The simple answer to all this is - look at Reddit or any normal discussion forum that functions well without real names. There are many of them.
Reddit &/. have proven methods of self-regulating with mods, and normal discussion forums are often collections of people with the same interest, so why would they misbehave? They're environments where your online identity is centred around *reputation within the space*, which makes your real identity irrelevant. In fact Reddit is divided into areas of interest (subreddits) where people also tend to want to maintain their status and the general quality of the group.
So the problem with social media is not a problem of identification *of the individual*, it a problem of identification *with the medium*. Reddit and other forums have a high level of investment and identification with the group. If you're on Twitter or FB commenting on other people's pages and stuff, which have little blowback to your own online persona - you don't lose anything in the online space - then there is obviously little incentive to behave.
TL;DR: Everyone cares about the reputation of their online profile, pseudonym or not. Twitter & FB don't have reputation systems, so bad behaviour has no consequence. On forums with a reputation system (ie. most of them), behaviour is generally not a problem. A rep system is a carrot - forcing real names is a stick.
Re:Windows 8 seems like a solid product
on
Windows 8 Is Ready
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· Score: 1
Showing total # posts on the user's comment title line? And their overall karma. Normal forums show that sort of thing.. longevity, rep and # posts. Why not here?
Logic is down from $1k to $200, Aperture from $500 to $80, etc..
Jesus, as if developers aren't devalued enough. As a developer, the feeling I have about my job has gone from "valuable professional" 10 years ago to "this far from being outsourced to India". Programmers used to be seen as rocket scientists, or at least impressive propeller heads, back in the 80's and prior. Masters of the arcane, there to help with our specialist knowledge and talented wizardry.
Now we play second fiddle to marketing, and if it's not in social media nobody cares anyway. You're a "tech". A worker bee. And there are thousands of other worker bees waiting to do your job for 1/10th of your wage as soon as distance collaboration tools mature. When you're told you can work from home a few days a week, start to worry - they're just testing to see if they can replace you with someone who works from home is Lithuania.
Or a 20-something who knows just as much as you do, because the technology changes so fast you don't actually get more skilled as you get older. Sure you're more rigorous, more familiar with good practice, but who cares about quality of code when everything's in bloody beta anyway! The UX guy has got all the Wireframes up on MockFlow for you, Amazon does all the heavy lifting, all you have to do is... SCRIPT it. That scripty stuff that kids get into these days. Geez, stop being so precious about it, it's not rocket science, it's just a web site!
This sort of measure is a waste of time. Lots of people are going to do it just to get the attention of being arrested with no consequences anyway.
The sooner we let all the internet trolls expose themselves and realise nobody is listening, the sooner they'll give up and people will stop caring anyway. Comes part and parcel with the internet. Unfortunately all the media attention is basically piping this normal virtual silliness into the real world. What's the point of that?
Leave it where it deserves to be - little briefly blinking letters on a screen with a half-life of 2 minutes, if people will just leave it alone.
How can you possibly say it was priced too high? If all of the shares Facebook was selling were bought by someone at $38, then that was the correct price.
You're leaving something very important out of that assessment. By your logic, if I held up this bottle of oil, proclaimed it will make all your hair grow back, and sold all my stock for a high price on that expectation - that means it was priced correctly?
Let me give you another example: I have some AAA rated, mortgage-backed loans to sell you.
Now, what's that one element which may be missing from your assessment of value? One hint - it has nothing to do with money.
Did they invent the smartphone? No. Did they invent mobile digital media players? No. Did they invent mobile computing? No. Did they invent the App Store? No. (Steam for example is an app store).
they're the first ones to bring together the myriad of design features into a well balanced and cohesive whole
Sure, although "well balanced and cohesive" is completely subjective. But yes, it sold very well, they're very good at making products "cool" and nice to use. That doesn't mean they make the "best" product either. Even "best" is subjective. But they sold well.
Right now, however, I believe Samsung phones sell at least as much as iPhones do. So which is "best" or "more innovative"?
All Apple is doing is playing hardball with patents, which they can do because the US patent system is ridiculous and lets people patent shit like the shape of a rectangular device. That's completely wrong. At the same time, one can't blame Apple, *as a company* for doing that, because they have a legal responsibility to their shareholders to use any leverage they can.
So this really comes down to both patent law and commercial law that, together, lead to completely dysfunctional marketplace behaviour like this.
If the result is silky smooth navigation in nearly all apps
Unless all the apps you run are games, when have you not seen "smooth navigation" in Windows applications? I have XP on my laptop and the only time I have to wait for an application to do something, whether it's Office or Visual Studio or Photoshop, is when it's accessing the hard disk.
One exception is Adobe Lightroom, but that's because its stupid UI spends half the time trying to look fancy instead of just doing what I want it to do.
