I'm glad you like it - I mean hell the point is that people can get work done in their OS. I'm just saying the people I know that use it don't like it. That includes 2 flash developers, 1 granny, 1 chef, 1 apparel designer, 1 electrician, 1 nurse, 1 accountant... we're really not talking techies here. They've had weeks to adapt and they're really annoyed because it gets in the way of their work in many ways (drivers, 3rd party app support, etc).
Is it so unlikely that he was intentionally drawing contrast? Perhaps instead of assuming that he's so incapable of normal social interaction that he didn't realize what he was doing we should first explore the idea that it may have been an intentional symbol/example of non-conformance to traditions and rules that have no practical or technical application.
The dress in and off its self was a statement as much as the speech. It's part of a consistent philosophy - money, culture, appearance, all that doesn't matter. Let's talk truth, and I'm interested. Instead of asking "Why would he draw attention to his clothing rather than his address?" we are supposed to be asking "Why are we talking about the clothing instead of the address?". The difference is taking responsibility before pointing the finger.
why take them off to get on stage and deliver a speech to respected academics To draw stark attention to the separation between appearance and substance by committing appearance suicide. Intelligent audience members will recognize immediately that he's making a point(he had to take his shoes off) to give no credit to appearance in a very intentional way. The natural assumption, then, is that it's his belief that appearance is immaterial and should not enter into judgment.
Just this weekend I was staying in a hotel in Seattle (on business) with a very old friend of mine. We were hanging out in the lobby in the morning enjoying some coffee, and a man wearing a T-shirt, a kilt, and sneakers walked through the lobby. I pointed out the rather odd combo. My friend responded "You know, that's the nice thing about these times - people can dress however they want. In the 60's everyone here would have to be wearing a nice shirt and tie at very least. If someone walked in like that, it's likely the police would have been called because something was 'off' about him."
That just seems so wrong and foreign to me. Now, I wasn't alive in the 60's and couldn't vouch for the correctness of what he said, but if that's true we've come a long ways. Extrapolate, and you can see why I think it's really cool that RMS showed up barefoot in a T-shirt.
I imagine the dress code is vestigal. It's a very old organization, after all. Heck, in my state they still have laws against spitting in the company of women or children.
I doubt my experience is that uncommon: I've met one "clueless consumer" type that liked Vista. Every other person I've talked to either said
I heard Vista was crap, can I get my computer with XP instead? or
Vista is junk - my new computer runs slower than my old one with XP on it or
Vista is hard to use - I can't find any of the stuff I know how to do on XP Until Dell started offering machines with XP on them, friends and family members of mine that always bought from Gateway or Dell or whoever would ask me (as their "geek advisor") where they could buy a computer without Vista.
I'm not looking for this kind of feedback nor soliciting it. They bring it up on their own.
why doesn't comcast request that legitimate torrent/tracker sites register with them in exchange for guaranteed non-filtering Because that would involve admitting that they're interfering with torrents (and who knows what else) in the first place.
I wish vendor lock in didn't work anymore. I routinely have clients that need to use outlook because they use exchange server, or demand their stuff run on MSSQL 2K5 and.NET because then Microsoft will be their 'partner' or well... you name it. About Half my clients insist on Microsoft stuff because they currently use other Microsoft stuff. I can only convince a few that it's not actually a necessity nor advantageous.
Hardware suppliers have always counted on Microsoft to force people into buying a new system. If they design something that's optimized and competitive, they will lose their advantage and preferrential treatment by those vendors. Don't worry about that - it won't happen. The "microkernel" they're talking about takes 40 MB of ram just to boot to a text interface and run a minimalist web server. Damn Small Linux can boot to a gui with just 8. They never even mentioned whether or not they cut out the hardware detection and drivers for anything but VirtualPC on that model either.
This system isn't optimized, it's just a small fraction of what makes up a full Windows install (no gui included in this one). If they hype how streamlined they are and back it up with 'demos' people will feel less comfortable accusing their software of being bloated. They're just trying to get a press pass to keep doing what they've been doing.
