1) Probably because nobody but you would have a clue what you were talking about.
2) Also, maybe its just me, but if someone were to talk to me about an AT machine, I'd probably think of the ATs from IBM. (google "IBM AT")
Re:All new 3D Shooters are missing one thing...
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Prey Review
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· Score: 1
Wait, so a feature that you agree is "great" is only for "idiotic players"
When praising its use in a lame/idiotic manner yes.
I also think parking brakes are great feature; they help keep a car from moving when parked, especially on an incline. If somone was spouting about how great they were for getting into skids in school zones and "impressing chicks" I call that idiotic.
I think highbeams are a great feature too. They make driving at night in the rural areas without streetlights safer. However if someone proclaimed how highbeams were cool because you could use them to blind the guy in front of you if they pissed you off I'd call that idiotic too.
I'm really quite surprised anyone would have trouble with this concept.
Or does the submitter not understand the difference between Wireless USB and USB Wireless Networking Adapters?
IMHO PEBKAC:)
For most of us, "wireless usb devices", -are- "usb wireless network adapters". Given the notoriety these things have and the context of the sentence... "one day they'll actually work out of the box..." it seemed pretty clear to me what the submitter meant, to the degree that I didn't even think about WUSB.
I think at this point, "wireless usb", as the "thing that sort of works just like bluetooth" is enough of a niche that most people, including the submitter might not have even heard of it, so its not really fair to accuse them of not understanding the difference between A and B, when they probably never heard of B.
Re:All new 3D Shooters are missing one thing...
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Prey Review
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· Score: 1
Wow, I seem to have touched off some RAGE judging by your POST and the amount of CAPS used.
Not really. I capped around 7 words over 7 paragraphs to emphasise them. That said, I -am- frustrated when I see "hardcore" players point at tedious or lame play styles as being "great features" for casuals. It happens in a lot of games, most particularly mmorpgs, where the "hardcore raid guild" player frequently asserts that the dull, repetitive, lame, and relatively unrewarding content that is available for solo or casual play is a "great feature" for the casual players.
I guess I'm an idiotic player, because I loved that feature in co-op.
Why did you love that feature again?
In your most recent post you claim you loved the feature because it it let you play. It was much better than sitting twiddling your thumbs after dying and/or making your friend commit suicide so you didn't have to sit there bored. From -that- perspective I'd agree its a great feature.
On the other hand, you originally claimed it was a great feature because it could be exploited, where you could just mindlessly do suicide runs to thin the opponents, respawn by your friend, and "lather rinse and repeat". From that perspective I think its an extremely lame feature, for all players, not just "casuals".
So which is it?:)
For my part, I think the former aspect of the feature is excellent, while the latter consequence is regrettable -- perhaps an even better feature would have been to have a percentage of the opponents heal and respawn when you re-spawned after death. This would mostly eliminate "mindless suicide runs" as a viable tactic because it wouldn't actually be very effective at "thinning the opponents", but it still allows both of you to play without long periods of bored thumb-twiddling, or of nagging your friend to hurry up and die...
-cheers,
Re:All new 3D Shooters are missing one thing...
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Prey Review
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Then when the first player dies, he respawns back by the second player. Lather, rinse, repeat until you make it through. For casual gamers this is a great feature!
A "great feature" like that would only be appreciated by idiotic players not casual players.
I don't know what kind of player you are, but suggesting that -any- sort of player would consider a game that encourages them to perform tedious borderline exploit tactics to beat the game a "great feature" isn't thinking straight.
A "great feature" for casual players is multiple difficulty levels so they can play the game at a challenge level that matches their skill. A "great feature" for casual players is the ability to pause and save anywhere so they can leave and go do something else without losing their progress.
Its true that games that allow unlimited saves anywhere DO allow players to respawn crawl through levels, but players rarely ENJOY playing like that, and I can't think of a single person I've ever met who, when they felt "compelled" to respawn crawl, thought it was a "great feature". Every single one of them thought it was a STUPID and UN-FUN way to play the game, and the only reason they did it was that restarting the level over from the beginning over and over and over was deemed even STUPIDER and more UN-FUN.
A game that allows save-anywhere should be designed to discourage the "respawn crawl" playstyle. Seriously, what sort of idiot would WANT to play games like that?
One way of discouraging it is to limit saves per level per session so that you can save if you need to go, but can't save after every room unless you want to quit and re-open the game every couple deaths. Another way is to put a time limit between saves... you can save anytime, anywhere, but once you've saved, you can't save again until either 10 minutes have passed or you cross an auto-save checkpoint. Yet another way is to allow the player to change the difficulty between deaths -- if he's 10 hours into a 15 hour game on "Hard", and he was doing fine, but as he got deeper the game got harder to the point that he's now dying every other room - give him the option to drop the difficulty a notch.
Adding this choice gives the player a more attractive option than the three he's currently faced with: a) restarting the game at a lower difficulty which would be exceedingly boring - to play through the 10 hours you already beat on an -easier- setting (yawn), or b) continue forward banging your head on the wall because you can make virtually no progress at all and you have to keep playing the same part of the same level over and over and over again (double yawn), or using respawn-crawl to inch through, which is both boring AND lame.
