???? So the ability to install native / local apps precludes this? Huh???
The optimization in this case is the removal of unneeded options and features, so yes.
And yes, some people do need or want these "unneeded" features. I certainly do. I own a $300 laptop that's a more powerful than my desktop machine was ten years ago - I don't just run a web browser on that kind of gear, I use it for anything I might need to do.
But, some people may find the idea of a machine that provides just a web browser rather useful. By stripping away everything not related to that one task, the end result is a machine that's a little bit better at that task.
Providing an OS that only does one thing also manages user expectations. For instance, if the machine comes with 4GB disk space - a paltry amount these days - if it's "just a web browser" then that's fine. If it's a machine where people can install or run a lot of other applications, that limit can quickly become frustrating.
An optimization is a trade-off. When you optimize software, you make it more specialized - better at handling certain jobs, and (most often) worse in other cases. In user interfaces the most common case of this is features being removed or hidden in order to reduce clutter. This kind of thing is justified by the fact that these operations are not typically needed, and the upshot is that the UI is simplified. This is really just another case of that. You find that unpalatable, apparently, as do I. I don't run this kind of system, I'm not interested. But that doesn't mean it's not useful in some cases.
But consider -- aren't widescreen monitors better for first-person shooters?
For the same overall pixel count - I imagine so. Unless it's a game with a heavy emphasis on vertical aiming... That's one point in their favor, and I guess HD video would be a second.
Personally, though, those two things don't rank high on my list of computer uses.
Coreboot STILL isn't supported in my 5 year old system (an Asus M2N-MX). How exactly isn't a 5 year old ASUS included in "a hell of a lot of platforms"?
What a silly question.
All the non-Asus platforms made in the last 10 years would still be "a hell of a lot of platforms", just not the one you personally own...
(Mine wasn't supported by Coreboot last I checked, either...)
A widescreen monitor turned sideways is truly awesome if you play vertical shooters (quite common under the MAME emulator).
Except that most arcade games (even those that used rotated monitors) had 4:3 screens...
Of course, you can always display 4:3 content on a 16:9 screen - but the point here is that even in this case, a 4:3 monitor would be better than a widescreen monitor...
That said, I just bought my very first LCD monitor (16:10 - I wouldn't settle for less vertical space than that) - and a monitor arm... I love being able to rotate the display and move it around easily, though I can't help but feel that 4:3 still would have been better.
Vim has an overwhelming number of features. Its built-in help system and documentation are comprehensive and easy to navigate once you know what you're looking for, but knowing where to start is sometimes very difficult.
It's really intuitive, once you get to know how to use it.
I hate to ruin a perfectly good joke by being all serious, but, actually, that would be true of a lot of applications. (Or, perhaps, it's not accurate to call them intuitive at all - rather, they just offer enough support via documentation, etc. to help you muddle through) Anything that's hard to get started with, but offers a lot of assistance once you're up and running. I'd say Emacs fits this description to some extent - cryptic keyboard shortcuts (which are quite handy once you learn 'em) - and then there's commands you can search for, and even execute, by name. It's handy when I have a pretty good idea what the command name might be, but not what the shortcut is, or where it's located in the menu system or customization system, etc. I'd say the same could be true of MS Word as well - it confronts you immediately with a wall of controls, and it can be hard to find your way around, but it also offers a lot of support. Then there's specialized applications, content creation stuff especially like Photoshop or 3DS Max - which can be complicated just due to the amount of power they offer... There's a lot to learn, in other words, but the application helps you to learn it.
Re:"Steep" learning curve
on
Hacking Vim 7.2
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
This is one of my pet peeves.
A steep learning curve refers to something that is quickly learned, as the curve that represents knowledge over time would indeed be steep in that case.
Something difficult would have a shallow learning curve, not a steep one.
I think usually when people talk about learning curves, the horizontal axis represents knowledge and the vertical axis is your investment to acquire that knowledge.
Is there some established convention that contradicts this?
