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What I would not give for a URL bar that only went to hosts actually entered into URL bar and NOTHING more.

One that did not try and autocomplete hosts beyond the hosts DNS local domains list. One that never under any circumstance sends queries to search engines. I mean what's the point of having a separate search field if the system is going to ignore the original intent of the URL bar?

The other day I was screwing with a browser I don't remember which one... I entered a local hostname http://myserver/ even prefixed with http and the piece of shit went and did a Google search. I'm just so tired of the bullshit and systems with all kinds of heuristics to try and read minds and or rake in a few more $$$ on search traffic that it's impossible to predict what will occur. Oh http://mysite/ happens to be down...surprise this means browser should hit up http://mysite.com/ because??? or do a google search for term "mysite"....because? It assumes? What? Why?

Is it really that hard...that difficult...that outrageous of a request to have URL bar go to what was actually entered and a search bar run searches?

Recover from what?...

OS to be easy to recover, not the apps. And by easy I do not mean a re-install.

Linux does not typically require a re-install to recover the OS, and if you're having that kind of issue, then it doesn't matter what OS you're using - most users will typically call someone else or pay someone to fix it; that someone else typically knows where to look - whether MS KB (which is horrendous), TechNet, or Linux Distribution equivalents.

And, FYI - Ubuntu and Red Hat all have equivalents of MS KB and TechNet for their subscribers to support the corporates that want that kind of thing. However, that's just a centralized copy of all the decentralized works. MS has nothing comparative to that amount of software shipped in a normal Linux distribution - they (MS) only have a few products compared to the thousands of products in any given Linux distro. If you have an issue with GIMP you may first try your distribution, but the issue will more likely be documented with GIMP unless it is distro specific. Same goes for any of those other pieces of software in the distro. Not necessarily an ideal situation, but not one that is easy to rectify either.

In comparison, you don't go to MS KB to solve an Adobe Photoshop issue; you go to Adobe. MS could care less.

So you do realize that every distribution has that kind of thing already, no?

For Ubuntu as an example, I know there's a wiki and a bug tracker but nothing that compares to the MS KB pages that detail problems, error codes, version application, fixes, etc. What I know of Ubuntu's solutions is more MS Answers quality than MS KB.

Again, MS doesn't do that for every single application that runs on Windows. They do it on their own, and they may have some high profile ones where they are the culprit of the issue. It's no different with Linux distros other than the fact that you don't have to go to 1000 different places to get all the software to start with.

Well, the first part here is remote access. For Linux users that means adding a new user account and enabling SSH for a third-party to be able to access it. True, you could install TeamViewer, LogMeIn, or similar third-party services, but you have to first and foremost solve the remote-access issue.

I don't need to know what it involves, I just need to know it works for stupid people. My aunt-in-law has a problem with her computer, I send her a link to a fix and it fixes the problem without me having to go to her house or have a working remote login for myself on her system. I spend enough time fixing peoples computers, I want to be done with it as quickly and with as little inconvenience to myself as possible. Like it or not, those "Mr FixIt" scripts save a LOT of time.

Typically for Linux the solution is: "Go to updater, refresh, click apply" Sometimes you'll have to add "log out and log back in" but that's it. You can do that over the phone. Some times, you may have to wait a day while the patch comes through, but that's really it.

Of course, there are other solutions that you could do too - like giving her text to copy/paste into a terminal (with minimum direction to do so) that would run a shell script you wrote - e.g "wget https://mysite.com/myshellscri... | bash" and you could automate some things yourself.

And again, it's not really any different on Windows aside from the fact that you would have to go to one of any number of websites to download an update to a particular package, hope she gets the right one (and it's not infected with malware), and then guide her through running the install -which could be as simple as click-click-click or as complicated as building a 747 depending on the vendor.

Conversely, the Linux distros validate everything that is being updated against its source

If I link to http://mysite.com/It was the day my grandmother exploded. I sat in the crematorium, listening to my Uncle Hamish quietly snoring in harmony to Bach's Mass in B Minor, and I reflected that it always seemed to be death that drew me back to Gallanach. that could be copyright infringement in a URL.

For additional security, I could password protect the folder so if someone stumbled upon mysite.com/My Music/, they wouldn't be able to get in.

http://mysite.com/My%20Music/ - returns the 404 page. Mate, fix your 401.[html|php] page, will ya?

Mysite (owned by Netzero) and Google Sites are among the living and well. Tripod still clings to life, but who knows for how much longer.

You mean that ?area=51 crap? How is http://mysite.com/?area=51 usable?

(Unless the page is about government conspiracies, I guess.)

Wordpress by default allows you to configure URL writing. The default is set to something like: http://www.mysite.com/?p=1.

For SEO purposes it's always handy to switch to the more popular example: http://www.mysite.com/2009/03/my-title-of-my-post.html.