Unless that was the FBI's best chance for knowing where he would be at what time.
They have to rely on his scheduled appearances to catch up to him? Y
What was the point of illegally tapping his phone, recording all his internet activty, and monitoring his bank and credit card transactions if they can't even use it to find they guy?
Clearly the administration needs to start implanting RFID tags in all Americans, and visitors. They'll never catch up to the terr'ists if they have to wait until they have scheduled appearances before they can find them.
I for one welcome rfid tag implants. If the government can't find me even with 24x7 monitoring of all my communications and transactions I need to be implanted today to ensure my safety!!
It already exists, its called an SPF record. Its been around for years now and 95% of domains don't have one.
There is also nothing stopping the spammers from using SPF, and they do. In fact, in many surveys the spammers are registering domains and using SPF *more* than legitimate users are. SPF does mitigate some spoofing issues, but that's about it.
On its own its proven worthless. As part of more cohesive anti-spam strategy it might prove to have some value.
Most OS wizards, control panels, etc Most web forms Most business applications (From POS systems to Personal Tax Software) Most utility software Most IO-bound or Net-bound applications.
The amount of code out there that could run at 1/4 speed and make no difference to anybody is quite literally staggering. A vast number of applications are little more than "library/api glue", and the amount of time spent inside the api/libraries or waiting for user interaction frequently vastly dominates the amount of time actually running "the glue".
I agree execution time is important, and I agree many applications that do real "work" and aren't just api glue can benefit from choosing a "faster" language, but I find more often than not the design of the program is more significant than the choice of language -- you have to be doing some moderately serious processing/number crunching for language to really matter. And I think you are massively underestimating the amount of applications that are just api glue.
And do you think issuing edicts ex cathedra on what your user base really needs, without careful evaluation, is the best way to serve their long term interests?
What makes you think there wasn't careful evaluation?
Congrats on having run across so many low-tech businesses where WordPad suffices for 90 % of users. However, I'd suggest you avoid hitching your wagon to them: the ratio and level of knowledge workers in most Western industries can only increase, and for them WordPad and its ilk quickly becomes a straitjacket.
I'm not talking "knowledge workers in cubicles collaborating on documents". Maybe they -do- need office. Maybe there is a business case for them having office. In MANY cases there is, I work with companies on MS-Office that I wouldn't recommend switch.
The 90% of workers I referred to worked for a company that was chain of retail stores. Those workers were retail sales people. They had into the hundreds of computers, 3+ per store, each with office so staff who spent 90% of their time in the POS application could do their timesheets once a week. Along with a handful of word templates for misc correspondance -- fax cover letter, PO for office supplies, etc.
I think you underestimate the number of people using Office like this. These aren't "knowledge workers" creating and colloborating on documents. These are people like travel agents, insurance salesmen, car salesmen, fast food restaurant managers, retail stores, mechanics, plumbers, etc, etc. They use office to write the odd letter, fill out forms/templates sent down from a head office, and so on. That's it.
As for being "wary of hitching my wagon to them", what's there to be wary of? You think the girl selling you pants is going to be outsourced to india? Or perhaps you think she'll be collaborating on a team document after she rings up your sale?
Typically more time is spent running the code than writing it...
That's only relevant if the user is waiting for the code to run.
Consider a "report feature" in many systems. More often than not you are waiting for the database to return the query and then the printer to print it. While it might take 30 seconds to produce the report from start to finish the "code" you wrote only runs for 1 second total, even in a high level interpreted script. Is there really a point to spending 10x the effort to cut the code execution by 70%, and produce the report in 29.3 seconds instead of 30?
Similarly, consider an interactive system, where the software pauses at each step to get input from the user. If the high level scripted system is responding within 0.1 seconds, seemingly instant to the user. Would it be worth spending 10x the effort to develop the system to respond in 0.05 seconds? The end users productivity will be identical; because the bottleneck is the user not the code.
If the business case for switching to OO were that clearcut, you think MS Office would still be around?
Yes. Absolutely. "Nobody ever got fired for recommending Microsoft Office."
I know several business where 90% of the users don't need much more than WordPad who are running MS Office Pro. They only use spreadsheets at all because the "table" layout makes doing certain types of form easier -- they have timesheets, expense sheets, etc that don't even use calculations. They don't use powerpoint or access or even outlook. (they on a corporate webmail)
They DO NOT need a several hundred licenses of MS Office.
But the IT director authorizes Office Pro on every new desktop. There is no business case for it. When I suggested they cut costs and standardise on OO on at least the machines that are being used by low level staff to fill out their time sheet and read office memos I just get a blank stare.
They've never heard of it, don't beleive that it could possibly meet their needs (which they've clearly never actually assessed), and they have ZERO intention of even looking into it. Worse they've been gradually growing, and new machines come with new office the old machines have "old office".. so they are supporting users with every version office since 95.
Its sad.
FWIW I *have* converted a couple companies to OO, and the most recent was done as part of a general upgrade. We pulled out boxes with Win98 and Office 98 and dropped in new XP Pro boxes with OO. We set the defaults to use office formats so there would be minimal transition issues. Most staff aren't even really aware they aren't using Microsoft Office anymore -- which is unfortunate really, because its not doing OO much good if people don't even know they are using it.
