"As opposed to messing around in Windows? Have you ever tried to walk someone through fixing their Windows PC over the phone?"
Yes, I did it for years.
"Most people can find the shift key. It's actually a hell of a lot easier to tell someone to type specific text than guide them through a GUI over the phone."
"Basically, the bigger the magnitude of the killing, destruction, and carnage, the more acceptable."
Hardly surprising. A two year old is more likely to grab the keys to the car than to wield a machine gun. Now, the kid reaching the brake pedal to shift into drive...
"Even so, why should Linux tech support cost them more? It's all outsourced anyway to people who read through checklists like robots. They can just as easily tell you to reboot and reinstall your Linux system as they do your Windows."
They could, but it wouldn't work. Linux doesn't 'break' like Windows does. Fixing it, however... imagine telling the user over the phone they have to be very specific about when they use the shift key.
In any event, I'd like to point out that I said percieved. All that has to happen is some big-wig at Dell watches somebody mess around in Linux and say "Wow, our tech support people will need a LOT more training." Stupid? Sure. But who wearing a suit at Dell's going to know any better?
"However, I've heard more good things about Ubuntu than any other Linux version, I would rather buy a laptop with Ubuntu than Vista."
Heck, I'm an XP user and I feel the same way. It pisses me off that if I buy a laptop, it'll come with Vista, and I'd actually have to buy another license to roll it back to XP. Lame.
"So Dell is saying that the presence of Windows degrades the value of a computer? I can't argue with that."
Hehe.
Seriously though, I wonder if they mark it up because of percieved tech support problems down the road. I know Windows has its share of BS, but I cannot imagine having Linux-trained support staff ready to answer questions about.CONF files etc.
"I once saw Win95a running in only 8 MB of RAM. Launching Netscape 4 would take about 2 minutes, but it worked."
Count me in. I had a 486-33 with 8 meg of RAM and 95 worked okay. Granted, that's probably by a different standard than I'm used to today, but yeah, it worked. I played games and everything on it. I didn't have the half-hour bootups that were mentioned earlier. I'm curious: Was there a fundamental difference between a 386DX and a 486DX? Is there a reason that a 486-DX 33 would boot up in under 5 mins when a 386-DX 20 would take half an hour? (Same amount of RAM...) I think I may have been misinformed about the differences between the 386 and the 486, so I'm curious.
The issue is not that it's impossible to finish something, it's that 80% done is where the money is. Companies that go overboard on quality either go out of business or get relegated to serving a niche market. Quality is expensive and customers will repeatedly drop their cash on unfinished products that pass the dog and pony show.
You raise a good point, but I don't think it covers the whole spectrum. The products listed in the summary have a unique ability to be changed after being sold. I mean that this is unlike the way things were a measly decade ago. When you purchased a VCR, for example, that was it. If it had a design flaw, that was it, you had to either deal with it or get a new one later on. Now, here's the funny thing: What constitutes a design flaw? The flashing 12:00 feature that has fueled the comedy industry for years? There are technical reasons for that. There's expense involved in curing it. Who would have thunk it would have been such a problem? It's easy for the customer to fix, right? Sure. But how would they know that until millions of people have put it through its paces? These days, they can put features in or alter existing ones once they get some hard data back from their customers. On paper, anyway, that's a bonus. "Ah, we didn't realize some people prefer to use the 24-hour format, welp, download this update, and you're good to go."
From where I sit, 'unfinished' is too strong of term. The fact is, when you're designing a product, you'd need a magic crystal ball that could see into the future to know what problems will be faced. It's one thing to have a hundred beta testers, it's another to have 10,000. There's always somebody that'll try to do something out of the bounds of what it was designed for. A trivial fix would suit their needs, but how does one go about that after the design's locked? There's no easy solution to that problem. At least now products have updatable firmware so new usability issues can be addressed.
Now, that's just usability I'm talking about. A new issue that has come up deals with internet usage. I have to be honest, I'm a little surprised anybody here really thinks a product can be internet-proofed. Take Quake3, for example. Here's a popular game that is/was played on the net by millions. Shouldn't be any different than, say, designing a LAN game where latency is less reliable. Right? Nope. Cheaters. Somebody sniffs the packets or watches what's going on in memory, and they find creative ways of getting an unfair advantage in the game. The potential here is a ruining of the experience for everybody. So, what does ID do? They make patches, address issues that came up, and kick the cheaters out. Okay. Unfortunately, they're a creative bunch. They can't get at the network code? No problem, we'll screw around with the video drivers and make the walls transparent. Cute. Call me a pessimist, but I don't think it's possible to lock down every scenario and still maintain a fun game for the masses. This problem has permeated to just about any internet-enabled device or application ever in existence.
