"They just have to make a better, more intuitive, easy to use word processor."
While certainly possible, I think that there are limits to how great you can make a word processor. There comes a point where it's good enough for just about everybody, and I think we've already reached that point. Yeah, there are some problems, but I think those problems are probably inherent to using a general purpose WSIWYG editor than they are problems that can be fixed by a better interface or more features.
The goal here is not to build a better mousetrap, but to invent something that solves some other problem I have. Microsoft isn't particularly good at that.
I think this is exactly right, and one of the most interesting aspects of Microsoft's business.
Their whole business is dependent on being the popular standard. But by definition, a standard can't be a moving target, so it has to change very slowly or people will stick with "the old version that everyone has."
This puts Microsoft between a rock and a hard place, since they'll lose the market if they make too drastic a change, and they'll also lose the market if they don't change at all, and allow other implementations to catch up.
It's a high-wire balancing act, and while they're very good at it, they're going to slip eventually.
All of you people worried about Microsoft as a monopoly are freaking out over nothing. In the long term, what they're doing with Windows and Office is not sustainable.
"The population has grown and at some point resources simply won't stretch far enough for all of us."
Yawn. This was a big fear forty years ago, and yet it hasn't come to pass, despite world population exploding beyond all predictions.
There are still plenty of resources to go around. The method of distribution needs work in some places, but it's not a problem in the civilized world, where only the rich are thin.
It doesn't disqualify you from making statements, but when you lace your scientific statement with political opinion, you end up sounding more like a fanatic than a professional.
You would see the logic in what I'm talking about if you would only accept the Lord Jesus Christ as your own personal saviour, as I have.
I expect to have to do a little configuration, and that's cool.
But when the automated update software erases my configuration without asking (and without telling me, so the only indication I have that something's changed is that the wireless card's light is dark) that's a pain in the ass.
Linux is getting better and better, but it's still a hassle. I can't install it on anyone else's computer, because if the auto update tool screws up the configuration I put on there, they're out of luck if I'm not around.
Me too. I think that's what happens when you try to make a all-in-one solution without realizing there's a tradeoff between power and flexibility. You either make something that's too specific to be useful so that users have to constantly fight against design decisions you made, or something that requires almost as much work to make it do what you want than writing it from scratch would.
The ridiculously complex configuration files are a symptom of moving as many design decisions as possible out to the last possible moment. Complexity isn't reduced, it's just in a different place.
Which, ironically, makes the whole thing that much more complex, since now you have multiple places things can go wrong.
I tried using this stuff years ago, and found it wasn't close to worth the hassle, especially for a single developer. I just did a search for "J2EE success story," and the vast majority of hits were about a small team of Python programmers replacing large J2EE teams that failed to produce a working product.
But maybe I'm wrong, and the people who know much more than I do about this can list a hundred different projects where J2EE saved the company. It just seems like it's overhyped and people are really much more concerned about the scaffolding they're using than the work that they're supposed to be doing with it.
That's not the submitter's problem. You need to bone up on some acronyms, or you'll never make a goodJavaProgrammer. Here's a quick lesson in what you should do:
Write a thousand different programs using acronyms that start with J that do nothing except fuck up the data as it's being transmitted between the database and your application. Then, you have to write automated tools that also are acronyms that start with J and contain the word "Bean" in there somewhere, and those exist to generate parts of those previously mentioned thousand programs.
Then, write some Swing components that have nothing to do with all of this, and call those by almost exactly the same names, so that people get confused and can't do a proper Google search for documentation. Name an IDE after the Swing components, too.
Finally, call it all "middleware," give it yet ANOTHER name and bundle it all together, making sure that everything breaks if you don't include fifty different XML configuration files in the proper directory hierarchy that changes with each version.
Then when all of this doesn't work for more than one project because it's hopelessly complex, do it all over again and call it the next greatest revolution in Java middleware.
You're right in theory, but do you really want people who couldn't hack it in any other major but education teaching economics?
Because that's what you'll get, and we'll have millions more shrieking idiots running around who think they know how economies work because they read about Karl Marx in high school.
I love Linux, and FreeBSD even more, but Linux (in particular, Fedora Core 6) on a laptop costs me a lot more time than Windows on the same machine.
There are numerous problems, all laptop specific. Like how if I lose network connectivity it takes two minutes to start a terminal. Or how if I unplug the power cord with a full battery, Fedora mis-reads the battery status and pops up a helpful "Your battery power is dangerously low (99%). The system will be shut down." message before shutting off. No, it doesn't give you ten seconds to save what you were doing.
