But what we have to ask is, why does it sell? Why do people who would be insulted if a salesman selling cars or stereos or any other reasonably complex type of equipment talked down to them ("BIG WHEELEY THING GO FAST!" "SHINY BOX MAKE NOISE!") want to be talked to like three-year-olds when they're buying computers? I agree that sleazy marketing has a lot to do with it -- witness the otherwise inexplicable success of Microsoft -- but at a certain point, people have to take responsibility for what they buy and how they use it.
Short version: I probably ignore the offer, because it's de facto spam, even if I've previously registered on the publisher's site for other purposes.
Longer version: in the unlikely event that I think the offer might be both respectable and useful, I will put a fair amount of effort into verifying it. The fact that the questionnaire link isn't on the publisher's site is a huge red flag for me; at that point I would back out and send them an e-mail, at the very least. And no, I wouldn't trust the reply-to in the e-mail; any reputable organization will have contact information on their main site. Also, even organizations that I'm sure are legitimate don't get too much of my information, as a rule. Whenever I'm registering for anything on the web, I don't mind giving my name, address, and phone #, because those can be harvested from the phone book, for God's sake; anything else (DOB, mother's maiden name, that kind of stuff) I'm twitchy about. Is this enough to protect me from every scam out there? Probably not -- but it's done a good job so far, and saved me from a number of scams that other people I know have fallen for.
And this is off the top of my head. Which is kind of my point. I'm no one's idea of a security geek; my expertise lies in other areas. But I pay attention; I'm aware of the threats to the tools I rely on every day, and without putting an enormous amount of effort into it, I keep my machine and my credit rating safe. I'm not a mechanic either -- but I don't have to be to take simple steps to make sure my car will run.
Suppose you take your car to the mechanic, and he says, "It's broken, and you'll have to pay me a bunch of money to fix it."
You say, "Well, before I pay you all that money, how about you tell me exactly what's wrong?"
And he says, "You wouldn't understand all the technical jargon. Just trust me."
Would you give that mechanic your money?
No, I'm not blaming the "mechanics" (i.e., the people who write warnings and anti-malware) here. I'm blaming the people who, even if they can't actually fix anything more complicated than a flat tire, at least have a pretty decent idea of what the various parts of their car do, and can tell when someone is spouting expensive bullshit at them, but refuse to learn the most basic bits of computer knowledge in order to keep these machines -- which are just as important these days as cars -- up and running. If it weren't for the fact that their stupidity affects everyone else, I'd say fuck 'em, let their POS Windows (pretty much always) boxes be infected by every damn virus and worm in existence, let their bandwidth be sucked up by zombie penis enlargement e-mails, let their credit card and Social Security numbers be taken by every identity thief on the planet. But of course that's not a solution, any more than letting someone drive around with no brakes is okay.
So I don't know what to do about it, but I'm really goddamn tired of whiners who depend on computers to run large chunks of their lives but still think of it, more or less, as that magical glowy box.
All the abstruse stuff that an OS, DBMS, or compiler writer should know about, but that an application programmer does not need.
Well, there are at least two answers to that. The first is general: the idea that "programmers don't need to know all that theory" is, IMNSDGHO, largely responsible for all the crappy bloatware that the computing world has to deal with; if programmers spent more time learning real CS than the latest buzzwords, software would generally be much better than it is.
The second is specific to the topic of discussion: scientific programming, including bioinformatics, is much closer to the theoretical level than is most application programming. Pretty widgets don't matter nearly as much as the fact that you're dealing with complex operations on huge data sets, and if you write your program without any awareness of What's Really Going On, then your program will run like shit.
Yes, exactly. The reason, I think, that there's a perception that biologists make better bioinformatic[ists|icians] (it's a stupid argument; both terms are well understood) than computer scientists is that the learning curve for hacking is shallower than the learning curve for molecular biology. Someone with no training in CS can pick up a "Teach Yourself $LANGUAGE in 24 Hours" book and turn out code that, even if it's poorly written, at least does something useful; someone with no training in biology cannot pick up "Biology for Dummies" and do meanignful biological research.
