That was exactly my first thought. I have the N700 (?), their first gen model. It's a completely open platform. Nokia encourages its user base to hack around with the device. In fact, they're hoping that a community builds up around it and achieves critical mass to allow the device to enter the mainstream. Given the choice, I'd use the Nokia tablet for any kind of general purpose "central command" device. Obviously if you already own a smartphone and rather than have 2 devices would prefer to use that, then I can see why you'd go that route. No reason you can't whip up something in.NET and put it on a WinMo smartphone if you already have one.
He's referring to 2 factor authentication. You not only need knowledge in the head (password to login via SSH), but also a physical device (RFID tag). Of course it's more secure than single factor authentication. Even if someone knows your password, they still need the RFID which adds another step to the process. People have discussed ways to trivially spoof the tag, but nevertheless the more steps involved the less likely a criminal is to succeed.
You already have a secure path to issue the unlock command, the RFID tag doesn't add anything.
There can be problems with upsizing tables. I'm sure you didn't mean to insinuate that it's always straightforward, so I'd like to be clear to the less experienced people. Upsizing a table can be trivial in some environments. However, in a large production environment using legacy Access MDBs, this can wreak havoc. For example, the table in Access may not have a key on it. In order to be able to run UPDATE queries in Access to a linked table from SQL Server 2000, the table has to have a key. As you can guess, adding a key to a table that previously had none could break any INSERT INTO queries that aren't grouping by the fields used in the key. So now you have to go search for queries that insert records into that table. In a large environment, good luck with that.
Another problem with upsizing tables in a complex environment full of interlinking Access databases: A given table in Access might be linked to from other Access databases. If you upsize the table and create a link to the SQL Server table, the other Access databases' links will break. They will not follow the link to SQL Server. So now you have to find all the Access databases in production that link to that upsized table and directly link to SQL Server in each of those Access databases.
I could go on...
As for your other statement: you CAN in fact call module defined functions from within a query in Access. This is a great feature to have in limited situations. It's no different from how SQL Server lets you use user defined Functions from within Stored Procedures. So now you have yet another migration related headache.
Re:It would make MySQL easier to deploy...
on
Sun Buys MySQL
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· Score: 1
You're making a common mistake in assuming that every operation in a bank is mission critical. How about a one-off database used to help plan a year-end party? Not mission critical. How about a database used to keep track of who has checked out technical books from IT's library? Not mission critical.
An analogy could be that just because someone works at a prestigious company doesn't mean his job is also prestigious. I could say I work for Microsoft, but I could be a janitor and not a software architect.
Thanks to everyone for replying to my use of the Mercedes/Honda analogy. You're all correct in what you say. Keep in mind that I used this analogy when I was much younger and it worked in those circumstances. I was in fact selling a superior, high quality product and it cost more than some people expected. My point was that when looking at the price they had to keep in mind that they were in fact getting more than the cheaper junk they were used to.
The analogy was never meant to be all that accurate. For example, the statement about paying more for brand identity is correct. In my generic example I'm referring to a product that IS superior and costs more. That doesn't mean it's just "more expensive", it's a different product so of course it costs a different price. You can't compare a superior product's price to that of its inferior clones. They are different. To a degree it's an apples/oranges comparison.
The same goes for the non-utilitarian based preferences of wanting a certain color car. In that case that involves an irrational consumer preference that doesn't apply to what I'm talking about.
One of the most irritating pet peeves of mine from the days of working retail is what you stated. There's nothing more annoying than a customer complaining to you that something is "too expensive" because it costs more. What I would do to help them understand is to tell them "A Mercedes costs more than a Honda, but people still buy them. You pay more and you get more. The same applies to this product."
I think you're wrong about this. A number of years ago Kentucky began enforcing a trademark on its name. As a result, we now have "KFC". Same goes for Kentucky Blue Grass. Sellers have begun changing it's name to something that slips my mind at the moment. Even the Kentucky Derby fell prey to this trademark enforcement.
