One of his peeves is when a text-editing program like Microsoft Word asks users if they want to save their work before they close their document.
blah
For them, a clearer question would be: "Throw away everything you've just done?"
No, I think the original analogy was to the point. The author complains that they're using a term that's new to people new to computers, which is really stupid. What do you mean 'Throw away everything you've just done?'. So much ambiguity... Does that delete the document, or merely discard changes? Where does the document go? Once you throw it away, can you pick it up if you change your mind?
Besides this, dumbed-down terms don't really help teach users how computers work. If there's a new term, it's associated with a new action, and a new understanding of how that action works. It'll take time, like anything new does. Once you're used to it, you wouldn't dream of calling it anything else. Microsoft Bob... Where did that go?
If you don't know, ask someone who does. Or click the god-damned 'Help' button. Maybe we need another label saying 'Clicking: Pointing your mouse at an object and depressing the left (or right, if you're left-handed) mouse button and then releasing it'.
Um.. I'm guessing they're considering that 75,000 people (previously) downloaded each track from iTunes, who've now shifted to AllOfMp3, which, I'm thinking, is still ridiculous. I've become a member, but the payment site looks too shady to trust with my credit card.
The same thing used to happen on my friend's Series 60 Nokia phone when I downloaded it for him. It would get stuck, but you could minimize it and continue working the phone. But you couldn't end-task it.
I really couldn't care. For me, it's a welcome article. I use Mini regularly, it's much better that the Netfront that comes bundled with my phone. I had no idea a version 3 was in the making. With RSS!
The process entails mapping page attributes - HTML, colors, graphics - to elements like fire, water, and air. 'Any disturbance of these established elements can cause an imbalance in the site that directly affects its business,' Narang says.
Ah! That explains why her site has all the hits, and the millions reading it every single day and commenting and fighting about posts and reviews. Slashdot business, on the other hand, is doing bad. So bad that they have to take orders for articles by individual e-mail.
Instead of that, our money goes to India, a contry with 50% literacy rate (and a nuclear stockpile), a country with no labor laws or labor movement, where it gets spend to creates sweatshops and child labor camps with forced abortions and whatnot.
You're only displaying your prejudice and ignorance when you say that. In my line of work, I lose jobs to American musicians staying here. Ultimately, it's a matter of making economic sense (I include quality as a factor in this). If it won't make economic sense, it won't come here, and if the quality of products from here isn't good, outsourcing won't survive. If you're so sure that Indian engineers are incompetent, you don't have to worry. The outsourcing market will collapse, and you'll get your jobs back.
Just like in any country, we have good engineers, and we have bad engineers. Intel will have the same standard, good or bad, in India that it does in the States.
For hardcore techies, Windows is hardly a powerful-enough network OS. Besides, most things that Web 2.0 boasts of are perfectly handled by free and open-source software that are, as mentioned in the article itself, 'increasingly available on any platform'. Firefox supports AJAX and CSS competently on Linux (better than IE6 does on Windows), and so does Opera. In fact, as more and more applications move to the web and utilities are being deployed online, the core operating system is increasingly being seen in terms of how good it is as a kernel and how powerful it is, rather than how easy it is to use and what programs are bundled with it. That's bad news for Windows.
I recently upgraded my computer, and I'm rediscovering my geeky side. As a result, I'm spending more time on the net that I used to, and I use FC4 all the time. The only thing that I use Windows for is to run Cubase (I'm a musician). The web works fine for me on Linux, I maintain my site from here (with much more ease that I could on Windows), I browse the net, I use GAIM, I lookup Wikipedia, I listen to online radio, I watch DVDs, and I download torrents.
If I wanted, I could work with music right here, I could edit videos, and much more, things that I could never do online, and for free. I'm sure Mac users have as much, or more, choice. It's not long before Windows will be seen as the 'poor man's choice', a OS that you choose to use when you aren't intelligent enough to learn any other.
