I think your attempt to categorize windows users as ignorant rubes who would choose differently if only they were as wise as you is pretty insulting to them,
That isn't what I said at all. I said that most people don't know or don't care enough about computers or operating systems to change, even if they're aware of the options, which most are not. But if you really want to put those words in my mouth, fine. I think most Windows users are fundamentally ignorant about computers and operating systems. That's because most people don't give a damn. It's why they use whatever came with the computer, including all the pre-installed OEM crapware. They don't know better because they're ignorant. They don't care because they're apathetic about computers beyond "I need this thing to do my job."
There's nothing necessarily wrong with that. I don't expect them to be computer experts and I understand most people are not enthusiastic enough about computers to really care what OS they have. But you seem to think the majority of people are really technically astute enough to know their options and weigh their choices. Most people aren't.
But for reasons I can't quite fathom, you seem to actually believe that:
The general public is pretty knowledgable about computers
They also care about their operating system
Given the above, they carefully deliberate their choices and most conclude Windows is ideal for them, based on rational, technical, and economic factors.
Whereas I believe:
The general public is pretty ignorant about computers
They also don't give a damn what operating system they use, so they use Windows, since that's what was there
There is a minority of people who want the latest and greatest of everything, or just think they need "an upgrade"
Those people tend to buy retail Windows because they "already know Windows", and fear change, not because of any rational, technical, or economic factors.
Another way to look at it would be the fanboy factor. Linux and Mac zealots abound, and will not hesitate to tell you how awesome their choice is. Those are people who weighed options and made a concious, deliberate decision to use something other than Windows. Of all the millions and millions of people using Windows day in and day out, what percentage of them would you say are really excited about it?
my point is that there is some clear value differentiation between what windows does and what competing products do; otherwise windows wouldn't be in the position that it is in.
Now then, do you honestly beleive that __nobody__ anywhere has carefully evaluated their options and decided that buying windows represents the best value?
Windows is in the position it's in because of a lot of Microsoft tactics, the most obvious of which is getting OEMs to ship with Windows pre-installed, either through bribery, kickbacks, or getting other companies to eat the cost by bunding their crapware alongside it. The vast majority of users out there are clueless and simply use whatever came with the computer, which is Windows. Microsoft happened to be in the right place at the right time; there was no big consensus among the public that Windows offers what they want. Back in the day there was very little competition anyway.
I am not suggesting that there isn't some small number of people who have evaluated their options and concluded that Windows is the best. But I think it's fairly obvious that such people represent a tiny minority. You were talking about "the world", meaning the public at large. The truth is the public at large just uses whatever is installed on the computer at the time of purchase. They have not, do not, and will not evaluate anything.
More people buy boxed retail copies of windows, not attached to any computer, than do acquire mac OS X or any version of Linux via any delivery mechanism combined.
Perhaps so, but this says very little about the price value of Windows or its utility or efficiency as a desktop platform. Rather, it speaks volumes to user apathy ("I already know Windows"), fear ("My programs won't work on anything but Windows!"), ignorance ("Windows is the computer"), and other psychological factors.
You can argue that these mental states, taken as a whole, add up to perceived value of Windows in the eyes of the user, and there may be some merit to that notion, but it certainly does not mean that Joe User carefully considered his options and chose Windows. It just means he's used to Windows, along with all its failings and quirks, and doesn't want to bother trying something else. The user thinks "the devil you know is better than the devil you don't," -- he does not think "Windows seems superior to Linux or OS X to me."
And all miss certain desktop scenarios that windows nails, which is why everyone on the planet hasn't simultaneously said "OMG -- why do i keep paying money for windows when *nix does EVERYTHING I NEED EXACTLY THE WAY I WANT"
That's kind of a foolish statement. Windows doesn't do things the way people want either, which is why the average user can emit an impressive stream of complaints about their computer if you let on that you're in any IT-related field. The reason people don't switch is a combination of some or all of these factors:
They don't know there are options. Some are aware that there are Macs, and a few have vaguely heard of this Linux thing, but they don't really know what either one is.
Windows "came with the computer" so that's what they use. Much like people who continue using whatever crap-ass stereo came with the car. It's "good enough" to them, and there's no pressing reason to switch as far as they are concerned.
Of those that are aware of options, they're scared about "compatibility". In an era of Firefox, Openoffice, and practically everything users do being web-based, this is rather silly, but they don't realise that and no one bothers educating them. Their views are often reinforced by those around them who also don't know any better.
Familiarity. Most users flip out if you so much as move their desktop icons around, because they don't really know how to use a computer or even figure out menus and such. They do what they do through rote memorisation of where shortcuts are located. Ergo, even if (say) the Gnome desktop is vastly superior to anything Microsoft has ever offered (and I believe it is), it's not what they're used to and people hate that.
The idea that the operating system on your computer -- the thing that actually lets it do useful things -- isn't worth dinner for 2 at a national-chain resturant (your $30 figure) is completely hillarious. You honestly would rather forego the last 30 years of personal computer history and instead have 1 dinner for two?
What are you talking about? Linux and others have been around forever. In the past five years or so Linux, particularly desktop-focussed distros like Ubuntu, have gotten to the point where you could give one to Your Mom and she'd be able to install it. These are free operating systems. They're also completely gratis. There's no law that says an OS has to cost money, and there's not that much support in the history books for such a notion either.
You say that for you, an OS is worth about a hundred dollars. That's fine, but understand that's your perception of value, something about which you just finished lecturing that other guy. Neither history nor economics support the idea that an OS must have a pricetag.
Finally,
I think it's fair to guess that most people paying for windows figure it is worth 75% or more [to them] of what they're paying for it.
That's patently absurd. Most people don't realise they're paying for Windows at all. Remember, to them, "it came with the computer". To an extent they are paying very little for it since OEMs subsidise the cost with the idiotic crapware they also pre-install. But the point is that most people do not go out and buy a Windows disc. They use whatever the hell is on the computer and give zero thought to the price or value of the OS.
A more realistic scenario would be to talk to a real user. You know, that nice lady next door who has been pulling her hair out for the past two weeks because Windows has getting less and less stable. At first it was just throwing Dr Watson stuff in her face she didn't understand. Then Explorer would crash practically every time she booted the thing and she's had to learn to reboot seven or eight times before it would come up and stay. Then McAffee started throwing a hissy fit, often crashing and taking down Windows with it. IE is taking forever to open and half the time, when sh
I think part of the difference is that most people just say "webcam" for all the other products. Anyone who constantly said "Lifecam" instead would get weird looks. But because it's an APPLE product people actually refer to it as "iSight" and take that seriously. It's bizarre.