From Snopes:
It sounded good, but the real reason behind the shift to KFC had nothing to do with healthy food or finicky consumers: it was about money -- money that Kentucky Fried Chicken would have had to pay to continue using their original name. In 1990, the Commonwealth of Kentucky, mired in debt, took the unusual step of trademarking their name. Henceforth, anyone using the word "Kentucky" for business reasons -- inside or outside of the state -- would have to obtain permission and pay licensing fees to the Commonwealth of Kentucky. It was an unusual and brilliant scheme to alleviate government debt, but it was also one that alienated one of the most famous companies ever associated with Kentucky. The venerable Kentucky Fried Chicken chain, a mainstay of American culture since its first franchise opened in Salt Lake City in 1952, refused as a matter of principle to pay royalties on a name they had been using for four decades. After a year of fruitless negotiations with the Kentucky state government, Kentucky Fried Chicken -- unwilling to submit to "such a terrible injustice" -- threw in the towel and changed their name instead, timing the announcement to coincide with the introduction of new packaging and products to obscure the real reasons behind the altering of their corporate name.
Kentucky Fried Chicken were not the only ones who bravely refused to knuckle under. The name of the most famous horse race in North America, held every year at Churchill Downs, was changed from the "Kentucky Derby" to "The Run for the Roses" for similar reasons; many seed and nursery outfits that had previously offered Kentucky Bluegrass switched to a product known as "Shenendoah Bluegrass" instead; and Neil Diamond's song "Kentucky Woman" was dropped from radio playlists at his request, as the licensing fees he was obligated to pay the Commonwealth of Kentucky exceeded the peformance royalties he was receiving for the airplay.
http://www.snopes.com/lost/kfc.htm
I'm not sure how much you know about sex offender registries. The first time I heard about a publicly available list I thought it would make sense. You could look at a map and see where they lived. However, since that early, naive time I've learned a lot. The biggest problem with these lists is that they're poorly maintained by the government (surprise!). So here's yet another example of how these things go wrong, as they invariable do:
http://www.theagitator.com/2007/12/10/hey-not-our-fault/
Hey, Not Our Fault
Monday, December 10th, 2007
Nevada's Public Safety Commission has set up a website that includes searchable maps of where the state's sex offenders live. The city of Las Vegas then decided to set up its own site, with a grant from the U.S. Department of Justice.
The problem is that both websites populate their databases with information from sex offenders themselves, people who, as you might imagine, aren't terribly vigilant about keeping their addresses up to date with state authorities. This has led to neighbors harassing non-sex offenders who happened to have moved into residences formerly occupied by sex offenders.
The city says it isn't to blame because . . . it includes a disclaimer on the website stating it shouldn't be used to harass or intimidate sex offenders. Pitchfork-toting crowds, city police say, should be aware of the fact that sex offenders supply the state with it's information, and that they 100 percent accurate. Sounds . . . dubious.
When 71-year-old Harry Berlin, a non-sex offender who's been mistakenly harassed and threatened by neighbors, asked city officials to correct their records, they told him he had to ask the people who run the state database. When he went to the state, they told him to go back to the city. So now he's suing. In the meantime, his neighbors will continue to periodically gather outside his door to taunt him.
Maybe Berlin should consider himself lucky. Matt Welch notes that a guy in California was stabbed to death last month after a neighbor found his name on a sex offender list. There were two similar vigilante murders in Maine earlier this year, and two more in Washington State last year. Both pairs of murders involved online sex offender lists. I can't seem to find a link to an online version, but CNN did a special about a year ago on a mentally retarded kid in his late teens who had the mental capacity of a 10-year-old. He was convicted of a sex crime after exposing himself to a minor in a "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" kind of way. After moving, his new neighbors found his name on a sex offender list, and began posting signs around the neighborhood warning about the "rapist" who lived at his address. The kid ended up killing himself.
mirroring != backup
Mirroring protects against hardware failure. If HDD1 dies, then HDD2 still contains an exact copy of the data. However, if data on HDD1 becomes corrupt, virus infected, or is deleted, then that is replicated onto HDD2. This is not a backup solution, it's a redundancy to protect against hardware failure.
RAID 5 contains both parity and striping. This better solves the poster's needs. He needs performance which striping will provide and he needs a backup which parity will provide. The use of parity will make sure his data is stored reliably.
For an actual backup, he also needs to utilize snapshot backups. That is, he needs to keep copies of the files over a period of time. What if he deletes the wrong file and his backup solution subsequently deletes said file from the archive?
I highly suggest you go read Radley Balko's blog http://theagitator.com/. He writes about police state excesses like the one below. It's really a sad story that a man was killed because a SWAT team was used for a simple arrest.