But the fact is that both fields exist as serious areas of academic study in their own right for a reason; a bioinformatic___ who doesn't put several years of serious effort into understanding both will do mediocre work at best. Also, I would argue, an equal amount of effort should be put into the chemistry and math which underlie biology and CS, respectively. I've done pretty much all of the above, and I'm still well aware of how much I have to learn. Anyone in any interdisciplinary field who dismisses the knowledge of those in related fields is making a huge mistake.
There's just as much PC on the Right as on the Left, it's just that you're supposed to say (or not say) different things. Nobody in the mainstream media dares to say anything bad about the recently departed Pope, f'rinstance. (This is part of a general, long-running, PC-of-the-Right reverence for religion.) Extremists on both sides will always try to muzzle those with whom they disagree. You can keep believing otherwise if you like, of course... right up until they take you to the camps.
In other words, you're a coward. Because if you really believed the "global cooling/global warming fad" meme, and had any courage in your convictions, you'd take the bet.
Don't tar us all with the same brush... I watch the news reports from the US and have a good laugh just like you do.
Oh, I'm not trying to, which is why I said "religious fanatics," not "religious believers." Most of the faithful I know are perfectly sane people; but as SmallOak pointed out, here in the US, it's the far-right fanatics who shout the loudest, and they've been frighteningly successful in co-opting "faith" as a code word for their brand of extremism. Given that we are and will almost certainly remain a majority Christian country, the only way to turn this around, IMO, is for believers who object to their belief being used solely to advance an extreme agenda to stand up and say, "Not in our name." I see some signs of this happening, but not nearly fast enough.
Bingo. It amazes me how religious fanatics and Luddites (the former generally on the Right, the latter generally on the Left, but they're essentially the same species) will happily accept science and technology up to a point -- usually, roughly speaking, the point it had reached at the time their parents were born -- but decry anything else as evil and dangerous and against the will of the Lord. They're hypocrites, cowards, and fools. I used to argue with them; now I just don't bother.
Not only do different people have different measures of success, some types of success are easier to measure than others. Success in software is relatively easy to measure: if the software has the features the customer expects, and it's usable and stable, then it's done. Success in "business" (i.e., what the executives do) is much harder to measure and subject to endless spin. I'd love to see a study of how often management fails to deliver up to expectations on time, but of course the people who pay for the studies are the same people who would have to be evaluated by some kind of objective standard... and you can bet they're not going to want that.
We can't forget about PostgreSQL, because any mention of MySQL on/. inevitably brings forth a flood of "MySQL 5vX0rZ PostgreSQL r0X0Rz" trolls. Not saying you're one of those trolls, you understand, but I honestly don't think there's any lack of awareness of PostgreSQL in the F/OSS DB world, at all.
As someone who has been developing enterprise apps with MySQL for a while now, I'll answer this, even though I'm 99.44% sure you're trolling: what we've always done, so far, is put all the triggers in the application layer. Now we can make "real" triggers in the DB layer, but guess what? The logic is exactly the same.
Given the widespread use of MySQL to run some very complex systems, I rather suspect that you, like most anti-MySQL trolls, have no idea of what the "typically skilled MySQL user" actually does. Yes, there are lots of people who pick it up because it's free, easy to use, and widely known who have no business doing any kind of DB work. There are also those of us -- a lot more than you think -- who make our living at it and know exactly what we're doing.
It seems to me that PostgreSQL and MySQL have been following different paths converging on the same goal (a powerful, usable, stable DBMS): the PostgreSQL philosophy is to throw in everything and the kitchen sink and then make it work right, whereas the MySQL approach is to add things one at a time, making sure that everything works right from the beginning. It's possible that the endless sniping has caused the MySQL team to abandon its careful development process, but I don't see any evidence of that so far.
I've used MySQL and PostgreSQL both extensively over the years, as well as working with commercial DBMSs including Oracle and SQL Server. MySQL's lack of features has certainly been a frustration, but I keep coming back to it because what it does, it does very very well. If the MySQL team has managed to produce a "real" DBMS that works as well as previous versions, then it will be damn near perfect.