Other examples of this mentality:
If talking about a Dell, HP, IBM, Acer, or any other type of laptop, most people just say "laptop". "Hey, grab your laptop and get over here," or "I hear Jane got a new laptop."
But not with Apple. Oh no. Then it must be called a Macbook. "Woah, nice Macbook." "Hey, how come Joe got a Macbook from IT?"
There are a thousand different mp3 players out there and most people just say "mp3 player" or "music player". Unless it's an Apple product. Then it's an iPod! Woo!
The difference is that nobody really pays attention to nonsense written on a bathroom wall, or idle gossip. Maybe there will be a bit of a rumor floating around for a while afterwards but it'll die down pretty quickly and in a few months nobody will even remember. Additionally, with such things, only a small subset of people will hear the rumors / gossip / whatever.
With the internet, the information (or misinformation) is out there effectively forever. When you're across the desk interviewing for your new job, the employer didn't hear that rumor that you slept with the cleaning lady at your last job. But if something like that were posted online, with your full name, the employer is likely to come across it in a routine search, and, whether true or fair or not, this taints his view of you.
One reason it matters is when you're dealing with other companies, particularly small companies. I am occasionally called upon to talk to one of our clients about some problem they are having. Ninety-nine percent of the time the problem is on their side, not ours, and before anyone can do anything about it the client needs to understand that -- otherwise they'll refuse to take the necessary steps, and continue blaming us for something that really has nothing to do with us.
So! It's very hard to convince clients of this, because they always have their "IT guy" with them. This is usually one of several types:
- The college kid who comes in after class when he remembers, but he's always on that myspace thing so he must know computers
- The one guy in the office who knows more about computers than anyone else there (usually, he really only knows enough to be dangerous)
- Most commonly, some third-party slob who charges a hundred bucks an hour but still doesn't know anything much beyond "reboot or reinstall". Network knowledge doesn't extend beyond how to plug cables into a router.
But that "IT guy" is someone they know, and he's standing right there assuring them that he "checked everything" (e.g., pinged google successfully). He has to say this, otherwise he looks like an idiot for not seeing it sooner, and has to explain why he's racked up 300 dollars of billable time without fixing anything. The customer wants to believe the person they know, and wants to believe that their money went somewhere useful. I'm just some voice on a phone.
At that point my job is much more difficult, and sometimes impossible. We've actually lost clients a once or twice over this -- the client could have done something to fix the problem and we'd all go about our merry way but "The IT Guy" was insisting it "must be a problem with the system" because he "checked everything". Ugh!
Kind of a rant there, but it's one of the reasons I despise the term "IT guy". It's meaningless. And as the submitter noted, it lumps everyone into the same category -- the Unix sysadmin with the "dude who can reboot Windows", and the MCSE with some helpdesk phone jockey.
There is definitely an ego component to that -- the competent people don't want to be considered on the same level as the morons. But ego aside, the term is so generic that it can cause real problems, causing real people to waste real money, as noted above.
Tagging images is an important task because many images on the web are unlabeled and have no semantic information.
And yet somehow we've managed to survive. I've never really seen the point behind "tagging" much of anything. In every implementation, it just amounts to a mostly random bunch of words that a mostly random person or group thought vaguely described the item at that time. It's never been useful for finding more of the same because tags are so absurdly broad, and it's never been useful for narrowing down searches. Most of the time they're not even useful for getting vague overviews of the item.
Right here on slashdot, tags on the front page include "!change", "social", "donotwant", and "duh". There will never be a point at which I am going to think "Gee, I'd sure like to read more stories about 'not-change'. I'll just click this tag here..." That doesn't even tell me what the story is about -- it only tells me that enough smartasses thought it was clever for some reason.
The same pretty much applies to anything else that gets "tagged" online. It's just noise. Why does it matter?
Indeed. The entire rest of the developed world is all wrong, and the way America is doing it is right. It makes perfect sense to continue paying private corporations who are happy to take our money but have a profit motive for denying us coverage when we need it, and letting bean-counters decide what medical procedures we need, instead of doctors. That system seems to be working really well.
The other half of the story is that 30 million of those Americans are uninsured but covered by government programs like SCHIP and Medicare. The remaining ones are illegal intruders (non-citizens).
Up until a few years ago I was not insured, and I wasn't covered by any government program. Nor am I an illegal alien. My situation was hardly unusual.
It was extra fun when I broke my wrist and needed twelve thousand dollars in surgery to get it fixed properly. Be mighty interested to know what the free-market-solves-everything types would have suggested for that.
Why does he need virtualisation for most of that? Just run multiple services on a single machine. It's not like dhcp and dns are all that resources intensive -- put both services on a machine, configure them, and start them. What's the advantage of virtualising that? Sounds like a lot of unnecessary overhead to me.
Depending on how heavy the load is, that same machine could probably handle postfix, apache, and some kinda ftp server too. That's more or less what you said anyway, but I don't get why you think it requires virtualisation. If a service starts misbehaving you just restart that service instead of rebooting the virtual machine.
Although, for 150 people, a WRT router running non-crap firmware (e.g., ddwrt or tomato) would probably suffice for dns and dhcp. There's a practically off-the-shelf solution for fifty bucks instead of mucking around with higher-end hardware and virtual machines.
Regarding the city streets, that smoke turns into dirty-looking sidewalks from the tar, cigarette butts floating up on the beach and in our streams, and other environmental harm that goes way beyond the immediate harm to people nearby.
A few years ago some dolt made a similar argument to me while I was smoking on an outdoor patio at a restaurant. My reply was "I'm sorry sir, I didn't realise I was ruining the clean, pristine air of downtown Atlanta."
I realise many people find smoking to be gross, but most seem to be perfectly content sitting in their cars or big honkin' SUVs for hours at a time breathing exhaust during rush hour. They complain loudly if the government dares try to tell factories and power plants to clean their smokestacks and stop belching so much crap into the air. They mock anyone who suggests that cleaning up our act might be a good idea regardless of whether or not it's actually altering the climate. They defend business' right to pollute freely because "the government has no business interfering".
