video feed?

[Al DeFlorio]

What I said was that an analogy that uses 40% of the market in order to make a point about the market's behavior toward a 4% share is faulty.  I'm sorry if you can't grasp that.  It is perfectly logical for someone to choose to write off a share of the market as small as 4% in terms of his product and service offering, and to curse him for doing it shows a lack of understanding.  John's analogy, much as I love him, stretched the point beyond reality.

Getting into a Mac vs. Windows argument is as pointless as arguing religion, and I haven't the time or interest.  You pays your money and takes your choice.  Windows choosers buy a system and get on with life.  Mac choosers too often become obsessed with defending their choice to the complete boredom of the rest of us.

"But anyone who buys a Mac knows that going in and has already decided it's worth it."

And anyone who buys a Mac knows that they are in a 4% minority and will be treated as such by the marketplace.  The rest of us don't want to hear their whining when they experience it.

[jeh25]

Al DeFlorio wrote:
It is perfectly logical for someone to choose to write off a share of the market as small as 4% in terms of his product and service offering, and to curse him for doing it shows a lack of understanding.  John's analogy, much as I love him, stretched the point beyond reality.

See, this is exactly why I hate the 'net trend of arguing using analogies. I never intended to make any statement whatsoever about market share. You guys inferred that one completely on your own. My sole intent was to attempt to illustrate the unsolicited condescension and derision that is frequently directed toward nonconformists that buck the norm.  

Al DeFlorio wrote:
Getting into a Mac vs. Windows argument is as pointless as arguing religion, and I haven't the time or interest.  You pays your money and takes your choice.  

I completely agree. In the last month, I found myself just as irritated by the silly faculty member that literally tried to high-five as when she discovered I owned an iBook as I was by the clueless department admin that felt the need to trash the macintosh when she saw a G4 install cd in my hand.  Computers are a tool. Nothing more. I don't feel the need to validate my existance in this world with my choice of computing platform.

However, that having been said, I assume you can see how the repeated dismissal of any non-MS platform due to some provincial bigotry could be rather irksome. Not that this excuses the chip so many macintosh users seem to carry around, but it does become somewhat tiresome. I've long been a supporter of the any browser campaign http://www.anybrowser.org/campaign/ and open standards http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS1. Coding a website to one browser and one platform is just plain lazy at best and more likely is a sign of incompetence.

If a website can't afford to support the macintosh or linux with their autoconfigure scripts, that's fine with me. They can just set the mime type correctly on their server, give me the raw stream and let me configure my own media player. But to pop up an insulting message is just childish.  In spite of my hatred for argument via analogy and at risk of beating a dead horse, I must return to the car analogy one last time. As the owner of a diesel, I'd suggest that, the former is akin to making me use the old non-pay at the pump diesel pump out back while the latter is like the 19 year old pump jockey sneering at me while saying "why'd you buy a diesel. don't you know diesels are dirty and slow..." The first is acceptable given the state of the market while the second is ignorant and unprofessional.

Of course, I like 5+ hours of battery life on my laptop and 600+ miles on $20 worth of fuel, so what do I know....

Cheers.

John



Post Edited (10-28-03 13:00)

[Al DeFlorio]

John E Hayes '98 '00 wrote:

The first is acceptable given the state of the market while the second is ignorant and unprofessional.
Post Edited (10-28-03 13:00)

As I've said, I completely agree with both observations.

Have you seen the new Prius, John?

[DeltaOne81]

Notice I'd let it drop too... glad we agree on the fundamentals. Al and I got into a discussion on a detail that avoided the main point.

Also, my next car'll be a hybrid :-}... though that's a few years off, hopefully 5ish .

[jeh25]

Al DeFlorio wrote:

Have you seen the new Prius, John?

I've *never* like Toyotas but damn, they nailed it in the the 2nd generation Prius. Ugly as sin, but 0-60 in under 10 seconds while getting 61/50 city/hwy in a car bigger than a Passat? That's some serious engineering. A Cd of .26 doesn't hurt.

Of course, I'm still pining for BMW to sell the 330D in the US. 220hp, 0-60 in under 6.7 s and the thing still gets 40+ mpg.

[DisplacedCornellian]

good lord.  You people take your computers too seriously.  To call the pop up insulting and childish seems a bit strong to me.  Can't anyone take a joke in this world anymore?

Or are we all become far too PC??

[Robb \'94]

[Q]Or are we all become far too PC??[/Q]

At the risk of fanning the flames, no - we've all become far too Mac....ba-da-crash!

IT'S A JOKE, PEOPLE!  If anyone responds seriously to this, I'm going to start a petition for an ignore list...

[jtwcornell91]

DisplacedCornellian wrote:
To call the pop up insulting and childish seems a bit strong to me.

How about irritating and redundant?  I know I'm using Mozilla (Explorer isn't even made for the operating system I get the most use from); I don't need to be reminded of it every time I access their homepage.

[kaelistus]

I e-mailed the (incompetent) chief architect.. and told him something along the lines of: Your web page works with Mozilla just fine, please remove the incredibly annoying pop-up.

Of course, even despite this, its a pretty shoddy looking web page. I think its a bit ironic considering one of the excuses Cornell used to not used their alumni resources was that they wanted something 'more professional'.

At least, for me, I'll get video this year, which is nice. I wasn't willing to pay the $7 or so for audio, but I am willing to pay for video. In my mind this reduces their Major DQ to maybe a double minor (for unsportsmanlike conduct, and Alumni patronizing).

[Rich Gourley]

I saw in todays Ithaca Journal that the fee for the video feed is $5 per game or $60 for all 16 home games.

Jason N '95 wrote:

[marty]

Rich Gourley wrote:

I saw in todays Ithaca Journal that the fee for the video feed is $5 per game or $60 for all 16 home games.
[/b]

The quality of the feed better be good.:-(

For the record I would think $3 or $4 is more reasonable.  If the feed is GREAT then I will be OK with $5.

[RedAR]

I guess these idiots think that Dell PC's or Sony PC's or Toshiba PC's don't count as qualifying hardware.  Last time I checked, Intel made the chips for PC's, and IBM made the chips for Macs.


Minimum Viewing Requirements
Cable modem, DSL, T1 or Ethernet capable of at least 384 Kbps download speeds
Click here to test your speed
Internet Explorer 5.0
Windows Media Player 9.0
IBM PC Pentium II 400 MHz
with 64 MB RAM