Actually, some of us love optical viewfinders because they're better. Better resoloution, better brightness, MUCH better response rate, easier to see in sunlight, etc etc. I used to use compact digitals (was never much of a photographer in the film days) with LCDs because I didn't know any better. Then I tried a DSLR, and the viewfinder was the thing that impressed me the most. 2 years and $10k later I wouldn't ever buy a camera with an LCD viewfinder again, they just aren't good enough, and don't really have any advantages. Low angle shots? That's why I was blessed with knees.
I think this is the future of photography.
I don't. The next few years will tell us who's right.
Having just come back from Safari in South Africa with a couple of DSLRs which spent a week in the back of an open truck bouncing down a dusty near-desert road. I can safely say that the sensor dirt issue really isn't one.
1) Don't get the sensor dirty. Change lenses infrequently and in closed environments. I took 2 bodies, one with a long telephoto and one with a mid range. In the field swap cameras, not lenses. This doesn't just help with DSLRs, with film cameras there are plenty of problems to be had if crap gets into the body. Plus of couse changing lenses is slow, animals aren't. 2) If you do get it dirty, don't clean it yourself. You'll screw it up.
HFCS isn't used because it's low calorie, it's not, it's used becase it's low cost. The diet versions here contain the same artifical sweetners as in Sweden, this is the non-diet versions we're talking about.
How's it feel people to spend $1200 on a system which will most likely melt itself into your entertainment center. ^_^ I've no idea. I spent $399 on a system which works just great and is providing me and my better half some nice entertainment in these dreary winter nights.
And explain again why employees of a development house should get easier access to retail units than anyone else? I mean it's one thing to complain about a lack of dev units, but seeing as you guys were paying for them yourself they are for home use right? In which case, get to the back of the line with everyone else.
Every comment I've seen from people getting their units replaced has been exceptionally quick. Typically under a week from first phone call to new unit sitting under TV.
Now replace "slavery" in the above quote with "racism". Making racism illegal didn't advance racial equality one bit. And it only became illegal after the average joe citizen had already decided it was generally immoral. But when the government made racism illegal, we lost some of our freedoms.
So murder should be legal? The majority of people have agreed it's immoral, so making murder illegal surely doesn't have any effect?
Or maybe the fact that it's illegal makes it possible for society to act to stop those in the minority who disagree with the immorality of killing people. Regardless of whether the majority of people have decided racism is bad, there are still some who think it's acceptable. Those people deserve, in my opinion, to have their freedoms curtailed.
I use it all the time but it is the truth. Last year the number one game sold for the holiday season was not on any of the current gen systems... it was the hand held retro controllers that plugged straight into your TV and contained 6-12 games. Outsold all console game sales combined! This coupled with the fact that online flash/shareware games are seeing massive sales numbers means that there is a large untapped audience out there hungry for a simpler, fun, game system.
I have one of those. Someone bought it for me because they knew I liked games and it was cheap. It's a piece of crap. Seriously. The reason those things sold so many is that people who know nothing about games were buying them as gifts, and they were cheap. You have no stats at all on how many were actually used, or have been thrown in the trash. Neither do I of course, but making the assumption that something which sells well at christmas must be a high quality item which people actually want seems like a stretch.
Personally I also get very tired of this holier than thou crap suggesting you're not a "true gamer" unless you like old games. Well I am, and I don't. I played all those old games back in the day, I used to love my Master System, Megadrive, Jaguar and everything else. But I moved on, and I prefer what I play now, and I have no desire to go back. This doesn't make me less of a "true gamer" than you, it just means I have different taste.
Pretty much. What I've seen has been pretty much crap compared to the current generation. Slight improvements at best; no high-poly models, particle effects, etc. Then I suggest you open your eyes and see some more. Take, for example, PGR3. Whilst in PGR2 (a pretty damn fine looking game by last-gen standards) they used 10,000 polys per car, in PGR3 it's closer to 100,000 on average. To me, 10x increase != "slight improvement". Add the fully scaled reflections, HDR lighting, amazingly detailed buildings and you have something way beyond anything capable on last-gen hardware.
Now I'm not arguing here about nebulous concepts like "gameplay" or "fun" or even "artistic style" which everyone can have their own opinions on, but pure hard facts - which you seem unaware of.