I've also recommended OO to a many Home users. For the most part they are happy with it, and it works well enough that they actually prefer the "legality" of it even if its not 100% what they are used to.
Access actually has a number of uses in the business world, and even the enterprise.
Even in larger businesses, where a major enterprise database/system would NEVER be written in "access" its not uncommon for a little access app to be written as a custom front end to some aspect of an mssql server database. In fact that's one of access' strenths, its actually a pretty good RAD (rapid application development) tool for building simple UI front ends for larger databases. And since Access is bundled with Office Pro its basically "free" in this environment.
If you could just stick to some guidelines strictly, you will be safe against any virus, not just old and new ones. And yes, for free (as in beer) too.
In other words... "If you could just stop being a fallible human being indefinately..."
In other words, you are right, but the conditions you require are unattainable so its not a terribly useful solution.
If his PCs bugger up he wastes maybe an hour or two recovering the system from a complete backup and goes about his business,...
Not necessarily.
With the right kind of malware afflicting his system, he won't be spending 1-2 hours recovering from a complete backup. He'll have to either reinstall from scratch or revert to a very old backup image and then scavenge his backup(s) for usable files and documents, and even may have to give up on several files and recreate them from scratch. He could lose weeks or much more. Is it unlikely? Hell yeah. But then... so is my house burning down.
"Good" Malware doesn't bring your system down hard right away, so that you can simply restore it from a recent clean image. It corrupts data over time so your backups are corrupt too. And then restoring it is a *much* bigger hassle, and depending on your backup strategy you might have lost stuff too.
I'm not saying AV will necessarily save you, but it might give you an earlier warning than you might otherwise have had. The right backup strategy will save your data, but those strategies are tend to be tedious, cumbersome, and complex, especially for home users. And restoring will still be a PITA. Fortunately most malware just wants to annoy you with advertising, or use your computer to launch further attacks on someone else.
But there are virii that are designed to maliciously cause damage to the systems they are on, or steal your identity/ or harvest 'valuable' data from your PC. Backups won't help much against these kinds of malware. In the former, the backups are themselves likely to be corrupt, and in the latter the real damage cannot simply be undone by restoring from backups -- that won't get your 'stolen' data back.
It's a year later and, other than my systems running almost twice as fast and having a lot fewer weird hangups and crashes, I have not had a single problem.
I cancelled the insurance on my home. One year later other than saving $550 I have not had a single problem. I wasn't robbed, it didn't burn down, and no hurricanes, floods, or earthquakes hit me either...
Just because the "worst" didn't happen, doesn't mean it won't.
Plus what is the "worst"? Its ill-defined. In my opinion its *not* a virus/spyware that pops up 400 popups and makes your computer an unusable steaming turd. Its the virus that installs a rootkit and remote control software, and adds your PC to a zombie spam network, and/or sets it up as "free ftp space" for child porn. All this after scanning your PC for passwords, financial records (the save files from tax software, credit card information, etc etc...), and installs a keylogger. And then it runs like this for 6 months without you knowing about it.
Then you get a low disc space warning and that's when you find the hidden folder full of child pornography you've been serving up for the last year.
I'm not saying Norton's software is better than garbage. I too think its over rated, over priced crap. But sadly, installing nothing and doing regular backups is far less protection than you might think.
I recall one virus in particular that periodically would randomly pick a file and rewrite a few dozen bytes in it in some random place. In theory it could run for months without getting detected. Gradually your doucments would become corrupt, or applications would start having issues until finally it would hit something critical and your pc would fail. Restoring from backups was worthless because this thing had been damaging files for ages, and your backups were full of damaged files.
For what its worth, I tend to agree that "real-time" protection is over-rated, 0-day exploits and so one will continue to get through, but frequent full system scans with the latest definitions are a good idea.
and would like to start with 1GB of ram on one chip, so that I can upgrade to 2GB down the road easily
Just to clarify, by down the road, I mean pretty much when it arrives, especially if there is a significant performance issue running on an unmatched pair.
I'd order it with 2GB except that apple charges stupid amounts of cash for that. I'd order it with 1GB on one stick... except that I can't. I'd love to order it empty, but of course that's not an option either. So like you I'd have to order it with 2x256 and then discard them, and i'm annoyed by the waste of money.
Well, I actually do want the option of dual booting windows and playing a couple games.
And longer term, because I believe the radeon will extend the useful life of the unit a lot longer.
and at that point, why bother buying a mac?
Because I like OSX more than windows. I'm not sure why you'd argue dual booting to windows for a game or two should indicate that I just stay in windows all the time and buy a PC.
So, if it's AppleEasy to swap RAM and HD from somewhere else, why whine about it?
I was using the RAM and HD as examples of the absurdity of apple's pricing for "upgrades" from the base model. RAM and HD are easy to measure because they are so easy to DIY, and you can really effectively compare prices.
My real frustration stems from the fact that I have to pay ~$1500 more than the base macbook (and upgrade to the mid level powerbook) to get the graphics card I want. But I don't want a powerbook. I don't want the larger screen, faster cpu, expresscard slot, etc.