Some companies take this to a stupid level. I agree with that. The simple fact is that a product still has to be well-designed out of the box. If you buy a digital camera but an expected function is broken and requires a firmware update, that's bad. That's VERY bad. However, that 80% bit you mention, you're spot on. We buy products to serve a purpose. It's not always the complete package we're worried about. Higher quality may yield a more versatile product, but I'd argue that it's hard to spend that extra $100 on the better camera if we don't see the value in it. As you've mentioned, there's only so much that can be done in a reasonable amount of time or under a budget.
"The United States, it seems, is the only country in the world that prefers to use the name football to refer to a game that doesn't actually use the feet."
"Because the toner is $120+ and while I don't know the usage patters of the parent, I wouldn't need to spend $220 on a printer when I print maybe 50 sheets of paper at home a year."
I spent $250 on a laser printer several years ago. I'm still on the original toner cartridge. Funny thing about toner: it doesn't magically disappear when not in use like ink does.
"Nice. He's essentially saying the Wii is for morons."
Semi OT: Good design isn't about user intelligence, it's about user interest level. If you hand somebody that is really interested in gaming a machine that requires an OS install, they'll go through the steps to follow the process. If you hand that same machine to somebody who doesn't care much, they'll lose interest rather quickly and skip it. Intelligence doesn't factor into it.
This is something that applies to... well... just about ANYTHING you present to other people. I could, for example, convert this post to ROT-13. You're smart, you could decode it, right? I doubt you would, though. I certainly think most people here wouldn't bother, anyway. It isn't because you and everybody else here are incapable of translating it, it's because I would have made a bad design choice while trying to communicate my views with you. It wouldn't be very accurate of me to say that anybody who skipped my post is 'a moron'. If anything, I'd be the moron for doing something like that and expecting anybody to invest the time.
"To suggest this to be true is no different than saying P2P doesn't exist."
I dunno about that. One suggestion is that people are getting music, but they still spend money on it. They could use P2P to discover what they want to get, then go get it. Sounds counter intuitive, but you've got to consider that there's always new music coming out. For example, I discovered the Chemical Brothers through 'piracy'. When they released a new album, I just went out and bought it. I was excited about getting it. Etc.
That may or may not convince you, that's cool, I understand. Afterall, I'm only giving you anecdotal evidence. I just know that I've spent MORE money since I've had the ability to acquire music/movies on the net than I did before. Sites like YouTube, for example, have kept me interested in entertainment. P2P may get people content for free, but it also keeps their interest alive. I can picture that balancing out. Ask yourself this question: Do you know anybody who exclusively gets content from P2P but never purchases movies or music? Personally, I don't, but I'll concede I'm only a sample of one.
"Have some perspective. On September 11, one well funded terrorist organization succeeded in making an attack. 3,000 people died, about the number of people that die in traffic accidents every two weeks. I'm just not seeing the demonstrations over outlawing cars."
Since we're talking about having some perspective:
a.) 9-11 did a lot more damage than just killing 3,000 people. The economy took a severe hit and lots of people went unemployed so long that the benefits had to be extended in several states.
b.) Accidents != violence. There is risk in driving a car, this is understood before anybody gets behind the wheel. The risk of being accidentally killed by a commercial airliner while you're 100 floors up in a building is astronomically low. The risk goes up when it becomes intention, even if it is only percieved risk.
c.) Lots of the individual causes for car crashes have been demonstrated against. You cannot fix drunk driving by changing the design of the car. Hence laws are needed. In the case of mini-blinds, when they cause a serious risk, they're recalled and redesigned.
d.) 3,000 people died in one day, not two weeks. (Not to mention the unexpected nature of terrorism.) If things had gone a little differently, it could have been over 50,000.
e.) If 9-11 could have been trivialized down to simply a kill-count, it wouldn't have become such an important event in history. (Have some perspective.)
"Terrorism relies on the press to sensationalize an item. The politicians volley the fear back and forth, making more and more laws for the sake of making laws to look effective. The result is that a few good laws are enforced and obeyed."
