Why would you, as a developer, care what anyone else thinks?
As a professional, I care about what my customers care about. If my app doesn't appeal to them, they don't use it and I don't get paid.
As a developer, I want what I produce to be interesting enough to show other people.
Isn't that how OSS is supposed to work?
Most of what I write isn't OSS (although I'll contribute bug fixes if I bother to implement them). But even on a realistic level, that's not how OSS is supposed to work. That attitude is why there are eight-trillion apps that do the same thing okay-ish, with poor UI and feature sets. If you made the OSS project more polished than what it takes for you to be happy, you can make it easier to reuse your code instead of rewriting the code. (This assumes you can rise above the crap... but that's a problem of bad OSS development before). Then, instead of rewriting the code before they have to move on, the eight trillion developers can add a feature, or fix a bug, or somesuch. Then, instead of linear growth (and constantly getting set back to zero), we get geometric growth, as features feed on features.
But that never happens if your code is "as polished as I would like it to be." Because I understand my own assumptions. Because my stupid acronyms make sense to me. Because learning someone else's system is harder than creating your own, so you have to work harder on other aspects if you want to ever get beyond what you can write.
The Ipod came in when there were effectively no other players in the portable media device market, it managed to take an unutilised and uncontested market, even I bought one and this was my first experience with Apple
Other than Sony, Creative, Diamond Rio, whichever company made the Personal Jukebox, and a few generic style ones with boring names. I had MP3 players for years before the iPod came out. Some were smaller than the iPod when it did come out.
People are now seeing that they have a choice, for years the only way to get a non-apple MP3 player in Perth (Australia) was by mail order, this changed recently and now I'm seeing more non-ipod MP3 players then ipods.
ou're ignoring the massive government intervention in multiple areas of the market which built and extended an unsustainable boom period leading (inevitably) to the crash,
Leading up to the crash there were a few causes. However, there was a lassie-faire attitude of the government. They even let oil companies drill into Navy reserves, trusting those companies to meet the need whenever the Navy needed the oil.
Now, the huge amount of saved cash from WWI led to the stock market going up, and unpreceedented loans backed by stocks were used to purchase new stocks.
Like the other person who replied to you said, the analogs to 2008 are many.
Please compare the Federal Reserve's actions with regard to the money supply before, during, and at the end of the Great Depression. Contrast with the 1921 Depression.
Well, if you make a point, I'll be happy to respond to it. I'm not about to write an arbitrary paper just because someone on slashdot asked me to.
Besides, the gold standard meant that their attempts to change the money supply were less powerful then the Fed's attempts today.
It doesn't make it acceptable, but it does mean that you cannot cite it as a reason to dislike it. If you run secret police arresting people in Poland SSR, you cannot really cast stones at Russia SSR for having secret police.
If you say "I use non-Microsoft products because Microsoft does X", you have to find non-Microsoft products that don't also do X. Or come up with a different rational (there are plenty!)
Only fools would believe the Microsoft of today is culturally not the same company that abused its market positions, violated patents, announced vaporware, shipped stolen source code, scammed partners, plotted against competitors with deliberate incompatibilities and even more to expand and embed their dominance.
What big software company doesn't do all those things?
Wells Fargo, owning the primary morgage, has to sue all secondary lien holders. They are owners of a second lien (thus a secondary lien holder), so they either have to sue themselves, sue no one, or give up the second lien.
If they sue no one, they cannot easily foreclose (have to settle with everyone).
If they give up the second lien, and lose the lawsuit against the other secondary lien holders, they lose out on monies they would otherwise be entitled to, by owning the second morgage.
Suing themselves is an insurance policy against losing other lawsuits.
IANAL, but other articles seem to make this point clearly, like the Monty Fool
Sarah Palin's speech was coherent? Which speech was that again?
Her resignation speech. It wasn't the Gettysburg Address, but it had a message. According to a lot of articles, she just jibbered. She didn't.
I don't know if I agree with any of her points, but they were at least made.