I really just want a 13" macbook with a 1.8GHz core duo, super drive, and a decent graphics card.
Those upgrades are worth 250, 300, maybe even 350... but $1500? Get freaking real.
Sure the extra $1500 gets me into a macbook pro and buys me more than just the superdrive and radeon, but I couldn't care less about the other stuff. It has no value to me. And frankly I don't want to spend $2500+ for a laptop when I only need a laptop worth less than $1500.
I think a lot of people are in the same boat. All they want and need a basic macbook, but know the GMA950 isn't going to satisfy them but the premium to get into a pro is ridiculous. And so they buy nothing, and whine.:)
It's so easy to install new RAM on the MacBook anyways, why would you ever pay Apple to do it for you?
Because they won't ship it without RAM. So if I'm going to be paying for them to preinstall ram anyways, it would be nice if they'd at least support a configuration that wasn't going to get yanked the day I take it out of the box.
Apple only sell matched memory in the MacBooks because of the integrated graphics.
Ah, I see, that makes some sense I guess.
Of course, I'd ultimately like 2GB; I just think Apple's price to have that preinstalled to be stupidly overpriced. I mean, 1GB of DDR2 PC2-4200 SODIMM RAM can be had easily for under $120 bucks. Why should I pay $500 to upgrade from 2x256MB chips to 2x1GB chips when you can buy 2x1GB chips outright at retail for under $250.
Ideally I'd like to buy a MacBook with no ram at all so that instead of paying their stupid prices for even one stick of ram I'd have apple knock 100 off the price, and then just put 2GB in myself. Of course that'll never happen, which is why I'd like to have apple pre-load with 1GB on 1 stick so that I only have to pay exorbant prices for half the ram instead of all of it.
Once you roll the "experience" factor in, I would say most Macs are in fact not overpriced. (no defence for the MacBook Pros, they are still quite expensive)
The real issue with Mac Pricing, is the "premium" on the premium versions. Frankly I think the base MacBook and MacBook pro aren't too badly priced. But the jumps for the models up, and lack of customization is baffling.
e.g. I'd like a base macbook with a superdrive, except that I can't. Superdrive is not an option on the base. So I have to move up to the middle model. $200 bucks to move from a combo drive to a superdrive? (Sure it comes with a slight cpu bump, but I don't care about that.)
and the next model up from that? Another $200 for what? 20 mor GB of HD! Ridiculous!! (Oh and its black plastic)
Worse, I'd like to potentially run parallels on it, and would like to start with 1GB of ram on one chip, so that I can upgrade to 2GB down the road easily. Nope can't do it. I have to shell out $500 bucks for 2GB RAM. (Which is itself ridiculous for RAM)
Why isn't 1GB of RAM on one chip an option? (It is with the MacBook Pros, using the same CPUs!!)
Ditto the HD upgrades... $250 for 120GB to upgrade from a $60. That is again, ridiculous. You can get a 60 for ~110, and 120 for around ~200. So the upgrade should cost around ~100, why am I being asked to fork out $250?
The base model at 1100 is pretty decent, but to put in the big HD, 2GB of ram, and a superdrive will run another:
$500 to upgrade to 2GB RAM $250 to upgrade to 120GB HD $2oo to upgrade to model with Superdrive ---- $950 bucks
That's easily double what those upgrades are worth.
Am I alone in not being attracted by all these bells and whistles phones have these days? I want a phone to be a phone
So buy one of the phones without bells and whistles then. PDA phones are an electronics swiss army knife. But if all you want is a butter knife, just buy a butter knife and stop complaining every time someone comes out with a new and better swiss army knife.
I already have a digital camera to take pictures, and a music player to play music. Why try to cram all these features into a mobile phone, which just complicates the user interface and adds cost?
Because its both cheaper and more convenient than carrying 3 separate devices? The built in camera might not be as good as your digital, but if you just need to make sure you are picking up the right gift taking a photo with your phone and sending it to your wife so she can just look at it is far easier than spending 20 minutes trying to describe it over the phone. Even if you had your digital camera with you when shopping (unlikely) it would do you no good.
Bundling these devices with your phone allows you to make use of the network. You can buy songs online where-ever you are. You can take and send pictures immediately. This has value. Granted the networks are currently grossly overcharging for these services, but long term, this is going to be both affordable and normal, and even today, its highly convenient in some cases.
That is called a typewriter, and may I say, that they do a find job at that.
So? They have entry level base model phones that don't have camera or music players. They are cheap too... selection is limited, but then have you tried to buy a typewriter lately, selection there is limited too.
This reminds me of the time I wanted to try the Gillette Mach 100 razor and then had to have a skin graft to fix my face.
Gillette is already up to 6. 100 may seem a long way off, but I really couldn't see the reason for more than 2. They've already far exceeded my expectations, (and far exceeded my judgement of usefulness...although its ironic that 5 is so cumbersome for fine details that they had to add another 1 on the flip side to fix it.)
More isn't always better, but in this case I think there may be an exception.
Maybe, maybe not. If the cpus are all starved (and waiting) for memory, the main problem for general multi-cpu setups, then doubling the number of cores will just starve them further.
Slashdot Mirror
why not call them "AT machines"?