January 26, 2006 Salvatore Culosi, Jr., Dead by Government
The Washington Post offers more details on this week's police shooting death of a Fairfax County, Virginia man:
Fairfax County's police chief said yesterday that one of his officers accidentally shot and killed an optometrist outside the unarmed man's townhouse Tuesday night as an undercover detective was about to arrest him on suspicion of gambling on sports.
Police had been secretly making bets with Salvatore J. Culosi Jr., 37, since October as part of a gambling investigation, according to court records. They planned to search his home in the Fair Oaks area, just off Lee Highway, shortly after 9:30 p.m.
Culosi came out of his townhouse on Cavalier Landing Court about 9:35 p.m. and was standing next to the detective's sport-utility vehicle, police said, when the detective gave a signal to tactical officers assembled nearby to move in and arrest Culosi.
"As they approached him . . . one officer's weapon, a handgun, was unintentionally discharged," said Fairfax Police Chief David M. Rohrer.
[...]
Perez said Culosi had not displayed a weapon or shown any violent tendencies while he was being investigated by Baucom. But Perez said police had to be prepared for any possibility, because "the unexpected can occur."
"Tactical officers" is a eumpemism for SWAT team. So yes, the Fairfax County police department dispatched the SWAT team to arrest an optometrist suspected of gambling. They had their guns drawn. The descended upon him. And one of them killed him.
Fairfax police can talk all they want about a "thorough investigation." But whether the officer has his finger on or near the trigger, whether he tripped or was bumped, or whether or not his gun was faulty -- frankly, none of that means a damn thing. A 37-year-old man is dead because the Fairfax County police department, like police departments all over the country, is sending SWAT teams to serve gambling warrants. And nonviolent drug warrants. And a host of other warrants.
Lt. Perez is wrong. SWAT teams don't diminish the risk of violence. They escalate it. In rare situations -- hostage crises, barricades, or violent crimes-in-process, for example -- escalation is necessary to stave off immediate harm. In inherently nonviolent, routine police work -- like serving warrants on optometrists -- they're needlessly provocative and dangerous. A growing pile of bodies testifies to that.
And until spineless lawmakers put an end to this idiocy (and yes, risk being called "soft on crime" as a result), the pile is only going to get larger.
Posted by Radley Balko on January 26, 2006
Part of Flickr's success can be directly attributed to their opening up of their API. After doing so, numerous third party apps and websites were able to integrate Flickr's services with their own. If this were to ever become a growing trend (see Facebook) we'll start seeing more hybridization of web services with client software.
There's no reason you can't let 3rd parties create their own front ends to your service. You might have to deal with consumer confusion between who's product they're actually using. For example, someone might not even be aware of the company whose API is being used. They only see the front end and assume that that IS the product. But these problems can be minimized with well drafted contracts on what and how developers use your API.
I just posted the top 10 User Interface Design Principles that I use in all my usability assessments. Based on those 10 topics alone, you can use them them to judge any device/software/website/etc.
When applied to Photoshop, you'd have plenty to write about. I'm currently evaluating Flickr's usability, but that's far from over. Evaluating Photoshop's UI would take much longer due to it's complex design elements. The task analysis can include hundreds of standard photo retouching processes.
Know your user
Let the user control the interaction
Capitalize on what the user already knows
Maintain consistency at the interface
Provide effective feedback
Expose the interaction to the user
Minimize reliance on user memory
Minimize the impact of user error
Aesthetic matters
Always test your interface with users
http://www.jozefnagy.com/?q=node/47
I read that book years ago and to this day I'm applying the timeless lessons I learned. It's a great book for understanding how to work with other people to get what you need.
Re:Pop music's quality doesn't match it's price
on
Piracy Economics
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· Score: 1
Gordo3000, you misunderstood what I meant by "quality". You're absolutely right that since the 90's there have been freely available pirated versions of music at the same audio quality as the originals.
What I was talking about is the quality of the music itself, not it's bitrate, etc. Listen to much of what plays on Top 40s stations today and you'll know what I mean. I don't mind listening to some catchy pop song for a little while, but it's shallow. It has little lasting value to me when compared to other types of music. Therefore, I won't pay $18 for the album when there are only a few good songs, and even those have little replay value.
For example, I've been listening to my Andrea Bocelli (sic?) collection for years. However, the latest Carrie Underwood song will only be in my rotation for a little while and then I'll relegate it to the bottom of the pile.
