When is it the right time to stop innovating? When can you be certain that
more processing power will never be necessary? When will you have found
everything that everyone needs to do, and when will they be able to do it
well enough?
The thing about technological advances is that each one not only makes
things possible that weren't, but makes things possible that no one could
imagine before the advance took place.
Sure, computers work well enough, if you discount all the myriad times when
they don't. I can do everything I need to do currently (except music
editing/production) on my two-year-old netbook running Windows XP. I
haven't upgraded to Windows 7 because I haven't had a compelling use case to
do so. But it would I think be presumptuous of me to say that the evolution
of computers and operating systems has gone far enough and can't we please
just be happy with what we have?
Look at the cell phone world. Even two years ago, the idea of full
accessibility to a cell phone was still a fractured dream for blind users.
IOS began changing that thought, but now there's competition and different
ways of doing things, and the dream of a voice-powered, pseudo-intelligent
personal assistant is at least on the horizon, with early prototypes out in
the world. The revolutions in access these technologies promise weren't
imaginable for most people when we had dumb phones that simply made calls
and maybe kept a calendar and task list. We are within a few years of the
mass obsolescence of a lot of specialized access technology, with the
accompanying "blindness tax" that will make access to many things available
to people who can't afford to drop a thousand dollars on a piece of
specialized software, or $7,000 for a notetaker.
So be not over hasty to say that we've gone as far as we need to. The fact
that you, or I may not have a use case for updating a particular item now
doesn't mean that at some point a new set of possibilities may not occur
that would make such a use case compelling.
Sorry for this near rant, but I see this kind of thinking in all sorts of
arenas and not just among disabled folk. I think it's important that we
embrace advances in technology when it is prudent to do so and not be afraid
of change.
Chris Bartlett
-----Original Message-----
From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On
Behalf Of Charles Rivard
Sent: Sunday, December 11, 2011 5:32 PM
To: Gamers Discussion list
Subject: [Audyssey] my beef about Microsoft - Re: plans for an updated Lone
Wolf
Do they really have to continually upgrade the operating system and
programs, making more power hogs, making us buy more powerful computers to
do the same tasks we were previously doing but having to use more powerful
processors and use more of the resources to do those tasks? Why can't they
just leave well enough alone once they get a system that actually does what
it's supposed to do?
---
"Security is not the absence of danger. It is the presence of the Lord."
----- Original Message -----
From: "dark" <d...@xgam.org>
To: "Gamers Discussion list" <gamers@audyssey.org>
Sent: Sunday, December 11, 2011 4:04 PM
Subject: Re: [Audyssey] plans for an updated Lone Wolf
> Hi Alex.
>
> As I said I'm not annoyed that Microsoft update their os, they have to,
> even if we don't like some of their decisions on interfaces etc.
>
> it just seems though that they don't give a dam about running older
> programs, games or anything else, they just claime "newer = better" it
> seems without actually considdering what people want their computers for,
> namely to run programs.
>
> comador didn't do this with their os or machines, even with compltely new
> hardware, going from amigar 500 to 1200.
>
> Even the big console developers are realizing that people like running
> their old games, hence the wii virtual consoles, virtual arcade and other
> such software versions of older games stil available on modern machines.
>
> Microsoft though just seem to expect everyone to update, buy their
> products and cope, because newer is always better in their opinion.
>
> for myself, if i could be certain all my games and other applications
> would work under windows 7, I'd be much less wary about updating.
>
> I just see this as a case of not listening to the customer and doing their
> own dam thing and expecting everyone to cope simply because they are a big
> fat company who just care about the prophit.
>
> Beware the grue!
>
> Dark.
>
> ---
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