Should we call out the Apple lovers amongst our ranks?

[reine]

I would say yes only if they've got any linux/bsd on their mac box and not a free (as in beer) bsd resold later as an expensive osex. Reine.....PS: a radical quote from the (i think) american sixties:"you are part of the problem OR part of the solution", there's no middle way!. An eternal newbie: Reine.

[jelkimantis]

An interesting thing, which I've heard before, is that "it's hard to install something on linux if it's not in the repositories." Which, to me, is the exact problem I have with Apple users. Macs have (or had anyway) the absolute smallest software pool to select from. Windows has the largest (I believe), and Linux has such a large software pool that it causes problems for some people. But mac, either you've got it for mac or you don't. I think you can run wine (or something similar) in mac, but then you run into all the problems wine represents (and I've rarely met someone who runs a software compatability layer on a mac).

I know a lot of mac people who just "go without" software if they can't find it... Would you rather go without or have a difficult time installing? I guess I just don't understand the concept of "difficult" versus "impossible" being a negative trade-off.

A friend of mine stated that he didn't want to drop to cli in order to run a web/html/ftp/etc server. He wanted to be able to do everything from a gui. I would call it much more complex to admin a web server through a gui than through cli. Lets say that you have 4 domains on your server, each domain will have it's own tab or access point, which will need to be dynamically created, using resources to interface. Then if you want a function or restriction which your GUI doesn't account for, then you're either stuck or back in cli fiddling with files that say, "do not edit this file."

I don't know, I just don't understand the mentality that "gui" is always better... I'm done whining now.

jsl

[snarkout]

I've never had trouble finding software for a mac - there are sites like versiontracker which have lots and lots of shareware easily searchable - but then I haven't used one for a few years. With darwinports or fink, there's also a lot of FOSS stuff available via apt-get or similar. I think, in general, the idea that there isn't software available for any platform is a fallacy - the idea that the best of breed software may not be available for any one platform is probably true, though.

[eddie]

Under linux most of the software you will ever need is just a click away with most distros. With google you would have to be pretty lazy not to find all the available apps you might need. Even with some web apps they are pretty easy. once you have done one or two, you can almost even do them blindfolded. In windows and osx, unless you get an oem system preloaded, you will be spend a bit of time loading apps and there is no point and click to install unless you want to install possible malware. I will say that on mac like we use to do in dos that you can in some cases expand a compressed app to a directory and it is installed. To uninstall it all you do is to delete it. I think "Portable Apps" for all the platforms has gone to a great lengths to to bring back that type of environment. More power to them. I think on our mac it took several hours to download and install apps and osx. The equivalent linux box would have taken a fraction of the time. If one can run virtually the same programs on linux as a commercial operating system, why pay at least two hundred dollars a pop for the os to do the same thing.

[Tsuroerusu]

why pay at least two hundred dollars a pop for the os to do the same thing.

In many people's cases, because of inertia, it's very very hard to get people to get used to something other than what they already are used to, unless they are motivated. And most people just aren't. When their Windows box shits the can, they pay somebody to fix it, then they use it for a month or two again, and then they pay to get it fixed. Most people I know, would rather do that, than switch to something else. Yes to me it's absolutely stupid, but I can't do anything about it.

[Patrick]

When their Windows box shits the can, they pay somebody to fix it, then they use it for a month or two again, and then they pay to get it fixed. Most people I know, would rather do that, than switch to something else.

I take the following course of action to convert people after they complain that their Windows machine is hurting:
1 - offer to install Linux on it for free and to give them the basics to get around
Some (the smart ones) will immediately take me up on this.
2 - tell them to go pay some guy to fix their machine
They spend $50-$200 and the machine works well for a while. Then it pukes again. The come back asking for help again.
3 - after the first go around I offer to install Linux on it again
Most will take me up at this point. Some will either pay someone to fix it again or go and buy a new machine to replace their "broken" PC. For the latter I offer to "dispose" of the broken machine.

[allix]

What about the windows gamers ?