Pop music's quality doesn't match it's price
on
Piracy Economics
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· Score: 5, Insightful
I've been a member of the Mises Institute for years. It's good to see Slashdot picking up on their articles.
The author's assertion was that the innovator produces the initial, high quality product. Then the pirates produce low quality knock-offs to fulfill a market segment the initial innovator isn't fulfilling. In the case of the record industry, I'm afraid they're well past the point of innovation and the production of high quality products (at least as far as pop music is concerned). In that case they're selling a low end version of their music, but still deluding themselves into thinking it's a quality product.
Either the quality has to go up or the price has to come down.
The point about people wanting to integrate w/ Windows has some merit. He was talking about Open Source software wanting to get onto the Windows platform. If they want it to run on the largest possible user base then yes, those developers need to have a Windows version. I love Konqueror and I use it at home, but I can't get it on Windows at work. That greatly limits the number of systems I can run it on.
I don't think that precludes developers from developing on Linux, it just means that some of them want to integrate with Windows. This is partly because Microsoft develops closed platforms that make it difficult. MS won't integrate with Linux, so Linux has to integrate with MS (for those that want it).
As for calling PHP and Perl the "Visual Basic" of Linux, I think there's some merit. I write mainly in.NET for work, but do some Perl and PHP for myself. It's true that the P* languages can scale and are usable at the enterprise level, but there's no way you can compare an interpreted scripting language like Perl to.NET..NET is a mature architecture I can develop against using different languages whereas Perl is a flexible language w/o being part of a whole architecture. Granted, Perl integrates well with Linux and is strongly suited to that task, but it is not part of an ecosystem the way you'd combine the.NET libraries w/ C# w/ the Windows OS. As a developer, I'd like to have the entire ecosystem integrated so there's more standardization and control.
Like a lot of people, I love to work in Visual Studio and develop in C# using.NET, but I wish I could do it on the Linux OS. Figure that one out and you can be rich.
I second that. All of my friends and I have at one time or another had accounts on SL. I even have a yearlong paid account that I haven't touched. There's a lot of potential to it. I don't agree with you that it's hype like most social-websites nowadays where people join to be part of the crowd. There's a lot of potential real value in the SL world, it's just having implementation troubles. Lag is the only reason I don't log on anymore. Oh, and a quality Linux client would help too.
I abandoned cell phones a few years back and have been using smartphones ever since. Despite obvious formatting issues, regular websites on a Windows Mobile or Palm OS device are a much better alternative.
I used to try getting directions, phone numbers, weather, etc. on my cell phone using whatever WAP sites I could find. Over 90% of them were junk, unnavigable, or unworkable. Google lets you send an SMS to them to get information and that helped, but it still wasn't enough.
It's 2007 and major commercial websites oftentimes STILL don't have a WAP version of their site. I guess since they can't stick enough banner ads on a WAP page they don't want to make it available... At least there are enough smartphone/PDA alternatives out there, but good luck to all you cell phone users.
A lot of the arguments about what should be on the list could have been avoided if PC World had better defined the criteria for the list. The criteria appear to be consumer, end user technologies that did well commercially regardless of their innovative nature.
It seems true what Dvorak always says on TWIT; that it's just a group of editors sitting around at lunch compiling a list.
What really gets me is that the ire was caused by a single company switching to another vendor's Linux. It was most likely determined more by vendor support and contractual issues than anything technical. Of all the arguments to take on, the critics sure picked a weak one.
No single OS is the best choice for every situation. Find the situations where Linux is the best option and push for it's implementation. Don't become blind to the alternatives, commercial or free.
Slashdot Mirror
That was exactly my first thought. I have the N700 (?), their first gen model. It's a completely open platform. Nokia encourages its user base to hack around with the device. In fact, they're hoping that a community builds up around it and achieves critical mass to allow the device to enter the mainstream. Given the choice, I'd use the Nokia tablet for any kind of general purpose "central command" device. Obviously if you already own a smartphone and rather than have 2 devices would prefer to use that, then I can see why you'd go that route. No reason you can't whip up something in .NET and put it on a WinMo smartphone if you already have one.
See above.