1) Probably because nobody but you would have a clue what you were talking about.
2) Also, maybe its just me, but if someone were to talk to me about an AT machine, I'd probably think of the ATs from IBM. (google "IBM AT")
Wait, so a feature that you agree is "great" is only for "idiotic players"
When praising its use in a lame/idiotic manner yes.
I also think parking brakes are great feature; they help keep a car from moving when parked, especially on an incline. If somone was spouting about how great they were for getting into skids in school zones and "impressing chicks" I call that idiotic.
I think highbeams are a great feature too. They make driving at night in the rural areas without streetlights safer. However if someone proclaimed how highbeams were cool because you could use them to blind the guy in front of you if they pissed you off I'd call that idiotic too.
I'm really quite surprised anyone would have trouble with this concept.
Or does the submitter not understand the difference between Wireless USB and USB Wireless Networking Adapters?
:)
IMHO PEBKAC
For most of us, "wireless usb devices", -are- "usb wireless network adapters". Given the notoriety these things have and the context of the sentence... "one day they'll actually work out of the box..." it seemed pretty clear to me what the submitter meant, to the degree that I didn't even think about WUSB.
I think at this point, "wireless usb", as the "thing that sort of works just like bluetooth" is enough of a niche that most people, including the submitter might not have even heard of it, so its not really fair to accuse them of not understanding the difference between A and B, when they probably never heard of B.
Wow, I seem to have touched off some RAGE judging by your POST and the amount of CAPS used.
:)
Not really. I capped around 7 words over 7 paragraphs to emphasise them. That said, I -am- frustrated when I see "hardcore" players point at tedious or lame play styles as being "great features" for casuals. It happens in a lot of games, most particularly mmorpgs, where the "hardcore raid guild" player frequently asserts that the dull, repetitive, lame, and relatively unrewarding content that is available for solo or casual play is a "great feature" for the casual players.
I guess I'm an idiotic player, because I loved that feature in co-op.
Why did you love that feature again?
In your most recent post you claim you loved the feature because it it let you play. It was much better than sitting twiddling your thumbs after dying and/or making your friend commit suicide so you didn't have to sit there bored. From -that- perspective I'd agree its a great feature.
On the other hand, you originally claimed it was a great feature because it could be exploited, where you could just mindlessly do suicide runs to thin the opponents, respawn by your friend, and "lather rinse and repeat". From that perspective I think its an extremely lame feature, for all players, not just "casuals".
So which is it?
For my part, I think the former aspect of the feature is excellent, while the latter consequence is regrettable -- perhaps an even better feature would have been to have a percentage of the opponents heal and respawn when you re-spawned after death. This would mostly eliminate "mindless suicide runs" as a viable tactic because it wouldn't actually be very effective at "thinning the opponents", but it still allows both of you to play without long periods of bored thumb-twiddling, or of nagging your friend to hurry up and die...
-cheers,
Then when the first player dies, he respawns back by the second player. Lather, rinse, repeat until you make it through. For casual gamers this is a great feature!
A "great feature" like that would only be appreciated by idiotic players not casual players.
I don't know what kind of player you are, but suggesting that -any- sort of player would consider a game that encourages them to perform tedious borderline exploit tactics to beat the game a "great feature" isn't thinking straight.
A "great feature" for casual players is multiple difficulty levels so they can play the game at a challenge level that matches their skill. A "great feature" for casual players is the ability to pause and save anywhere so they can leave and go do something else without losing their progress.
Its true that games that allow unlimited saves anywhere DO allow players to respawn crawl through levels, but players rarely ENJOY playing like that, and I can't think of a single person I've ever met who, when they felt "compelled" to respawn crawl, thought it was a "great feature". Every single one of them thought it was a STUPID and UN-FUN way to play the game, and the only reason they did it was that restarting the level over from the beginning over and over and over was deemed even STUPIDER and more UN-FUN.
A game that allows save-anywhere should be designed to discourage the "respawn crawl" playstyle. Seriously, what sort of idiot would WANT to play games like that?
One way of discouraging it is to limit saves per level per session so that you can save if you need to go, but can't save after every room unless you want to quit and re-open the game every couple deaths. Another way is to put a time limit between saves... you can save anytime, anywhere, but once you've saved, you can't save again until either 10 minutes have passed or you cross an auto-save checkpoint. Yet another way is to allow the player to change the difficulty between deaths -- if he's 10 hours into a 15 hour game on "Hard", and he was doing fine, but as he got deeper the game got harder to the point that he's now dying every other room - give him the option to drop the difficulty a notch.
Adding this choice gives the player a more attractive option than the three he's currently faced with: a) restarting the game at a lower difficulty which would be exceedingly boring - to play through the 10 hours you already beat on an -easier- setting (yawn), or b) continue forward banging your head on the wall because you can make virtually no progress at all and you have to keep playing the same part of the same level over and over and over again (double yawn), or using respawn-crawl to inch through, which is both boring AND lame.
Unless that was the FBI's best chance for knowing where he would be at what time.
:D
They have to rely on his scheduled appearances to catch up to him? Y
What was the point of illegally tapping his phone, recording all his internet activty, and monitoring his bank and credit card transactions if they can't even use it to find they guy?