Suggesting that we cut URL's that help Google rank our pages higher is preposterous.

Wordpress by default allows you to configure URL writing. The default is set to something like: http://www.mysite.com/?p=1.

For SEO purposes it's always handy to switch to the more popular example: http://www.mysite.com/2009/03/my-title-of-my-post.html.

Suggesting that we cut URL's that help Google rank our pages higher is preposterous.

1. email it if it's reasonably small -or-
2. burn it to CD / copy it to a flash drive if it's not I say these are the only two options because let's face it - how many end-users even know what an FTP site is, let alone where one is or how to use it?

It's been a while since I e-mailed something to someone that didn't permit attachments in the meg range. I have had problems with g-mail and programs. But so long as they are on a IM system, transfer is not a problem.

For end users who don't know what an ftp is, send them a url
ftp://mysite.com.

Ajax violates this page metaphor, which has some usability gurus in minor fits of apoplexia, Jakob Nielsen included.

AJAX doesn't have to violate the page metaphor, and I actually haven't seen any real examples of people destroying usability like people are running around yelling about. Yes it would be _possible_ to replace all navigation in your site with AJAX just as people have replaced all the navigation in their sites with a Flash menu, but the technology doesn't force you to improperly use it. If your front page has a stock ticker that dynamically updates, is that breaking usability? Also there are certain places you don't want the user to be able to bookmark, like the third page in a five page form they are filling out. The user thinks "Hey I'll just bookmark here and finish this later". Instead you could save the state of everything entered so far and return back to the position they left off at a later point with cookies, and your web app actually knows what's going on. All five pages of the form have the same url (http://www.mysite.com/survey/) so there is no confusion.

Right.. physical security is a different beast entirely. Basically what I meant was this...

Let's say I put highly secret material on my site at
http://www.mysite.com/abc.html - I don't index it, I don't link to it. I'm the only person who knows that the name of that file is "abc.html" ( short of my service provider, people inbetween when I visit, etc.; ignore them for a moment for the sake of the argument :) )
Many people would say that it is merely security through obscurity.

Now let's say I make it:
http://www.mysite.com/ughe8hgva87g23y8ogh9a8g379ye gdudg19278egdeubchahd89q7y93y8vduasdhc8ew.html
Good luck guessing that any time soon. But isn't it still security through obscurity? Basically there is no real security - everybody can get at that file - if they knew what the filename was.

Now let's shift that to, say, an archive file that has been encrypted. Many would argue that its security is not security through obscurity - yet everybody can get at the file's contents.. if they knew what the key was.

It seems to me that any real level of security would not only make it (exceedingly) difficult to guess the passwords/keys - it would also lock you out (even if it's temporarily) if you guess wrong (be it once, twice, thrice.. whatever). Though that would be security through obscurity combined with security through throttling - or whatever that would be labeled.

Essentially, I'm not sure what software system of security isn't essentially one where its primary basis of security is that of obscurity - that of making it (exceedingly) difficult to guess the wrong password/key.

Right.. physical security is a different beast entirely. Basically what I meant was this...

Let's say I put highly secret material on my site at
http://www.mysite.com/abc.html - I don't index it, I don't link to it. I'm the only person who knows that the name of that file is "abc.html" ( short of my service provider, people inbetween when I visit, etc.; ignore them for a moment for the sake of the argument :) )
Many people would say that it is merely security through obscurity.

Now let's say I make it:
http://www.mysite.com/ughe8hgva87g23y8ogh9a8g379ye gdudg19278egdeubchahd89q7y93y8vduasdhc8ew.html
Good luck guessing that any time soon. But isn't it still security through obscurity? Basically there is no real security - everybody can get at that file - if they knew what the filename was.

Now let's shift that to, say, an archive file that has been encrypted. Many would argue that its security is not security through obscurity - yet everybody can get at the file's contents.. if they knew what the key was.

It seems to me that any real level of security would not only make it (exceedingly) difficult to guess the passwords/keys - it would also lock you out (even if it's temporarily) if you guess wrong (be it once, twice, thrice.. whatever). Though that would be security through obscurity combined with security through throttling - or whatever that would be labeled.

Essentially, I'm not sure what software system of security isn't essentially one where its primary basis of security is that of obscurity - that of making it (exceedingly) difficult to guess the wrong password/key.

Now that's an excellent idea. Otherwise I can just change all my links to say , until all my competitors crumble under the bandwidth requirements.

I just upgraded to Gallery v. 2.0, but now I can't use Gallery Remote to upload photos. I keep getting the following error message:

Server contacted, but Gallery not found at this URL ( http://www.mysite.com/gallery2/main.php )

Any pointers? Has anyone else experienced this? Does Gallery Remote work at all with g2?