It's been too long since I saw the Katie Couric interview; I remember not being impressed with her during the campaign. But you cannot arbitarilly assume that everything thereafter she will say is dumb. Or, if that's your opinion, you should just ignore anything she says, as opposed to claiming it fits into a preconceived mold.
And overly-restrictive UI requirements will prevent the interface from ever evolving.
It's a GUI. Evolutions happen in spurts. There was (in Microsoft land) the Start button/taskbar in Win 95, and the widget panel in Vista. Oh, and an add on that shows all the open windows when you alt-tab. Whole lotta evolution. Apple has had three evolutions, their taskbar variant (the dock?), their widget panel, and their program switching, show all the apps screen.
I suppose, in fairness, Vista and some release of OS X also added screenshots when you roll over the icons on the taskbar/dock.
But interfaces have had for evolutionary steps in 14 years. And all at the OS level. I think that's fine, don't you?
The iPhone was specifically designed to be a smart phone. Not only that it was the iPod touch that followed the iPhone.
You're right. I stand corrected.
they got the phone right the first time. I own a first generation iPhone and am completely happy with it. I'm not even compelled to upgrade (AT&T is a different story). The industry has barely started to catchup (there might be something to the Pre, etc).
I had a Windows CE smartphone in 2005. It too had a touch-screen. I've use an iPhone. Honestly, the Windows CE phone wins in my mind. I don't know what they did that required catching up to, except they were good at building buzz. I suppose they have a lot of application developers, that's the only thing they did well, and it's not technological.
Because you'll ask, areas where my Windows CE phone won: Input, it had handwriting recognition and a stylus, so it could put a full keyboard up and I could poke at it. For that matter, it had a stylus and stylus holder, for precision pointing. It had an SD chip reader and video player. It was unlocked, so I could add codecs. It had good calander/notes apps. It could open Excel and Word docs for me to see and edit. I could set the ringtones to a random mp3. It had AIM, although I used that infrequently. I forget the rest.
What did the iPhone do other than multitouch that other phones didn't?
Sure the eMate was a flop, but you're talking about historic Apple Computer, not Apple Inc. proper
Same company.
And the belligerent blogger made a point. I have a hard time seeing a point to the iPhone. It seems a lot like the iPod, an expensive version of a regular device, hearlded as revolutionary because some people apparently never bought a smartphone/mp3 player before.
Point well taken. Apparently it went out of style in the 20th century (citation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potato_(word)#Spelling ) and is currently incorrect. Whether it was when Quayle used it or not I don't know.
Regardless, he corrected a little girl in a spelling bee, so it was wrong to use even if his version was technically acceptable at the time.
Even better solution. Tell the RIAA, MIAA, and the other stupid lame folks to make a quality product thats worth purchasing at the listed price.
The only way to do this is to not purchase -or- pirate their work. Otherwise, it's unclear whether you would pay $.99 a song or $20 an album. But no sales or downloads is unambiguous.
This demonstrates the inherent problem with open source's attitude towards user demands. To them you are either (a) a Programmer, or (b) a Grandma.
Close. To open source developers you are either (a) The developer himself, or (b) Not the developer himself. If (b) then the excuse is either (i) you are a Programmer - develop it yourself, or (ii) you are non-technical - I can ignore your input.
Open source is always talking about how they can win over more users. But how do you win over users if you don't focus on usability?
You cannot! Usability is very important. And everyone should concentrate on it. But not me right now, I just have this nifty little feature to add for myself/my close friend/etc.
Closed-source and other funded software can pay people for the unfun work of UI design and documentation.
Use zero modal dialogs. They force the user to act at the software's behest to continue doing what they want. Making the user your software's bitch.
This is the one thing I take issue with. Modal dialogs shouldn't interupt the normal user flow, but sometimes you have to use them. Typically, this is when something irreversable is about to happen that is probably an unintended side-effect of what's happening: "You are about to exit, save changes?"