Clearly the administration needs to start implanting RFID tags in all Americans, and visitors. They'll never catch up to the terr'ists if they have to wait until they have scheduled appearances before they can find them.
I for one welcome rfid tag implants. If the government can't find me even with 24x7 monitoring of all my communications and transactions I need to be implanted today to ensure my safety!!
No child left behind!!
USA! USA!
It already exists, its called an SPF record. Its been around for years now and 95% of domains don't have one.
There is also nothing stopping the spammers from using SPF, and they do. In fact, in many surveys the spammers are registering domains and using SPF *more* than legitimate users are. SPF does mitigate some spoofing issues, but that's about it.
On its own its proven worthless. As part of more cohesive anti-spam strategy it might prove to have some value.
Yeah. How often does that happen?
More often than you evidently think.
Most OS wizards, control panels, etc
Most web forms
Most business applications (From POS systems to Personal Tax Software)
Most utility software
Most IO-bound or Net-bound applications.
The amount of code out there that could run at 1/4 speed and make no difference to anybody is quite literally staggering. A vast number of applications are little more than "library/api glue", and the amount of time spent inside the api/libraries or waiting for user interaction frequently vastly dominates the amount of time actually running "the glue".
I agree execution time is important, and I agree many applications that do real "work" and aren't just api glue can benefit from choosing a "faster" language, but I find more often than not the design of the program is more significant than the choice of language -- you have to be doing some moderately serious processing/number crunching for language to really matter. And I think you are massively underestimating the amount of applications that are just api glue.
And do you think issuing edicts ex cathedra on what your user base really needs, without careful evaluation, is the best way to serve their long term interests?
What makes you think there wasn't careful evaluation?
Congrats on having run across so many low-tech businesses where WordPad suffices for 90 % of users. However, I'd suggest you avoid hitching your wagon to them: the ratio and level of knowledge workers in most Western industries can only increase, and for them WordPad and its ilk quickly becomes a straitjacket.
I'm not talking "knowledge workers in cubicles collaborating on documents". Maybe they -do- need office. Maybe there is a business case for them having office. In MANY cases there is, I work with companies on MS-Office that I wouldn't recommend switch.
The 90% of workers I referred to worked for a company that was chain of retail stores. Those workers were retail sales people. They had into the hundreds of computers, 3+ per store, each with office so staff who spent 90% of their time in the POS application could do their timesheets once a week. Along with a handful of word templates for misc correspondance -- fax cover letter, PO for office supplies, etc.
I think you underestimate the number of people using Office like this. These aren't "knowledge workers" creating and colloborating on documents. These are people like travel agents, insurance salesmen, car salesmen, fast food restaurant managers, retail stores, mechanics, plumbers, etc, etc. They use office to write the odd letter, fill out forms/templates sent down from a head office, and so on. That's it.
As for being "wary of hitching my wagon to them", what's there to be wary of? You think the girl selling you pants is going to be outsourced to india? Or perhaps you think she'll be collaborating on a team document after she rings up your sale?
Typically more time is spent running the code than writing it...
That's only relevant if the user is waiting for the code to run.
Consider a "report feature" in many systems. More often than not you are waiting for the database to return the query and then the printer to print it. While it might take 30 seconds to produce the report from start to finish the "code" you wrote only runs for 1 second total, even in a high level interpreted script. Is there really a point to spending 10x the effort to cut the code execution by 70%, and produce the report in 29.3 seconds instead of 30?
Similarly, consider an interactive system, where the software pauses at each step to get input from the user. If the high level scripted system is responding within 0.1 seconds, seemingly instant to the user. Would it be worth spending 10x the effort to develop the system to respond in 0.05 seconds? The end users productivity will be identical; because the bottleneck is the user not the code.
If the business case for switching to OO were that clearcut, you think MS Office would still be around?
Yes. Absolutely. "Nobody ever got fired for recommending Microsoft Office."
I know several business where 90% of the users don't need much more than WordPad who are running MS Office Pro. They only use spreadsheets at all because the "table" layout makes doing certain types of form easier -- they have timesheets, expense sheets, etc that don't even use calculations. They don't use powerpoint or access or even outlook. (they on a corporate webmail)
They DO NOT need a several hundred licenses of MS Office.
But the IT director authorizes Office Pro on every new desktop. There is no business case for it. When I suggested they cut costs and standardise on OO on at least the machines that are being used by low level staff to fill out their time sheet and read office memos I just get a blank stare.
They've never heard of it, don't beleive that it could possibly meet their needs (which they've clearly never actually assessed), and they have ZERO intention of even looking into it. Worse they've been gradually growing, and new machines come with new office the old machines have "old office".. so they are supporting users with every version office since 95.
Its sad.
FWIW I *have* converted a couple companies to OO, and the most recent was done as part of a general upgrade. We pulled out boxes with Win98 and Office 98 and dropped in new XP Pro boxes with OO. We set the defaults to use office formats so there would be minimal transition issues. Most staff aren't even really aware they aren't using Microsoft Office anymore -- which is unfortunate really, because its not doing OO much good if people don't even know they are using it.