If all I had was a text terminal... maybe. But I don't know of anything that Vim does that I can't do quicker in Open Office. Can someone allay my ignorance as to the virtues of Vim over anything but Emacs?
I can't imagine editing code in Open Office would be at all enjoyable, personally...
VI isn't exactly my cup of tea, either, and I can appreciate people's complaints about Emacs - but I'd hate to edit code in something that didn't simplify the process of formatting code, and which didn't let me adjust the rules for how code should be formatted...
I'm trying! It's been loading since 2005, so give me some more time dude.
See, there's your problem... Rather than wait five years for it to load, you should have waited a year or two, upgraded your machine, and tried again.:)
The school faculty is not an authority over the parents.
They are servants of the people. They have as much authority over the parents as the local garbage man. Actually, I take that back. The garbage man has some authority. Teachers and Principals do not.
In the context of the school, teachers and principals do have authority. They must have authority in order to do their job. They have authority over the children, but not the parents. If the parents abuse that fact, step in on behalf of their children every time this authority is inconvenient or uncomfortable for the child, the child learns that this authority is not important, and they don't take it seriously.
The important distinction is respect. It's true the teachers don't have authority over you, the parent. But they have authority over the child. Undermining that by treating them with a lack of respect just makes their job harder.
Taking school authority seriously is one thing, but should we also teach kids that we should follow authority no matter how stupid the rules seem?
Well, yes.
When subject to some kind of authority (as we all are, at some time) you don't get to pick and choose the rules you want to follow. The police officer will be happy to pull you over for a speeding ticket even if you think 45mph is ridiculously slow for this piece of road - and charge you double, even if you think it's stupid to call a stretch of road a "work zone" where no work is happening.
So, yes, the kids should be taught that authority is real and that they must follow the stupid rules, too.
At the same time, of course, you can teach them that there is some recourse for dealing with stupid rules. Teaching them that they can work to have a stupid rule eliminated is quite different from telling them that a stupid rule doesn't apply to them because it's stupid.
The difference is a matter of how you approach the problem. If you head into the school building, guns blazing so to speak - verbally assault the highest immediately accessible authority for an hour, and so on - first, you're very unlikely to accomplish anything except to make an underpaid professional's day worse, and to teach the child that yelling at people who piss you off is a sensible way of dealing with them. If the teacher or principal relents under those circumstances, you get what you want but the lesson you've taught your child is even worse - they've learned that this behavior is rewarded.
This is an obvious misuse of authority. The punishment is far far more severe than the crime. If the school administrators are unwilling to use judgment and discretion in their enforcement of the rules then they don't deserve my support as a parent. If you are going to give my kid detention for bringing a Jolly Rancher to school or receiving one from a friend you should expect me as a parent to sick and army of lawyers on the school district and not let up until the case gets to the Supreme Court. Why? Because the law you are enforcing is stupid if it doesn't allow you the discretion to inflict a punishment that fits the situation.
And, for sure, if you were willing to take the issue that far, it could be productive. You could get the stupid rule changed - which is often (and, specifically, in this case) beyond the power of the teacher or principal, and a much more worthwhile end than simply negating the immediate consequences of one violation of the rule.
Specifically what I do not approve of is people responding to things like this by going to the teacher or principal and verbally abusing them, threatening them, etc. First off, it's just flat-out rude to do so. Second, it undermines their authority, giving your child the sense that any time the teacher does something they don't like, they can just come running to you to overrule the teacher's authority. That, to me, is absolutely the wrong lesson. It's not always right to yield to unjust rules, but most of the time rebelling against authority isn't the right decision either. What happens when you get a speeding ticket? Do you yell at the police officer, threaten him with lawsuits, etc.? Most people would say that's a bad idea because of the possibility that this will just get you in more trouble. Beyond that I contend that this is simply wrong. Contradict the officer if he is wrong, but show respect, because he has a position that commands respect. If you want to fight the charge, there's a process to follow, and yelling at the guy who enforces the rule is not part of it.
In one sense, that's a pretty ugly idea - resigning oneself to the fact that there are powers in the world to which one must submit. But that's a reality in this world. Authorities exist, and rebellion against them is something you reserve for desperate situations.
