Oh. That kind of thing really makes me sad. Okay, it's cool, and it is made by smart people and makes your life 'easier' and all, but... really, smart fridges? What the? In the future, everything will be smart and their users will be more and more stupid and lazy, it looks like. Can't you keep track of expiring dates? Can't you keep track of what you are low on? Can't you try new recipes? Can't you detect rotting fruit/vegetables? The question isn't if you can or can't, of course you can... but maybe you're too busy playing your Call of Duty, pressing Share buttons on your controller, sharing your 1440 no-scope across the map trick shot with your 'friends' to do simple things in life like this. Or to have someone to do it for you. Probably your wife and children will be doing the same or something similar, so they won't have the time.

To focus more on other things in life other than food? What, for example? Work? Games? Internet? TV? Of course, because all that are more important than your food. Many things have been more important that people's food, that's why the food today is what it is and nobody cares.

I think things like this are made for fat-lazy-no-brained-rich-morons.

I'm impressed. You know nothing about the guy, but assume he is fat, lazy, and idiotic because he developed a series of tools to handle a series of mindless idiotic tasks that handles things in an exceptionally graceful and efficient way.

We are talking about a guy who convinced the gym he has a membership with to let him install whiteboards so he can keep picking away at problems while working out.

Do you grow your own food? Or do you let someone else do that for you and just buy it from them? Are you too stupid, lazy, and rich to be bothered with growing your own food when you could instead be using that time to fling insults at people you don't know online?

He is at work and at lunch he gets it into his head that he wants to make an apple crisp when he gets home (about a 20 minute drive from town), then the system will email him before he leaves the office to let him know that he probably doesn't have enough butter or apples, or remind him that the apples he does have are a little older than he might want to use. It will also tell him if the carton of milk never made it back to the fridge and probably is wise to replace it.

As opposed to getting home, spending a few minutes to dig out the recipe book and find which one you want, then a few more minutes to sort through all your stuff only to discover something is missing. And when something is missing then it means the better part of an hour to go through and decide what else he wants at the store, drive the 20 minutes there, shop, and drive the 20 minutes back. So yeah, clearly he is a super lazy guy for wanting to be able to spend an extra hour or so with his family at home...

It will also suggest meal plans to use up older food, thereby avoiding waste and lowering what the family spends on food every year. He also has the system tied into the hydroponics system and nutritional software. His family eats healthier food of better quality than the majority of middle class North Americans, and are doing it for less money (Barring his expenses into building the prototype.)

And frankly, it is a great system. By using a touch screen in his kitchen you can quickly tap the answers to a handful of multiple choice questions and it comes up with a great suggestion of what to get for a snack or a meal. Food doesn't get boring for his family, they are consistently trying new things, and spend more of their time and effort on other far more interesting things.

I'm impressed. You know nothing about the guy, but assume he is fat, lazy, and idiotic because he developed a series of tools to handle a series of mindless idiotic tasks that handles things in an exceptionally graceful and efficient way.

What guy? I said it is intended for people like that, The Typical American®. It is a series of tools to handle simple and easy tasks that don't need the aid of computers to be handled.

I'll skip the growing my own food part, it's not worth replying.

All what you have said, can be done without the aid of computers or robots, which makes the act of thinking unnecessary for people who use them. It's just ridiculous how technology makes people slaves and irrational.

Keep in mind that I did not insult the creator of this crap, I find him smart, I said. But I think his creation is for The Typical American®.

The fridge prototype is intended for families of busy professional types, and assisted home care clients.

So you will dodge the comments on your food supply, which for the majority of people is just as 'automated' as the fridge you are bashing. Someone/thing else handles the growing, the prep, transport, etc. The majority of people in North America walk into a store to buy food without a second thought as to how it is grown or produced. So that is perfectly acceptable laziness, thinking and effort being done by someone else so they don't have to, and yet having something/someone else make a list for you is somehow horrible and people who would use it should be ridiculed?

I already develop my games for Linux primarily ($indows is a secondary port), so I don't think it would be terribly inconvenient to add SteamOS and special controller support. Is anyone else thinking that the same?

The fridge prototype is intended for families of busy professional types, and assisted home care clients.