Go back and re-read my post, that's exactly what I was saying. The difference is that I added to the point. People are getting bombarded with terrorist sensationalism. When something bad happens, it will be over-investigated, and something silly like the kid pointing a piece of chicken at a teacher and saying 'bang bang' will be brought up and people were ask "why didn't you do something then?"
"Remind me again why Roland Piquepaille is allowed to continue to WHORE here?"
Slashdot makes money off ads. The more people (like you) there are that post/brows/etc, the more ads that are served. This story is at 100 comments now, with some thanks going to you. If you really want him to go away, try to find a way that doesn't involve Slashdot earning money off your bitching about it.
"And seriously, why in the world would a terrorist mark their bombs with light-up cartoon characters? "
To be fair, the Gov't keeps telling us the terrorists want to kill us. The media has picked this message up and sensationalized the heck out of it. The great fear is that somebody WILL try something like that, succeed, then have this horrible question asked: "When this was found, why didn't anybody report it?" Back in the days shortly after Columbine, a child (6 years old, I think) picked up a piece of chicken at lunch, pointed it at his teacher, and went "bang bang". The teacher reported it, and the letters WTF appeared over people's heads all over the country. It was silly of the teacher to do that, but I'm sure she was spooked by the idea if that kid eventually DID do something, that little incident would have been brought down on her like a ton of bricks.
In other words, I agree with you that it should have gone to court. In this environment, though, I can see why people reported it. It sucks. We have a tendency to punish people when hindsight is 20/20.
"Oh how I wish I could play Rocket Jockey again. I'd love to see it released as OSS if there's enough support in the community to make it even better."
That's the beauty of OSS. You can write the game yourself!!
Slashdot Mirror
"$150 million to make something vibrate. I wonder if they will go after cell-phones and beepers next."
Their patent is for video games.
"Now Firefox will use up even MORE memory."
The operative word being 'use'.
"As opposed to messing around in Windows? Have you ever tried to walk someone through fixing their Windows PC over the phone?"
Yes, I did it for years.
"Most people can find the shift key. It's actually a hell of a lot easier to tell someone to type specific text than guide them through a GUI over the phone."
Mmm hmmm.
"Basically, the bigger the magnitude of the killing, destruction, and carnage, the more acceptable."
Hardly surprising. A two year old is more likely to grab the keys to the car than to wield a machine gun. Now, the kid reaching the brake pedal to shift into drive...
"Even so, why should Linux tech support cost them more? It's all outsourced anyway to people who read through checklists like robots. They can just as easily tell you to reboot and reinstall your Linux system as they do your Windows."
They could, but it wouldn't work. Linux doesn't 'break' like Windows does. Fixing it, however... imagine telling the user over the phone they have to be very specific about when they use the shift key.
In any event, I'd like to point out that I said percieved. All that has to happen is some big-wig at Dell watches somebody mess around in Linux and say "Wow, our tech support people will need a LOT more training." Stupid? Sure. But who wearing a suit at Dell's going to know any better?
"However, I've heard more good things about Ubuntu than any other Linux version, I would rather buy a laptop with Ubuntu than Vista."
Heck, I'm an XP user and I feel the same way. It pisses me off that if I buy a laptop, it'll come with Vista, and I'd actually have to buy another license to roll it back to XP. Lame.
"So Dell is saying that the presence of Windows degrades the value of a computer? I can't argue with that."
.CONF files etc.
Hehe.
Seriously though, I wonder if they mark it up because of percieved tech support problems down the road. I know Windows has its share of BS, but I cannot imagine having Linux-trained support staff ready to answer questions about
"Why does everyone insist that it doesn't come with an OS? It clearly states that it comes with FreeDOS."
The DVD box for Episode I claims to have 6 hours of entertainment....
Did putting a math co-processor with a 386DX make it close to a 486DX? (or... did 386's allow for a co-processor...?)
(p.s. thanks for the info!)
"I once saw Win95a running in only 8 MB of RAM. Launching Netscape 4 would take about 2 minutes, but it worked."
Count me in. I had a 486-33 with 8 meg of RAM and 95 worked okay. Granted, that's probably by a different standard than I'm used to today, but yeah, it worked. I played games and everything on it. I didn't have the half-hour bootups that were mentioned earlier. I'm curious: Was there a fundamental difference between a 386DX and a 486DX? Is there a reason that a 486-DX 33 would boot up in under 5 mins when a 386-DX 20 would take half an hour? (Same amount of RAM...) I think I may have been misinformed about the differences between the 386 and the 486, so I'm curious.