But god forbid they walk through a cloud of smoke for a few seconds, or even spend an hour in a bar where people are smoking. Then out come the exaggerated coughs and the endless stream of complaints about how they can't breathe and you're trampling their rights and on and on and on.
If your problem is littering (throwing cigarette butts all over the place) that's an entirely seperate issue. We don't ban soda just because some idiots throw bottles and cans all over the place -- another common site on the streets or beaches or rivers of any major city.
Your point about occupational hazards is noted but exaggerated. There's a world of difference between some guy in a rural area taking a job as a coal miner because that's pretty much the only game in town, versus a waiter in a restaurant in an urban city where there is no shortage of restaurants, many of which do not allow smoking. The coal miner's options are extremely limited, whereas the waiter can go to any of the other twenty restaurants in a two-block radius if he really has a problem with smoke.
It does amaze me how many people will waste twenty minutes complaining about a problem that is slowing them down by a few seconds. This happens at my company all the time.
Even better is when it really is a system issue so the support lines get jammed with hundreds of people calling to complain about it, even though we put messages on our queue indicating that we already know. Then they waste further time complaining about how long they had to wait on hold to complain about the problem we already said we're addressing.
When I was taking calls, I always wanted to reply "Well, if people like you weren't calling to whine about minor inconveniences about which we're already aware, maybe queue times would be shorter, but you are, so they're not."
Back in the day, I was also frequently the only person who could fix such problems, and the customers often knew this, but that wouldn't stop them from constantly calling to "get a status update". Gee sir, I'm not sure how long this will take me to fix, because oddly enough, I haven't had a chance to look at it because people like you want "updates" instead of letting me fix the problem.
Okay, end of my little offtopic rant. It had to be said.
Your anecdotes aren't any more compelling than mine. Many of my classes in high school were taught by coaches who, somehow, were pressed into duty as math or science teachers. My tenth grade science teacher barely covered the origins of the universe, prefaced it with a long, rambling disclaimer about "theories", and gave such laughably incorrect information that it's no wonder nobody believed her. My school district gained national media attention during one of the times it tried to put disclaimer stickers on biology textbooks (I say one of the times because it pulls a similar stunt like every other year), to the point where Penn and Teller even did a show on it. Nothing like seeing your high school being mocked on public television for being run by incompetent, scientifically illiterate assholes.
Sex education was basically limited to the biology of reproduction and a passing mention of diseases; I don't remember any discussion being given to decision-making or birth-control methods, and I am absolutely certain they never demonstrated or discussed how to use a condom.
My astronomy teacher in eleventh grade was reading the textbook literally a day or two ahead of the class, so my friend and I ended up teaching most of the semester since we knew vastly more on the topic than she did.
A degree certifies that you've read and to some degree understood, the book.
...just long enough to past a test, anyway, at which point you're permitted to, and likely will, forget most of it forever. Most people never use what they allegedly learned in college because the majority of it is fundamentally useless, and ten years hence, the most they'll be able to say about a particular topic in college is that they remember taking the class.
In any case, requiring "a four-year degree" says nothing about what the degree involved. I'm an English major in a field that has nothing, whatsoever, to do with English or literature. The world is full of history majors working in sales and middle managers who majored in economics.
Requiring a degree for most jobs is an utterly arbitrary decision. I suspect it's often there to decrease the sheer number of applicants, or because HR simply doesn't grasp what the job entails. I've seen degrees required for the most banal of entry-level positions, including things like requiring a CS degree for tier-one helpdesk work. Trust me, it doesn't take a four year computer science degree to tell people to reboot something.
Yeah, that's the OSX way of doing things. It sucks. The GUI has no business "deciding" what I'm trying to do, and it introduces inconsistent behavior.
Right now, for example, I have an xterm open. Now I want another. If I click the little xterm icon, is it going to bring up my currently running xterm window, or launch another for me?
Of course, it's going to launch another for me. It will do this consistently, every single time. That's what I want.
In the OSX paradigm, now copied by Windows 7, I have to make a special effort to launch a new instance of a program. Here's how it actually works in real life:
I click the launcher icon.
My currently-running program pops up.
Irritated, I minimise it back because that's not what I wanted.
I do some inane key-combo shortcut crap while clicking the icon again.
The new instance of the program comes up, which is what I wanted.
I should have been done with the first step, but instead I had to go through four additional steps. The third one is really annoying. It's part of why I sigh anytime someone touts the OSX way of doing things as "really intuitive" and "a great UI". It's not.
A primitive human would notice that things don't just appear; they are made. The spear in his hand didn't just fall from the sky; he had to make it, as he made his campfire, his shelter, his clothing, and the bag in which he carries stuff. Those things only exist because he personally took the time to make them.
Later he views the world at large, and wonders where it came from. He remembers how things don't just appear, they are made. He reasons that someone had to make the world. But this primitive human can only make a few things, like spears and animal-skin clothes. Clearly, whoever made the world must be immensely more powerful than he is. He's never seen this world-maker, but since someone must have made it, this world-maker must exist. Thanks, world-maker!
I suspect that most religious viewpoints through human history were content to leave it at that, more or less. "There must be a very powerful being that made all this." Later they decided that this being, or beings like him, since they made the world, must also be responsible for what goes on in the world, like rain, earthquakes, and the difference between plentiful food and famine. So they grappled with various ways of asking the world-maker for help or appeasing the world-maker.
Over time these ideas developed into the "revealed" religions -- where the all-powerful being actually reveals to us what he wants us to do.
In other words, the notion of God as we have him today in Abrahamic religions did not spring fully-formed from some prehistoric mind. It slowly developed from "someone made the world" into what we have in the Bible.
The judge may have been an idiot but that is the usual view of judges who deal with traffic court, where normal conventions do not apply. The state skirts around most protections guaranteed to you, the defendant, by classing the charges as "administrative violations" or something similar, rather than "criminal charges". Since the Constitution only guarantees rights of the accused for criminal prosecutions, presto! You suddenly have no right to a trial by jury, or for an attorney. "Innocent until proven guilty," while not precisely codified by the Constitution, is also a concept that has no meaning in traffic court.
This has been going on for a long, long, long time. Here's Mr Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain, to describe it for us:
We sat on wooden benches in a lock-up partitioned off from the Court Room, for four hours, awaiting judgment -not awaiting trial, because they don't try people there, but only just take a percentage of their cash, and let them go without further ceremony..... I stayed by and watched them dispense justice a while and observed that in all small offences the policeman's charge on the books was received as entirely sufficient, and sentence passed without a question being asked of either accused or witnesses...