You assign value to statistics gathered from forum postings? Wow.
People complain on forums - it's what they're for. If you hung out on any of the product support forums I frequent you'd get the impression that at least 50% of the units were defective and everyone had driver problems. Neither of those is accurate.
You get bad units, it happens with any products. Microsoft are replacing all units which exhibit any fault, for example overheating. They overnight you an empty box, you put the defective unit in and overnight it back, then they overnight you a new unit. Total time elapsed: less than a week, total cost to you: zero dollars. That's better than most return policies in my experience. So far MS have been saying that the return rate is around 3%, which is below industry average. So again - what's the problem here? A company produced a product which has lower than average failure rates and is happily and rapidly replacing any defective units for free.
This guy doesn't wany justice, he wants free money. He's a greedy ass and should be brought to book for encouraging this insane litagation culture to feed his own pocket.
And the last thing I want is a recall - mine is working perfectly.
My girlfriends PC recently died (antique hardware failure), so it was time to get something new. She already has an iBook, and likes Macs in general, but after much deliberation we ended up getting a PC. Why? Some reasons:
1) The rest of our apartment is full of Windows boxes. We've already had trouble fully integrating the one Mac we have (e.g. printer sharing) and while she can live with issues on the laptop her desktop has to be rock solid. 2) She doesn't really like OSX (rather, she's not as used to it and finds it awkward). She's been using Windows for years and while by no means a power user she's comfortable with it. Sure she could adapt to OSX, but she doesn't really want to spend the time doing so. 3) We've had exactly 0 instances of malware/viruses in the last couple of years. Helped no doubt by universal use of Firefox, automatic windows update and the firewall at the network gateway. 4) Price. We got a perfectly decent PC (higher spec than a mac mini) for $300. Not to mention the cost of adding (for example) additional disk space to a mini is extremely high (you either use notebook drives and void the warranty or pay for an external enclosure). And the jump up from a mini to a "real" mac is very high.
In other words, I simply don't see the negatives you do (no malware, stable OS) and the positives (pretty UI) simply aren't worth the money. I have nothing against Macs, and I'm sure they're ideal for lots of people, but they simply aren't ideal for everyone.
But this isn't about trying to sell accessories, all stores do that. It's about refusing to sell the item at all, making up bogus charges and threatening the customer if they refuse to buy the accessories.
I'd Adorama to that list, they're big enough to be reputable. But you're right, I learned early on that for camera equipment, avoid anything in NYC (Brooklyn in particular).
My machine runs windows. It's stable. Very stable. It DOES NOT CRASH. Got that through your thick skull? I haven't reinstalled windows on it. Ever. Still the original XP Prof install from 2 years ago when I built the box. Numerous hardware & software changes since then. Still works just fine.
Except for Firefox.
I use it everyday, it's a great browser. It's also as leaky as the titanic. It can easily hit 1gb+ within a few hours. Open up task manager, kill the proc, everything's happy again. Until the next time.
Looking at the evidence, I don't see why I should blame anyone other than the developers of the one, single application which exhibits these problems. But if you want to blame MS, go right ahead.
I'm not an idiot, I'm capable of nuanced perception of problems
I fail to see any evidence for that. What I see is someone who has serious denial issues. Firefox is great, but it isn't perfect. It has issues. Get over it.
So your suggested fix for a browser which can't display a certain kind of content reliably is to not try to display that kind of content? Genius. It works in other browsers, it should work in firefox. There's no excuse.
I recently bought a new PC for $350. Adding up the prices of the components I know about (100GB hd, 3000+ AMD proc, mobo, modem, case, CD burner, 256mb ram, mouse, keyboard, etc) comes to around $200-250. I'm sure they make some profit (lets say $50) and I'm sure Best Buy wanted their cut too (maybe another $50?). I'm now struggling to see where the supposed $100 for XP Home comes from, never mind MS Works which was also included.
The prices you quote are retail, and yes, they are accurate. But large OEMs get this stuff for virtually nothing. Dell, Gateway, etc do NOT pay $100+ per windows license or anywhere close to that. So the "Microsoft Tax" included in the price of the new PC is much lower than some people would have you believe. I'd be amazed if selling the machine I bought without Windows would cost any less whatsoever - mainly because of all the trial versions of stuff which came preinstalled (their manufacturers paid for that service) which wouldn't be possible without Windows. So overall, I think MS saved me money. Which is nice seeing as I got it home and nuked it to install Knoppix.
