Actually, you did say "In actuality, *real* tech savvy people are interested in only one thing - the best search engine." [slashdot.org] That certainly seems to imply anyone considering these other issues aren't tech savvy. Maybe I misunderstood what you meant.
Hmmm, looks like you got me. You win that one. That is what I said, and there is no reading between the lines to spin it any other way. So, I will concede, since you called me on it, that tech savvy people may use other criteria beyond pure technical excellence to choose their tools, and that does not mean they are not tech savvy. However, I don't think that changes my personal philosophy - just give me the best tool for the job.
The moral code I find many techies seem to measure these things by involves functionality. When something limits functionality, it's bad. When something intentionally limits functionality it is evil...
Thank you for that thoughtful explanation. I can appreciate the distinction you make regarding "intentionally standing in the way". I guess my view is that in the vast majority of cases those "limitations" are the result of system design and business model tradeoffs, and are not done capriciously or with bad intent. Consequently, it is difficult for me to think of the companies that make those tradeoffs as "evil". I know how difficult it is to build a system without making any tradeoffs, and without building in some limits. It's funny, but in some ways, this gets at one of the problems I have with the "do no evil" approach. To me that philosophy is almost synonymous with "don't do too much", since going any further could be construed as limiting the end-user. And this often results in a lot of half-baked "products", any of which need significant finished work or re-work to make them perform the task I need done.
Ideology does not preclude picking the best tool for the job.
Obviously.
Nor does having some particluar ideology imply that one is not, in fact, tech savvy.
I agree, and for the record, I never said it did.
But thanks for sharing your own view.
You're welcome
The IT industry is littered with examples of technically inferior tech winning out... part of it is because given the complexity of the technology
Again, I agree. In most cases, "technically superior" is a multi-dimensional determination. One product may be more flexible while the second may be more reliable. One may be faster, while the other may produce superior or more complete results. So figuring out which is technically best is largely a function of which particular requirements you might be trying to meet and/or optimize. With all of that said, the fact that one solution comes from a company with a "do no evil" motto (see the original post), while the other comes from a large, some might say evil, software company, is not a factor I would ever consider when weighing technical superiority. But as several have pointed out in this thread, that simply reflects my own "ideology" which attempts to eliminate emotionally driven reasons from my technical determinations.
Got me. Suggesting that techies should only consider technical excellence in their tool selection is indeed a reflection of my own "agenda" and "world view". You see, I believe you should always choose the best tool for the job, if at all possible. And I don't think you should cloud that selection process with ideology. Am I to assume you believe otherwise? If that is the case, feel free to use inferior tools that rationalize your own "world view", but don't be too surprised when you find yourself losing out to those who are *not* blinded by ideology.
"Also, they make sure to attract the zealots amongst us by being open-source friendly"
There, fixed that for ya.
In actuality, *real* tech savvy people are interested in only one thing - the best search engine. People with an agenda, on the other hand, add other considerations (open source friendliness, "don't be evil" motto, etc.) to their decision criteria. That said, there is no denying Google is the best search engine today by far, and whoever is in second place isn't even close.
And what exactly did that cost you? Probably Real subsidized the video distribution. Would you rather have paid to see the clip? If you are nervous about what Real might do to your machine, then you can use a virtual machine and install the Real player into that. Then after watching the clip, exit the machine without saving state and voila - no harm done. I will say that I have not tried this with Real player so I don't know if it will work in this particular case, but I have used this technique with other applications that I don't want mucking around with my machine.
Hmmm, one wonders if this machine-dependent limitation will have the same effect on the future of books that the 74 minute CDs had on music. I suppose you could vary the font size to squeeze in more content, but beyond what can be gained by that you would probably have to break it up into volumes (like a 2 CD set).
IMHO, most people that want a computer have one and unless there's a pressing need, I can't see lots of people jumping on the Vista bandwagon.
Well, computers get old. They get slow. The become obsolete. Then they get replaced. Also, many people are now starting to buy second and third computers and installing networks in their homes. I was at Best Buy this morning and two of their "Geek Squad" guys were loading tons of DLink network gear into their Geek Squad VW. Though I don't know for certain, I am guessing that they do quite a few network installations in private homes. Does anybody out there know if this is the case?