Nothing -- absolutely nothing -- has changed since Clemens' time, well over one hundred years later.
Here's an example. In 2005 my insurance lapsed for a day because I forgot to pay or something. I don't know, it was years ago. Anyway, in Georgia, apparently the state gets notified when this happens, and suspends your tag. Not your license, mind you -- your tag. I had no idea this happened, they just did it. For the next several years I went about my business, including getting my tag updated annually, and even being pulled over a few times, with nary a word about this from any of the tag office clerks, police, or anyone else.
Finally, one cop noticed, pulled me over, and arrested me for driving on the suspended tag. I went to jail because of this.
The judge decided it was my fault and blah blah blah ignorance is no excuse yadda yadda. The truth is, I had been dutifully updating my tag every year as required, which should say something about my intent to fully comply with the law, and I'd think that any rational person would see that no offense was meant and no harm was done, so send me on my way. But no.
That's how the justice system works. The laws are so numerous, so convoluted, and updated and modified so frequently, that we as a society freely acknowledge that the average person has no way of understanding it, which is why we have specialty occupations like lawyers. But we expect the average person to comply with all these laws he can't understand, too.
It really doesn't matter that the laws are theoretically available for anyone to read. No mortal human has time for that. Even lawyers tend to specialise in one specific area of law, and when asked about some other area, will give you mostly blank looks.
To an extent, I think ignorance of the law is a fine excuse. Clearly there are certain things that are known to be illegal across the vast majority of the populace, but there are way too many people being prosecuted and going through immense legal hassle over minor violations of obscure laws nobody knows or cares about except the state when they need some excuse to extort more money from the citizenry.
Solution one: Switch to Linux. Then when family members whine about their computers, say, "Gee, I just don't know, I don't really know Windows anymore."
Solution two: Switch them to Linux, Ubuntu in particular. If they can transition from Windows to OS X they can transition to Ubuntu just as easily if not easier. And they can do it with the hardware they already have, rather than having to shell out another thousand or more dollars for a Mac.
I've taken a combination approach. When my sister's Windows netbook died because Windows refused to boot for some idiotic reason, I could have spent a weekend "fixing" it (e.g., reinstalling Windows, all her applications, all the updates, then making her spend another day setting all her applications back how she wanted them)...
or I could grab her files, install Ubuntu on the machine, put her files back, and be done in two hours.
Guess which approach I took? It has the further advantage that if something goes wrong I can ssh to her machine and fix it quickly, instead of enabling RDP and dealing with incredible GUI latency (she's in Israel, I'm in Atlanta) and inefficient GUI clicky crap that never tells you anything about what's broken. She's using her softphones and writing papers and chatting online and surfing the web and watching videos just fine with Ubuntu.
My parents and step-parents haven't made the switch yet. They're family and I will help them if I can, but the computer is well and truly screwed, I can always fall back on the very truthful "I haven't really used Windows in years, I don't know" routine, and it ceases to be my problem.
Either way, as I said, they are family and I will help them if I can. "Spend a thousand dollars or more on an entirely new computer" is not helpful, in my opinion, so the "get a Mac" solution isn't much of a solution. They have the hardware already and the OS they need is right in front of them. I see absolutely no reason to get them to use Macs.
Oh yeah? Well, I recommend that everyone chisel their data into stone tablets and store them in underground, climate-controlled facilities. Give this "papyrus" thing a chance to mature and maybe I'll start using it, once I know it's safe.
I find it to be all of those things, but I also find OS X to be a total UI abomination, so as far as I, personally, am concerned, they did a fantastic job copying each other. It's like watching a race to the bottom.
His post is vague but it doesn't sound like they're doing much beyond screwing around on the web, sending email (probably also web-based), and perhaps online chatting. There's not going to be any compatibility complaints if he gives them Ubuntu. They're probably already using Firefox and Openoffice anyway.
I've done this for several friends and family members and the only real problem I've had was iTunes. For some that's a total show stopper, but for everyone else, it's fine.
The last few times I've flown Delta they've had wireless onboard. They want you to pay, but check the in-flight magazine for the promotional password -- it's something like "deltatrygogo". You create a profile, give it the promotional code, and away you go.
When you fly again you pull the same stunt and give it a different username and email. I used my name, the names of both my cats, and Captain Kirk's middle name the last four times.
I'm not really trying to advocate wholesale stealing. Really, for longer flights, the price would be worth it -- it was like eight or ten dollars, I think. I'd pay that for a four or five hour flight. But for a 90 minute Atlanta-Miami flight, it's excessive. I think they should bill by flight time, or by minutes used, or, ideally, by bandwidth consumed. Since I was doing little more than IRC and email, bandwidth would have been minimal for me. Let the sucker in 37A trying to download twenty-meg powerpoint presentations pay the big bucks. He's probably on an expense account anyway.
For those wondering, bandwidth was pretty decent for being 30,000 feet up. I was pulling about a meg down. Latency was about 300ms, but that's just fine for pretty much everything.
Yeah, and "Brangelina" is a nickname for Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, and "Tomkat" is a nickname for Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, but you know what? That doesn't make it any less stupid.
Inventing moronic shorthand words where shorthand was completely unnecessary should be grounds for immediate, on-the-spot execution. Pretending like they're valid because you've seen them used elsewhere is grounds for torture before the execution.
You know, Hannity tried making that same point last night on his show. He was getting into how everyone can attack Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter, but if anyone said anything like that about Michelle Obama, they'd be crucified. Blah blah blah double standard.
Here's the thing. It's not a double standard. Michelle Obama is, to the best of my knowledge, a wholly decent person who doesn't make a spectacle of herself or try to be controversial. Slagging her would be pointless and make you look like a complete jerk. And you actually want to compare the behavior of idiots like Glenn Beck to the behavior of Michelle Obama? Are you serious? Do you not see the difference in what they do and how they act and what they say and how they treat others?
Ppeople like Glenn Beck, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, et al, make their careers out of being rude, offensive, outright insulting, machete-mouthed assholes. They and name-call everyone who doesn't agree with them, they write lengthy diatribes insulting anyone who doesn't agree with them, they host or appear on talk shows bad-mouthing and screaming -- literally -- at anyone who doesn't agree with them. This is not a matter of opinion; these are facts. It's how every one of them makes a living -- by being ill-tempered, loud-mouthed, vicious, and insulting. It's how they get ratings and sell books.
