I can't wait for my company to switch to Vista! With the relative stability of XP over the past few years, my snarky jokes about Microsoft have run dry. I need new fodder!
Crap browser eh? My co-worker has never used an iPhone/iPod/Macintosh, but saw me using Safari (on my PC) so he gave it a try. He is now going to buy a Macbook solely on his positive experience with Safari on a PC. If it's crap, then I'll order 100 plates of steamy poo, thank you.
"The next thing you know" the document is real and available to the public as court evidence. The audacity of those court systems to actually make stuff up!
I was inclined to think it was fake too until I read the FA. Follow the links. The content comes from public records and Bill was asked to comment on the situation, and he obliged. Unless, of course, a professional journalist for the Post-Intelligencer has enough balls to put his career on the line to fake everything he posted?
Every System Engineer at the software company I work at starts nearly EVERY sentence with So... It's annoying as hell, but really cool in SE circles, I imagine, since they all do it.
Ask 100 random computer users on the street and 98 of them will tell you Outlook is for email, Word is for typing, Excel is a spreadsheet, etc. etc. Maybe 10 of them will be able to tell you what their media player is called. I think some of you guys need to step out of your shells and realize just what counts as "mainstream" now days.
I am not sure that email is really by Gates I wasn't either, because it is way too inarticulate to come from such a successful person. If you follow the link to the Seattle paper though, it seems to be genuine.
And if a program requests the root password and the user gives it, is this the OS's fault?
No, of course not - but you'd be amazed at the number of people who blame Windows even for such social engineering tricks, or believe that if we only all switched to Linux malware would be a thing of the past.
People "blame" windows for their own stupidity because there are about 1,000,000 schemes out there that attack windows users. Compare that to Linux and OSX and you start to see why I believe in the security-through-obscurity "misnomer". Sure my Mac may not be any more secure, but I'm not getting assaulted 10 times a day either.
My OSX? I don't now, and I don't plan to ever use OSX. I'm not sure why you'd say this in response to my comment, which didn't even mention anything OSX specific. Modus Operandi for Apple bashers--are you new here?
Nothing looks more ridiculous than a WinXP fake system error pop-up in the middle of an OSX Safari session. It wouldn't be hard to determine the OS and display an OS-specific error screen, but hey, nobody ever accused the cretins of being intelligent.
if Windows has 93% marketshare, OS-X 6%, and Linux 1% -- what platform will you choose to attack? If I were a dirt-bag, scum-bucket hacker type, I'd probably really hate Macs and thus, try to attack those because of my out-of-proportion hatred towards Hipsters and Shiny Things.
Haven't you ever heard the saying "think before you speak"?
I didn't have to think before I spoke, because "good design doesn't require the user to have to pay attention" is the mantra of good design. The less the user has to think about to accomplish routine tasks, the better the design.
Anyway, your post doesn't immediately get posted with "no going back". You have to click at least twice: Preview, then Submit. The purpose of a "preview", incidentally, is something along the lines of "read what you just typed and make sure it's what you really meant to say". My gripe with slashdot is that after I preview my post, the buttons are not correctly placed, and even though I MEAN to go back and edit my post before submitting, I accidentally hit the submit button because the submit button is not displaced far away from buttons that have the exact opposite function (UI 101). The bigger problem with slashdot is the inability to edit your post after it is posted--a function that the other forums I hang out in all have--forums that are filled with some of the least technical people on the planet (drummers).
One thing I've learned is that people don't like to hear problems from other people unless they can provide a solution. Here's mine--place a "Submit" button on the far right of the first box (giving the person the option to forego the Preview function if they are comfortable in their post. Then, if they do hit Preview, the Submit button remains on the FAR RIGHT. This serves two UI purposes. First, it makes it impossible to click the wrong button, by forcing the user to move all the way to the right to submit. Second, it maintains consistency by having the submit button in the same place on every screen (if they were to put the submit button on the first screen like described above).
So there ya go, just because you see no problem with the current UI doesn't mean there aren't problems with it. No disrespect, but attitudes like yours (blame the user for everything, burden the user with poor UI) is the main reason most of the software and web stuff out there is a nigh-unusable mess.
Really, it's pretty silly to claim the buttons are too close together... It's nothing you'd have much chance of messing up as long as you were paying attention. Good design doesn't require the user to have to pay attention. It is typical for someone who doesn't understand UI to blame the user when bad UI design is to blame. In this case, the best solution would be to move the two buttons far apart from each other, especially considering there is plenty of room to do so and especially because there is no going back if you click the wrong one. This is basic, basic UI and the lack of thought on the placement of these buttons is one of the most eggregious examples of bad UI I can think of at the moment (right up there with "shutdown" being under the "start" button).
The guy writing the code should never be writing the test measures. It's that whole checks-and-balances thing our Software Engineers and Programmers never understand...
Anyway, you're entirely without excuse for spelling mistakes. Firefox has built-in spell check, and "spair" isn't even a word. Well, if slashdot had a bit more modern discussion forum that, I don't know, actually let you edit your posts after you hit submit button, I'd suggest he/she is entirely WITH excuse for minor mistakes. If slashdot would invest some time in some human interface design and realize the placement of "submit" and "continue editing" are placed too closely together, I'd not give him/her a pass either. Given those two glaring shortcomings on the UI side, I'd say none of us are to fault for minor mistakes in our posts.