[eddie]

I would like to see a lot more "reaL" educational games. I see a real market in linux for education just waiting to be tapped. .
-
US kids have been playing too many games and that is why the market and the economy is being taken away from us. It is time to get the kids off of video game drugs and back on education. I am not against video games such as gta, but they should be the dessert and not the main meal so to speak. It is a shame that all the technology to make mindless games could not be used to help kids learn science, language skills, and ethics. I guess the game companies are not smart enough or are too lazy to make intelligent games profitable. Maybe they need a real marketing department that is innovative and will let industry become more socially responsible.

[Tsuroerusu]

When their Windows box shits the can, they pay somebody to fix it, then they use it for a month or two again, and then they pay to get it fixed. Most people I know, would rather do that, than switch to something else.

I take the following course of action to convert people after they complain that their Windows machine is hurting:
1 - offer to install Linux on it for free and to give them the basics to get around
Some (the smart ones) will immediately take me up on this.
2 - tell them to go pay some guy to fix their machine
They spend $50-$200 and the machine works well for a while. Then it pukes again. The come back asking for help again.
3 - after the first go around I offer to install Linux on it again
Most will take me up at this point. Some will either pay someone to fix it again or go and buy a new machine to replace their "broken" PC. For the latter I offer to "dispose" of the broken machine.

Believe me, I've tried all that, it has not worked once.

What about the windows gamers ?

You could either tell them to dual boot, or use consoles instead. Although I usually just don't even bother trying to get this group of people to move away from Windows.

US kids have been playing too many games and that is why the market and the economy is being taken away from us. It is time to get the kids off of video game drugs and back on education. I am not against video games such as gta, but they should be the dessert and not the main meal so to speak.

OK, STOP right there!
You mention "kids" and "gta" in the same context, dude kids should NOT be playing Grand Theft Auto at all, like they should not be watching very violent movies. GTA has a 18+ rating for a reason.

It is a shame that all the technology to make mindless games could not be used to help kids learn science, language skills, and ethics. I guess the game companies are not smart enough or are too lazy to make intelligent games profitable. Maybe they need a real marketing department that is innovative and will let industry become more socially responsible.

I think Nintendo would take offense to those claims. Recently they have been doing stuff like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_Age: ... utes_a_Day!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_Age_ ... utes_a_Day!

From Wikipedia: "Brain Age features a variety of puzzles, including stroop tests, mathematical questions, and Sudoku puzzles, all designed to help keep certain parts of the brain active.".

"Nintendo was looking for something new to develop that would appeal to both traditional and casual gamers. In one of the meetings, the Chief Financial Officer of Nintendo's Japanese division suggested reviewing a published book titled Train Your Brain: 60 Days to a Better Brain, which was enjoying a great deal of success in Japan. Satoru Iwata, the president of Nintendo, arranged for a meeting with Professor Ryuta Kawashima, the author of the book."

"Ryuta Kawashima (川島 隆太 Kawashima Ryūta?) (born May 23, 1959) is a Japanese neuroscientist known to video game players for his appearance in the Brain Training series of video games for the Nintendo DS (known as Brain Age in North America)[1]"

Now that's recent history, but also in many of Nintendo's traditional games, you find things you can learn from. You mentioned language skills, well guess where a big part of my English skills come from, it's certainly not school! A lot of it comes from video games with a lot of text such as Zelda or Pokémon, which I have played a lot for like 10 years now, and still do. This one is obviously more relevant for non-native English speakers, but tell me, when was indirect practice (Such as having to read and clearly understand conversations with characters in a video game to figure out where you need to go to get some item) a bad thing?

The impression I got was that you labeled most traditional video games today as being "mindless games", if that was the case, I think you should step a bit away from the Hillary Clinton/Jack Thompson koolaid, because this is definitely NOT reality.