Then they cry because someone did it right back to them? They whine about "double standards"? They want to be demeaning, lying jackwipes but have total immunity from anyone insulting them? Give me a break.
They chose a business that puts them squarely in the spotlight, and they chose to be as outrageous as possible during their time in that light. Screw 'em if they can't take what they dish out.
Because disabling it means disabling any history in the address bar. This is stupid. I want it to work the way it's worked in address bars for fifteen years. I type "sl", hit the down arrow, and get slashdot. With the "awesome bar", time and memory is wasted as Firefox looks through every page, page title, url, bookmark, and everything in the history that might contain the letters "sl" anywhere. If I visited a page that was, like, http://whatever.com/sid=726yn27228sl6691, Firefox helpfully shoves that in my face because hey, it has "sl" in there. It's asinine.
I understand that you and others like you enjoy it; that's your perogative. But there are just as many, like me, who hate it. There are a million sites out there that tell you how to adjust "maxrichresults" to 0 to disable it, but all that seems to do is completely disable any history in the address bar whatsoever, which is unacceptable.
It's really irritating that the only two choices are "use the awesome bar, or have no history". What was wrong with the way address bars behaved for the past decade and a half? Why can't we have that as an option at least?
Slashdot Mirror
That isn't what I said at all. I said that most people don't know or don't care enough about computers or operating systems to change, even if they're aware of the options, which most are not. But if you really want to put those words in my mouth, fine. I think most Windows users are fundamentally ignorant about computers and operating systems. That's because most people don't give a damn. It's why they use whatever came with the computer, including all the pre-installed OEM crapware. They don't know better because they're ignorant. They don't care because they're apathetic about computers beyond "I need this thing to do my job."
There's nothing necessarily wrong with that. I don't expect them to be computer experts and I understand most people are not enthusiastic enough about computers to really care what OS they have. But you seem to think the majority of people are really technically astute enough to know their options and weigh their choices. Most people aren't.
But for reasons I can't quite fathom, you seem to actually believe that:
Whereas I believe:
Another way to look at it would be the fanboy factor. Linux and Mac zealots abound, and will not hesitate to tell you how awesome their choice is. Those are people who weighed options and made a concious, deliberate decision to use something other than Windows. Of all the millions and millions of people using Windows day in and day out, what percentage of them would you say are really excited about it?
my point is that there is some clear value differentiation between what windows does and what competing products do; otherwise windows wouldn't be in the position that it is in. Now then, do you honestly beleive that __nobody__ anywhere has carefully evaluated their options and decided that buying windows represents the best value?
Windows is in the position it's in because of a lot of Microsoft tactics, the most obvious of which is getting OEMs to ship with Windows pre-installed, either through bribery, kickbacks, or getting other companies to eat the cost by bunding their crapware alongside it. The vast majority of users out there are clueless and simply use whatever came with the computer, which is Windows. Microsoft happened to be in the right place at the right time; there was no big consensus among the public that Windows offers what they want. Back in the day there was very little competition anyway.
I am not suggesting that there isn't some small number of people who have evaluated their options and concluded that Windows is the best. But I think it's fairly obvious that such people represent a tiny minority. You were talking about "the world", meaning the public at large. The truth is the public at large just uses whatever is installed on the computer at the time of purchase. They have not, do not, and will not evaluate anything.
More people buy boxed retail copies of windows, not attached to any computer, than do acquire mac OS X or any version of Linux via any delivery mechanism combined.
Perhaps so, but this says very little about the price value of Windows or its utility or efficiency as a desktop platform. Rather, it speaks volumes to user apathy ("I already know Windows"), fear ("My programs won't work on anything but Windows!"), ignorance ("Windows is the computer"), and other psychological factors.
You can argue that these mental states, taken as a whole, add up to perceived value of Windows in the eyes of the user, and there may be some merit to that notion, but it certainly does not mean that Joe User carefully considered his options and chose Windows. It just means he's used to Windows, along with all its failings and quirks, and doesn't want to bother trying something else. The user thinks "the devil you know is better than the devil you don't," -- he does not think "Windows seems superior to Linux or OS X to me."
That's kind of a foolish statement. Windows doesn't do things the way people want either, which is why the average user can emit an impressive stream of complaints about their computer if you let on that you're in any IT-related field. The reason people don't switch is a combination of some or all of these factors:
The idea that the operating system on your computer -- the thing that actually lets it do useful things -- isn't worth dinner for 2 at a national-chain resturant (your $30 figure) is completely hillarious. You honestly would rather forego the last 30 years of personal computer history and instead have 1 dinner for two?
What are you talking about? Linux and others have been around forever. In the past five years or so Linux, particularly desktop-focussed distros like Ubuntu, have gotten to the point where you could give one to Your Mom and she'd be able to install it. These are free operating systems. They're also completely gratis. There's no law that says an OS has to cost money, and there's not that much support in the history books for such a notion either.
You say that for you, an OS is worth about a hundred dollars. That's fine, but understand that's your perception of value, something about which you just finished lecturing that other guy. Neither history nor economics support the idea that an OS must have a pricetag.
Finally,
I think it's fair to guess that most people paying for windows figure it is worth 75% or more [to them] of what they're paying for it.
That's patently absurd. Most people don't realise they're paying for Windows at all. Remember, to them, "it came with the computer". To an extent they are paying very little for it since OEMs subsidise the cost with the idiotic crapware they also pre-install. But the point is that most people do not go out and buy a Windows disc. They use whatever the hell is on the computer and give zero thought to the price or value of the OS.
A more realistic scenario would be to talk to a real user. You know, that nice lady next door who has been pulling her hair out for the past two weeks because Windows has getting less and less stable. At first it was just throwing Dr Watson stuff in her face she didn't understand. Then Explorer would crash practically every time she booted the thing and she's had to learn to reboot seven or eight times before it would come up and stay. Then McAffee started throwing a hissy fit, often crashing and taking down Windows with it. IE is taking forever to open and half the time, when sh
I think part of the difference is that most people just say "webcam" for all the other products. Anyone who constantly said "Lifecam" instead would get weird looks. But because it's an APPLE product people actually refer to it as "iSight" and take that seriously. It's bizarre.