Bingo. It really amazes me that anyone doesn't understand how sleazy Microsoft was being with the "Reduced Media" name, and how necessary it was for the EU to make them change it. Personally, after this episode, I think the EU should have made them change the name to "Windows XP Legal Edition," and the original(Media Player) version to "Windows XP Convicted Monopolist Edition," and slapped them with a few billion extra in fines for being such buttheads. But maybe that's just me being vindictive.
Yes, but if you don't replace your toaster, it's not like there are new kinds of bread out there that will deliberately infect your old toaster with mold and make anything that comes out of it unfit to eat.
Well, I'll be damned. Okay, you're more longtime than me.;) It does seem like most of the experienced Mac people I know call it "Cmd", and n00bs call it "Apple" because that's the only symbol on it they can immediately identify.
As I mentioned in another post, Microsoft ripped off Apple (again) by mapping all the standard Mac Cmd keyboard shortcuts to Ctrl, back before the Windows key existed, and then by pushing the Windows key when the utility of an extra "symbol" key became apparent. So the keyboard shortcuts that Windows users think of as Ctrl options, Mac users think of as Cmd options, and always have; why should Apple change this to conform to Microsoft's paradigm?
This has nothing to do with the number of mouse buttons.
Fn: this is to activate options that would be separate keys on a full-size desktop keyboard. Every laptop I've ever owned, PC or Mac, has used something similar.
Ctrl: Same as the Ctrl key on PC keyboards, laptop or desktop.
Option: Macs have always had these; at some point they started including the "Alt" label to indicate the equivalent PC key.
Apple, usually called "Cmd", short for "command", by longtime users (that's what the four-leaf clover is, I don't know why): The most commonly used key on Macs, and again, it has nothing to do with the number of buttons on the mouse; it activates most keyboard shortcuts. Cmd-Q is quit, Cmd-C is copy, etc. The PC world has actually ripped this off twice -- first by mapping the standard Apple Cmd shortcuts to Ctrl, then by adding the Windows key, which apparently is kind of like the Apple key except it does something different in every program.
FWIW, I agree that mapping multi-button mouse options to $KEY + click is a pain in the ass, but the proliferation of keys really is a separate issue.
[shrug] It's a matter of personal opinion, no more and no less. Personally, I find that the more development MS does on the interfaces, the harder they are to use to actually get work done. In any case, that's IMO the least important point here.
This is a philosophy for F/OSS products that I've always thought is a mistake, for three reasons. The first is personal bias: I think Micrsoft UI's are generally lousy, and if a F/OSS project is going to imitate someone else's work, IMO they should pick a better source of inspiration. Microsoft's success has nothing to do with the quality of their UI's, and everything to do with marketing.
Second, the idea that ordinary users can't learn to switch interfaces is absurd. People have gone through DOS, the MacOS, and Windows; through WordStar, WordPerfect, and MS Word; through Mosaic, Netscape, and IE. A product that looks like the MS equivalent but isn't quite the same thing isn't the way to get people to switch.
Which leads me to my third and most important point: if you build a product that looks almost exactly like the MS equivalent, but acts just a little different, people aren't going to say, "This is almost as good, and it's free, so I'll use it." They'll say, "This is a cheap knockoff." You can replicate every widget, every menu item, every weird behavior -- but all you'll do with that is lull people into a false sense of familiarity, so the first time something doesn't behave exactly the way it does in Windows/Word/IE, their reaction will be to assume that the F/OSS app they're using is broken, and that by extension, F/OSS is broken. And where will that send them? Right back to Bill.
Nobody will ever be as good at being Microsoft as Microsoft is. Instead of trying to be almost kinda sorta just as good, we should try to be better -- and "better" implies "different."
Yes. Mozilla as a browser is still much more customizable than Firefox -- or hell, I don't know, maybe it isn't, but its customization works in a way I find instantly understandable, which isn't the case for FF -- and I for one like the interface a lot better. FF, like Safari, looks like it's trying to be IE. People may bitch about how "Mozilla looks like the old Netscape," but you know, it was the old Netscape that popularized the Web. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Slashdot Mirror
But what we have to ask is, why does it sell? Why do people who would be insulted if a salesman selling cars or stereos or any other reasonably complex type of equipment talked down to them ("BIG WHEELEY THING GO FAST!" "SHINY BOX MAKE NOISE!") want to be talked to like three-year-olds when they're buying computers? I agree that sleazy marketing has a lot to do with it -- witness the otherwise inexplicable success of Microsoft -- but at a certain point, people have to take responsibility for what they buy and how they use it.