And if you don't confront authority that is out of control you get a utopia?
There is a difference between confronting authority and undermining it.
Confronting those in authority while respecting that authority (yeah yeah, insert South Park joke, if you must) is fine. That means you approach the issue with civility, and if you don't get your way, the lesson is that you lost that battle, and this is a rule the kid needs to follow. Respecting authority is important. Respect in general is important. But if the parent doesn't respect authority, there's no reason the child will, either.
Following this approach can lead to good things, for sure. If you convince the teachers involved that you, the parent, are taking the issue seriously, then you probably stand a better chance of convincing them that a week of detention is unnecessary. Or possibly not. But at least by approaching the issue this way, you give a better lesson to the child. You reinforce the idea that the teacher's authority is real, (i.e. not something that you, the parent, can trample over any time it's convenient) and demonstrate the way things like this should be happened - confrontation, certainly, but not verbal abuse directed at the closest stopping-point on the chain of authority.
If you found yourself in a situation like this - your child forced to abide by draconian, seemingly arbitrary rules, the productive course of action would be to try to get those rules changed. You could accomplish this with the right kinds of threats, sure, but I don't think that's a good way to proceed. Frankly, I hate that sort of bullshit, so why would I want to create more of it? Take it to the school board, and get your kid involved with that process, to some extent. That would be my approach.
Someday, there will be another widely used application that people want on an iPhone, that Apple won't approve. This won't be resolved until Apple pulls their collective heads out of their arses and gets rid of the insane requirement that they approve all applications on these platforms.
Someday, jackasses like yourself will realize that people are buying the iPhone specifically for the walled-garden, not in spite of it. Someday, jackasses like yourself will realize just how big a hypocrite you are because you bash Apple for the same exact business practice you support with your ownership of any gaming console.
Someday, jackasses like yourself (and also me) will stop aping the parent post's style just to punch up the reply with an added bit of retarded flare. (Is this game console angle the official party line or something? It seems to be the one argument people always come back to when defending Apple. Admittedly, I think it's a good analogy...)
With regard to the whole gaming console thing - it's a matter of expectations. Would you take that "walled garden" bullshit if you were buying a desktop computer? I certainly wouldn't, because my desktop works for me, and it's my job to decide what runs on it. That's the traditional role of the desktop machine, what people are used to.
Gaming consoles are what they are - and anybody who doesn't want to buy one, especially with the colossal bullshit that goes on with them these days - I can totally appreciate that.
A tablet like the iPad is something of a gray area. Is it a large iPhone or a small laptop with no keyboard? Depending on which way you look at it, your expectations may be different. I don't think anyone thinks of it as a gaming console - but its ties to the iPhone may lead people to offer it the same expectations as phone platforms... Many of which are closed. If you look at it in terms of laptops, then you'd expect a more open platform. I can appreciate the argument that the iPad is what it is, and nothing more - but I certainly don't think it's unreasonable to expect more.
I wouldn't say my expectations are typical of everyone - I am a programmer and when I have a device I like to code for it... And if there's software out there that can do a job that needs doing, I want to be able to run it without unnecessary hassles. So here's my usual disclaimer with regard to iPad posts - I am not arguing that iPad's approach will lead to it failing as a commercial product. I am not arguing that my evaluation of this thing applies to everyone. But I have my own standards for what defines a good piece of gear, and iPad isn't it.
Slashdot Mirror
any idea on how to get them onto Palin?
Oh, she's already got 'em.
Seems like a "stinkpalm"-type sacrifice throw...
I've heard chicken flied lice tastes good
It's fried rice you plick!
And it's not The Craw, it's The Craw!
Stop lying nerds, you haven't probably even seen your own pubic hair in years.
Sure I have. Your mom never bothers to pick it out of her teeth.
????
So the ability to install native / local apps precludes this?
Huh???
The optimization in this case is the removal of unneeded options and features, so yes.
