The place is dead. Super dead. I think the only time I've seen a dance floor this un-utilized is the time I went 'clubbing' in Vancouver, and there were literally 12 people in the entire place who weren't me, and they all came as a group.
... Nobody gave a crap about the Wii. At the beginning of the party, the PR guy and I wondered whether or not we were able to play the games, because only the people Nintendo hired were playing them.
The quick hands-on previews of the available games aren't exactly flattering, either.
It looks like my most recent article has made it to the front page of OSNews. As usual, the comments got off to a rocky start with the requisite grouch making half-baked arguments. Other than the political sub-thread he started, the comments have otherwise been very positive.
All in all, I think the coverage is kind of cool. Wouldn't you agree?
Edit: Almost forgot! One poster was kind enough to provide a link to this little hack. (And I do mean *little*!) Smitty, I think that one is for you?
In an accidental followup to David Brin's article Why Johnny Can't Code, I share my own experiences with introducing my son to a Commodore 64. The experience convinced me that older machines are just plain better at teaching than modern software and computers. Which would be sad, except that the Commodore 64 is perfectly positioned to make a comeback as an educational toy!
Last year, CBSSportsline showed every game in the first 3 rounds of March Madness online for free (as in beer). Response was overwhelming, and yet the internet did not buckle
``This is the future,'' Big Sky Commissioner Doug Fullerton said. ``The fan will decide what they are going to watch and when they are going to watch it.''
Well, it looks like Slashdot has a new comment system. If you're a subscriber, you can turn it on by smacking the checkbox at the top of a comments page.
Unfortunately, I give you about 5 minutes before you'll be smacking that checkbox back off. I don't know about anyone else, but I normally browse at +0 Nested. This gives me a clear view of the discussion, and allows me to quickly browse from comment to comment. Anything else (e.g. Threaded mode) tends to require too much clicking.
The problem is that this new scheme is nothing more than uber-threading mode. It allows you to see the highest rated comments, and/or fold up the comment listings of lower-rated comments. Which breaks up the discussion horribly. It might be nicer for people who *like* threaded mode, but for the rest of us it's not particularly useful. Even worse, it doesn't seem to save your changes. So everytime I go to a new story, I have to lower the threshhold to 0! Fixing this problem alone would increase the usablility by 100%.
Basically, it's a nice concept, but I can't seem to take a liking to it. Perhaps if the threading was a little less clunky, I might like it. One thing I hope they *don't* do is make the comments download via AJAX. When I use a laptop, I'll occasionally load a large page of comments and read them on the go. This can be nice for interesting topics that have generated a lot of comments while I wasn't looking.
If anything, I'd like to see the page overflow feature fixed first. The way the overflow works, comments can disappear into the ether if there are a large number of responses to a top level post. To actually see the comments, you need to muck around with the threading/flat/nested settings trying to find a way of displaying the info so that it doesn't overflow.
Final analysis: I love the attempt and I encourage Taco and Pudge to keep trying. Unfortunately, the current version isn't it. What do the rest of you think?
When it comes to Open Source games, it often seems like the selection is limited. Sure, everyone has played Tux Racer and Frozen Bubble, but what comes after that? The answer seems to be "not very much." Still, there are a few diamonds in the rough that have gone unnoticed by the majority of gamers. These are the games that you wish you existed, but are nearly impossible to find. In my latest article, I've collected a list of the top ten games that you've probably never played, but really wish you had.
After months of work, and several sleepless nights, I have finally moved. All the articles and your comments have been flawlessly imported to the new site. The Blogger.com site will soon redirect to the new site.
Don't think for a minute that my work is done on the new site, though. I have a lot of plans for expanding it. I'll update all ya' all as my plans for world conquest grow nearer.
Peace out.
The below is my response to
http://redmondmag.com/columns/article.asp?EditorialsID=1245
Hey Barney,
I use all 3 major operating systems. XP (3.0ghz w/HT, 1g ram, etc...) at home for gaming, OS X on a 12" (all I've ever needed) PowerBook during my 35 min train ride to/from work, and FC 3(RedHat) with KDE (just switched from Gnome this week) at work(2.8ghz, 1g RAM etc). My firewall machine is an old 233 running RedHat 9 w/128m RAM, My mythtv box is FC4, My wife's machine is XP. My webserver (http://www.sportsdot.org) is FC2.