Other examples of this mentality:
If talking about a Dell, HP, IBM, Acer, or any other type of laptop, most people just say "laptop". "Hey, grab your laptop and get over here," or "I hear Jane got a new laptop."
But not with Apple. Oh no. Then it must be called a Macbook. "Woah, nice Macbook." "Hey, how come Joe got a Macbook from IT?"
There are a thousand different mp3 players out there and most people just say "mp3 player" or "music player". Unless it's an Apple product. Then it's an iPod! Woo!
The difference is that nobody really pays attention to nonsense written on a bathroom wall, or idle gossip. Maybe there will be a bit of a rumor floating around for a while afterwards but it'll die down pretty quickly and in a few months nobody will even remember. Additionally, with such things, only a small subset of people will hear the rumors / gossip / whatever.
With the internet, the information (or misinformation) is out there effectively forever. When you're across the desk interviewing for your new job, the employer didn't hear that rumor that you slept with the cleaning lady at your last job. But if something like that were posted online, with your full name, the employer is likely to come across it in a routine search, and, whether true or fair or not, this taints his view of you.
One reason it matters is when you're dealing with other companies, particularly small companies. I am occasionally called upon to talk to one of our clients about some problem they are having. Ninety-nine percent of the time the problem is on their side, not ours, and before anyone can do anything about it the client needs to understand that -- otherwise they'll refuse to take the necessary steps, and continue blaming us for something that really has nothing to do with us.
So! It's very hard to convince clients of this, because they always have their "IT guy" with them. This is usually one of several types:
- The college kid who comes in after class when he remembers, but he's always on that myspace thing so he must know computers
- The one guy in the office who knows more about computers than anyone else there (usually, he really only knows enough to be dangerous)
- Most commonly, some third-party slob who charges a hundred bucks an hour but still doesn't know anything much beyond "reboot or reinstall". Network knowledge doesn't extend beyond how to plug cables into a router.
But that "IT guy" is someone they know, and he's standing right there assuring them that he "checked everything" (e.g., pinged google successfully). He has to say this, otherwise he looks like an idiot for not seeing it sooner, and has to explain why he's racked up 300 dollars of billable time without fixing anything. The customer wants to believe the person they know, and wants to believe that their money went somewhere useful. I'm just some voice on a phone.
At that point my job is much more difficult, and sometimes impossible. We've actually lost clients a once or twice over this -- the client could have done something to fix the problem and we'd all go about our merry way but "The IT Guy" was insisting it "must be a problem with the system" because he "checked everything". Ugh!
Kind of a rant there, but it's one of the reasons I despise the term "IT guy". It's meaningless. And as the submitter noted, it lumps everyone into the same category -- the Unix sysadmin with the "dude who can reboot Windows", and the MCSE with some helpdesk phone jockey.
There is definitely an ego component to that -- the competent people don't want to be considered on the same level as the morons. But ego aside, the term is so generic that it can cause real problems, causing real people to waste real money, as noted above.
Tagging images is an important task because many images on the web are unlabeled and have no semantic information.
And yet somehow we've managed to survive. I've never really seen the point behind "tagging" much of anything. In every implementation, it just amounts to a mostly random bunch of words that a mostly random person or group thought vaguely described the item at that time. It's never been useful for finding more of the same because tags are so absurdly broad, and it's never been useful for narrowing down searches. Most of the time they're not even useful for getting vague overviews of the item.
Right here on slashdot, tags on the front page include "!change", "social", "donotwant", and "duh". There will never be a point at which I am going to think "Gee, I'd sure like to read more stories about 'not-change'. I'll just click this tag here..." That doesn't even tell me what the story is about -- it only tells me that enough smartasses thought it was clever for some reason.
The same pretty much applies to anything else that gets "tagged" online. It's just noise. Why does it matter?
Indeed. The entire rest of the developed world is all wrong, and the way America is doing it is right. It makes perfect sense to continue paying private corporations who are happy to take our money but have a profit motive for denying us coverage when we need it, and letting bean-counters decide what medical procedures we need, instead of doctors. That system seems to be working really well.
The other half of the story is that 30 million of those Americans are uninsured but covered by government programs like SCHIP and Medicare. The remaining ones are illegal intruders (non-citizens).
Up until a few years ago I was not insured, and I wasn't covered by any government program. Nor am I an illegal alien. My situation was hardly unusual.
It was extra fun when I broke my wrist and needed twelve thousand dollars in surgery to get it fixed properly. Be mighty interested to know what the free-market-solves-everything types would have suggested for that.
Why does he need virtualisation for most of that? Just run multiple services on a single machine. It's not like dhcp and dns are all that resources intensive -- put both services on a machine, configure them, and start them. What's the advantage of virtualising that? Sounds like a lot of unnecessary overhead to me.
Depending on how heavy the load is, that same machine could probably handle postfix, apache, and some kinda ftp server too. That's more or less what you said anyway, but I don't get why you think it requires virtualisation. If a service starts misbehaving you just restart that service instead of rebooting the virtual machine.
Although, for 150 people, a WRT router running non-crap firmware (e.g., ddwrt or tomato) would probably suffice for dns and dhcp. There's a practically off-the-shelf solution for fifty bucks instead of mucking around with higher-end hardware and virtual machines.
Regarding the city streets, that smoke turns into dirty-looking sidewalks from the tar, cigarette butts floating up on the beach and in our streams, and other environmental harm that goes way beyond the immediate harm to people nearby.
A few years ago some dolt made a similar argument to me while I was smoking on an outdoor patio at a restaurant. My reply was "I'm sorry sir, I didn't realise I was ruining the clean, pristine air of downtown Atlanta."
I realise many people find smoking to be gross, but most seem to be perfectly content sitting in their cars or big honkin' SUVs for hours at a time breathing exhaust during rush hour. They complain loudly if the government dares try to tell factories and power plants to clean their smokestacks and stop belching so much crap into the air. They mock anyone who suggests that cleaning up our act might be a good idea regardless of whether or not it's actually altering the climate. They defend business' right to pollute freely because "the government has no business interfering".
But god forbid they walk through a cloud of smoke for a few seconds, or even spend an hour in a bar where people are smoking. Then out come the exaggerated coughs and the endless stream of complaints about how they can't breathe and you're trampling their rights and on and on and on.
If your problem is littering (throwing cigarette butts all over the place) that's an entirely seperate issue. We don't ban soda just because some idiots throw bottles and cans all over the place -- another common site on the streets or beaches or rivers of any major city.