Or when the system update program helpfully reinstalls the bcom43xx kernel module and erases the ndiswrapper settings, resulting in a non-working wireless card. That's a fun one to figure out.
Linux on the desktop, at least for me, is a reality -- there's no reason to use Windows other than for games. On a laptop...eh.
"I Want to use my Nvidia 512Meg Video Card just so I can use Linux in 80x25 text mode. Ill use my 3.5 out of my 4 gigs of ram as a RAM Drive Just so running vi will come up and running without any wait what so ever, oh and compiling every month or so is so much quicker that way too..."
Search for the word "conviction." You won't find it. Why? Because it was a civil trial, not a criminal one, and civil courts do not "convict" anything.
Go find a historical record of a corporation being tried in a criminal court in the U.S. Have fun.
Have you ever been to California? People out here will spend thousands on any ineffective new sporting equipment that will make them look even slightly more ridiculous than the previous fad.
Mountain unicycling comes to mind. Yes, it exists.
You would absolutely love having a background in EE.
It makes the difference between shopping for a CD player and saying, "Oh, so they put fun inside" and "it's still going to be limited by the sensitivity of the DAC, so I don't need to pay extra for the oversampling."
Cops are citizens too. As people who work so closely with ridiculous laws, if what your cop friend said was true, he should be out there leading the charge to have it changed.
Nobody goes around saying, "I'm a sysadmin, I don't write the laws, you do."
Slashdot Mirror
"They just have to make a better, more intuitive, easy to use word processor."
While certainly possible, I think that there are limits to how great you can make a word processor. There comes a point where it's good enough for just about everybody, and I think we've already reached that point. Yeah, there are some problems, but I think those problems are probably inherent to using a general purpose WSIWYG editor than they are problems that can be fixed by a better interface or more features.
The goal here is not to build a better mousetrap, but to invent something that solves some other problem I have. Microsoft isn't particularly good at that.
I think this is exactly right, and one of the most interesting aspects of Microsoft's business.
Their whole business is dependent on being the popular standard. But by definition, a standard can't be a moving target, so it has to change very slowly or people will stick with "the old version that everyone has."
This puts Microsoft between a rock and a hard place, since they'll lose the market if they make too drastic a change, and they'll also lose the market if they don't change at all, and allow other implementations to catch up.
It's a high-wire balancing act, and while they're very good at it, they're going to slip eventually.
All of you people worried about Microsoft as a monopoly are freaking out over nothing. In the long term, what they're doing with Windows and Office is not sustainable.
That sounds like a GOOD sci-fi novel.
I hope (against all odds) someone makes a decent movie out of your idea.
"The population has grown and at some point resources simply won't stretch far enough for all of us."
Yawn. This was a big fear forty years ago, and yet it hasn't come to pass, despite world population exploding beyond all predictions.
There are still plenty of resources to go around. The method of distribution needs work in some places, but it's not a problem in the civilized world, where only the rich are thin.
It doesn't disqualify you from making statements, but when you lace your scientific statement with political opinion, you end up sounding more like a fanatic than a professional.
You would see the logic in what I'm talking about if you would only accept the Lord Jesus Christ as your own personal saviour, as I have.
See how that works?
My complaint was not that it was not possibly to get everything running, but that it costs me a lot of time to do so, which I don't have a lot of.
When I was in school and had no kids, sure, I had plenty of time to dick around with config files and support forums. Now, not so much.
I still run Linux on spare laptops, though.
Well, mostly.
I expect to have to do a little configuration, and that's cool.
But when the automated update software erases my configuration without asking (and without telling me, so the only indication I have that something's changed is that the wireless card's light is dark) that's a pain in the ass.
Linux is getting better and better, but it's still a hassle. I can't install it on anyone else's computer, because if the auto update tool screws up the configuration I put on there, they're out of luck if I'm not around.
Me too. I think that's what happens when you try to make a all-in-one solution without realizing there's a tradeoff between power and flexibility. You either make something that's too specific to be useful so that users have to constantly fight against design decisions you made, or something that requires almost as much work to make it do what you want than writing it from scratch would.
The ridiculously complex configuration files are a symptom of moving as many design decisions as possible out to the last possible moment. Complexity isn't reduced, it's just in a different place.
Which, ironically, makes the whole thing that much more complex, since now you have multiple places things can go wrong.
I tried using this stuff years ago, and found it wasn't close to worth the hassle, especially for a single developer. I just did a search for "J2EE success story," and the vast majority of hits were about a small team of Python programmers replacing large J2EE teams that failed to produce a working product.