Firstly, Linux and Mac aren't trying because your magazine doesn't have the right audience, and I don't mean this in an insulting way. I think that most of the people who read your magazine (self described as "The independent voice of the Microsoft IT community") are in the "Cult of Microsoft." There are also cults of Apple and Linux for sure. And all of those people are difficult to reach with rational argument, and usually unwilling to spend a month using another OS to really appreciate it. There's no doubt that very few hardcore Linux users are aware of how stable XP really is and how good terminal services is now. I would say equally few Windows users understand how much their experience can be changed by changing/configuring window managers, or how good Mplayer or OpenOffice really is. And Macnatics won't even be in a room with either OS.
IMHO the home desktop is in it's last hurrah. Gaming is going away from the desktop, consoles look to be on the verge of dominating that space. Who's going to win that space is a completely different discussion, but props to MSFT on the 360. Email is moving to more portable devices. Web Browsing...well, I still do a lot of it from my home desktop, but now I do about 15% from my myth box in my home theater -- up 15% from last year. And quite frankly, you don't need much of an OS (or computer) to browse the web. Microsoft's big push to the MediaCenter PC is their realization of the demise of the home desktop. I think for the home the future is interactive embedded devices, all connected wirelessly. And you'll finally see Bill Joy's statement of "The Network is the Computer" realized, as with the advent of AJAX, rich applications move to the web. In 5 years I'm pretty sure that "Quicken Online" (or something like it) will be 10x more popular than Quicken on the desktop. Sites like http://www.writely.com have such a huge advantage over Word, that I wonder what tasks are left for the home desktop.
I recognize my home network/home theater set up is much more complicated than what most people have, and I am much more sophisticated than most users, but EVERYONE who has been in my house has asked me if they could set up something like that up. My response is "Would you consider putting a hardwood floor in yourself? If you would, I think that for a similar level of work, investment in learning how to do it and $$$, you can have a home network and a home media center (lowercase). Don't think that it's easy as pie, but anyone who wants to can do it. And it become simpler every week. I recently helped a friend install knoppmyth...turns out, even though he had used Linux before, he did not need my help, except for me bringing over the CD -- he was recording TV in 2 hours. In fact he just sent me a 30 second clip from the Daily Show. For full disclosure, I have to mention he did his digital editing on his windows desktop.
That's the market Linux is exceptionally competetive in -- the computer that the average person doesn't even know is a computer. On a device that sells for less than $200, having the OS be free is a huge boon to the manufacturer -- even if the MS license were only $5/unit (and I have no idea how much it actually is) that's over 5% profit loss, which can crush a business in volume. I guarantee you everyone in the U.S. has used a Linux powered computer and been completely unaware of it, whether as a touch screen somewhere, or in a high end cash register, or in a small router in their house.
As for the desktop -- you said "...none of the companies selling (or giving away) this stuff really seem to care about desktops and laptops..." I'm assuming you're baseing this statement on the fact that they are not overly interested in interviewing with you or in traditional PR or advertizing, but neither Linux nor Mac advertize in that way. They both work on the principle -- "if you build it, they will come". Linux companies and Apple are focused on exactly that -- building a better mousetrap -- or in their case, the best operating system they can. The operating systems advertize themselves (although Mac also gets alot of advertizing from the Ipod too). If you look at the number of institutions (schools, municipal and state governments, etc) that have committed to open source, it does seem that people are becoming more aware of other options.
I don't think the Linux and Mac people are not trying to compete in the desktop space-- I think there method of competing is not through advertizing, but through constantly improving. I can tell you as someone who uses all 3 every day -- each has it's place. I would never try to play games on Linux box (though I've done it once or twice) -- the Windows experience is vastly superior. I would never try to write/debug intensive code on my windows box (though I've done it once or twice), the Linux experience is vastly superior. And I'd never try to travel with a laptop that wasn't OS X. The Powerbooks are so fantastic, I'm not likely to ever go back to anything else.
Sorry for the long letter -- hope there's some opinions in there you'll find worthwhile.
Dan
Today's systems have hundreds of file formats they must support. Wouldn't it be great if we could reduce all the file formats in existence down to a single file format that could be supported across all systems?
My latest three-part article addresses this concept: The Intelligent File Format
If such a concept could be made into a standard, pressure could be put onto Microsoft and other large companies to support the format or lose massive government business. (See the recent pushes for the Open Document Format for a very real example of how this can work.)
I'd love to hear your thoughts and opinions.
"If I do not want others to quote me, I do not speak." -- Phil Wayne