I've also recommended OO to a many Home users. For the most part they are happy with it, and it works well enough that they actually prefer the "legality" of it even if its not 100% what they are used to.
Access actually has a number of uses in the business world, and even the enterprise.
Even in larger businesses, where a major enterprise database/system would NEVER be written in "access" its not uncommon for a little access app to be written as a custom front end to some aspect of an mssql server database. In fact that's one of access' strenths, its actually a pretty good RAD (rapid application development) tool for building simple UI front ends for larger databases. And since Access is bundled with Office Pro its basically "free" in this environment.
If you could just stick to some guidelines strictly, you will be safe against any virus, not just old and new ones. And yes, for free (as in beer) too.
... "If you could just stop being a fallible human being indefinately..."
In other words
In other words, you are right, but the conditions you require are unattainable so its not a terribly useful solution.
If his PCs bugger up he wastes maybe an hour or two recovering the system from a complete backup and goes about his business,...
Not necessarily.
With the right kind of malware afflicting his system, he won't be spending 1-2 hours recovering from a complete backup. He'll have to either reinstall from scratch or revert to a very old backup image and then scavenge his backup(s) for usable files and documents, and even may have to give up on several files and recreate them from scratch. He could lose weeks or much more. Is it unlikely? Hell yeah. But then... so is my house burning down.
"Good" Malware doesn't bring your system down hard right away, so that you can simply restore it from a recent clean image. It corrupts data over time so your backups are corrupt too. And then restoring it is a *much* bigger hassle, and depending on your backup strategy you might have lost stuff too.
I'm not saying AV will necessarily save you, but it might give you an earlier warning than you might otherwise have had. The right backup strategy will save your data, but those strategies are tend to be tedious, cumbersome, and complex, especially for home users. And restoring will still be a PITA. Fortunately most malware just wants to annoy you with advertising, or use your computer to launch further attacks on someone else.
But there are virii that are designed to maliciously cause damage to the systems they are on, or steal your identity/ or harvest 'valuable' data from your PC. Backups won't help much against these kinds of malware. In the former, the backups are themselves likely to be corrupt, and in the latter the real damage cannot simply be undone by restoring from backups -- that won't get your 'stolen' data back.
Your argument is specious.
I'd say that depends largely on which virus scanner you end up choosing.
Kapersky was noted as having a 90% hit rate, for example.
It's a year later and, other than my systems running almost twice as fast and having a lot fewer weird hangups and crashes, I have not had a single problem.
I cancelled the insurance on my home. One year later other than saving $550 I have not had a single problem. I wasn't robbed, it didn't burn down, and no hurricanes, floods, or earthquakes hit me either...
Just because the "worst" didn't happen, doesn't mean it won't.
Plus what is the "worst"? Its ill-defined. In my opinion its *not* a virus/spyware that pops up 400 popups and makes your computer an unusable steaming turd. Its the virus that installs a rootkit and remote control software, and adds your PC to a zombie spam network, and/or sets it up as "free ftp space" for child porn. All this after scanning your PC for passwords, financial records (the save files from tax software, credit card information, etc etc...), and installs a keylogger. And then it runs like this for 6 months without you knowing about it.
Then you get a low disc space warning and that's when you find the hidden folder full of child pornography you've been serving up for the last year.
I'm not saying Norton's software is better than garbage. I too think its over rated, over priced crap. But sadly, installing nothing and doing regular backups is far less protection than you might think.
I recall one virus in particular that periodically would randomly pick a file and rewrite a few dozen bytes in it in some random place. In theory it could run for months without getting detected. Gradually your doucments would become corrupt, or applications would start having issues until finally it would hit something critical and your pc would fail. Restoring from backups was worthless because this thing had been damaging files for ages, and your backups were full of damaged files.
For what its worth, I tend to agree that "real-time" protection is over-rated, 0-day exploits and so one will continue to get through, but frequent full system scans with the latest definitions are a good idea.
and would like to start with 1GB of ram on one chip, so that I can upgrade to 2GB down the road easily
Just to clarify, by down the road, I mean pretty much when it arrives, especially if there is a significant performance issue running on an unmatched pair.
I'd order it with 2GB except that apple charges stupid amounts of cash for that.
I'd order it with 1GB on one stick... except that I can't.
I'd love to order it empty, but of course that's not an option either.
So like you I'd have to order it with 2x256 and then discard them, and i'm annoyed by the waste of money.
I'm curious. What do you need the radeon for?
Well, I actually do want the option of dual booting windows and playing a couple games.
And longer term, because I believe the radeon will extend the useful life of the unit a lot longer.
and at that point, why bother buying a mac?
Because I like OSX more than windows. I'm not sure why you'd argue dual booting to windows for a game or two should indicate that I just stay in windows all the time and buy a PC.
So, if it's AppleEasy to swap RAM and HD from somewhere else, why whine about it?
:)
I was using the RAM and HD as examples of the absurdity of apple's pricing for "upgrades" from the base model. RAM and HD are easy to measure because they are so easy to DIY, and you can really effectively compare prices.
My real frustration stems from the fact that I have to pay ~$1500 more than the base macbook (and upgrade to the mid level powerbook) to get the graphics card I want. But I don't want a powerbook. I don't want the larger screen, faster cpu, expresscard slot, etc.