But the way "reality" works is that it pays people who come up with better, faster, and cheaper ways of doing stuff. One out of three ain't bad. Unfortunately, in "reality", better and faster never matter...only cheaper. Or am I just being overly harsh of the software company I work for?
So do mine, but so poorly that there are at least three or four ways to backdoor into any Youtube link. I guess if they weren't so bored, they'd figure out how to block these pesky time-waters once and for all!
No, because if you were a civil engineer you would have advocated a useless four-way intersection with poorly timed lights right in the middle of the Golden Gate bridge.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't wait for my company to switch to Vista! With the relative stability of XP over the past few years, my snarky jokes about Microsoft have run dry. I need new fodder!
Crap browser eh? My co-worker has never used an iPhone/iPod/Macintosh, but saw me using Safari (on my PC) so he gave it a try. He is now going to buy a Macbook solely on his positive experience with Safari on a PC. If it's crap, then I'll order 100 plates of steamy poo, thank you.
"The next thing you know" the document is real and available to the public as court evidence. The audacity of those court systems to actually make stuff up!
10 comments into the story and the server is slashdotted already
what is going on lately with these servers?
Maybe because I read it first on del.ic.ious, digg or gizmodo before it was even posted on slashdot?Yeah, looks 100% fake to me....or not. Man, the MS apologists are out in full force today!
I was inclined to think it was fake too until I read the FA. Follow the links. The content comes from public records and Bill was asked to comment on the situation, and he obliged. Unless, of course, a professional journalist for the Post-Intelligencer has enough balls to put his career on the line to fake everything he posted?
Every System Engineer at the software company I work at starts nearly EVERY sentence with So... It's annoying as hell, but really cool in SE circles, I imagine, since they all do it.
Ask 100 random computer users on the street and 98 of them will tell you Outlook is for email, Word is for typing, Excel is a spreadsheet, etc. etc. Maybe 10 of them will be able to tell you what their media player is called. I think some of you guys need to step out of your shells and realize just what counts as "mainstream" now days.
Thanks for contributing.
No, of course not - but you'd be amazed at the number of people who blame Windows even for such social engineering tricks, or believe that if we only all switched to Linux malware would be a thing of the past.
People "blame" windows for their own stupidity because there are about 1,000,000 schemes out there that attack windows users. Compare that to Linux and OSX and you start to see why I believe in the security-through-obscurity "misnomer". Sure my Mac may not be any more secure, but I'm not getting assaulted 10 times a day either.Nothing looks more ridiculous than a WinXP fake system error pop-up in the middle of an OSX Safari session. It wouldn't be hard to determine the OS and display an OS-specific error screen, but hey, nobody ever accused the cretins of being intelligent.
Haven't you ever heard the saying "think before you speak"?
I didn't have to think before I spoke, because "good design doesn't require the user to have to pay attention" is the mantra of good design. The less the user has to think about to accomplish routine tasks, the better the design. Anyway, your post doesn't immediately get posted with "no going back". You have to click at least twice: Preview, then Submit. The purpose of a "preview", incidentally, is something along the lines of "read what you just typed and make sure it's what you really meant to say". My gripe with slashdot is that after I preview my post, the buttons are not correctly placed, and even though I MEAN to go back and edit my post before submitting, I accidentally hit the submit button because the submit button is not displaced far away from buttons that have the exact opposite function (UI 101). The bigger problem with slashdot is the inability to edit your post after it is posted--a function that the other forums I hang out in all have--forums that are filled with some of the least technical people on the planet (drummers).One thing I've learned is that people don't like to hear problems from other people unless they can provide a solution. Here's mine--place a "Submit" button on the far right of the first box (giving the person the option to forego the Preview function if they are comfortable in their post. Then, if they do hit Preview, the Submit button remains on the FAR RIGHT. This serves two UI purposes. First, it makes it impossible to click the wrong button, by forcing the user to move all the way to the right to submit. Second, it maintains consistency by having the submit button in the same place on every screen (if they were to put the submit button on the first screen like described above).
So there ya go, just because you see no problem with the current UI doesn't mean there aren't problems with it. No disrespect, but attitudes like yours (blame the user for everything, burden the user with poor UI) is the main reason most of the software and web stuff out there is a nigh-unusable mess.
I once worked a few weeks at Apple back in their heyday...
I don't get it, you still work there then?The guy writing the code should never be writing the test measures. It's that whole checks-and-balances thing our Software Engineers and Programmers never understand...
Certainly won't be going into copy editing.
Speaking of boring jobs...I IS one!My IT guys block youtube.
So do mine, but so poorly that there are at least three or four ways to backdoor into any Youtube link. I guess if they weren't so bored, they'd figure out how to block these pesky time-waters once and for all!No, because if you were a civil engineer you would have advocated a useless four-way intersection with poorly timed lights right in the middle of the Golden Gate bridge.
Parachute instructor? What do you train a parachute to do?