Here's a chicken and egg problem I see in society. Politicians and a lot of parents have a stick up their asses, about how bad violent video games are etc. etc. yet when some kids play something like Pokémon (Which actually also teach some ethics, if you're as deeply vested in it, as kids might be), the chance that they get bullied in school for playing what is not "cool" (Which is non-violent games in many cases) is pretty big. That was the case for some friends of mine, for a long time they played Pokémon because I showed them the game back in like 1998, but then they stopped because other people pressured them to through bullying and so on, even though they actually did like the games, and started playing stuff like Counter-Strike or GTA (Even though they were like 9 years below the applicable rating of the game) instead, because that's what their surroundings thought was "cool".
From day one of school, I was bullied about my skin color (I'm adopted from Sri Lanka), so being bullied about what video games I played was not anything new or big, so I just resisted or even fought (Literally) back some times. Not everybody is as good at "not giving a shit" about what other people think as I am, so this is a big problem.

Another thing I find frustrating is the parents who think that all video games have a halo over their boxes, yet they would never allow their kids to watch a very bloody movie. In my social science class (Before school ended for this school year), there was a woman (31 years old I think) who really had a bug up her butt about how "They are ONLY allowed to play those things ONE hour a day!!!", yet she fully admitted to buying Grand Theft Auto (A game with an 18+ rating) for her 11 year old son. When I heard that I thought to myself "WHERE THE HECK IS MY FISH BOWL!!!". And then she went on to say that the reason she allowed her son to play these games, was because if she said that something else was more relevant for his age, he'd be like "Mom, come on, that's sooo uncool!!!", an example of what I describe in the previous paragraph.

Also, unless you blend an educational game with elements of a traditional game, you just aren't gonna get kids to play them, a math game is not fun, even if you don't listen to what others around you say, but a game where you have to USE math skills, to get through a dungeon, for example, THAT is relevant, and you can find that in RPG games like Zelda, Final Fantasy, Pokémon and many many others.

Here's another thing to chew on, violent video games is actually something that's mostly attributable to the western part of the world. As far as I know, Japan's modern culture actually have a lot less of this. Here's a bit from an interview with Satoshi Tajiri, the guy who created the Pokémon games:

TIME: A lot of people blame violence in video games for violent things young people do, especially in the U.S. Do you feel guilty about that?
Tajiri: In Japan, violence in games is pretty much self-regulated. In the 1980s, there was a game called Bullfighter where the matador stabbed the bull and red blood squirted out. The day after it was released, they changed the blood to green. There's more violence in games in the U.S., in things like Mortal Kombat, where they rip out hearts and cut off heads. Japanese people wouldn't come up with ideas of blood splattering all over. Japanese focus more on the intricacies of the actions, the motion.

TIME: The TV people in the U.S. were worried about violence in Pokémon. Can you believe that?
Tajiri: I'm very careful about violence in games. I'm not interested in creating violent effects.

TIME: It seems like role-playing games are more popular in Japan than the U.S. Why's that?
Tajiri: Well, one reason is that back when we had arcade games only, they cost 100 yen for one game. I think in the U.S. it was always [much cheaper at] 25 cents. So 20 years ago we thought it was very expensive, but when role-playing games were introduced in Japan, it was revolutionary because once you bought the software, no matter how many times you played, it was free.

TIME: So Japanese game designers aren't making violent games?
Tajiri: No, they make them. But only to sell in the U.S.

TIME: Still, American kids like Pokémon, even without the blood.
Tajiri: I was really careful in making monsters faint rather than die. I think that young people playing games have an abnormal concept about dying. They start to lose and say, "I'm dying." It's not right for kids to think about a concept of death that way. They need to treat death with more respect.

TIME: Well, there's a preacher in the U.S. who says Pikachu is the devil.
Tajiri: I never heard of that! [Laughs] I heard there was a guy who criticized [kid's book character] Harry Potter because of the magic. But I saw the author, and she seemed really nice. The critic seemed like a grouchy mean guy.

[eddie]

Rumor has it that Apple just closed it's brand new big store in the big apple.

[Patrick]

Rumor has it that Apple just closed it's brand new big store in the big apple.

To stock the new versions of their overpriced phones.

[eddie]

[Patrick]

The pot calls the kettle black:
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/ ... store.html

[eddie]

Time to remove osx from my last osx based mac.

[Patrick]

$199 for the new iPhone? Awesome! Wait, not so fast:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=2051

And the rate plans start at $69 a month:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/gadgetreviews/?p=240