I mean, people wanted an iPhone for years before Apple release it and it turned the market upside down. If they just put an iPod on a phone or a phone on an iPod nobody would have cared except for a few fanboys. Instead they made a truly innovative device and entered the market when the time was right -- when they had something interesting
They did just put a phone in an ipod touch. And people bitched (correctly) about the lack of 3G, GPS, etc. It took a few generations to get right. See Maddox
A Netbook is old... real old. I remember they were popular concepts in '95... only then they didn't have batteries. Apple put one out way back then, and it flopped. Probably why they haven't put one out lately.
And they put their OS on a tiny underpowered device with less than 800x600 (480x320) screen, and called it a ipod touch. That's their netbook.
No, it doesn't. Not even a little bit. Not a smidgen. There is no credible evidence to support that position.
You just outlined why game companies love consoles. And movie companies love Bluray. Without copyright law, expect more specialized devices/inter-device encryption/locked-down hypervisors/less control over your hardware/software.
Your link shows Spore was pirated on the PC, but not on the console.
Bush phrased a lot of things poorly, but most people attribute misspeaking to him: incorrect conjugation ("is our children learning"), applying multiple prefixes incorrectly ("misunderestimate"), generic malapropism (calling himself "authoritarian" instead of "authoritative"... I suppose some attribute it to a Freudian slip instead of malapropism).
They often came out poorly, but he was over-criticised for them. Some are merely sentences that can be parsed in two ways, with one obviously what he intended: "Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country"; "I want to thank you for taking time out of your day to come and witness my [portrait's] hanging". Some are merely sentences that are marginally counterintuitive: "I've abandoned free market principles to save the free market system." Some are merely wording that some would consider strange, but seems okay: "I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully."
But the content of a "Bushism" is rarely thought of as stupid... usually its a phrasing/grammar issue.
Not to minimize phrasing or grammar, but if you harp on that, you're implictly stating that is the biggest issue you have.
The math doesn't look like arithmetic, but then most math doesn't.
I was a math major, once upon a time. I know it is math. But it's not interesting because it's math.
If you want to talk about patentability, you have to choose the interesting aspect to be patented. Math shouldn't be patented, but at some level what you're patenting in CS is expressed in math, but the concept is not. "One-click shopping", believe it should be patented or not (and most say no), is not interesting because of the math.
By selling services instead of copies. You can't pirate technical support, programmer man hours, etc..
Sure, you can. See outsourcing to India.
Besides, that only works as long as the software is hard to use. If it becomes more polished/easier to use, this revenue source goes away. Preverse incentive, huh?
And lastly, a lot of good programmers want steady income to work on products, not occupy the lowest rung of the ladder/innermost circle of hell.
Well, they'd do it by erecting technical barriers to copying. DRM plus a million. Because they would have to.
And it still wouldn't work.
DRM works. It's not foolproof, but it does cut down on the piracy. And DRM would get more insane if it had to.
At the lowest level. Interesting things gloss over this... just like word processing glosses over the math. And the interesting things are what get patented.
Slashdot Mirror
As a professional, I care about what my customers care about. If my app doesn't appeal to them, they don't use it and I don't get paid.
As a developer, I want what I produce to be interesting enough to show other people.
Most of what I write isn't OSS (although I'll contribute bug fixes if I bother to implement them). But even on a realistic level, that's not how OSS is supposed to work. That attitude is why there are eight-trillion apps that do the same thing okay-ish, with poor UI and feature sets. If you made the OSS project more polished than what it takes for you to be happy, you can make it easier to reuse your code instead of rewriting the code. (This assumes you can rise above the crap... but that's a problem of bad OSS development before). Then, instead of rewriting the code before they have to move on, the eight trillion developers can add a feature, or fix a bug, or somesuch. Then, instead of linear growth (and constantly getting set back to zero), we get geometric growth, as features feed on features.
But that never happens if your code is "as polished as I would like it to be." Because I understand my own assumptions. Because my stupid acronyms make sense to me. Because learning someone else's system is harder than creating your own, so you have to work harder on other aspects if you want to ever get beyond what you can write.