And yes, some people do need or want these "unneeded" features. I certainly do. I own a $300 laptop that's a more powerful than my desktop machine was ten years ago - I don't just run a web browser on that kind of gear, I use it for anything I might need to do.
But, some people may find the idea of a machine that provides just a web browser rather useful. By stripping away everything not related to that one task, the end result is a machine that's a little bit better at that task.
Providing an OS that only does one thing also manages user expectations. For instance, if the machine comes with 4GB disk space - a paltry amount these days - if it's "just a web browser" then that's fine. If it's a machine where people can install or run a lot of other applications, that limit can quickly become frustrating.
An optimization is a trade-off. When you optimize software, you make it more specialized - better at handling certain jobs, and (most often) worse in other cases. In user interfaces the most common case of this is features being removed or hidden in order to reduce clutter. This kind of thing is justified by the fact that these operations are not typically needed, and the upshot is that the UI is simplified. This is really just another case of that. You find that unpalatable, apparently, as do I. I don't run this kind of system, I'm not interested. But that doesn't mean it's not useful in some cases.
So tell me.
Why is an OS that you can only use web applications on better than one that you can use web applications on and native apps on?
Optimization of the software platform and the user interface.
...is like selling a car based on the doors...
And let the terrible analogies flow.
Come on, at least he made it a car analogy
I approve!
But consider -- aren't widescreen monitors better for first-person shooters?
For the same overall pixel count - I imagine so. Unless it's a game with a heavy emphasis on vertical aiming... That's one point in their favor, and I guess HD video would be a second.
Personally, though, those two things don't rank high on my list of computer uses.
Huh, interesting... So I guess my mainboard may be supported, but it may also be a question of how well it's supported...
I have always wanted to try it, but I must admit to being a little bit afraid of the prospect. :)
Well, 10.10 will be like that, only for people who aren't thieves.
I read your post and I have no idea what you're talking about. Could you explain please?
Coreboot STILL isn't supported in my 5 year old system (an Asus M2N-MX). How exactly isn't a 5 year old ASUS included in "a hell of a lot of platforms"?
What a silly question.
All the non-Asus platforms made in the last 10 years would still be "a hell of a lot of platforms", just not the one you personally own...
(Mine wasn't supported by Coreboot last I checked, either...)
A widescreen monitor turned sideways is truly awesome if you play vertical shooters (quite common under the MAME emulator).
Except that most arcade games (even those that used rotated monitors) had 4:3 screens...
Of course, you can always display 4:3 content on a 16:9 screen - but the point here is that even in this case, a 4:3 monitor would be better than a widescreen monitor...
That said, I just bought my very first LCD monitor (16:10 - I wouldn't settle for less vertical space than that) - and a monitor arm... I love being able to rotate the display and move it around easily, though I can't help but feel that 4:3 still would have been better.
Vim has an overwhelming number of features. Its built-in help system and documentation are comprehensive and easy to navigate once you know what you're looking for, but knowing where to start is sometimes very difficult.
It's really intuitive, once you get to know how to use it.
I hate to ruin a perfectly good joke by being all serious, but, actually, that would be true of a lot of applications. (Or, perhaps, it's not accurate to call them intuitive at all - rather, they just offer enough support via documentation, etc. to help you muddle through) Anything that's hard to get started with, but offers a lot of assistance once you're up and running. I'd say Emacs fits this description to some extent - cryptic keyboard shortcuts (which are quite handy once you learn 'em) - and then there's commands you can search for, and even execute, by name. It's handy when I have a pretty good idea what the command name might be, but not what the shortcut is, or where it's located in the menu system or customization system, etc. I'd say the same could be true of MS Word as well - it confronts you immediately with a wall of controls, and it can be hard to find your way around, but it also offers a lot of support. Then there's specialized applications, content creation stuff especially like Photoshop or 3DS Max - which can be complicated just due to the amount of power they offer... There's a lot to learn, in other words, but the application helps you to learn it.
This is one of my pet peeves.
A steep learning curve refers to something that is quickly learned, as the curve that represents knowledge over time would indeed be steep in that case.
