In short, the whole book felt like he got great access to data, and poked around in it until something interesting popped up. Then overarching conclusions were drawn without significant effort to describe whether or not the data was representative.
My experience with shopping online in New Zealand is not like in the US. International shipping prices to NZ are typically insane and shipments take forever. Depending on the item, it’s usually cheaper and faster to just pick it up at the store.
The exception to that is of course online shopping from NZ-based retailers, but I only came across online shops for specific verticals, like computers (e.g. Newegg.com), Trademe (Craigslist), or simply a a brick and mortar shop that also delivers (same price as in store, plus delivery fee). Keep in mind, NZ has a population of something like 5 million people, so it’s harder to get economies of scale.
Furthermore, if you live in a rural area (I don’t know what the cutoff is) without a regular parcel service, you also have to pay an additional delivery fee through NZ Post. This looks like it’s at least $3.70, and maybe more for packages [1].
My point is that I think that the economic incensitves that cause Kiwis to shop locally are the same economic incentives that cause Americans to buy online. I don’t think it’s out of any heightened sense of altruism or local affiliation.
[1] https://www.nzpost.co.nz/tools/rate-finder/sending-nz/rural-...
Been using Ubuntu for close to 5 years now. I tried, I really tried to love it but the drivers are horribly outdated. Nvidia graphics broke everything in my Dell 9560. Even a fresh install of Ubuntu LTS is practically unusable. Each keystroke takes around 3 to 7 seconds to register. The screen lag is horrible. I tried fresh install and still everything looks pathetic compared to OSX or even Windows 10.
After Windows 10 got native Ubuntu 16, I just moved to it and though I have to run Linux startup services manually I am pretty satisfied with it.
We can't fight the inevitable just because of personal vendetta. Walmart was a small time store once. They got big because of the ease of use. Same with Amazon. To me it's just stupid to go out of the way to "buy local" when it's a losing game.
It’s not terrible, but taking all of my daily work into account, it’s still not feasible on the whole. And the problems are about the same as always. Hardware compatibility, arduous installations and config (yak shaving), and stuff just not working. And the pervasive pattern, inherited from open source itself, that things have recursive dependencies, each involving their own incredible journey of configuration and workarounds. Always the journey, never the destination of getting work done. In the end, I clean installed Windows, set it up to minimize annoyance, and got on with work.
I feel that, much like Blender, Linux requires a certain mindset. I suspect that mindset resembles either masochism or Stockholm Syndrome. I still have no complaints about MacOS.
But that’s a good analogy for this article. UNIX-like devices did eventually dominate the world, just not in the form factor we were expecting. I’m writing this on my pocketable UNIX device. You’ve probably heard of it; it’s called an iPhone. If one adds up all the devices in the world, Microsoft only owns a fraction of all of the operating systems installed.[1] Like the store keepers in this article, Microsoft failed to adapt but continued to rely on an increasingly failing business model (desktops). There will still be a place for Windows in 20 years but it will be a niche product like macOS is today. Unless they quickly adapt.
I certainly prefer to Amazon something than go to a store. This story is one of struggling to protect a failing business model. Were I one of those business owners I would spend all of my (increasingly) free time learning to either sell online or tweak my service so that it’s so compelling that people would willingly dress, drive out, risk crowds, and pay more. I would get online (hah!) and find the world’s best retailers, find out what they’re doing, and emulate their success.
There are still buggy whip manufacturers[2] but they learned what was needed to adapt. Adapt or get run over.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_sys...
It's an equal nightmare to develop on windows and deploy on Linux. But it's true. I have Linux systems running for couple of years with no downtime at all.
"And the pervasive pattern, inherited from open source itself, that things have recursive dependencies, each involving their own incredible journey of configuration and workarounds."
You get software from repos. Your system figures out the dependencies for you I literally have no idea where you could possibly be coming from.
"Hardware compatibility"
Buy compatible hardware.
"arduous installations"
Don't know what you are talking about. Given well supported hardware installation is incredibly easy and has been for over a decade.
" feel that, much like Blender, Linux requires a certain mindset. I suspect that mindset resembles either masochism or Stockholm Syndrome. I still have no complaints about MacOS."
You accept that MacOS doesn't run on just any hardware, buy hardware from a vendor who sell you MacOS preinstalled on supported hardware and experience no issues. Can I propose that you would have similar lack of issues with a vendor who sells prepackaged linux solutions?
Linux is bad in some ways but you are mostly kinda bad at linux. People installing hackintoshes seem to exist in a world that is fraught with pitfalls and workarounds but nobody expects MacOS to work out of the box on whatever. Linux by virtue of actually working on 99% of machines catches flack for only working optimally on 80%.
To boot you wonder why apple who has received thousands of dollars from you works better than a product which you provide zero support for. Its super likely that if you and others who wanted open source solutions to work for them had spent 15 years giving open source software 10% of the support provided to closed source solutions you might have something closer to what you want.
A lot of people have hardware and aren't looking to buy something shiny and new just to use Linux.
It's an immediate no-go for me to recommend anyone Linux when their machine is not support out of the box (sans nvidia blob, some people insist on it)
Free software development time is finite and information on some hardware is notably absent.
If you desire better support pool money to pay for improvements to particular hardware. Anything else is hoping people are willing to expend their resources for free so that you don't have to.
In the meantime I'm guessing most people intend to eventually buy a new machine. Upgrade time is a great time to think about trying Linux. Instead of
Linux it will run on whatever terrible machine you got on sale at Walmart with a Vista certified sticker.
Think instead...
Make your next computer a Linux machine.
Outside of hardware primarly used under Linux, you won't have much luck paying any vendor money to improve that situation. You'll have to suck it up and make it work anyway by patching the kernel.
>Linux it will run on whatever terrible machine you got on sale at Walmart with a Vista certified sticker.
Vista? I have upgraded people to Linux with 98 stickers and earlier. These people won't buy new machines, the current machine will have to work.
There won't be a "next computer" for some of them.
Use the right tool for the job, avoid assuming you need the most expensive tool possible!
Even then, most people don't buy with "it must run linux" in mind, they grab whatever has good sounding numbers on it.
There is nothing about linux that would imply screen lag or keystrokes its pretty clear that something was clearly broken with your gpu driver. For example using software rendering rather than your gpu. Possibly something that could have been corrected by using drivers that aren't "horribly outdated" which are certainly available.
You didn't happen to think all the people using linux are just dealing with keysstrokes that take seconds to show up and pretending its normal did you?
This last time, I put Windows 10 and WAMP on the server and was amazed. I was tweaking products after a couple of hours. Things like ssl certificate, smtp/pop3 server, remote desktop all installed and worked with no arduous arcane CLI commands or hours spent researching tasks required.
Bonus: Robust antivirus and easy backups with a simple DOS script run from the task scheduler.
With only one buyer a week and 250 unique daily visitors, I don't need the speed of LAMP for my estore.
Ubuntu is worst linux distro.
Edit: As for condoms, I think the situation is a little different. They ruin sex compared to going without a condom, marketing from Trojan be damned. I'm not trying to endorse the mindset, but there are many people who are primarily just trying to avoid getting someone/themselves pregnant so if someone's on the pill that's good enough for them.
"Buying local" is the kind of thing everyone is in favor of and no one actually does. Well, okay, not "no one," but far fewer than favor it in theory. Like "giving up Facebook," "switching to Linux" and "always using a condom," the number of people who make the claim in order to signal something about themselves is much smaller than the number actually engaging a behavior.
See further Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are ( https://www.amazon.com/Everybody-Lies-Internet-About-Really/... ).