I've read a lot of posts in this thread, and I think you come the closest to nailing the issue. I especially liked your questioning of why someone would pay a premium price for Apple products as I have wondered that myself these many years. I think, however, that everyone is overlooking one very obvious problem with displacing Windows. Joe Consumer goes to Best Buy and sees reams of Windows computers. Then he wanders down the games aisle and sees reams of Windows software and a few Mac-compatible games. He wanders down the "productivity" aisle and sees lots of Windows software and a few expensive Mac apps. Even if Best Buy were to devote half their shelfspace to Linux computers it wouldn't make a difference because there is no pre-packaged software available for Linux. People on this thread talk about apt-get and other such nonsense which is far beyond most non-technical people. Nevermind that it presupposes the end-user has broadband. And even if they did understand it, the selections available are dwarfed by what is available for Windows. It is the classic chicken-and-egg problem. There won't be off-the-shelf packaged software until Linux has a large installed base, and there won't be a large installed base until there is a wide selection of reasonably priced off-the-shelf software.
A classic example of why Linux can never win. Guess what, both of those links point to "pay-for" software that is at least as expensive as that "expensive MS OS" you so decry. One of them is even a $5/month subscription! A Windows license costs the end user around $80 tops. And they don't have to fiddle around with 3rd party kluges to run their games and apps. They don't have to worry about compatibility with their hardware (did you even read the hardware requirements for those packages?). Expecting non-technical people to use 3rd party OS-emulators is a non-starter and should not even be discussed seriously. Sure, if there is *one* application somebody wants to run, and *only one*, and it is known that application works in the emulated environment, then perhaps it makes sense. However, it makes *no sense* for a general purpose system onto which people plan to install many different apps and games. To suggest that non-technical people go this route is simpy irresponsible.
People that read newspapers also select the newspaper that is in line with their opinion. As a businessman you'll buy a newspaper that will have a high coverage of financial news. A person interested in sport will buy a newspaper with more sport in it.
Ahh, but there is a flaw in your argument. For example, I read the Boston Globe because it has a pretty good sports section. And even though I happen to be significantly more conservative than the Globe political editors/commentators, I still read their (in my opinion misguided) op-eds because that is the daily paper I read. Contrast that with the internet where I can subscribe to lots of "sports channels" for my sports news, and then refer to, say, Fox News for my political news. That way I am never exposed to the left wing opinions with which I disagree. In the end, it's a matter of granularity. I can finely tune my news sources to match my preferences with the internet, like an ala carte menu. With traditional media, it's more like ordering a full meal where I get to choose, say, the meat, but the vegetables, potato, salad and "soup-of-the-day" are whatever the restaurant chooses to serve.
For what it's worth, I make it a point to try and read both sides of every issue because in my experience the truth usually lies in the middle of the extremes, and it is very hard to discover the truth without at least exposing yourself to the two extreme viewpoints. As an aside, this is why I participate in/., which, in my opinion, defines one extreme in many "techno-political" debates, though I'm sure many on this forum consider/. to be "fair-and-balanced":).
People already pick out TV/book/magazines that align with their beliefs. The internet is no different.
I agree, to a point. The difference with the internet is the granularity of those selections. The "mainstream" or shall I say "traditional" media is limited in how small a niche, or special interest group it can cater to, since there are only so many networks, radio stations, and newspapers, and each must appeal to a group that is large enough to support it. The internet, on the other hand, can be customized to fine-tune the news to virtually any niche or interest, however small.
But i believe it's anyone else who is sick of being forced to upgrade every 3-5 years
Forced to upgrade every 3-5 years? What are you talking about? I have lots of boxes running Windows 2000 - a 6 year old OS. I have yet to receive a phone call or email from Microsoft demanding that I upgrade them. True, the latest and greatest stuff won't run on them, but then the hardware is pretty old too, so how well would they run anyhow? Nobody is forcing me to upgrade the OS on those boxes any more than anyone is forcing me to upgrade the hardware. Now if I want to run the latest games, well then, I probably need the latest of everything. Is your position that once I fork over my hard-earned money for a PC then from that point forward, every application and game ever written must run on my box? Your specific example of porting DirectX 10 to XP may have some validity, but one could just as easily criticize the game developers for not supporting DirectX 9 with their latest games... why must they always use the latest and greatest API's (hint, their is value in those new APIs - new value that you didn't pay for when you bought your XP license).
Look at the bright side, when MS does upgrade Windows, at least they expend an inordinate effort to provide backwards compatibility so that you aren't forced to upgrade/replace all your applications. There is no denying that backwards compatibility is something the other OS vendors (*cough* Apple) could learn to do a much better job on.
Young people have smelt the bullshit from miles away and refuse to read it because they've been exposed to so much BS in their lifetimes and have been hurt by it so many times they have a motivation to get away from it.