Something difficult would have a shallow learning curve, not a steep one.
I think usually when people talk about learning curves, the horizontal axis represents knowledge and the vertical axis is your investment to acquire that knowledge.
Is there some established convention that contradicts this?
If all I had was a text terminal... maybe. But I don't know of anything that Vim does that I can't do quicker in Open Office. Can someone allay my ignorance as to the virtues of Vim over anything but Emacs?
I can't imagine editing code in Open Office would be at all enjoyable, personally...
VI isn't exactly my cup of tea, either, and I can appreciate people's complaints about Emacs - but I'd hate to edit code in something that didn't simplify the process of formatting code, and which didn't let me adjust the rules for how code should be formatted...
up
I'm trying! It's been loading since 2005, so give me some more time dude.
See, there's your problem... Rather than wait five years for it to load, you should have waited a year or two, upgraded your machine, and tried again. :)
The school faculty is not an authority over the parents.
They are servants of the people. They have as much authority over the parents as the local garbage man. Actually, I take that back. The garbage man has some authority. Teachers and Principals do not.
In the context of the school, teachers and principals do have authority. They must have authority in order to do their job. They have authority over the children, but not the parents. If the parents abuse that fact, step in on behalf of their children every time this authority is inconvenient or uncomfortable for the child, the child learns that this authority is not important, and they don't take it seriously.
The important distinction is respect. It's true the teachers don't have authority over you, the parent. But they have authority over the child. Undermining that by treating them with a lack of respect just makes their job harder.
Taking school authority seriously is one thing, but should we also teach kids that we should follow authority no matter how stupid the rules seem?
Well, yes.
When subject to some kind of authority (as we all are, at some time) you don't get to pick and choose the rules you want to follow. The police officer will be happy to pull you over for a speeding ticket even if you think 45mph is ridiculously slow for this piece of road - and charge you double, even if you think it's stupid to call a stretch of road a "work zone" where no work is happening.
So, yes, the kids should be taught that authority is real and that they must follow the stupid rules, too.
At the same time, of course, you can teach them that there is some recourse for dealing with stupid rules. Teaching them that they can work to have a stupid rule eliminated is quite different from telling them that a stupid rule doesn't apply to them because it's stupid.
The difference is a matter of how you approach the problem. If you head into the school building, guns blazing so to speak - verbally assault the highest immediately accessible authority for an hour, and so on - first, you're very unlikely to accomplish anything except to make an underpaid professional's day worse, and to teach the child that yelling at people who piss you off is a sensible way of dealing with them. If the teacher or principal relents under those circumstances, you get what you want but the lesson you've taught your child is even worse - they've learned that this behavior is rewarded.
This is an obvious misuse of authority. The punishment is far far more severe than the crime. If the school administrators are unwilling to use judgment and discretion in their enforcement of the rules then they don't deserve my support as a parent. If you are going to give my kid detention for bringing a Jolly Rancher to school or receiving one from a friend you should expect me as a parent to sick and army of lawyers on the school district and not let up until the case gets to the Supreme Court. Why? Because the law you are enforcing is stupid if it doesn't allow you the discretion to inflict a punishment that fits the situation.
And, for sure, if you were willing to take the issue that far, it could be productive. You could get the stupid rule changed - which is often (and, specifically, in this case) beyond the power of the teacher or principal, and a much more worthwhile end than simply negating the immediate consequences of one violation of the rule.
Specifically what I do not approve of is people responding to things like this by going to the teacher or principal and verbally abusing them, threatening them, etc. First off, it's just flat-out rude to do so. Second, it undermines their authority, giving your child the sense that any time the teacher does something they don't like, they can just come running to you to overrule the teacher's authority. That, to me, is absolutely the wrong lesson. It's not always right to yield to unjust rules, but most of the time rebelling against authority isn't the right decision either. What happens when you get a speeding ticket? Do you yell at the police officer, threaten him with lawsuits, etc.? Most people would say that's a bad idea because of the possibility that this will just get you in more trouble. Beyond that I contend that this is simply wrong. Contradict the officer if he is wrong, but show respect, because he has a position that commands respect. If you want to fight the charge, there's a process to follow, and yelling at the guy who enforces the rule is not part of it.