Ok, running on only 40 MB of ram (with 7 free) you can run a text interface and an http server. How is this streamlined? Check out Damn Small Linux - I can get full gui up on it using 8 megs of ram, 2 of which are the wallpaper. If I boot up without X I'm using around 4 megs of ram.
Congratulations, you've booted Windows without a gui and a minimalist http server in only 33 megs of ram.
Most Windows "Everyday" users won't ever mess up Linux enough to even put it in an unusable state, the most that can usually happen is your home directory gets wiped. Thats it. I can vouch for that. I've installed Linux dual booting with Windows for my dad, mom's office PC, and my step-dad and they all use it exclusively. None have managed to break it either. Open Office, Firefox, Amarok, and Thunderbird handle their needs nicely. I expected them to just use Linux as a backup for when they screwed Windows up (so I wouldn't have to rush to fix it as quickly), but they ended up preferring it.
It's just funny how when Vista doesn't have drivers, there's a real feeling that manufacturers are at fault. But Linux? Fuck it.:( I would have said the same thing, but without using the guy's own words with a find+replace to say so. I think your method proved the point far better.
On a side note, might Vista's uptake lack because it is harder to pirate? It isn't. I have a few friends that know pretty much nothing about computers (they're casual gamers and that's it... like if the guy at Best Buy tells them something, they believe it). They've managed to pirate Vista without headache. Some liked it, some went back to XP, but none had any trouble pirating it.
This seems to be the theme on slashdot so much that you would think it was true, except that out in the real world, I've seen and heard very little about Vista one way or the other. All in all, it seems to be a fairly ho-hum release that people don't care too much about. I work for myself, so many days I just go to a random cafe with free wireless and do my work there. I've had a fairly large number of encounters where someone would hear me on the phone with a client and say "Hey, you sound like you know something about computers - I can't figure out how to get the Internet working on this thing. Worked fine on my last laptop" - sure enough, it's Vista. Usually the issue is something simple (for geeks) like IE7 staying in "offline" mode even though there's a perfectly active connection (I know, IE7 is for XP too, I'm just stating the latest example I encountered), but it's hard for them. While I'm getting them online I routinely hear complaints about speed and usability. I only used to hear people complaining about speed when they'd had XP installed for a few years and it was bogged down with spyware.
Vista really is a different case. I haven't met anyone that's satisfied with it, and I've met a lot of mom'n'pop end users that were pretty vocal in their criticism of it.
Anecdotal? Possibly. I could have a superhuman ability to attract people that have problems with Vista, or perhaps people that use the WiFi in cafes are demographically more prone to disliking Vista than everyone else, but I'm inclined to believe this is an indication of a larger trend.
A friend of mine almost did the same as well. He owns two restaurants, and has PC-based terminals in the more recently made one. He wanted to get the same system installed in his first restaurant, so he called up the company that makes the software and they told him to buy 3 PCs and they'd come get everything set up. He buys 3 PCs which come with Vista, and they tell him that 'for security reasons' he has to purchase XP Pro licenses (at $170-$220 a pop, depending where you get them) for the systems before they'll install the software.
He didn't know any better - good thing he had me to call.
Vista will load 95% of XP drivers without a hitch... The only caveats here are that network drivers won't work " Ummm, isn't that a HUGE caveat? Especially since that's the one driver that, if it doesn't work, you can't just go download? Besides, I would be a bit surprised if network drivers didn't add up to a lot more than 5% of all drivers.
and XP video drivers will work fine but you lose all the advantages of WDDM. Oh, now that WOULD be tragic.
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I'm glad you like it - I mean hell the point is that people can get work done in their OS. I'm just saying the people I know that use it don't like it. That includes 2 flash developers, 1 granny, 1 chef, 1 apparel designer, 1 electrician, 1 nurse, 1 accountant... we're really not talking techies here. They've had weeks to adapt and they're really annoyed because it gets in the way of their work in many ways (drivers, 3rd party app support, etc).
It was wise to post as an AC :-) Protect your Karma, oh ignorant ones (I told you I'm talking about clueless end users, not /. readers).