Your point about occupational hazards is noted but exaggerated. There's a world of difference between some guy in a rural area taking a job as a coal miner because that's pretty much the only game in town, versus a waiter in a restaurant in an urban city where there is no shortage of restaurants, many of which do not allow smoking. The coal miner's options are extremely limited, whereas the waiter can go to any of the other twenty restaurants in a two-block radius if he really has a problem with smoke.
It does amaze me how many people will waste twenty minutes complaining about a problem that is slowing them down by a few seconds. This happens at my company all the time.
Even better is when it really is a system issue so the support lines get jammed with hundreds of people calling to complain about it, even though we put messages on our queue indicating that we already know. Then they waste further time complaining about how long they had to wait on hold to complain about the problem we already said we're addressing.
When I was taking calls, I always wanted to reply "Well, if people like you weren't calling to whine about minor inconveniences about which we're already aware, maybe queue times would be shorter, but you are, so they're not."
Back in the day, I was also frequently the only person who could fix such problems, and the customers often knew this, but that wouldn't stop them from constantly calling to "get a status update". Gee sir, I'm not sure how long this will take me to fix, because oddly enough, I haven't had a chance to look at it because people like you want "updates" instead of letting me fix the problem.
Okay, end of my little offtopic rant. It had to be said.
Your anecdotes aren't any more compelling than mine. Many of my classes in high school were taught by coaches who, somehow, were pressed into duty as math or science teachers. My tenth grade science teacher barely covered the origins of the universe, prefaced it with a long, rambling disclaimer about "theories", and gave such laughably incorrect information that it's no wonder nobody believed her. My school district gained national media attention during one of the times it tried to put disclaimer stickers on biology textbooks (I say one of the times because it pulls a similar stunt like every other year), to the point where Penn and Teller even did a show on it. Nothing like seeing your high school being mocked on public television for being run by incompetent, scientifically illiterate assholes.
Sex education was basically limited to the biology of reproduction and a passing mention of diseases; I don't remember any discussion being given to decision-making or birth-control methods, and I am absolutely certain they never demonstrated or discussed how to use a condom.
My astronomy teacher in eleventh grade was reading the textbook literally a day or two ahead of the class, so my friend and I ended up teaching most of the semester since we knew vastly more on the topic than she did.
All this was in one of the most affluent areas in Atlanta. The public education system is a complete shambles.
A degree certifies that you've read and to some degree understood, the book.
...just long enough to past a test, anyway, at which point you're permitted to, and likely will, forget most of it forever. Most people never use what they allegedly learned in college because the majority of it is fundamentally useless, and ten years hence, the most they'll be able to say about a particular topic in college is that they remember taking the class.
In any case, requiring "a four-year degree" says nothing about what the degree involved. I'm an English major in a field that has nothing, whatsoever, to do with English or literature. The world is full of history majors working in sales and middle managers who majored in economics.
Requiring a degree for most jobs is an utterly arbitrary decision. I suspect it's often there to decrease the sheer number of applicants, or because HR simply doesn't grasp what the job entails. I've seen degrees required for the most banal of entry-level positions, including things like requiring a CS degree for tier-one helpdesk work. Trust me, it doesn't take a four year computer science degree to tell people to reboot something.
Right now, for example, I have an xterm open. Now I want another. If I click the little xterm icon, is it going to bring up my currently running xterm window, or launch another for me?
Of course, it's going to launch another for me. It will do this consistently, every single time. That's what I want.
In the OSX paradigm, now copied by Windows 7, I have to make a special effort to launch a new instance of a program. Here's how it actually works in real life:
I should have been done with the first step, but instead I had to go through four additional steps. The third one is really annoying. It's part of why I sigh anytime someone touts the OSX way of doing things as "really intuitive" and "a great UI". It's not.
A primitive human would notice that things don't just appear; they are made. The spear in his hand didn't just fall from the sky; he had to make it, as he made his campfire, his shelter, his clothing, and the bag in which he carries stuff. Those things only exist because he personally took the time to make them.
Later he views the world at large, and wonders where it came from. He remembers how things don't just appear, they are made. He reasons that someone had to make the world. But this primitive human can only make a few things, like spears and animal-skin clothes. Clearly, whoever made the world must be immensely more powerful than he is. He's never seen this world-maker, but since someone must have made it, this world-maker must exist. Thanks, world-maker!
I suspect that most religious viewpoints through human history were content to leave it at that, more or less. "There must be a very powerful being that made all this." Later they decided that this being, or beings like him, since they made the world, must also be responsible for what goes on in the world, like rain, earthquakes, and the difference between plentiful food and famine. So they grappled with various ways of asking the world-maker for help or appeasing the world-maker.
Over time these ideas developed into the "revealed" religions -- where the all-powerful being actually reveals to us what he wants us to do.
In other words, the notion of God as we have him today in Abrahamic religions did not spring fully-formed from some prehistoric mind. It slowly developed from "someone made the world" into what we have in the Bible.
Yeah, I could use some more attention drawn to myself.
This has been going on for a long, long, long time. Here's Mr Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain, to describe it for us:
Nothing -- absolutely nothing -- has changed since Clemens' time, well over one hundred years later.
Here's an example. In 2005 my insurance lapsed for a day because I forgot to pay or something. I don't know, it was years ago. Anyway, in Georgia, apparently the state gets notified when this happens, and suspends your tag. Not your license, mind you -- your tag. I had no idea this happened, they just did it. For the next several years I went about my business, including getting my tag updated annually, and even being pulled over a few times, with nary a word about this from any of the tag office clerks, police, or anyone else.
Finally, one cop noticed, pulled me over, and arrested me for driving on the suspended tag. I went to jail because of this.
The judge decided it was my fault and blah blah blah ignorance is no excuse yadda yadda. The truth is, I had been dutifully updating my tag every year as required, which should say something about my intent to fully comply with the law, and I'd think that any rational person would see that no offense was meant and no harm was done, so send me on my way. But no.
That's how the justice system works. The laws are so numerous, so convoluted, and updated and modified so frequently, that we as a society freely acknowledge that the average person has no way of understanding it, which is why we have specialty occupations like lawyers. But we expect the average person to comply with all these laws he can't understand, too.