Short version: I probably ignore the offer, because it's de facto spam, even if I've previously registered on the publisher's site for other purposes.
Longer version: in the unlikely event that I think the offer might be both respectable and useful, I will put a fair amount of effort into verifying it. The fact that the questionnaire link isn't on the publisher's site is a huge red flag for me; at that point I would back out and send them an e-mail, at the very least. And no, I wouldn't trust the reply-to in the e-mail; any reputable organization will have contact information on their main site. Also, even organizations that I'm sure are legitimate don't get too much of my information, as a rule. Whenever I'm registering for anything on the web, I don't mind giving my name, address, and phone #, because those can be harvested from the phone book, for God's sake; anything else (DOB, mother's maiden name, that kind of stuff) I'm twitchy about. Is this enough to protect me from every scam out there? Probably not -- but it's done a good job so far, and saved me from a number of scams that other people I know have fallen for.
And this is off the top of my head. Which is kind of my point. I'm no one's idea of a security geek; my expertise lies in other areas. But I pay attention; I'm aware of the threats to the tools I rely on every day, and without putting an enormous amount of effort into it, I keep my machine and my credit rating safe. I'm not a mechanic either -- but I don't have to be to take simple steps to make sure my car will run.
Suppose you take your car to the mechanic, and he says, "It's broken, and you'll have to pay me a bunch of money to fix it."
You say, "Well, before I pay you all that money, how about you tell me exactly what's wrong?"
And he says, "You wouldn't understand all the technical jargon. Just trust me."
Would you give that mechanic your money?
No, I'm not blaming the "mechanics" (i.e., the people who write warnings and anti-malware) here. I'm blaming the people who, even if they can't actually fix anything more complicated than a flat tire, at least have a pretty decent idea of what the various parts of their car do, and can tell when someone is spouting expensive bullshit at them, but refuse to learn the most basic bits of computer knowledge in order to keep these machines -- which are just as important these days as cars -- up and running. If it weren't for the fact that their stupidity affects everyone else, I'd say fuck 'em, let their POS Windows (pretty much always) boxes be infected by every damn virus and worm in existence, let their bandwidth be sucked up by zombie penis enlargement e-mails, let their credit card and Social Security numbers be taken by every identity thief on the planet. But of course that's not a solution, any more than letting someone drive around with no brakes is okay.
So I don't know what to do about it, but I'm really goddamn tired of whiners who depend on computers to run large chunks of their lives but still think of it, more or less, as that magical glowy box.
All the abstruse stuff that an OS, DBMS, or compiler writer should know about, but that an application programmer does not need.
Well, there are at least two answers to that. The first is general: the idea that "programmers don't need to know all that theory" is, IMNSDGHO, largely responsible for all the crappy bloatware that the computing world has to deal with; if programmers spent more time learning real CS than the latest buzzwords, software would generally be much better than it is.
The second is specific to the topic of discussion: scientific programming, including bioinformatics, is much closer to the theoretical level than is most application programming. Pretty widgets don't matter nearly as much as the fact that you're dealing with complex operations on huge data sets, and if you write your program without any awareness of What's Really Going On, then your program will run like shit.
Yes, exactly. The reason, I think, that there's a perception that biologists make better bioinformatic[ists|icians] (it's a stupid argument; both terms are well understood) than computer scientists is that the learning curve for hacking is shallower than the learning curve for molecular biology. Someone with no training in CS can pick up a "Teach Yourself $LANGUAGE in 24 Hours" book and turn out code that, even if it's poorly written, at least does something useful; someone with no training in biology cannot pick up "Biology for Dummies" and do meanignful biological research.
But the fact is that both fields exist as serious areas of academic study in their own right for a reason; a bioinformatic___ who doesn't put several years of serious effort into understanding both will do mediocre work at best. Also, I would argue, an equal amount of effort should be put into the chemistry and math which underlie biology and CS, respectively. I've done pretty much all of the above, and I'm still well aware of how much I have to learn. Anyone in any interdisciplinary field who dismisses the knowledge of those in related fields is making a huge mistake.