I really just want a 13" macbook with a 1.8GHz core duo, super drive, and a decent graphics card.
Those upgrades are worth 250, 300, maybe even 350... but $1500? Get freaking real.
Sure the extra $1500 gets me into a macbook pro and buys me more than just the superdrive and radeon, but I couldn't care less about the other stuff. It has no value to me. And frankly I don't want to spend $2500+ for a laptop when I only need a laptop worth less than $1500.
I think a lot of people are in the same boat. All they want and need a basic macbook, but know the GMA950 isn't going to satisfy them but the premium to get into a pro is ridiculous. And so they buy nothing, and whine.
It's so easy to install new RAM on the MacBook anyways, why would you ever pay Apple to do it for you?
Because they won't ship it without RAM. So if I'm going to be paying for them to preinstall ram anyways, it would be nice if they'd at least support a configuration that wasn't going to get yanked the day I take it out of the box.
Apple only sell matched memory in the MacBooks because of the integrated graphics.
Ah, I see, that makes some sense I guess.
Of course, I'd ultimately like 2GB; I just think Apple's price to have that preinstalled to be stupidly overpriced. I mean, 1GB of DDR2 PC2-4200 SODIMM RAM can be had easily for under $120 bucks. Why should I pay $500 to upgrade from 2x256MB chips to 2x1GB chips when you can buy 2x1GB chips outright at retail for under $250.
Ideally I'd like to buy a MacBook with no ram at all so that instead of paying their stupid prices for even one stick of ram I'd have apple knock 100 off the price, and then just put 2GB in myself. Of course that'll never happen, which is why I'd like to have apple pre-load with 1GB on 1 stick so that I only have to pay exorbant prices for half the ram instead of all of it.
Once you roll the "experience" factor in, I would say most Macs are in fact not overpriced. (no defence for the MacBook Pros, they are still quite expensive)
The real issue with Mac Pricing, is the "premium" on the premium versions. Frankly I think the base MacBook and MacBook pro aren't too badly priced. But the jumps for the models up, and lack of customization is baffling.
e.g. I'd like a base macbook with a superdrive, except that I can't. Superdrive is not an option on the base. So I have to move up to the middle model. $200 bucks to move from a combo drive to a superdrive? (Sure it comes with a slight cpu bump, but I don't care about that.)
and the next model up from that? Another $200 for what? 20 mor GB of HD! Ridiculous!! (Oh and its black plastic)
Worse, I'd like to potentially run parallels on it, and would like to start with 1GB of ram on one chip, so that I can upgrade to 2GB down the road easily. Nope can't do it. I have to shell out $500 bucks for 2GB RAM. (Which is itself ridiculous for RAM)
Why isn't 1GB of RAM on one chip an option? (It is with the MacBook Pros, using the same CPUs!!)
Ditto the HD upgrades... $250 for 120GB to upgrade from a $60. That is again, ridiculous. You can get a 60 for ~110, and 120 for around ~200. So the upgrade should cost around ~100, why am I being asked to fork out $250?
The base model at 1100 is pretty decent, but to put in the big HD, 2GB of ram, and a superdrive will run another:
$500 to upgrade to 2GB RAM
$250 to upgrade to 120GB HD
$2oo to upgrade to model with Superdrive
----
$950 bucks
That's easily double what those upgrades are worth.
Am I alone in not being attracted by all these bells and whistles phones have these days? I want a phone to be a phone
So buy one of the phones without bells and whistles then. PDA phones are an electronics swiss army knife. But if all you want is a butter knife, just buy a butter knife and stop complaining every time someone comes out with a new and better swiss army knife.
I already have a digital camera to take pictures, and a music player to play music. Why try to cram all these features into a mobile phone, which just complicates the user interface and adds cost?
Because its both cheaper and more convenient than carrying 3 separate devices? The built in camera might not be as good as your digital, but if you just need to make sure you are picking up the right gift taking a photo with your phone and sending it to your wife so she can just look at it is far easier than spending 20 minutes trying to describe it over the phone. Even if you had your digital camera with you when shopping (unlikely) it would do you no good.
Bundling these devices with your phone allows you to make use of the network. You can buy songs online where-ever you are. You can take and send pictures immediately. This has value. Granted the networks are currently grossly overcharging for these services, but long term, this is going to be both affordable and normal, and even today, its highly convenient in some cases.
That is called a typewriter, and may I say, that they do a find job at that.
So? They have entry level base model phones that don't have camera or music players. They are cheap too... selection is limited, but then have you tried to buy a typewriter lately, selection there is limited too.
This reminds me of the time I wanted to try the Gillette Mach 100 razor and then had to have a skin graft to fix my face.
Gillette is already up to 6. 100 may seem a long way off, but I really couldn't see the reason for more than 2. They've already far exceeded my expectations, (and far exceeded my judgement of usefulness...although its ironic that 5 is so cumbersome for fine details that they had to add another 1 on the flip side to fix it.)
More isn't always better, but in this case I think there may be an exception.
Maybe, maybe not. If the cpus are all starved (and waiting) for memory, the main problem for general multi-cpu setups, then doubling the number of cores will just starve them further.