But maybe I'm wrong, and the people who know much more than I do about this can list a hundred different projects where J2EE saved the company. It just seems like it's overhyped and people are really much more concerned about the scaffolding they're using than the work that they're supposed to be doing with it.
Actually, I was being a bit facetious.
People actually DO get J2EE apps to work. Here is a very informative instructional video by some Japanese researchers who show how it's done:
J2EE Example
That's not the submitter's problem. You need to bone up on some acronyms, or you'll never make a goodJavaProgrammer. Here's a quick lesson in what you should do:
Write a thousand different programs using acronyms that start with J that do nothing except fuck up the data as it's being transmitted between the database and your application. Then, you have to write automated tools that also are acronyms that start with J and contain the word "Bean" in there somewhere, and those exist to generate parts of those previously mentioned thousand programs.
Then, write some Swing components that have nothing to do with all of this, and call those by almost exactly the same names, so that people get confused and can't do a proper Google search for documentation. Name an IDE after the Swing components, too.
Finally, call it all "middleware," give it yet ANOTHER name and bundle it all together, making sure that everything breaks if you don't include fifty different XML configuration files in the proper directory hierarchy that changes with each version.
Then when all of this doesn't work for more than one project because it's hopelessly complex, do it all over again and call it the next greatest revolution in Java middleware.
If he is, hopefully he can scale the images on their web page properly, and change the javascript so it doesn't try to resize my browser window.
You're right in theory, but do you really want people who couldn't hack it in any other major but education teaching economics?
Because that's what you'll get, and we'll have millions more shrieking idiots running around who think they know how economies work because they read about Karl Marx in high school.
This is about the hundredth time someone has mentioned that specific brand of soap with a link.
Is this story some sort of marketing gimmick?
I love Linux, and FreeBSD even more, but Linux (in particular, Fedora Core 6) on a laptop costs me a lot more time than Windows on the same machine.
There are numerous problems, all laptop specific. Like how if I lose network connectivity it takes two minutes to start a terminal. Or how if I unplug the power cord with a full battery, Fedora mis-reads the battery status and pops up a helpful "Your battery power is dangerously low (99%). The system will be shut down." message before shutting off. No, it doesn't give you ten seconds to save what you were doing.
Or when the system update program helpfully reinstalls the bcom43xx kernel module and erases the ndiswrapper settings, resulting in a non-working wireless card. That's a fun one to figure out.
Linux on the desktop, at least for me, is a reality -- there's no reason to use Windows other than for games. On a laptop...eh.
"the joke the skit is based around is funny for thirty seconds but the skit is seven minutes long"
Funny for thirty seconds? Sounds like a good episode of SNL.
"I Want to use my Nvidia 512Meg Video Card just so I can use Linux in 80x25 text mode. Ill use my 3.5 out of my 4 gigs of ram as a RAM Drive Just so running vi will come up and running without any wait what so ever, oh and compiling every month or so is so much quicker that way too..."
:make submit
Damn right.
Heh, you should see the stuff that I think better of posting before I hit Submit.
I like the way you think.
But what we really need is a way to control mosquitos so that they can swarm to form advertisements. Then we'd get the laser bug zapper for free.
"How the heck am I going to explain that one to the wife?"
I'd say this:
Why do you keep talking about this cat, honey? For the millionth time, we NEVER HAD A CAT. I think you need to see a doctor.
It's a pretty healthy way to help loved ones deal with loss.
Yeah, what's with all these weird functions like CMPXCHG, XOR, MOVS, and PUSH?
That Windows C++ stuff, boy, it sure is weird!
Go read the wikipedia article about the case.
Search for the word "conviction." You won't find it. Why? Because it was a civil trial, not a criminal one, and civil courts do not "convict" anything.
Go find a historical record of a corporation being tried in a criminal court in the U.S. Have fun.
"... and he would have been correct"
Other than not knowing the difference between criminal and civil court, I guess so.
Have you ever been to California? People out here will spend thousands on any ineffective new sporting equipment that will make them look even slightly more ridiculous than the previous fad.
Mountain unicycling comes to mind. Yes, it exists.
You would absolutely love having a background in EE.
It makes the difference between shopping for a CD player and saying, "Oh, so they put fun inside" and "it's still going to be limited by the sensitivity of the DAC, so I don't need to pay extra for the oversampling."
Cops are citizens too. As people who work so closely with ridiculous laws, if what your cop friend said was true, he should be out there leading the charge to have it changed.
Nobody goes around saying, "I'm a sysadmin, I don't write the laws, you do."