There can be problems with upsizing tables. I'm sure you didn't mean to insinuate that it's always straightforward, so I'd like to be clear to the less experienced people. Upsizing a table can be trivial in some environments. However, in a large production environment using legacy Access MDBs, this can wreak havoc. For example, the table in Access may not have a key on it. In order to be able to run UPDATE queries in Access to a linked table from SQL Server 2000, the table has to have a key. As you can guess, adding a key to a table that previously had none could break any INSERT INTO queries that aren't grouping by the fields used in the key. So now you have to go search for queries that insert records into that table. In a large environment, good luck with that.
Another problem with upsizing tables in a complex environment full of interlinking Access databases: A given table in Access might be linked to from other Access databases. If you upsize the table and create a link to the SQL Server table, the other Access databases' links will break. They will not follow the link to SQL Server. So now you have to find all the Access databases in production that link to that upsized table and directly link to SQL Server in each of those Access databases.
I could go on...
As for your other statement: you CAN in fact call module defined functions from within a query in Access. This is a great feature to have in limited situations. It's no different from how SQL Server lets you use user defined Functions from within Stored Procedures. So now you have yet another migration related headache.
You're making a common mistake in assuming that every operation in a bank is mission critical. How about a one-off database used to help plan a year-end party? Not mission critical. How about a database used to keep track of who has checked out technical books from IT's library? Not mission critical.
An analogy could be that just because someone works at a prestigious company doesn't mean his job is also prestigious. I could say I work for Microsoft, but I could be a janitor and not a software architect.
Thanks to everyone for replying to my use of the Mercedes/Honda analogy. You're all correct in what you say. Keep in mind that I used this analogy when I was much younger and it worked in those circumstances. I was in fact selling a superior, high quality product and it cost more than some people expected. My point was that when looking at the price they had to keep in mind that they were in fact getting more than the cheaper junk they were used to.
The analogy was never meant to be all that accurate. For example, the statement about paying more for brand identity is correct. In my generic example I'm referring to a product that IS superior and costs more. That doesn't mean it's just "more expensive", it's a different product so of course it costs a different price. You can't compare a superior product's price to that of its inferior clones. They are different. To a degree it's an apples/oranges comparison.
The same goes for the non-utilitarian based preferences of wanting a certain color car. In that case that involves an irrational consumer preference that doesn't apply to what I'm talking about.
One of the most irritating pet peeves of mine from the days of working retail is what you stated. There's nothing more annoying than a customer complaining to you that something is "too expensive" because it costs more. What I would do to help them understand is to tell them "A Mercedes costs more than a Honda, but people still buy them. You pay more and you get more. The same applies to this product."
I think you're wrong about this. A number of years ago Kentucky began enforcing a trademark on its name. As a result, we now have "KFC". Same goes for Kentucky Blue Grass. Sellers have begun changing it's name to something that slips my mind at the moment. Even the Kentucky Derby fell prey to this trademark enforcement.
From Snopes:
It sounded good, but the real reason behind the shift to KFC had nothing to do with healthy food or finicky consumers: it was about money -- money that Kentucky Fried Chicken would have had to pay to continue using their original name. In 1990, the Commonwealth of Kentucky, mired in debt, took the unusual step of trademarking their name. Henceforth, anyone using the word "Kentucky" for business reasons -- inside or outside of the state -- would have to obtain permission and pay licensing fees to the Commonwealth of Kentucky. It was an unusual and brilliant scheme to alleviate government debt, but it was also one that alienated one of the most famous companies ever associated with Kentucky. The venerable Kentucky Fried Chicken chain, a mainstay of American culture since its first franchise opened in Salt Lake City in 1952, refused as a matter of principle to pay royalties on a name they had been using for four decades. After a year of fruitless negotiations with the Kentucky state government, Kentucky Fried Chicken -- unwilling to submit to "such a terrible injustice" -- threw in the towel and changed their name instead, timing the announcement to coincide with the introduction of new packaging and products to obscure the real reasons behind the altering of their corporate name.