Alright, so it isn't automatically filtered. But that doesn't mean that a person who posts messages like these and means them in principle (not as an example) will be allowed to do so. If someone posts something that is universally considered offensive or stupid, his post will:
- either be gunned down by the moderator,
- or he'll get a lot of vile replies,
- or he won't be commented upon,
- OR he'll offend a certain segment of people unnecessarily.
If the first three happen, it's cool. If the last does, and it can be prevented, why not do so? I agree with you that the people in charge of censorship have to be chosen carefully, and that they have to act in good faith. But just allowing free-for-all speech is not as utopian as it's made out to be; there are are a lot of stupid people who incite, and there are a lot of stupid people who get violent.
I know what you're saying, that people have a right to opinion, and a right to express it. But I think that the right to be protected from unprovoked attack by other people is as important. In the cases that Shivam's written about, maybe the censorship was for political reasons; I don't have enough knowledge to comment. However, IMHO, the internet WILL eventually evolve a global system of moderation, like any society or culture has in the past. We might as well start doing that right now so that the system will be mature sooner.
I wasn't able to read the article; it gives me a DNS error. Is it being censored? whois fails, proxies aren't working; his server must have choked from traffic, and he must have taken it down. His nameserver's in India too, so there's a possibility of it being blocked. An online whois worked, though. I've mailed him requesting for a text.
The main thing about India is that people tend to be very groupist, probably because of the large number of groups we have here, some of which have histories of conflict. And things like censorship are (ideally) wise. I say ideally because I don't know who decides that is hate-inciting. IMO, the important thing is that the person doing the censorship is qualified to do so.
Doesn't slashdot have censorship? Will it allow you to post anti-semitic words? If I say N*gro, will my comment be deleted? I think it will; most sites have moderators, and it makes sense. The ones that don't are full of people flaming each other for no particular reason.
Slashdot Mirror
The more I read TFA, the more I'm convinced that this guy IS Bob.
One of his peeves is when a text-editing program like Microsoft Word asks users if they want to save their work before they close their document.
blah
For them, a clearer question would be: "Throw away everything you've just done?"
No, I think the original analogy was to the point. The author complains that they're using a term that's new to people new to computers, which is really stupid. What do you mean 'Throw away everything you've just done?'. So much ambiguity... Does that delete the document, or merely discard changes? Where does the document go? Once you throw it away, can you pick it up if you change your mind?
Besides this, dumbed-down terms don't really help teach users how computers work. If there's a new term, it's associated with a new action, and a new understanding of how that action works. It'll take time, like anything new does. Once you're used to it, you wouldn't dream of calling it anything else. Microsoft Bob... Where did that go?
If you don't know, ask someone who does. Or click the god-damned 'Help' button. Maybe we need another label saying 'Clicking: Pointing your mouse at an object and depressing the left (or right, if you're left-handed) mouse button and then releasing it'.
Um.. I'm guessing they're considering that 75,000 people (previously) downloaded each track from iTunes, who've now shifted to AllOfMp3, which, I'm thinking, is still ridiculous. I've become a member, but the payment site looks too shady to trust with my credit card.
What do you mean 'Of course I don't support copyright'? Is there currently cool? *Of course* I've seen . Heh. Heh heh. Heh heh heh.
The same thing used to happen on my friend's Series 60 Nokia phone when I downloaded it for him. It would get stuck, but you could minimize it and continue working the phone. But you couldn't end-task it.
I really couldn't care. For me, it's a welcome article. I use Mini regularly, it's much better that the Netfront that comes bundled with my phone. I had no idea a version 3 was in the making. With RSS!
Seriously, how does 10minutemail even merit an article? Everyone knows about mailinator and 2prong, right?
The process entails mapping page attributes - HTML, colors, graphics - to elements like fire, water, and air. 'Any disturbance of these established elements can cause an imbalance in the site that directly affects its business,' Narang says.