Is it so unlikely that he was intentionally drawing contrast? Perhaps instead of assuming that he's so incapable of normal social interaction that he didn't realize what he was doing we should first explore the idea that it may have been an intentional symbol/example of non-conformance to traditions and rules that have no practical or technical application.
The dress in and off its self was a statement as much as the speech. It's part of a consistent philosophy - money, culture, appearance, all that doesn't matter. Let's talk truth, and I'm interested. Instead of asking "Why would he draw attention to his clothing rather than his address?" we are supposed to be asking "Why are we talking about the clothing instead of the address?". The difference is taking responsibility before pointing the finger.
This may seem off topic at first - bear with me.
Just this weekend I was staying in a hotel in Seattle (on business) with a very old friend of mine. We were hanging out in the lobby in the morning enjoying some coffee, and a man wearing a T-shirt, a kilt, and sneakers walked through the lobby. I pointed out the rather odd combo. My friend responded "You know, that's the nice thing about these times - people can dress however they want. In the 60's everyone here would have to be wearing a nice shirt and tie at very least. If someone walked in like that, it's likely the police would have been called because something was 'off' about him."
That just seems so wrong and foreign to me. Now, I wasn't alive in the 60's and couldn't vouch for the correctness of what he said, but if that's true we've come a long ways. Extrapolate, and you can see why I think it's really cool that RMS showed up barefoot in a T-shirt.
I imagine the dress code is vestigal. It's a very old organization, after all. Heck, in my state they still have laws against spitting in the company of women or children.
At my funeral, I hope everyone is naked. That would rule.
I'm not looking for this kind of feedback nor soliciting it. They bring it up on their own.
The machine has 96 MB, but only 8 was in use.
I wish vendor lock in didn't work anymore. I routinely have clients that need to use outlook because they use exchange server, or demand their stuff run on MSSQL 2K5 and .NET because then Microsoft will be their 'partner' or well... you name it. About Half my clients insist on Microsoft stuff because they currently use other Microsoft stuff. I can only convince a few that it's not actually a necessity nor advantageous.
This system isn't optimized, it's just a small fraction of what makes up a full Windows install (no gui included in this one). If they hype how streamlined they are and back it up with 'demos' people will feel less comfortable accusing their software of being bloated. They're just trying to get a press pass to keep doing what they've been doing.
Ok, running on only 40 MB of ram (with 7 free) you can run a text interface and an http server. How is this streamlined? Check out Damn Small Linux - I can get full gui up on it using 8 megs of ram, 2 of which are the wallpaper. If I boot up without X I'm using around 4 megs of ram.
Congratulations, you've booted Windows without a gui and a minimalist http server in only 33 megs of ram.
Then they should keep selling the old OS's.
To quote one client that sent a .odf back to me: "We only deal with the imperialist Word format, thanks."
Isn't it 17 years + 17 optional if the copyright holder is alive and wants it, not the author?
..and faster boot time to logon screen. Yeah, but you still can't do anything for 30 seconds after you get there. How is that helpful?Vista really is a different case. I haven't met anyone that's satisfied with it, and I've met a lot of mom'n'pop end users that were pretty vocal in their criticism of it.
Anecdotal? Possibly. I could have a superhuman ability to attract people that have problems with Vista, or perhaps people that use the WiFi in cafes are demographically more prone to disliking Vista than everyone else, but I'm inclined to believe this is an indication of a larger trend.
A friend of mine almost did the same as well. He owns two restaurants, and has PC-based terminals in the more recently made one. He wanted to get the same system installed in his first restaurant, so he called up the company that makes the software and they told him to buy 3 PCs and they'd come get everything set up. He buys 3 PCs which come with Vista, and they tell him that 'for security reasons' he has to purchase XP Pro licenses (at $170-$220 a pop, depending where you get them) for the systems before they'll install the software.
He didn't know any better - good thing he had me to call.
and XP video drivers will work fine but you lose all the advantages of WDDM. Oh, now that WOULD be tragic.