You raise a good point, but I don't think it covers the whole spectrum. The products listed in the summary have a unique ability to be changed after being sold. I mean that this is unlike the way things were a measly decade ago. When you purchased a VCR, for example, that was it. If it had a design flaw, that was it, you had to either deal with it or get a new one later on. Now, here's the funny thing: What constitutes a design flaw? The flashing 12:00 feature that has fueled the comedy industry for years? There are technical reasons for that. There's expense involved in curing it. Who would have thunk it would have been such a problem? It's easy for the customer to fix, right? Sure. But how would they know that until millions of people have put it through its paces? These days, they can put features in or alter existing ones once they get some hard data back from their customers. On paper, anyway, that's a bonus. "Ah, we didn't realize some people prefer to use the 24-hour format, welp, download this update, and you're good to go."
From where I sit, 'unfinished' is too strong of term. The fact is, when you're designing a product, you'd need a magic crystal ball that could see into the future to know what problems will be faced. It's one thing to have a hundred beta testers, it's another to have 10,000. There's always somebody that'll try to do something out of the bounds of what it was designed for. A trivial fix would suit their needs, but how does one go about that after the design's locked? There's no easy solution to that problem. At least now products have updatable firmware so new usability issues can be addressed.
Now, that's just usability I'm talking about. A new issue that has come up deals with internet usage. I have to be honest, I'm a little surprised anybody here really thinks a product can be internet-proofed. Take Quake3, for example. Here's a popular game that is/was played on the net by millions. Shouldn't be any different than, say, designing a LAN game where latency is less reliable. Right? Nope. Cheaters. Somebody sniffs the packets or watches what's going on in memory, and they find creative ways of getting an unfair advantage in the game. The potential here is a ruining of the experience for everybody. So, what does ID do? They make patches, address issues that came up, and kick the cheaters out. Okay. Unfortunately, they're a creative bunch. They can't get at the network code? No problem, we'll screw around with the video drivers and make the walls transparent. Cute. Call me a pessimist, but I don't think it's possible to lock down every scenario and still maintain a fun game for the masses. This problem has permeated to just about any internet-enabled device or application ever in existence.
Some companies take this to a stupid level. I agree with that. The simple fact is that a product still has to be well-designed out of the box. If you buy a digital camera but an expected function is broken and requires a firmware update, that's bad. That's VERY bad. However, that 80% bit you mention, you're spot on. We buy products to serve a purpose. It's not always the complete package we're worried about. Higher quality may yield a more versatile product, but I'd argue that it's hard to spend that extra $100 on the better camera if we don't see the value in it. As you've mentioned, there's only so much that can be done in a reasonable amount of time or under a budget.
"last time i used thermal compound my cat had silver crap for weeks"
There's a warning on the thermal compound that you shouldn't take it internally. Now I realize it wasn't specific enough to mention cats....
"The United States, it seems, is the only country in the world that prefers to use the name football to refer to a game that doesn't actually use the feet."
Umm.. yeah. Ready the pitchforks.
"Because the toner is $120+ and while I don't know the usage patters of the parent, I wouldn't need to spend $220 on a printer when I print maybe 50 sheets of paper at home a year."
I spent $250 on a laser printer several years ago. I'm still on the original toner cartridge. Funny thing about toner: it doesn't magically disappear when not in use like ink does.
"Cue the Masturbation jokes in 3...2...1..."
Side effects include... blindness.
"I've got your log right here... just let me unzip it."
These stupid puns always have me reaching for the tar and feathers.
"So what exactly is the temperature at which e-books burn?"
Sony engineers are already hard at work on that problem!
"Nice. He's essentially saying the Wii is for morons."
Semi OT: Good design isn't about user intelligence, it's about user interest level. If you hand somebody that is really interested in gaming a machine that requires an OS install, they'll go through the steps to follow the process. If you hand that same machine to somebody who doesn't care much, they'll lose interest rather quickly and skip it. Intelligence doesn't factor into it.
This is something that applies to... well... just about ANYTHING you present to other people. I could, for example, convert this post to ROT-13. You're smart, you could decode it, right? I doubt you would, though. I certainly think most people here wouldn't bother, anyway. It isn't because you and everybody else here are incapable of translating it, it's because I would have made a bad design choice while trying to communicate my views with you. It wouldn't be very accurate of me to say that anybody who skipped my post is 'a moron'. If anything, I'd be the moron for doing something like that and expecting anybody to invest the time.