No. He can fuck it up with software. And run different software to unfuck it up. Probably choosable from a BIOS menu option.
If he had bricked it, he would need another device to fix it... see the Developer Board he talked about.
Other than Sony, Creative, Diamond Rio, whichever company made the Personal Jukebox, and a few generic style ones with boring names. I had MP3 players for years before the iPod came out. Some were smaller than the iPod when it did come out.
Maybe it's an Australian thing?
Leading up to the crash there were a few causes. However, there was a lassie-faire attitude of the government. They even let oil companies drill into Navy reserves, trusting those companies to meet the need whenever the Navy needed the oil.
Now, the huge amount of saved cash from WWI led to the stock market going up, and unpreceedented loans backed by stocks were used to purchase new stocks.
Like the other person who replied to you said, the analogs to 2008 are many.
Well, if you make a point, I'll be happy to respond to it. I'm not about to write an arbitrary paper just because someone on slashdot asked me to.
Besides, the gold standard meant that their attempts to change the money supply were less powerful then the Fed's attempts today.
Ships and countries are feminine, generic people masculine.
Partially cracked is directly analagous to being a partial virgin. You can have quite a bit of fun, but the really good stuff is just out of bounds.
Ummm... 1929? Market failure in farmland ownership/food growth, massive bank failures due to poor loans?
It doesn't make it acceptable, but it does mean that you cannot cite it as a reason to dislike it. If you run secret police arresting people in Poland SSR, you cannot really cast stones at Russia SSR for having secret police.
If you say "I use non-Microsoft products because Microsoft does X", you have to find non-Microsoft products that don't also do X. Or come up with a different rational (there are plenty!)
What big software company doesn't do all those things?
Wells Fargo, owning the primary morgage, has to sue all secondary lien holders. They are owners of a second lien (thus a secondary lien holder), so they either have to sue themselves, sue no one, or give up the second lien.
If they sue no one, they cannot easily foreclose (have to settle with everyone).
If they give up the second lien, and lose the lawsuit against the other secondary lien holders, they lose out on monies they would otherwise be entitled to, by owning the second morgage.
Suing themselves is an insurance policy against losing other lawsuits.
IANAL, but other articles seem to make this point clearly, like the Monty Fool
Her resignation speech. It wasn't the Gettysburg Address, but it had a message. According to a lot of articles, she just jibbered. She didn't.
I don't know if I agree with any of her points, but they were at least made.
It's been too long since I saw the Katie Couric interview; I remember not being impressed with her during the campaign. But you cannot arbitarilly assume that everything thereafter she will say is dumb. Or, if that's your opinion, you should just ignore anything she says, as opposed to claiming it fits into a preconceived mold.
It's a GUI. Evolutions happen in spurts. There was (in Microsoft land) the Start button/taskbar in Win 95, and the widget panel in Vista. Oh, and an add on that shows all the open windows when you alt-tab. Whole lotta evolution. Apple has had three evolutions, their taskbar variant (the dock?), their widget panel, and their program switching, show all the apps screen.
I suppose, in fairness, Vista and some release of OS X also added screenshots when you roll over the icons on the taskbar/dock.
But interfaces have had for evolutionary steps in 14 years. And all at the OS level. I think that's fine, don't you?
Bushisms are overrated. I wrote a long response to the first person to mention them.
I couldn't watch the video... the laughtrack made that impossible.
You're right. I stand corrected.
I had a Windows CE smartphone in 2005. It too had a touch-screen. I've use an iPhone. Honestly, the Windows CE phone wins in my mind. I don't know what they did that required catching up to, except they were good at building buzz. I suppose they have a lot of application developers, that's the only thing they did well, and it's not technological.
Because you'll ask, areas where my Windows CE phone won: Input, it had handwriting recognition and a stylus, so it could put a full keyboard up and I could poke at it. For that matter, it had a stylus and stylus holder, for precision pointing. It had an SD chip reader and video player. It was unlocked, so I could add codecs. It had good calander/notes apps. It could open Excel and Word docs for me to see and edit. I could set the ringtones to a random mp3. It had AIM, although I used that infrequently. I forget the rest.