Ah! That explains why her site has all the hits, and the millions reading it every single day and commenting and fighting about posts and reviews. Slashdot business, on the other hand, is doing bad. So bad that they have to take orders for articles by individual e-mail.Instead of that, our money goes to India, a contry with 50% literacy rate (and a nuclear stockpile), a country with no labor laws or labor movement, where it gets spend to creates sweatshops and child labor camps with forced abortions and whatnot.
You're only displaying your prejudice and ignorance when you say that. In my line of work, I lose jobs to American musicians staying here. Ultimately, it's a matter of making economic sense (I include quality as a factor in this). If it won't make economic sense, it won't come here, and if the quality of products from here isn't good, outsourcing won't survive. If you're so sure that Indian engineers are incompetent, you don't have to worry. The outsourcing market will collapse, and you'll get your jobs back.
Just like in any country, we have good engineers, and we have bad engineers. Intel will have the same standard, good or bad, in India that it does in the States.
For hardcore techies, Windows is hardly a powerful-enough network OS. Besides, most things that Web 2.0 boasts of are perfectly handled by free and open-source software that are, as mentioned in the article itself, 'increasingly available on any platform'. Firefox supports AJAX and CSS competently on Linux (better than IE6 does on Windows), and so does Opera. In fact, as more and more applications move to the web and utilities are being deployed online, the core operating system is increasingly being seen in terms of how good it is as a kernel and how powerful it is, rather than how easy it is to use and what programs are bundled with it. That's bad news for Windows.
I recently upgraded my computer, and I'm rediscovering my geeky side. As a result, I'm spending more time on the net that I used to, and I use FC4 all the time. The only thing that I use Windows for is to run Cubase (I'm a musician). The web works fine for me on Linux, I maintain my site from here (with much more ease that I could on Windows), I browse the net, I use GAIM, I lookup Wikipedia, I listen to online radio, I watch DVDs, and I download torrents.
If I wanted, I could work with music right here, I could edit videos, and much more, things that I could never do online, and for free. I'm sure Mac users have as much, or more, choice. It's not long before Windows will be seen as the 'poor man's choice', a OS that you choose to use when you aren't intelligent enough to learn any other.
Alright, so it isn't automatically filtered. But that doesn't mean that a person who posts messages like these and means them in principle (not as an example) will be allowed to do so. If someone posts something that is universally considered offensive or stupid, his post will:
- either be gunned down by the moderator,
- or he'll get a lot of vile replies,
- or he won't be commented upon,
- OR he'll offend a certain segment of people unnecessarily.
If the first three happen, it's cool. If the last does, and it can be prevented, why not do so? I agree with you that the people in charge of censorship have to be chosen carefully, and that they have to act in good faith. But just allowing free-for-all speech is not as utopian as it's made out to be; there are are a lot of stupid people who incite, and there are a lot of stupid people who get violent.
I know what you're saying, that people have a right to opinion, and a right to express it. But I think that the right to be protected from unprovoked attack by other people is as important. In the cases that Shivam's written about, maybe the censorship was for political reasons; I don't have enough knowledge to comment. However, IMHO, the internet WILL eventually evolve a global system of moderation, like any society or culture has in the past. We might as well start doing that right now so that the system will be mature sooner.
I wasn't able to read the article; it gives me a DNS error. Is it being censored? whois fails, proxies aren't working; his server must have choked from traffic, and he must have taken it down. His nameserver's in India too, so there's a possibility of it being blocked. An online whois worked, though. I've mailed him requesting for a text. The main thing about India is that people tend to be very groupist, probably because of the large number of groups we have here, some of which have histories of conflict. And things like censorship are (ideally) wise. I say ideally because I don't know who decides that is hate-inciting. IMO, the important thing is that the person doing the censorship is qualified to do so. Doesn't slashdot have censorship? Will it allow you to post anti-semitic words? If I say N*gro, will my comment be deleted? I think it will; most sites have moderators, and it makes sense. The ones that don't are full of people flaming each other for no particular reason.