Been paying attention to the FCC lately? If you're not, you should.
There's just as much PC on the Right as on the Left, it's just that you're supposed to say (or not say) different things. Nobody in the mainstream media dares to say anything bad about the recently departed Pope, f'rinstance. (This is part of a general, long-running, PC-of-the-Right reverence for religion.) Extremists on both sides will always try to muzzle those with whom they disagree. You can keep believing otherwise if you like, of course ... right up until they take you to the camps.
In other words, you're a coward. Because if you really believed the "global cooling/global warming fad" meme, and had any courage in your convictions, you'd take the bet.
Don't tar us all with the same brush... I watch the news reports from the US and have a good laugh just like you do.
Oh, I'm not trying to, which is why I said "religious fanatics," not "religious believers." Most of the faithful I know are perfectly sane people; but as SmallOak pointed out, here in the US, it's the far-right fanatics who shout the loudest, and they've been frighteningly successful in co-opting "faith" as a code word for their brand of extremism. Given that we are and will almost certainly remain a majority Christian country, the only way to turn this around, IMO, is for believers who object to their belief being used solely to advance an extreme agenda to stand up and say, "Not in our name." I see some signs of this happening, but not nearly fast enough.
Bingo. It amazes me how religious fanatics and Luddites (the former generally on the Right, the latter generally on the Left, but they're essentially the same species) will happily accept science and technology up to a point -- usually, roughly speaking, the point it had reached at the time their parents were born -- but decry anything else as evil and dangerous and against the will of the Lord. They're hypocrites, cowards, and fools. I used to argue with them; now I just don't bother.
Not only do different people have different measures of success, some types of success are easier to measure than others. Success in software is relatively easy to measure: if the software has the features the customer expects, and it's usable and stable, then it's done. Success in "business" (i.e., what the executives do) is much harder to measure and subject to endless spin. I'd love to see a study of how often management fails to deliver up to expectations on time, but of course the people who pay for the studies are the same people who would have to be evaluated by some kind of objective standard ... and you can bet they're not going to want that.
Why is it offensive for a man to make a sexist remark, when women get applauded for calling men dogs?
Women are whores, plain and simple.
So you say all women are whores, and then you're surprised when you get called a dog. (Or whatever.)
Here's a radical idea: how about both sexes lay off the name-calling. You can call this PC if you like; I see it as a matter of simple politeness.
We can't forget about PostgreSQL, because any mention of MySQL on /. inevitably brings forth a flood of "MySQL 5vX0rZ PostgreSQL r0X0Rz" trolls. Not saying you're one of those trolls, you understand, but I honestly don't think there's any lack of awareness of PostgreSQL in the F/OSS DB world, at all.
As someone who has been developing enterprise apps with MySQL for a while now, I'll answer this, even though I'm 99.44% sure you're trolling: what we've always done, so far, is put all the triggers in the application layer. Now we can make "real" triggers in the DB layer, but guess what? The logic is exactly the same.
Given the widespread use of MySQL to run some very complex systems, I rather suspect that you, like most anti-MySQL trolls, have no idea of what the "typically skilled MySQL user" actually does. Yes, there are lots of people who pick it up because it's free, easy to use, and widely known who have no business doing any kind of DB work. There are also those of us -- a lot more than you think -- who make our living at it and know exactly what we're doing.
It seems to me that PostgreSQL and MySQL have been following different paths converging on the same goal (a powerful, usable, stable DBMS): the PostgreSQL philosophy is to throw in everything and the kitchen sink and then make it work right, whereas the MySQL approach is to add things one at a time, making sure that everything works right from the beginning. It's possible that the endless sniping has caused the MySQL team to abandon its careful development process, but I don't see any evidence of that so far.
I've used MySQL and PostgreSQL both extensively over the years, as well as working with commercial DBMSs including Oracle and SQL Server. MySQL's lack of features has certainly been a frustration, but I keep coming back to it because what it does, it does very very well. If the MySQL team has managed to produce a "real" DBMS that works as well as previous versions, then it will be damn near perfect.