In one sense, that's a pretty ugly idea - resigning oneself to the fact that there are powers in the world to which one must submit. But that's a reality in this world. Authorities exist, and rebellion against them is something you reserve for desperate situations.
And if you don't confront authority that is out of control you get a utopia?
There is a difference between confronting authority and undermining it.
Confronting those in authority while respecting that authority (yeah yeah, insert South Park joke, if you must) is fine. That means you approach the issue with civility, and if you don't get your way, the lesson is that you lost that battle, and this is a rule the kid needs to follow. Respecting authority is important. Respect in general is important. But if the parent doesn't respect authority, there's no reason the child will, either.
Following this approach can lead to good things, for sure. If you convince the teachers involved that you, the parent, are taking the issue seriously, then you probably stand a better chance of convincing them that a week of detention is unnecessary. Or possibly not. But at least by approaching the issue this way, you give a better lesson to the child. You reinforce the idea that the teacher's authority is real, (i.e. not something that you, the parent, can trample over any time it's convenient) and demonstrate the way things like this should be happened - confrontation, certainly, but not verbal abuse directed at the closest stopping-point on the chain of authority.
If you found yourself in a situation like this - your child forced to abide by draconian, seemingly arbitrary rules, the productive course of action would be to try to get those rules changed. You could accomplish this with the right kinds of threats, sure, but I don't think that's a good way to proceed. Frankly, I hate that sort of bullshit, so why would I want to create more of it? Take it to the school board, and get your kid involved with that process, to some extent. That would be my approach.
WHOOSH!!!!
DAGNABBIT, YOU RASSAFRASSIN' KIDS! GIT OFF MAH LAWN!
(Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING. - no shit, that was the idea.)
I don't see Firewire taking off...
Are you kidding? Not only has it taken off, it's actually completed its departure. :)
Someday, jackasses like yourself will realize that people are buying the iPhone specifically for the walled-garden, not in spite of it.
Someday, jackasses like yourself will realize just how big a hypocrite you are because you bash Apple for the same exact business practice you support with your ownership of any gaming console.
Someday, jackasses like yourself (and also me) will stop aping the parent post's style just to punch up the reply with an added bit of retarded flare.
(Is this game console angle the official party line or something? It seems to be the one argument people always come back to when defending Apple. Admittedly, I think it's a good analogy...)
With regard to the whole gaming console thing - it's a matter of expectations. Would you take that "walled garden" bullshit if you were buying a desktop computer? I certainly wouldn't, because my desktop works for me, and it's my job to decide what runs on it. That's the traditional role of the desktop machine, what people are used to.
Gaming consoles are what they are - and anybody who doesn't want to buy one, especially with the colossal bullshit that goes on with them these days - I can totally appreciate that.
A tablet like the iPad is something of a gray area. Is it a large iPhone or a small laptop with no keyboard? Depending on which way you look at it, your expectations may be different. I don't think anyone thinks of it as a gaming console - but its ties to the iPhone may lead people to offer it the same expectations as phone platforms... Many of which are closed. If you look at it in terms of laptops, then you'd expect a more open platform. I can appreciate the argument that the iPad is what it is, and nothing more - but I certainly don't think it's unreasonable to expect more.
I wouldn't say my expectations are typical of everyone - I am a programmer and when I have a device I like to code for it... And if there's software out there that can do a job that needs doing, I want to be able to run it without unnecessary hassles. So here's my usual disclaimer with regard to iPad posts - I am not arguing that iPad's approach will lead to it failing as a commercial product. I am not arguing that my evaluation of this thing applies to everyone. But I have my own standards for what defines a good piece of gear, and iPad isn't it.
ladies & gentlemen I'm proud to present to you the great whisper jeff, the man with a huge apple shaped hole in his heart!
Didn't Tony Stark have one of those?