Well, I couldn't disagree more. Sure I like a few old games, Gauntlet has seen some action on my 360 recently (playing online is a hoot), but most of them bore me to tears within a few minutes. I never was any good at Defender, Pacman loses it after a few levels and Space Invaders is hypnotically sleep-inducing. Asteroids was kinda fun in it's day but Geometry Wars 2 takes the same idea and rolls with it, with excellent results.
When I play a game now I want something else, I want an "experience" (for want of a better word). I like loud noises, music, flashy graphics and online play. I'm sorry if that makes me a lower form of gamer in your eyes, but I play games to be entertained and immersed for a couple of hours. When I get home from work a quick blast of PGR3, or PD0, or Star Wars Battlefront, or even Katamari Damacy does wonders for my relaxation and general well being. If I want intellectual exercise I'll watch a movie or read a book.
I'm not trying to have a go at the kind of games you like (though I personally think you owe that taste more to fond memories of yesteryear than anything else) but please, leave off the "all modern games suck" cliche. You sound a lot like my parents complaining about this new fangled pop music.
Oh please - get over yourself. I may be unusual, but yes, I research purchases. If I want a video card I spend days reading reviews, benchmarks and pricing guides, then I decide which one I want. Why should I compromise? You mentioned cameras - good example. Not much point selling me a Nikor lens for a Canon body is there? What happens when I buy a lens and I want the matching hood and, say, a polarizer? There is exactly one hood which will work with that lens - no other will do, and I don't want it in a week I want it now, with the lens. There are a number of filters I can choose from, but it would have to be the right size & type. Maybe I want a case from the excellent LowePro Street & Field series - they're popular because they're good. I don't want a cheap generic knock off in faux-leather, thanks all the same.
And, I don't know of too many independent stores that can't order whatever you absolutely, positively need, anyway. Excellent - so I can pay someone else to go online and order it for me! What a fantastic idea. Tell you what, why don't I bring in my lunch so you can eat it for me - I'll even pay for the service. Am I supporting my local economy now? I used to work in a small computer shop with a limited (due to space) inventory. We could order stuff for people, and often did. But I felt horrible doing it. We'd go to the exact same mailorder company the customer could use themselves and stick 40% on the price. I don't like ripping people off, so I quit. They went bust shortly after - good riddance.
See the riots outside of Wal-Mart stores this time of year? No, I never go to Walmart, they only sell cheap crap and that's not something I tend to buy. You seem to think that the reason I shop online is to buy cheap crap cheaply. Not so. It's so I can buy the exact product I want, that fits my needs exactly, and get it for the best price. I don't buy crap, but it's all most of the B&M stores I go to sell.
There are some things for which local stores are unbeatable - food & drink, artworks, books, clothing, hifi etc. All these things benefit from personal service, the ability to see, touch and examine items before purchase, etc. For the large part, however, consumer electronics is not that way anymore. There's far more information online than any salesperson could memorise, even if they tried (which they rarely do) and the informed (or "picky" as you call them) customer typically already knows what they want. It's a dead market sector, and I'm sure as hell not going out of my way to support it. As we're always telling the **AA - you're not guaranteed a business model. If times change you have to keep up.
And, do you really NEED 100,000 different items to choose from? Are you buying 100,000 different items? No, I'm buying 1 item. But I need the correct one item. That's why a large selection is useful.
Of course there are, in fact pretty much everyone in my family has one. They're great for two purposes - keeping track of things I'd like to buy for myself (I bunch orders for small things together to save on shipping) and giving others ideas if they want to buy me something. I'd much rather get a $10 CD I actually want for christmas than a $30 plastic piece of crap novelty.
Clickstream Analysis has been a common phrase for a few years now, it seems to be to quite fairly summarize the activity. Unless you think "log grokking" sounds better.