So, no, he isn't saying the Wii is for morons.
"This thing isn't going to increase security, it's only going to increase convenience."
Easy to defeat != no effect on security. Otherwise nobody'd lock their car doors. Afterall, it only takes a hammer to get in.
"To suggest this to be true is no different than saying P2P doesn't exist."
I dunno about that. One suggestion is that people are getting music, but they still spend money on it. They could use P2P to discover what they want to get, then go get it. Sounds counter intuitive, but you've got to consider that there's always new music coming out. For example, I discovered the Chemical Brothers through 'piracy'. When they released a new album, I just went out and bought it. I was excited about getting it. Etc.
That may or may not convince you, that's cool, I understand. Afterall, I'm only giving you anecdotal evidence. I just know that I've spent MORE money since I've had the ability to acquire music/movies on the net than I did before. Sites like YouTube, for example, have kept me interested in entertainment. P2P may get people content for free, but it also keeps their interest alive. I can picture that balancing out. Ask yourself this question: Do you know anybody who exclusively gets content from P2P but never purchases movies or music? Personally, I don't, but I'll concede I'm only a sample of one.
"Have some perspective. On September 11, one well funded terrorist organization succeeded in making an attack. 3,000 people died, about the number of people that die in traffic accidents every two weeks. I'm just not seeing the demonstrations over outlawing cars."
Since we're talking about having some perspective:
a.) 9-11 did a lot more damage than just killing 3,000 people. The economy took a severe hit and lots of people went unemployed so long that the benefits had to be extended in several states.
b.) Accidents != violence. There is risk in driving a car, this is understood before anybody gets behind the wheel. The risk of being accidentally killed by a commercial airliner while you're 100 floors up in a building is astronomically low. The risk goes up when it becomes intention, even if it is only percieved risk.
c.) Lots of the individual causes for car crashes have been demonstrated against. You cannot fix drunk driving by changing the design of the car. Hence laws are needed. In the case of mini-blinds, when they cause a serious risk, they're recalled and redesigned.
d.) 3,000 people died in one day, not two weeks. (Not to mention the unexpected nature of terrorism.) If things had gone a little differently, it could have been over 50,000.
e.) If 9-11 could have been trivialized down to simply a kill-count, it wouldn't have become such an important event in history. (Have some perspective.)
"Terrorism relies on the press to sensationalize an item. The politicians volley the fear back and forth, making more and more laws for the sake of making laws to look effective. The result is that a few good laws are enforced and obeyed."
Go back and re-read my post, that's exactly what I was saying. The difference is that I added to the point. People are getting bombarded with terrorist sensationalism. When something bad happens, it will be over-investigated, and something silly like the kid pointing a piece of chicken at a teacher and saying 'bang bang' will be brought up and people were ask "why didn't you do something then?"
"Remind me again why Roland Piquepaille is allowed to continue to WHORE here?"
Slashdot makes money off ads. The more people (like you) there are that post/brows/etc, the more ads that are served. This story is at 100 comments now, with some thanks going to you. If you really want him to go away, try to find a way that doesn't involve Slashdot earning money off your bitching about it.
"And seriously, why in the world would a terrorist mark their bombs with light-up cartoon characters? "
To be fair, the Gov't keeps telling us the terrorists want to kill us. The media has picked this message up and sensationalized the heck out of it. The great fear is that somebody WILL try something like that, succeed, then have this horrible question asked: "When this was found, why didn't anybody report it?" Back in the days shortly after Columbine, a child (6 years old, I think) picked up a piece of chicken at lunch, pointed it at his teacher, and went "bang bang". The teacher reported it, and the letters WTF appeared over people's heads all over the country. It was silly of the teacher to do that, but I'm sure she was spooked by the idea if that kid eventually DID do something, that little incident would have been brought down on her like a ton of bricks.
In other words, I agree with you that it should have gone to court. In this environment, though, I can see why people reported it. It sucks. We have a tendency to punish people when hindsight is 20/20.
"Oh how I wish I could play Rocket Jockey again. I'd love to see it released as OSS if there's enough support in the community to make it even better."
That's the beauty of OSS. You can write the game yourself!!
So basically what you're saying is that scientists have devised a way to debunk one (or more) of the inconsistencies in Star Wars.