Nice try, but I think you are giving young people too much credit. While I agree with you that newspaper readership is much less prevalent in the younger generation, I think the reasons are a little less flattering to the younger set. I think mostly being accustomed to reading things on the screen versus in print is a big part of it. My proof is that younger people also read fewer books - have they been "hurt by" books also? I also think younger people, having grown up with the internet, are used to a more interactive environment where they can discuss the article, ala on-line news sites and forums. Lastly, and this is the most scary reason, the internet generation is much more accustomed to reading articles that align with their own beliefs. This is the one thing about the internet that really worries me... the ability to customize your "news" in such a way that you only read things with which you agree. This tends to polarize people (seen much of that?) and cause huge rifts between the camps, because over time you forget you are only reading half of the story.
Windows will never be secure. Microsoft would have to spend huge amounts of money on it and it wouldn't sell very well.
On this we can agree, though I would probably say "Microsoft will never be as secure as a server-based OS". As you know there are degrees of security, so making a blanket statement without qualifying what you mean by secure is fairly meaningless. Anyhow, a desktop that is as locked down as a hardened server would be extremely annoying to use, even for technically saavy users. For the typical home user it would be downright maddening, and so, as you correctly suggest, it wouldn't sell very well.
Are you content to be only a tenant in a system where someone else retains ultimate control?
You mean like using an online "office" product like Writely? Or a photo management site like Shutterfly? Maybe you are referring to having a Gmail account for your email? Seems to me people are flocking to be "a tenant in a system where someone else retains ultimate control".
... my analysis of Vista so far has yielded little in the way of concrete security improvments...
You must not have looked very hard. Actually there have been substantive changes as regards security, not the least of which is that the user is *not*, by default, running with administrator privileges. This is the #1 reason *nix types criticize Windows as insecure and it has been fixed. Now, I'm sure with all the bloat and "rushed" schedules, problems will creep in, but the very fact that the average home user is no longer an admin should have a huge effect on overall security. Secondly, the windows firewall is now bidirectional - a substantial improvement over XP. IE7 is much improved over IE6, though it is also avaiable to XP users. There are other lesser improvements (you can "analyze" them here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsvista/aa 905073.aspx).
I believe the AV vendors are quite concerned, and rightfully so. As regards your statement that it's all a "marketing battle", you are correct. However, it is the AV vendors waging that battle, trying to convince users they are still necessary. Time will tell.
... according to computer security researchers at Trend Micro...
... like Trend Micro doesn't have anything to gain by people thinking there are Vista exploits. Seriously, Norton, McAfee and Trend Micro are all worried that their golden goose may be cooked if Vista is significantly more secure than XP. And I loved the use of the cloak-and-dagger word "infiltrated" to strike further fear into people. This seems to me little more than a sad attempt to remain relevant by an anti-virus vendor.
about Microsoft, but this is one thing they have *always* gotten. Providing excellent tools and 3rd party developers has been one of the main reasons they have been so successful over the years. It's nice to see they haven't forgotten that.
Did anybody else notice, late in the call while talking to the female rep, he was extremely close to getting her to understand, but he missed the chance. When he was doing his 1 cent, 100 kilobytes example and she was using a calculator, he said "use the calculator to multiply 1 cent by 100 kilobytes". She then said "OK, so I enter.01 into the calculator". At that point there he should have stopped her and said, "why did you enter.01 when the rate is 1 cent?" He did get her to admit that half a cent is.005, but then he dropped it there. I think she might have figured it out if he'd continued on this line... ultimately getting her to enter.00002 on the calculator instead of.002 (just like she entered.01 instead of 1, etc). -Sigh- It was painful to listen to, but not terribly surprising. In my mind the root problem is that most people blindly accept whatever the computer is telling them.
Help me to understand why everybody benefiting drives you crazy.
Help me to understand why people on/., detecting that I am -horror-of-horrors- of a conservative bent, insist on putting words in my mouth. They habitually misrepresent my statements and twist my words. Fortunately for me I have the written record in the thread to disprove other people's claims as to what I supposedly "believe" by referring to what I actually said. As a refresher (you can read it in my other comments in this thread) I merely stated "a rising tide lifts all boats". My point, which I thought was clear, was that, while it's true that the spread between rich and poor is widening (I am not denying that assertion), the simple fact is that both rich and poor are much better off than they ever were before. So how does this mean it "drives me crazy when everybody benefits"? I am saying *exactly* the opposite - I am pointing out that everyone is better off despite the bigger rich-poor disparity. For me the widening gap is not an issue (and no, I am not in the top 2% - far from it).
