18 Jan
2010
18 Jan
'10
2:28 p.m.
At 11:40 PM 1/17/2010, Dave McGuire wrote:
On Jan 17, 2010, at 10:50 PM, Fred Cisin wrote:
That's Fred for you. :-)
Windows can be locked down to a certain extent, of course.
Only large institutions and malware take the time to do it.
At 09:42 PM 1/17/2010, Dave McGuire wrote:
Design choices were made that reduced the
stability of Windows, in order
to make it more adaptable to "multimedia" (dancing kangaroos, etc.),
because that is what the public wants. We are not particularly
representative of the generaal public. I use Windows a lot. I wish that
there were a configuration choice to make it rigidly unchangeable,
so that reinstallation would not ever be necessary -- but, I am not who it was
designed for.
This is the most coherent statement I've seen on this subject
matter in a very long time. Actually, ever. I am impressed. On Jan 17, 2010, at 10:20 PM, John Foust wrote:
True. "Tolerance" is supposed to be this big great wonderful
thing, but it got us made-in-China garbage from Wal*Mart, Microsoft
Windows, and phones that drop calls for no real technical reason.
Tolerance is overrated and misunderstood. And we're all paying the
price.
I forgot video, too. Let's buy a new 1080p 50" television and then
feed it MPEG distortion.
Speaking of dancing animations and USA corporate cluster-stupidity,
the original versions of the circa 1998 "dancing baby" animation were
made with an add-on called Character Studio for 3D Studio Max from Kinetix,
a branch of Autodesk.
The 3D baby model was made years before by the company I was working for
at the time, Viewpoint. The animation was licensed by another mo-cap company,
Biovision. Viewpoint gave Kinetix the right to redistribute the baby model
in exchange for a credit.
The dancing baby was popularized by a recurring appearance as a
hallucination of the main character of the television series "Ally McBeal".
Autodesk PR promoted the fact it was produced in their software,
but in fact many of the times it was on the air in the show, the
animation was actually produced with a competing product, Lightwave.
To top it all off, when Viewpoint intended to give-away a CD at
a trade show containing a screen saver with a "dancing baby" animation,
Autodesk slapped it with a cease-and-desist.
- John