Kentucky Fried Chicken were not the only ones who bravely refused to knuckle under. The name of the most famous horse race in North America, held every year at Churchill Downs, was changed from the "Kentucky Derby" to "The Run for the Roses" for similar reasons; many seed and nursery outfits that had previously offered Kentucky Bluegrass switched to a product known as "Shenendoah Bluegrass" instead; and Neil Diamond's song "Kentucky Woman" was dropped from radio playlists at his request, as the licensing fees he was obligated to pay the Commonwealth of Kentucky exceeded the peformance royalties he was receiving for the airplay. http://www.snopes.com/lost/kfc.htm
I'm not sure how much you know about sex offender registries. The first time I heard about a publicly available list I thought it would make sense. You could look at a map and see where they lived. However, since that early, naive time I've learned a lot. The biggest problem with these lists is that they're poorly maintained by the government (surprise!). So here's yet another example of how these things go wrong, as they invariable do:
http://www.theagitator.com/2007/12/10/hey-not-our-fault/
Hey, Not Our Fault Monday, December 10th, 2007
Nevada's Public Safety Commission has set up a website that includes searchable maps of where the state's sex offenders live. The city of Las Vegas then decided to set up its own site, with a grant from the U.S. Department of Justice.
The problem is that both websites populate their databases with information from sex offenders themselves, people who, as you might imagine, aren't terribly vigilant about keeping their addresses up to date with state authorities. This has led to neighbors harassing non-sex offenders who happened to have moved into residences formerly occupied by sex offenders.
The city says it isn't to blame because . . . it includes a disclaimer on the website stating it shouldn't be used to harass or intimidate sex offenders. Pitchfork-toting crowds, city police say, should be aware of the fact that sex offenders supply the state with it's information, and that they 100 percent accurate. Sounds . . . dubious.
When 71-year-old Harry Berlin, a non-sex offender who's been mistakenly harassed and threatened by neighbors, asked city officials to correct their records, they told him he had to ask the people who run the state database. When he went to the state, they told him to go back to the city. So now he's suing. In the meantime, his neighbors will continue to periodically gather outside his door to taunt him.
Maybe Berlin should consider himself lucky. Matt Welch notes that a guy in California was stabbed to death last month after a neighbor found his name on a sex offender list. There were two similar vigilante murders in Maine earlier this year, and two more in Washington State last year. Both pairs of murders involved online sex offender lists. I can't seem to find a link to an online version, but CNN did a special about a year ago on a mentally retarded kid in his late teens who had the mental capacity of a 10-year-old. He was convicted of a sex crime after exposing himself to a minor in a "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" kind of way. After moving, his new neighbors found his name on a sex offender list, and began posting signs around the neighborhood warning about the "rapist" who lived at his address. The kid ended up killing himself.
This kind of thing was pretty predictable.
mirroring != backup Mirroring protects against hardware failure. If HDD1 dies, then HDD2 still contains an exact copy of the data. However, if data on HDD1 becomes corrupt, virus infected, or is deleted, then that is replicated onto HDD2. This is not a backup solution, it's a redundancy to protect against hardware failure.
RAID 5 contains both parity and striping. This better solves the poster's needs. He needs performance which striping will provide and he needs a backup which parity will provide. The use of parity will make sure his data is stored reliably.
For an actual backup, he also needs to utilize snapshot backups. That is, he needs to keep copies of the files over a period of time. What if he deletes the wrong file and his backup solution subsequently deletes said file from the archive?
I agree. I didn't realize until after I hit Submit that I worded it incorrectly. I was going to post a different story, but stuck with the one seen.
Part of Flickr's success can be directly attributed to their opening up of their API. After doing so, numerous third party apps and websites were able to integrate Flickr's services with their own. If this were to ever become a growing trend (see Facebook) we'll start seeing more hybridization of web services with client software.
There's no reason you can't let 3rd parties create their own front ends to your service. You might have to deal with consumer confusion between who's product they're actually using. For example, someone might not even be aware of the company whose API is being used. They only see the front end and assume that that IS the product. But these problems can be minimized with well drafted contracts on what and how developers use your API.
I just posted the top 10 User Interface Design Principles that I use in all my usability assessments. Based on those 10 topics alone, you can use them them to judge any device/software/website/etc. When applied to Photoshop, you'd have plenty to write about. I'm currently evaluating Flickr's usability, but that's far from over. Evaluating Photoshop's UI would take much longer due to it's complex design elements. The task analysis can include hundreds of standard photo retouching processes.
Know your user
Let the user control the interaction
Capitalize on what the user already knows
Maintain consistency at the interface
Provide effective feedback
Expose the interaction to the user
Minimize reliance on user memory
Minimize the impact of user error
Aesthetic matters
Always test your interface with users
http://www.jozefnagy.com/?q=node/47
I read that book years ago and to this day I'm applying the timeless lessons I learned. It's a great book for understanding how to work with other people to get what you need.