It really doesn't matter that the laws are theoretically available for anyone to read. No mortal human has time for that. Even lawyers tend to specialise in one specific area of law, and when asked about some other area, will give you mostly blank looks.
To an extent, I think ignorance of the law is a fine excuse. Clearly there are certain things that are known to be illegal across the vast majority of the populace, but there are way too many people being prosecuted and going through immense legal hassle over minor violations of obscure laws nobody knows or cares about except the state when they need some excuse to extort more money from the citizenry.
There are other solutions.
Solution one: Switch to Linux. Then when family members whine about their computers, say, "Gee, I just don't know, I don't really know Windows anymore."
Solution two: Switch them to Linux, Ubuntu in particular. If they can transition from Windows to OS X they can transition to Ubuntu just as easily if not easier. And they can do it with the hardware they already have, rather than having to shell out another thousand or more dollars for a Mac.
I've taken a combination approach. When my sister's Windows netbook died because Windows refused to boot for some idiotic reason, I could have spent a weekend "fixing" it (e.g., reinstalling Windows, all her applications, all the updates, then making her spend another day setting all her applications back how she wanted them)...
or I could grab her files, install Ubuntu on the machine, put her files back, and be done in two hours.
Guess which approach I took? It has the further advantage that if something goes wrong I can ssh to her machine and fix it quickly, instead of enabling RDP and dealing with incredible GUI latency (she's in Israel, I'm in Atlanta) and inefficient GUI clicky crap that never tells you anything about what's broken. She's using her softphones and writing papers and chatting online and surfing the web and watching videos just fine with Ubuntu.
My parents and step-parents haven't made the switch yet. They're family and I will help them if I can, but the computer is well and truly screwed, I can always fall back on the very truthful "I haven't really used Windows in years, I don't know" routine, and it ceases to be my problem.
Either way, as I said, they are family and I will help them if I can. "Spend a thousand dollars or more on an entirely new computer" is not helpful, in my opinion, so the "get a Mac" solution isn't much of a solution. They have the hardware already and the OS they need is right in front of them. I see absolutely no reason to get them to use Macs.
Oh yeah? Well, I recommend that everyone chisel their data into stone tablets and store them in underground, climate-controlled facilities. Give this "papyrus" thing a chance to mature and maybe I'll start using it, once I know it's safe.
I find it to be all of those things, but I also find OS X to be a total UI abomination, so as far as I, personally, am concerned, they did a fantastic job copying each other. It's like watching a race to the bottom.
His post is vague but it doesn't sound like they're doing much beyond screwing around on the web, sending email (probably also web-based), and perhaps online chatting. There's not going to be any compatibility complaints if he gives them Ubuntu. They're probably already using Firefox and Openoffice anyway.
I've done this for several friends and family members and the only real problem I've had was iTunes. For some that's a total show stopper, but for everyone else, it's fine.
The last few times I've flown Delta they've had wireless onboard. They want you to pay, but check the in-flight magazine for the promotional password -- it's something like "deltatrygogo". You create a profile, give it the promotional code, and away you go.
When you fly again you pull the same stunt and give it a different username and email. I used my name, the names of both my cats, and Captain Kirk's middle name the last four times.
I'm not really trying to advocate wholesale stealing. Really, for longer flights, the price would be worth it -- it was like eight or ten dollars, I think. I'd pay that for a four or five hour flight. But for a 90 minute Atlanta-Miami flight, it's excessive. I think they should bill by flight time, or by minutes used, or, ideally, by bandwidth consumed. Since I was doing little more than IRC and email, bandwidth would have been minimal for me. Let the sucker in 37A trying to download twenty-meg powerpoint presentations pay the big bucks. He's probably on an expense account anyway.
For those wondering, bandwidth was pretty decent for being 30,000 feet up. I was pulling about a meg down. Latency was about 300ms, but that's just fine for pretty much everything.
Yeah, and "Brangelina" is a nickname for Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, and "Tomkat" is a nickname for Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, but you know what? That doesn't make it any less stupid.
Inventing moronic shorthand words where shorthand was completely unnecessary should be grounds for immediate, on-the-spot execution. Pretending like they're valid because you've seen them used elsewhere is grounds for torture before the execution.
You know, Hannity tried making that same point last night on his show. He was getting into how everyone can attack Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter, but if anyone said anything like that about Michelle Obama, they'd be crucified. Blah blah blah double standard.
Here's the thing. It's not a double standard. Michelle Obama is, to the best of my knowledge, a wholly decent person who doesn't make a spectacle of herself or try to be controversial. Slagging her would be pointless and make you look like a complete jerk. And you actually want to compare the behavior of idiots like Glenn Beck to the behavior of Michelle Obama? Are you serious? Do you not see the difference in what they do and how they act and what they say and how they treat others?
Ppeople like Glenn Beck, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, et al, make their careers out of being rude, offensive, outright insulting, machete-mouthed assholes. They and name-call everyone who doesn't agree with them, they write lengthy diatribes insulting anyone who doesn't agree with them, they host or appear on talk shows bad-mouthing and screaming -- literally -- at anyone who doesn't agree with them. This is not a matter of opinion; these are facts. It's how every one of them makes a living -- by being ill-tempered, loud-mouthed, vicious, and insulting. It's how they get ratings and sell books.
Then they cry because someone did it right back to them? They whine about "double standards"? They want to be demeaning, lying jackwipes but have total immunity from anyone insulting them? Give me a break.
They chose a business that puts them squarely in the spotlight, and they chose to be as outrageous as possible during their time in that light. Screw 'em if they can't take what they dish out.
Because disabling it means disabling any history in the address bar. This is stupid. I want it to work the way it's worked in address bars for fifteen years. I type "sl", hit the down arrow, and get slashdot. With the "awesome bar", time and memory is wasted as Firefox looks through every page, page title, url, bookmark, and everything in the history that might contain the letters "sl" anywhere. If I visited a page that was, like, http://whatever.com/sid=726yn27228sl6691, Firefox helpfully shoves that in my face because hey, it has "sl" in there. It's asinine.
I understand that you and others like you enjoy it; that's your perogative. But there are just as many, like me, who hate it. There are a million sites out there that tell you how to adjust "maxrichresults" to 0 to disable it, but all that seems to do is completely disable any history in the address bar whatsoever, which is unacceptable.
It's really irritating that the only two choices are "use the awesome bar, or have no history". What was wrong with the way address bars behaved for the past decade and a half? Why can't we have that as an option at least?