Of course if one were to subscribe to the politics of envy and "fairness", a widening gap sets off alarm bells. But there is *no denying* the poor are much better off now, despite that gap. Admit it, what bothers you is that the rich are getting richer faster than you are. You probably want to tax them into the stone age and spread the money around to your friends and "the poor". There, how do you like it when somebody makes hackneyed assumptions about what you think based on the fact that you express "liberal" opinions?
As is usually the case, the truth is somewhere in the middle - there are indeed high marketing expenses AND there are high develoment expenses. I have a bit of knowledge in this area, having worked in the big pharma clinical trials information management field for awhile. I can tell you that there is a tremendous amount of government mandated paperwork and oversight involved which consumes massive amounts of labor, which, as we know, is very expensive. And many drugs don't actually make it through the approval stage. As an example, Pfizer just dropped a very promising drug in the late stages of development (http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/12/04/torcetrapib. reut/index.html), after many millions have been spent, all for naught.
Regardless, my point holds - new drugs are initially expensive and hence available only to the wealthy or very well insured. Some percentage of these profits (we can debate how much) funds development of future drugs. Patents expire and generics then become cheaply available to the masses.
It seems to me that life expectancy is a really good proxy for standard of living as it encompasses access to better nutrition, better shelter, and better healthcare. Let's see what the numbers tell us then:
White male life expectancy, 1900: 48.2 years
White male life expectancy, 2000: 74.8 years
Non-White male life expectancy, 1900: 32.5 years
Non-White male life expectancy, 2000: 68.3 years
A factor of 2 improvement! So much for "pauperization". Perhaps you can explain for those of us not as enlightened as you why may post was a medal-worthy false dichotomy?
Slashdot Mirror
Thank you for that thoughtful explanation. I can appreciate the distinction you make regarding "intentionally standing in the way". I guess my view is that in the vast majority of cases those "limitations" are the result of system design and business model tradeoffs, and are not done capriciously or with bad intent. Consequently, it is difficult for me to think of the companies that make those tradeoffs as "evil". I know how difficult it is to build a system without making any tradeoffs, and without building in some limits. It's funny, but in some ways, this gets at one of the problems I have with the "do no evil" approach. To me that philosophy is almost synonymous with "don't do too much", since going any further could be construed as limiting the end-user. And this often results in a lot of half-baked "products", any of which need significant finished work or re-work to make them perform the task I need done.
I agree, and for the record, I never said it did.
You're welcome
Again, I agree. In most cases, "technically superior" is a multi-dimensional determination. One product may be more flexible while the second may be more reliable. One may be faster, while the other may produce superior or more complete results. So figuring out which is technically best is largely a function of which particular requirements you might be trying to meet and/or optimize. With all of that said, the fact that one solution comes from a company with a "do no evil" motto (see the original post), while the other comes from a large, some might say evil, software company, is not a factor I would ever consider when weighing technical superiority. But as several have pointed out in this thread, that simply reflects my own "ideology" which attempts to eliminate emotionally driven reasons from my technical determinations.
Got me. Suggesting that techies should only consider technical excellence in their tool selection is indeed a reflection of my own "agenda" and "world view". You see, I believe you should always choose the best tool for the job, if at all possible. And I don't think you should cloud that selection process with ideology. Am I to assume you believe otherwise? If that is the case, feel free to use inferior tools that rationalize your own "world view", but don't be too surprised when you find yourself losing out to those who are *not* blinded by ideology.
"Also, they make sure to attract the zealots amongst us by being open-source friendly"
There, fixed that for ya.
In actuality, *real* tech savvy people are interested in only one thing - the best search engine. People with an agenda, on the other hand, add other considerations (open source friendliness, "don't be evil" motto, etc.) to their decision criteria. That said, there is no denying Google is the best search engine today by far, and whoever is in second place isn't even close.
And what exactly did that cost you? Probably Real subsidized the video distribution. Would you rather have paid to see the clip? If you are nervous about what Real might do to your machine, then you can use a virtual machine and install the Real player into that. Then after watching the clip, exit the machine without saving state and voila - no harm done. I will say that I have not tried this with Real player so I don't know if it will work in this particular case, but I have used this technique with other applications that I don't want mucking around with my machine.
Hmmm, one wonders if this machine-dependent limitation will have the same effect on the future of books that the 74 minute CDs had on music. I suppose you could vary the font size to squeeze in more content, but beyond what can be gained by that you would probably have to break it up into volumes (like a 2 CD set).
