a pain in the ass.
I understand the idea that "Hey, I'm doing it! It's easy!" But it isn't true. I have stopped telling people that building their own PCs is easy. It is only easy if you've been doing it for years and know the history of the process. Any new development is just some new fact to toss on top of a very large pile of information. People starting from scratch do crazy things you'd have never even considered, because it's second nature to you. You have to explain things that seem like common sense. And I think that is the same thing with Linux. If you've been involved with it for a long time and are comfortable with UNIX and know what compiling means (I do, but only on a conceptual "definition of the word" sense), then yeah, it's easy. But most people do not walk in with that skill set. Only when ignorance of any of that poses no problem whatsoever will Linux be a serious competitor to Windows or the MacOS.
Yes there is. It was written by William S. Burroughs as a weird homoerotic revolution nightmare romp. The studio owned rights to the name, but the "story" (you can, indeed purchase this "script"--it's tough reading, even if you're a huge WSB fan, like myself) just wasn't going to work as a movie. So they took the cooler name from WSB and some of the themes from Dick and produced the best SF movie ever made. IMO, anyway.
I really believe it's better to put on muscle when you're a teenager. My friend started lifting about then and even when he totally drops exercise for months at a time, he keeps that mass. Me, I didn't get started until he goaded me into it last year (at age 31). I was going 3 times a week for an hour a time for 9 months and barely added to my lifting weight in all that time. I did get a little mass, but it disappeared in the 3 months after that that I just couldn't go because of a crunch at work. I started again a couple weeks ago, but found that I was back at square one, and looking small and squishy again. He was back to buff in a week. Maybe genetics, maybe not, but I have to say the 19yr-olds in the gym just seem to pile the weight on and go up each time I see them. I can't help but think that that is when I should have been doing this.
Um, if you lived/worked here in Japan, you wouldn't say such a bizarre thing.
I have to say that the education system that I went through, in the US, prior to the "all children left behind" nonsense, is the best I have ever seen. Japanese schools are an utter waste of time. There is no homework. None.
I teach university here, and the hardest part of my job is trying to get my students used to the idea of doing homework. But in an education system that is hinged upon entrance--not exit--exams, there simply is no point to doing homework.
Plenty of kids go to "cram schools," but the West's moral outrage over those is slightly misplaced. We should be upset that they are cramming for tests instead of actually learning material, not that they are up until 9 or so working on school. You and I and people in Western countries all were as well--only we didn't have to pay for it!
Having worked in the Japanese education system at every level, and even studied at the university level, I am sick to death of hearing about how great it is from people who know nothing about it.
Please, just take my word: It's shit. Absolute and unadulterated shit. Japan is successful not because of some magic educational formula, but because the economy is propped up by the US government in the form of a free military and the fact that the US finagled Japan out of having to pay its war restitutions. They started after the war with capital to burn, and that continues to make up for the fact that the society and industry is a backward, idiotic mess.
Up until a few weeks ago, I would have flamed you into oblivion for such heresy.
But I recently bought an Xbox360, and I have an HDTV coming in soon, and I gotta say... This is the life. Sitting on the couch, no carpal tunnel, and I can still play online with my friends while using VOIP. Nice.
That being said, things like BF2 will always need to stay on the PC, I think. They require too many kinds of controllers to litter your livingroom with. And too much horsepower.
But for single player or co-op games, the console has come into its own.
August of 2005 I used the system described on an American Airlines flight.
(Sigh) Every time this discussion comes up on Slashdot, I get the same response: "You must have crappy/old/whatever ones; mine display none of the negative characteristics basically inherent with the design of fluorescent lighting!"
I have a mixture of these and these, which I purchased here and here (two of the largest electronics store chains in Japan), within the calendar year 2006, at an average price of about US$14.
And yes, they take a long time to get to full, which I suspect has something to do with Japanese houses not being heated (and having something else to do with CFLs sucking?).
Couple that with the awful light they produce (to be fair, with some lamp shades they really look nice, but in places like bathrooms or kitchens where you're usually just dealing with a lightbulb, I think they are horrendous--And I've tried all three flavors), and I feel that I am justified in my criticisms.
I dunno. Maybe they just don't like Japan's 100V/50Hz AC? Aforementioned cold? Who knows?
Maybe I'll video record turning one on this evening and stick it up on YouTube for the next time I end up discussing this 'round here! ;-)
Amen! I tried to go to all CFLs a few months ago, and I've been secretly switching them back to incandescents when the wife is at work (she doesn't like the idea of wasting all that money on bulbs we're not going to use). The worst thing is the time it takes before they get to full power. It's insane. You turn on the light and stumble around in the dark for a minute or so.
Useless, horrible pieces of crap.
Amen. They make stuff well for little money, though, and they've correctly figured out that that is all that matters when corporations run the rest of the world. Don't get me wrong. I have been to China a number of times (going again next month!), have a degree in Asian studies, and find Chinese people to be some of the easiest to deal with in Asia. I like China. But it's time to start holding them to some higher standards.
That's an excellent point that I hadn't thought of. I am originally from NE Colorado, where there is 300 days of sunshine a year. The two years I lived in Toyama-ken, Japan, which is almost perpetually cloudy and often rainy, I was literally suicidal for a lot of it, despite being well-adjusted to Japan, having friends, speaking the language, etc... Finally one day one of my coworkers saw me cheerily enter the office and shout a happy "good morning" to everyone before sitting down and she said, "Must be a sunny day." She'd figured out before I did that my mood had a direct correlation to the sun. Sunny days=happy days. I then paid close attention to it, and yup, I get SAD (seasonal affective disorder) really badly.
So you're probably right; I'm probably just very sensitive to light color/brightness.
Now I can tell my wife that if we don't get rid of the CFLs, I'm going to kill myself. She's SURE to listen then!
There's light at the end of the tunnel... And it's incandescent!