What did the iPhone do other than multitouch that other phones didn't?
Same company.
And the belligerent blogger made a point. I have a hard time seeing a point to the iPhone. It seems a lot like the iPod, an expensive version of a regular device, hearlded as revolutionary because some people apparently never bought a smartphone/mp3 player before.
Point well taken. Apparently it went out of style in the 20th century (citation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potato_(word)#Spelling ) and is currently incorrect. Whether it was when Quayle used it or not I don't know.
Regardless, he corrected a little girl in a spelling bee, so it was wrong to use even if his version was technically acceptable at the time.
The only way to do this is to not purchase -or- pirate their work. Otherwise, it's unclear whether you would pay $.99 a song or $20 an album. But no sales or downloads is unambiguous.
Close. To open source developers you are either (a) The developer himself, or (b) Not the developer himself. If (b) then the excuse is either (i) you are a Programmer - develop it yourself, or (ii) you are non-technical - I can ignore your input.
You cannot! Usability is very important. And everyone should concentrate on it. But not me right now, I just have this nifty little feature to add for myself/my close friend/etc.
Closed-source and other funded software can pay people for the unfun work of UI design and documentation.
This is the one thing I take issue with. Modal dialogs shouldn't interupt the normal user flow, but sometimes you have to use them. Typically, this is when something irreversable is about to happen that is probably an unintended side-effect of what's happening: "You are about to exit, save changes?"
They did just put a phone in an ipod touch. And people bitched (correctly) about the lack of 3G, GPS, etc. It took a few generations to get right. See Maddox
A Netbook is old... real old. I remember they were popular concepts in '95... only then they didn't have batteries. Apple put one out way back then, and it flopped. Probably why they haven't put one out lately.
And they put their OS on a tiny underpowered device with less than 800x600 (480x320) screen, and called it a ipod touch. That's their netbook.
You just outlined why game companies love consoles. And movie companies love Bluray. Without copyright law, expect more specialized devices/inter-device encryption/locked-down hypervisors/less control over your hardware/software.
Your link shows Spore was pirated on the PC, but not on the console.
Bush phrased a lot of things poorly, but most people attribute misspeaking to him: incorrect conjugation ("is our children learning"), applying multiple prefixes incorrectly ("misunderestimate"), generic malapropism (calling himself "authoritarian" instead of "authoritative"... I suppose some attribute it to a Freudian slip instead of malapropism).
They often came out poorly, but he was over-criticised for them. Some are merely sentences that can be parsed in two ways, with one obviously what he intended: "Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country"; "I want to thank you for taking time out of your day to come and witness my [portrait's] hanging". Some are merely sentences that are marginally counterintuitive: "I've abandoned free market principles to save the free market system." Some are merely wording that some would consider strange, but seems okay: "I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully."
But the content of a "Bushism" is rarely thought of as stupid... usually its a phrasing/grammar issue.
Not to minimize phrasing or grammar, but if you harp on that, you're implictly stating that is the biggest issue you have.
I was a math major, once upon a time. I know it is math. But it's not interesting because it's math.
If you want to talk about patentability, you have to choose the interesting aspect to be patented. Math shouldn't be patented, but at some level what you're patenting in CS is expressed in math, but the concept is not. "One-click shopping", believe it should be patented or not (and most say no), is not interesting because of the math.
Sure, you can. See outsourcing to India.
Besides, that only works as long as the software is hard to use. If it becomes more polished/easier to use, this revenue source goes away. Preverse incentive, huh?
And lastly, a lot of good programmers want steady income to work on products, not occupy the lowest rung of the ladder/innermost circle of hell.
DRM works. It's not foolproof, but it does cut down on the piracy. And DRM would get more insane if it had to.
At the lowest level. Interesting things gloss over this... just like word processing glosses over the math. And the interesting things are what get patented.