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At the company I work for, we have a ratio of about 1 tech for every 150 users. That works fine most of the time... until there is a crisis.... then things go apeshit....

Dave
Participate in the Common Linking Experiment

See now.... this is just weird... it's also a frightening precidend(sp?). What is to come after this, those convicted of tax fraud are not allowed to talk about money, or car thiefs are not allowed to talk about cars.... The implications of this are scary. Convicted criminals should not have their first ammendmant rights stripped of them. I have no real opinion about whether or not Mitnick should have been encarcerated... I dont care... but this ruling/decision is something that people should be up in arms about.
It sounds to me like a similar law that made it illegal for certain criminals to make money off of their crimes by selling books... I don't know whether or not to agree with that... but to keep someone from giving lectures is just wrong.

Dave

Participate in the Common Linking Experiment

While I do believe it is true that a microsoft breakup will have a negative affect on the end-user and the industry, I think it will be very short-lived. If/When Microsoft gets broken up there is going to have to be a re-organization within industry. Companies who were once dependant on the software giant may have to look elsewhere for strategic alliances. And this in the end would benefit users becuase the industry would no longer be completely windows-focused.
A MS breakup would affect software integration between Office/IE and Windows Unless MS decided to release all the API calls that their software uses. Doing this would allow more integrated software across the board. Something which, depending on your opinion, could benefit users enormously.
MS has been dominating the marketplace for too long and I think its time they shared the wealth. If there is one thing consumers know, its that competition works in their favor. So while an MS breakup would probably 'stunt' the industry, it would probably be a good thing in the long run

Thats Just $.03 (not that anyone is interested)
Dave

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People.... People.... I think we are forgeting one of the suckiest M$ programs out there. Who could forget the ill-fated Microsoft Bob. This was an entire User Interface Based on those stupid little characters that tell you when you've made a typo in Word.

Ahh.. Quality Software.... hehe

Dave

Participate in the Common Linking Experiment

600 Clams seems a bit much to spend on a Car Stereo Head End. I've allways been a fan of the plug-the-portable-into-the-dash method of car-stereo expansion. I switch between a MD, CD player and a Laptop... works fine for me... so I could spend $600 or I could spend $100 and get a portable mp3 player which is versatile enough to walk around with as well...

Just my $.02
Dave

Participate in The Common Linking Experiment

Graphics Will never catch on.... they are merely a passing fad
hehe

Dave
Common Linking

I'm playing with a site design that allows all readers of an article to link any word anywhere. I'd appreciate it if people would come and help with this experiment....
I think it an interesting concept.
the URL can be found here: http://oshate.com/cl/
Sorry... no lynx users...(frames)
The purpose of this site is just to experiment with a new type of user interation.

Dave

I just thought I'd post a link to a neat little article I wrote on how to set up an Offsite Napster Gateway... Pretty simple technique (yes I know there are other ways to do this)
Check it out here.
Dave

OK, I'm going to throw my opinion into the ring, even though I slept in today and there are already too many comments on this thread for anyone to give a shit.

Sometimes Suck is right on, and sometimes they kind of miss the point. In this case their core argument is pretty sound, but unfortunetly they sort of missed the idea that no one is forcing users to download an ugly skin. Furthermore, the reason there are so many skins out there in the first place is not based on "the whim of a developer"...developers usually don't make too many skins, rather they are generated by the users based on demand -- that's right, demand -- if no one wanted to have their entire desktop look like cheese, then we wouldn't see 5000 cheese themes.

The main problem is that UI design is mostly subjective, but UI "professionals" want to make an objective science of it. It would be nice if we could decide on absolute tenets like "All Widgets Must Look Alike!", dub them the 10 commandments of UI design, and then hunt down and shoot anyone who doesn't conform to them, but unfortunetly life doesn't work that way. The Open Source scene, which most clearly reflects the user's UI desires without interference from focus groups or marketing teams, is indicative that different people like different things. People still use vi for God's sake -- and don't ever, EVER try to convince them to stop using it because some self-labelled UI "expert" said they need a scrollbar to be productive. Likewise, it's true that Netscape won't look the same as your native OS widgets, but on the other hand, Netscape will always have the same L&F no matter which OS you're using, so people who dual-boot won't have to learn two interfaces.

Furthermore, it's true that OSS people generally consider standards to be a good thing, but theming everything is an effort to help create standard desktops, not the other way around. For example, most E themes nowadays have an accompanying GTK theme...if you use both at the same time, then your entire desktop looks coherant (except of course for that ugly copy of Netscape 4.x...blech), and more importantly you chose what you wanted it to look like.

Which brings me to the most important point, which is why themes exist in the first place. Put simply, regardless of whether or not really ugly plain grey widgets increase usability (I think you'd be hard-pressed to prove that they do), they're still extremely boring to look at. If Suck had their way, we wouldn't be back in 1983...but we might make a pit stop in 1984, with slogans like "User Unhappiness is Usabilty!". Obviously the users are getting bored with the same drab widgets all the time, so who are we to tell them that they can't have their way?

Well, that's about all I have to say...oh yeah, read OSHate.com! Have a nice day.

-W.W.