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Actually, some of us love optical viewfinders because they're better. Better resoloution, better brightness, MUCH better response rate, easier to see in sunlight, etc etc. I used to use compact digitals (was never much of a photographer in the film days) with LCDs because I didn't know any better. Then I tried a DSLR, and the viewfinder was the thing that impressed me the most. 2 years and $10k later I wouldn't ever buy a camera with an LCD viewfinder again, they just aren't good enough, and don't really have any advantages. Low angle shots? That's why I was blessed with knees.
I think this is the future of photography.
I don't. The next few years will tell us who's right.
Having just come back from Safari in South Africa with a couple of DSLRs which spent a week in the back of an open truck bouncing down a dusty near-desert road. I can safely say that the sensor dirt issue really isn't one.
1) Don't get the sensor dirty. Change lenses infrequently and in closed environments. I took 2 bodies, one with a long telephoto and one with a mid range. In the field swap cameras, not lenses. This doesn't just help with DSLRs, with film cameras there are plenty of problems to be had if crap gets into the body. Plus of couse changing lenses is slow, animals aren't.
2) If you do get it dirty, don't clean it yourself. You'll screw it up.
Lucky they're not selling it in the US then, huh?
HFCS isn't used because it's low calorie, it's not, it's used becase it's low cost. The diet versions here contain the same artifical sweetners as in Sweden, this is the non-diet versions we're talking about.
How's it feel people to spend $1200 on a system which will most likely melt itself into your entertainment center. ^_^
I've no idea. I spent $399 on a system which works just great and is providing me and my better half some nice entertainment in these dreary winter nights.
And explain again why employees of a development house should get easier access to retail units than anyone else? I mean it's one thing to complain about a lack of dev units, but seeing as you guys were paying for them yourself they are for home use right? In which case, get to the back of the line with everyone else.
Version 1.0 works just fine, thanks. Take your unfunny, unoriginal FUD elsewhere. Oh sorry, I forgot this is Slashdot - as you were.
Every comment I've seen from people getting their units replaced has been exceptionally quick. Typically under a week from first phone call to new unit sitting under TV.
Now replace "slavery" in the above quote with "racism". Making racism illegal didn't advance racial equality one bit. And it only became illegal after the average joe citizen had already decided it was generally immoral. But when the government made racism illegal, we lost some of our freedoms.
So murder should be legal? The majority of people have agreed it's immoral, so making murder illegal surely doesn't have any effect?
Or maybe the fact that it's illegal makes it possible for society to act to stop those in the minority who disagree with the immorality of killing people. Regardless of whether the majority of people have decided racism is bad, there are still some who think it's acceptable. Those people deserve, in my opinion, to have their freedoms curtailed.
I use it all the time but it is the truth. Last year the number one game sold for the holiday season was not on any of the current gen systems... it was the hand held retro controllers that plugged straight into your TV and contained 6-12 games. Outsold all console game sales combined! This coupled with the fact that online flash/shareware games are seeing massive sales numbers means that there is a large untapped audience out there hungry for a simpler, fun, game system.
I have one of those. Someone bought it for me because they knew I liked games and it was cheap. It's a piece of crap. Seriously. The reason those things sold so many is that people who know nothing about games were buying them as gifts, and they were cheap. You have no stats at all on how many were actually used, or have been thrown in the trash. Neither do I of course, but making the assumption that something which sells well at christmas must be a high quality item which people actually want seems like a stretch.
Personally I also get very tired of this holier than thou crap suggesting you're not a "true gamer" unless you like old games. Well I am, and I don't. I played all those old games back in the day, I used to love my Master System, Megadrive, Jaguar and everything else. But I moved on, and I prefer what I play now, and I have no desire to go back. This doesn't make me less of a "true gamer" than you, it just means I have different taste.
Pretty much. What I've seen has been pretty much crap compared to the current generation. Slight improvements at best; no high-poly models, particle effects, etc.
Then I suggest you open your eyes and see some more. Take, for example, PGR3. Whilst in PGR2 (a pretty damn fine looking game by last-gen standards) they used 10,000 polys per car, in PGR3 it's closer to 100,000 on average. To me, 10x increase != "slight improvement". Add the fully scaled reflections, HDR lighting, amazingly detailed buildings and you have something way beyond anything capable on last-gen hardware.
Now I'm not arguing here about nebulous concepts like "gameplay" or "fun" or even "artistic style" which everyone can have their own opinions on, but pure hard facts - which you seem unaware of.