Gordo3000, you misunderstood what I meant by "quality". You're absolutely right that since the 90's there have been freely available pirated versions of music at the same audio quality as the originals.
What I was talking about is the quality of the music itself, not it's bitrate, etc. Listen to much of what plays on Top 40s stations today and you'll know what I mean. I don't mind listening to some catchy pop song for a little while, but it's shallow. It has little lasting value to me when compared to other types of music. Therefore, I won't pay $18 for the album when there are only a few good songs, and even those have little replay value.
For example, I've been listening to my Andrea Bocelli (sic?) collection for years. However, the latest Carrie Underwood song will only be in my rotation for a little while and then I'll relegate it to the bottom of the pile.
I've been a member of the Mises Institute for years. It's good to see Slashdot picking up on their articles.
The author's assertion was that the innovator produces the initial, high quality product. Then the pirates produce low quality knock-offs to fulfill a market segment the initial innovator isn't fulfilling. In the case of the record industry, I'm afraid they're well past the point of innovation and the production of high quality products (at least as far as pop music is concerned). In that case they're selling a low end version of their music, but still deluding themselves into thinking it's a quality product.
Either the quality has to go up or the price has to come down.
The point about people wanting to integrate w/ Windows has some merit. He was talking about Open Source software wanting to get onto the Windows platform. If they want it to run on the largest possible user base then yes, those developers need to have a Windows version. I love Konqueror and I use it at home, but I can't get it on Windows at work. That greatly limits the number of systems I can run it on.
.NET for work, but do some Perl and PHP for myself. It's true that the P* languages can scale and are usable at the enterprise level, but there's no way you can compare an interpreted scripting language like Perl to .NET. .NET is a mature architecture I can develop against using different languages whereas Perl is a flexible language w/o being part of a whole architecture. Granted, Perl integrates well with Linux and is strongly suited to that task, but it is not part of an ecosystem the way you'd combine the .NET libraries w/ C# w/ the Windows OS. As a developer, I'd like to have the entire ecosystem integrated so there's more standardization and control.
.NET, but I wish I could do it on the Linux OS. Figure that one out and you can be rich.
I don't think that precludes developers from developing on Linux, it just means that some of them want to integrate with Windows. This is partly because Microsoft develops closed platforms that make it difficult. MS won't integrate with Linux, so Linux has to integrate with MS (for those that want it).
As for calling PHP and Perl the "Visual Basic" of Linux, I think there's some merit. I write mainly in
Like a lot of people, I love to work in Visual Studio and develop in C# using
I second that. All of my friends and I have at one time or another had accounts on SL. I even have a yearlong paid account that I haven't touched. There's a lot of potential to it. I don't agree with you that it's hype like most social-websites nowadays where people join to be part of the crowd. There's a lot of potential real value in the SL world, it's just having implementation troubles. Lag is the only reason I don't log on anymore. Oh, and a quality Linux client would help too.
I abandoned cell phones a few years back and have been using smartphones ever since. Despite obvious formatting issues, regular websites on a Windows Mobile or Palm OS device are a much better alternative. I used to try getting directions, phone numbers, weather, etc. on my cell phone using whatever WAP sites I could find. Over 90% of them were junk, unnavigable, or unworkable. Google lets you send an SMS to them to get information and that helped, but it still wasn't enough. It's 2007 and major commercial websites oftentimes STILL don't have a WAP version of their site. I guess since they can't stick enough banner ads on a WAP page they don't want to make it available... At least there are enough smartphone/PDA alternatives out there, but good luck to all you cell phone users.
A lot of the arguments about what should be on the list could have been avoided if PC World had better defined the criteria for the list. The criteria appear to be consumer, end user technologies that did well commercially regardless of their innovative nature. It seems true what Dvorak always says on TWIT; that it's just a group of editors sitting around at lunch compiling a list.
What really gets me is that the ire was caused by a single company switching to another vendor's Linux. It was most likely determined more by vendor support and contractual issues than anything technical. Of all the arguments to take on, the critics sure picked a weak one.
No single OS is the best choice for every situation. Find the situations where Linux is the best option and push for it's implementation. Don't become blind to the alternatives, commercial or free.