Bingo. It really amazes me that anyone doesn't understand how sleazy Microsoft was being with the "Reduced Media" name, and how necessary it was for the EU to make them change it. Personally, after this episode, I think the EU should have made them change the name to "Windows XP Legal Edition," and the original(Media Player) version to "Windows XP Convicted Monopolist Edition," and slapped them with a few billion extra in fines for being such buttheads. But maybe that's just me being vindictive.
Yes, but if you don't replace your toaster, it's not like there are new kinds of bread out there that will deliberately infect your old toaster with mold and make anything that comes out of it unfit to eat.
Wrong. 12:00 AM is midnight, 12:00 PM is noon. You may not think this is logical, but it's the way it is.
In astronomical terms, Mount Everest isn't that big.
Neither is the entire Earth.
Well, I'll be damned. Okay, you're more longtime than me. ;) It does seem like most of the experienced Mac people I know call it "Cmd", and n00bs call it "Apple" because that's the only symbol on it they can immediately identify.
As I mentioned in another post, Microsoft ripped off Apple (again) by mapping all the standard Mac Cmd keyboard shortcuts to Ctrl, back before the Windows key existed, and then by pushing the Windows key when the utility of an extra "symbol" key became apparent. So the keyboard shortcuts that Windows users think of as Ctrl options, Mac users think of as Cmd options, and always have; why should Apple change this to conform to Microsoft's paradigm?
This has nothing to do with the number of mouse buttons.
Fn: this is to activate options that would be separate keys on a full-size desktop keyboard. Every laptop I've ever owned, PC or Mac, has used something similar.
Ctrl: Same as the Ctrl key on PC keyboards, laptop or desktop.
Option: Macs have always had these; at some point they started including the "Alt" label to indicate the equivalent PC key.
Apple, usually called "Cmd", short for "command", by longtime users (that's what the four-leaf clover is, I don't know why): The most commonly used key on Macs, and again, it has nothing to do with the number of buttons on the mouse; it activates most keyboard shortcuts. Cmd-Q is quit, Cmd-C is copy, etc. The PC world has actually ripped this off twice -- first by mapping the standard Apple Cmd shortcuts to Ctrl, then by adding the Windows key, which apparently is kind of like the Apple key except it does something different in every program.
FWIW, I agree that mapping multi-button mouse options to $KEY + click is a pain in the ass, but the proliferation of keys really is a separate issue.
[shrug] It's a matter of personal opinion, no more and no less. Personally, I find that the more development MS does on the interfaces, the harder they are to use to actually get work done. In any case, that's IMO the least important point here.
This is a philosophy for F/OSS products that I've always thought is a mistake, for three reasons. The first is personal bias: I think Micrsoft UI's are generally lousy, and if a F/OSS project is going to imitate someone else's work, IMO they should pick a better source of inspiration. Microsoft's success has nothing to do with the quality of their UI's, and everything to do with marketing.
Second, the idea that ordinary users can't learn to switch interfaces is absurd. People have gone through DOS, the MacOS, and Windows; through WordStar, WordPerfect, and MS Word; through Mosaic, Netscape, and IE. A product that looks like the MS equivalent but isn't quite the same thing isn't the way to get people to switch.
Which leads me to my third and most important point: if you build a product that looks almost exactly like the MS equivalent, but acts just a little different, people aren't going to say, "This is almost as good, and it's free, so I'll use it." They'll say, "This is a cheap knockoff." You can replicate every widget, every menu item, every weird behavior -- but all you'll do with that is lull people into a false sense of familiarity, so the first time something doesn't behave exactly the way it does in Windows/Word/IE, their reaction will be to assume that the F/OSS app they're using is broken, and that by extension, F/OSS is broken. And where will that send them? Right back to Bill.
Nobody will ever be as good at being Microsoft as Microsoft is. Instead of trying to be almost kinda sorta just as good, we should try to be better -- and "better" implies "different."
Yes. Mozilla as a browser is still much more customizable than Firefox -- or hell, I don't know, maybe it isn't, but its customization works in a way I find instantly understandable, which isn't the case for FF -- and I for one like the interface a lot better. FF, like Safari, looks like it's trying to be IE. People may bitch about how "Mozilla looks like the old Netscape," but you know, it was the old Netscape that popularized the Web. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.