You assign value to statistics gathered from forum postings? Wow.
People complain on forums - it's what they're for. If you hung out on any of the product support forums I frequent you'd get the impression that at least 50% of the units were defective and everyone had driver problems. Neither of those is accurate.
You get bad units, it happens with any products. Microsoft are replacing all units which exhibit any fault, for example overheating. They overnight you an empty box, you put the defective unit in and overnight it back, then they overnight you a new unit. Total time elapsed: less than a week, total cost to you: zero dollars. That's better than most return policies in my experience. So far MS have been saying that the return rate is around 3%, which is below industry average. So again - what's the problem here? A company produced a product which has lower than average failure rates and is happily and rapidly replacing any defective units for free.
This guy doesn't wany justice, he wants free money. He's a greedy ass and should be brought to book for encouraging this insane litagation culture to feed his own pocket.
And the last thing I want is a recall - mine is working perfectly.
My commercial PVR was free, so no, the Mac wouldn't be cheaper. Unless I stole it.
My girlfriends PC recently died (antique hardware failure), so it was time to get something new. She already has an iBook, and likes Macs in general, but after much deliberation we ended up getting a PC. Why? Some reasons:
1) The rest of our apartment is full of Windows boxes. We've already had trouble fully integrating the one Mac we have (e.g. printer sharing) and while she can live with issues on the laptop her desktop has to be rock solid.
2) She doesn't really like OSX (rather, she's not as used to it and finds it awkward). She's been using Windows for years and while by no means a power user she's comfortable with it. Sure she could adapt to OSX, but she doesn't really want to spend the time doing so.
3) We've had exactly 0 instances of malware/viruses in the last couple of years. Helped no doubt by universal use of Firefox, automatic windows update and the firewall at the network gateway.
4) Price. We got a perfectly decent PC (higher spec than a mac mini) for $300. Not to mention the cost of adding (for example) additional disk space to a mini is extremely high (you either use notebook drives and void the warranty or pay for an external enclosure). And the jump up from a mini to a "real" mac is very high.
In other words, I simply don't see the negatives you do (no malware, stable OS) and the positives (pretty UI) simply aren't worth the money. I have nothing against Macs, and I'm sure they're ideal for lots of people, but they simply aren't ideal for everyone.
But this isn't about trying to sell accessories, all stores do that. It's about refusing to sell the item at all, making up bogus charges and threatening the customer if they refuse to buy the accessories.
I'd Adorama to that list, they're big enough to be reputable. But you're right, I learned early on that for camera equipment, avoid anything in NYC (Brooklyn in particular).
My machine runs windows. It's stable. Very stable. It DOES NOT CRASH. Got that through your thick skull? I haven't reinstalled windows on it. Ever. Still the original XP Prof install from 2 years ago when I built the box. Numerous hardware & software changes since then. Still works just fine.
Except for Firefox.
I use it everyday, it's a great browser. It's also as leaky as the titanic. It can easily hit 1gb+ within a few hours. Open up task manager, kill the proc, everything's happy again. Until the next time.
Looking at the evidence, I don't see why I should blame anyone other than the developers of the one, single application which exhibits these problems. But if you want to blame MS, go right ahead.
I'm not an idiot, I'm capable of nuanced perception of problems
I fail to see any evidence for that. What I see is someone who has serious denial issues. Firefox is great, but it isn't perfect. It has issues. Get over it.
So your suggested fix for a browser which can't display a certain kind of content reliably is to not try to display that kind of content? Genius. It works in other browsers, it should work in firefox. There's no excuse.
I recently bought a new PC for $350. Adding up the prices of the components I know about (100GB hd, 3000+ AMD proc, mobo, modem, case, CD burner, 256mb ram, mouse, keyboard, etc) comes to around $200-250. I'm sure they make some profit (lets say $50) and I'm sure Best Buy wanted their cut too (maybe another $50?). I'm now struggling to see where the supposed $100 for XP Home comes from, never mind MS Works which was also included.