So you will dodge the comments on your food supply, which for the majority of people is just as 'automated' as the fridge you are bashing. Someone/thing else handles the growing, the prep, transport, etc. The majority of people in North America walk into a store to buy food without a second thought as to how it is grown or produced. So that is perfectly acceptable laziness, thinking and effort being done by someone else so they don't have to, and yet having something/someone else make a list for you is somehow horrible and people who would use it should be ridiculed?

Done by people who don't give a F*beep* about the people whom they feed nor about the animals nor about the environment. Only about the profit. People are lazy and stupid, they don't use their brains, they only care about their tasty burgers or any kind of crap they eat, it doesn't matter what is it made of. They only care about their momentary pleasure and convenience.

What does this have to do with everything we've been discussing? Technology in the present days have an important role on keeping people lazy, stupid, busy, addicted and uninterested, even about their food. By the way, the new iPhone is out, so amazing, must buy!

What does this have to do with everything we've been discussing Steam?!

Can you guys stay on topic - SteamOS, and break the Luddite debate into another thread if it must go on?
It's well known that the average person ain't so bright, a statistical fact that half the population are below average. It's irrelevant to this thread. If you want to get angry about it all the time and develop a superiority complex and high blood pressure, fine, but keep it to yourself.


To get back to the "retarded" controller that's obviously "made for stupid people" simply because it has a touch screen ---
Think about the task they set themselves and the metrics they were using to evaluate designs.

It had to be comfy to use on a couch -- that immediately discounts mice, but makes gamepads look good.
But.... It has to be able to control every existing PC game, which immediately discounts relative-input devices like thumb-sticks, and makes the mouse look good.
Their touch "thumb pads" are a compromise, where in software they can either act like a game-pads thumbsticks (relative input) or a laptops track-pad (absolute input).
They didn't just throw away thumb-sticks and replace them with touch pads simply because it's the flavour of the month and it makes stupid people happy.

The centre touchscreen is obviously there because some PC games require 26 keys, while others can be mapped to 8. It allows different games to have a completely software controlled input area, with a variable number of buttons of different shapes and sizes.

Sit down and task yourself with designing a couch-friendly / console-esque input device that will work with every game in steam, and see what you come up with ;-P

I like you, Hodgman. You are right, enraging myself won't take me anywhere better... I apologize for my rants and going off topic, I won't bother you guys anymore.

It had to be comfy to use on a couch -- that immediately discounts mice, but makes gamepads look good.
But.... It has to be able to control every existing PC game, which immediately discounts relative-input devices like thumb-sticks, and makes the mouse look good.
Their touch "thumb pads" are a compromise, where in software they can either act like a game-pads thumbsticks (relative input) or a laptops track-pad (absolute input).
They didn't just throw away thumb-sticks and replace them with touch pads simply because it's the flavour of the month and it makes stupid people happy.

While I see WHY they did it I'm still not convinced how this is going to work in practise, at least not for all games.

A large number of games practically demand the Xbox/PS3 style duel thumb sticks and cluster of buttons setup - here, while you have two thumb sticks you appear to have lost that cluster of 4 buttons which would sit under one thumb, instead moving them into the middle where they require both hands to get at them.

I'm also not convinced too much about the pads anyway; years of gaming have left me with fine muscle control when moving a mouse millimetres to target something via a combination of thumb/finger, wrist and lower arm movement.. I'm not convinced you'll get that level of accuracy/control from a single thumb input.

Maybe you'll be able to play the games just fine but for many games you are still going to need console-like aim compensation/automatic targeting to make a game playable imo.

In short, like most things Valve do, while I'm not anti-it I'm also not gushing with praise just because Valve did it (which oh so many people are in the wild...).

While I see WHY they did it I'm still not convinced how this is going to work in practise, at least not for all games.

Yeah, if playing PC games on a couch, I'd probably still choose to stack up a pile of text books next to me and put a mouse pad on top of them, and a keyboard on my lap

Regarding the typical 4 buttons under the right thumb... in theory you could still configure the controller to act as 4 buttons because it's all software/touch driven... but, 4 "virtual"/touch buttons like that would be pretty pitiful compared to real buttons. They'd need 4 bumps around that outer circle at least so you could feel your way to each "button"...

I too feel that it looks to be worse than a 360 controller, and also worse than a mouse/keyboard -- a horrible bastard of both... but we'll just have to wait and see. As a developer, I might still buy one simply to add support for it

While I'm not overly impressed by any of those announcements, I will definetely check out the os once it becomes available for download. If this means better drivers for linux, that'd be great.