I've read a lot of posts in this thread, and I think you come the closest to nailing the issue. I especially liked your questioning of why someone would pay a premium price for Apple products as I have wondered that myself these many years. I think, however, that everyone is overlooking one very obvious problem with displacing Windows. Joe Consumer goes to Best Buy and sees reams of Windows computers. Then he wanders down the games aisle and sees reams of Windows software and a few Mac-compatible games. He wanders down the "productivity" aisle and sees lots of Windows software and a few expensive Mac apps. Even if Best Buy were to devote half their shelfspace to Linux computers it wouldn't make a difference because there is no pre-packaged software available for Linux. People on this thread talk about apt-get and other such nonsense which is far beyond most non-technical people. Nevermind that it presupposes the end-user has broadband. And even if they did understand it, the selections available are dwarfed by what is available for Windows. It is the classic chicken-and-egg problem. There won't be off-the-shelf packaged software until Linux has a large installed base, and there won't be a large installed base until there is a wide selection of reasonably priced off-the-shelf software.
For what it's worth, I make it a point to try and read both sides of every issue because in my experience the truth usually lies in the middle of the extremes, and it is very hard to discover the truth without at least exposing yourself to the two extreme viewpoints. As an aside, this is why I participate in
Look at the bright side, when MS does upgrade Windows, at least they expend an inordinate effort to provide backwards compatibility so that you aren't forced to upgrade/replace all your applications. There is no denying that backwards compatibility is something the other OS vendors (*cough* Apple) could learn to do a much better job on.
I believe the AV vendors are quite concerned, and rightfully so. As regards your statement that it's all a "marketing battle", you are correct. However, it is the AV vendors waging that battle, trying to convince users they are still necessary. Time will tell.
oops ... "for 3rd party developers", not "and 3rd party developers". Must click preview. Must click preview.
about Microsoft, but this is one thing they have *always* gotten. Providing excellent tools and 3rd party developers has been one of the main reasons they have been so successful over the years. It's nice to see they haven't forgotten that.
Did anybody else notice, late in the call while talking to the female rep, he was extremely close to getting her to understand, but he missed the chance. When he was doing his 1 cent, 100 kilobytes example and she was using a calculator, he said "use the calculator to multiply 1 cent by 100 kilobytes". She then said "OK, so I enter .01 into the calculator". At that point there he should have stopped her and said, "why did you enter .01 when the rate is 1 cent?" He did get her to admit that half a cent is .005, but then he dropped it there. I think she might have figured it out if he'd continued on this line ... ultimately getting her to enter .00002 on the calculator instead of .002 (just like she entered .01 instead of 1, etc). -Sigh- It was painful to listen to, but not terribly surprising. In my mind the root problem is that most people blindly accept whatever the computer is telling them.
And where did I say that it bothers me that everybody wins, which is what you accused me of?
Of course if one were to subscribe to the politics of envy and "fairness", a widening gap sets off alarm bells. But there is *no denying* the poor are much better off now, despite that gap. Admit it, what bothers you is that the rich are getting richer faster than you are. You probably want to tax them into the stone age and spread the money around to your friends and "the poor". There, how do you like it when somebody makes hackneyed assumptions about what you think based on the fact that you express "liberal" opinions?
As is usually the case, the truth is somewhere in the middle - there are indeed high marketing expenses AND there are high develoment expenses. I have a bit of knowledge in this area, having worked in the big pharma clinical trials information management field for awhile. I can tell you that there is a tremendous amount of government mandated paperwork and oversight involved which consumes massive amounts of labor, which, as we know, is very expensive. And many drugs don't actually make it through the approval stage. As an example, Pfizer just dropped a very promising drug in the late stages of development (http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/12/04/torcetrapib. reut/index.html), after many millions have been spent, all for naught.
Regardless, my point holds - new drugs are initially expensive and hence available only to the wealthy or very well insured. Some percentage of these profits (we can debate how much) funds development of future drugs. Patents expire and generics then become cheaply available to the masses.
It seems to me that life expectancy is a really good proxy for standard of living as it encompasses access to better nutrition, better shelter, and better healthcare. Let's see what the numbers tell us then:
White male life expectancy, 1900: 48.2 years
White male life expectancy, 2000: 74.8 years
Non-White male life expectancy, 1900: 32.5 years
Non-White male life expectancy, 2000: 68.3 years
source: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005140.html
A factor of 2 improvement! So much for "pauperization". Perhaps you can explain for those of us not as enlightened as you why may post was a medal-worthy false dichotomy?