The prices you quote are retail, and yes, they are accurate. But large OEMs get this stuff for virtually nothing. Dell, Gateway, etc do NOT pay $100+ per windows license or anywhere close to that. So the "Microsoft Tax" included in the price of the new PC is much lower than some people would have you believe. I'd be amazed if selling the machine I bought without Windows would cost any less whatsoever - mainly because of all the trial versions of stuff which came preinstalled (their manufacturers paid for that service) which wouldn't be possible without Windows. So overall, I think MS saved me money. Which is nice seeing as I got it home and nuked it to install Knoppix.
Well, I couldn't disagree more. Sure I like a few old games, Gauntlet has seen some action on my 360 recently (playing online is a hoot), but most of them bore me to tears within a few minutes. I never was any good at Defender, Pacman loses it after a few levels and Space Invaders is hypnotically sleep-inducing. Asteroids was kinda fun in it's day but Geometry Wars 2 takes the same idea and rolls with it, with excellent results.
When I play a game now I want something else, I want an "experience" (for want of a better word). I like loud noises, music, flashy graphics and online play. I'm sorry if that makes me a lower form of gamer in your eyes, but I play games to be entertained and immersed for a couple of hours. When I get home from work a quick blast of PGR3, or PD0, or Star Wars Battlefront, or even Katamari Damacy does wonders for my relaxation and general well being. If I want intellectual exercise I'll watch a movie or read a book.
I'm not trying to have a go at the kind of games you like (though I personally think you owe that taste more to fond memories of yesteryear than anything else) but please, leave off the "all modern games suck" cliche. You sound a lot like my parents complaining about this new fangled pop music.
if you let the external P/S breathe the XBOX360 will not crash !
Mine doesn't crash anyway. These "problems" are just the usual round of blog-powered hyperbole.
Oh please - get over yourself. I may be unusual, but yes, I research purchases. If I want a video card I spend days reading reviews, benchmarks and pricing guides, then I decide which one I want. Why should I compromise? You mentioned cameras - good example. Not much point selling me a Nikor lens for a Canon body is there? What happens when I buy a lens and I want the matching hood and, say, a polarizer? There is exactly one hood which will work with that lens - no other will do, and I don't want it in a week I want it now, with the lens. There are a number of filters I can choose from, but it would have to be the right size & type. Maybe I want a case from the excellent LowePro Street & Field series - they're popular because they're good. I don't want a cheap generic knock off in faux-leather, thanks all the same.
And, I don't know of too many independent stores that can't order whatever you absolutely, positively need, anyway.
Excellent - so I can pay someone else to go online and order it for me! What a fantastic idea. Tell you what, why don't I bring in my lunch so you can eat it for me - I'll even pay for the service. Am I supporting my local economy now? I used to work in a small computer shop with a limited (due to space) inventory. We could order stuff for people, and often did. But I felt horrible doing it. We'd go to the exact same mailorder company the customer could use themselves and stick 40% on the price. I don't like ripping people off, so I quit. They went bust shortly after - good riddance.
See the riots outside of Wal-Mart stores this time of year?
No, I never go to Walmart, they only sell cheap crap and that's not something I tend to buy. You seem to think that the reason I shop online is to buy cheap crap cheaply. Not so. It's so I can buy the exact product I want, that fits my needs exactly, and get it for the best price. I don't buy crap, but it's all most of the B&M stores I go to sell.
There are some things for which local stores are unbeatable - food & drink, artworks, books, clothing, hifi etc. All these things benefit from personal service, the ability to see, touch and examine items before purchase, etc. For the large part, however, consumer electronics is not that way anymore. There's far more information online than any salesperson could memorise, even if they tried (which they rarely do) and the informed (or "picky" as you call them) customer typically already knows what they want. It's a dead market sector, and I'm sure as hell not going out of my way to support it. As we're always telling the **AA - you're not guaranteed a business model. If times change you have to keep up.
And, do you really NEED 100,000 different items to choose from? Are you buying 100,000 different items?
No, I'm buying 1 item. But I need the correct one item. That's why a large selection is useful.
Of course there are, in fact pretty much everyone in my family has one. They're great for two purposes - keeping track of things I'd like to buy for myself (I bunch orders for small things together to save on shipping) and giving others ideas if they want to buy me something. I'd much rather get a $10 CD I actually want for christmas than a $30 plastic piece of crap novelty.
Clickstream Analysis has been a common phrase for a few years now, it seems to be to quite fairly summarize the activity. Unless you think "log grokking" sounds better.