I have Win 7 on my PC but XP still on my laptop. The one main thing I really loathe about Win 7 is Windows Explorer. The file explorer. I had to make sure all my folders were set to "General Items", so it at least didn't slow down too much. I *hate* how backspace is now "Back" instead of "parent folder". I *never* used the Back button on XP, but there was always a parent folder button for me. ALT-UpArrow is a PITA.
I can't get rid of the "tool bar" or whatever it's called, with the "Organise" and "Include in Library" buttons - why it's not hide-able is beyond me. I never use it, it just wastes a lot of space and looks hideous anyway. CTRL-I used to open Favourites in XP. That was useful. There doesn't seem to be a shortcut to open the Navigation Pane in Win 7. That's just retarded.
Right-clicking the Windows Explorer window icon (top left) in XP used to give me the same context menu options as if I'd right-clicked the folder itself. That's gone in Win 7. I've no idea how to get the folder context items, apart from going to the parent folder and doing it from there. You'd think you'd be able to right-click the clickable "breadcrumb" path items, but no, that does sweet F.A. as well.
Basically Windows Explorer in Windows 7 is brain damaged and one of the main reasons I still love using XP on my laptop.
And don't get me started on the Windows 7 Control Panel. Suddenly it's alphabetically sorted *across the page* and works like pages of a *web application*, as if suddenly the UI paradigm of web apps is considered superior to opening separate applications with their own special window. You know, like using Windows. I mean seriously... when you want to flip around the Control Panel apps, you don't want to fuck around with the BACK button like a fucking web application because someone in MS thought it was "the hip thing to do".
They got better reviews then they deserved considering how many reviewers adored the thing, but the market didn't care.
Judging a technology based purely on market success makes you sound more like a fan of business than a fan of technology. Whether it's Betamax vs VHS or Blu-ray vs HD DVD, the factors are a lot more complex that simply who the market "cares about".
What is it with the desparate need to never, ever blame wackos like this for their own acts?
What is it with people who refuse to see the point and divert to a completely different topic?
There is a big difference between 1 whacko with a machete and 1 whacko with a bomb/gun.
I, for one, much prefer living a society where guns are hard to come by so whackos can't just casually decide to gun down a lot of people. Not saying it never happens, but it happens a shitload less than in the U.S. per capita. In 2010 there were 8775 firearm murders in the U.S., which is 68% of all murders. Over half. Here in Oz, firearms account for 15% of murders.
I tend to think that making it harder for the average person to kill is generally a good thing.
I don't know... I lived through the whole "Evil Micro$oft" era but, these days, I kind of think MS and Google are all that is left of *comparatively* reasonable technology companies. I'd rather Apple and Facebook continue to have some serious competition, at least so that we have alternatives.
Hopefully this will just be the kick in the pants MS needs to get it together.
With reference to a particular South Park episode, I tend to think the kind of guy who can't understand why women might find this sort of thing objectionable is comparable to the kind of white American who can't understand what it means to be a black American. That is, most white people; or, in this case, most males.
Just face it - you don't get it. Neither do I, but I don't use that as the basis for saying someone else is over-reacting.
Personally the flat Metro look takes all the character out of software.
I like some kind of texture. Almost every app out there, web or native, has some kind of "depth" to many UI elements. Metro is entirely, utterly, flat. I think they've made a serious, serious mistake in that way. I just have this feeling in my bones that it is wrong, and it will actually take away the visceral attachment people have to software they like using, simply because it's *characterless*.
I think I finally see the point to the Ribbon now though. Not that it makes me want to use it. But it's to make using Office on tablets easier, by basically turning the most common functions into buttons, instead of using menus.
Not exactly sure why a slightly enlarged toolbar couldn't have done the same thing (including being totally customisable) but I think it makes a kind of sense looked at that way. At least it doesn't make any sense to me any other way.:)
Yep as a sole trader I still use Office 2003, most of my clients have 2010 and I have no trouble reading stuff they send me. I do have a VM install of 2010 just in case, but only needed it once for an Excel doc that had data lookup lists on a separate sheet.
Yes, it's simply the ribbon. It's simply that I can work faster using 2003's normal menus. The ribbon slows me down, every time, all the time. It doesn't feel natural, it looks chaotic, gave it a few chances and said no thanks. I still don't know why they made it mandatory and so messed up everyone's workflow. Same with Win8. It's the sort of thing that turns people off your company (MS I mean).
It's possible they're just worried about mobile phones messing with the electronics of the pump, more than an explosive risk.
If you fill your tank (a mechanical process) but somehow the pump crashes and doesn't clock up the proper amount, they lose money. It may be a rare but possible effect. Of course they wouldn't want to tell people *that*, because then everyone would be trying it.
But seriously, expecting to browse the modern web with noscript enabled just isn't sane.
Really? Works fine for me. Most script is in the same domain as the page, which is enabled by default. It's only cross-domain scripts that are off by default, and they're usually only needed for delivering ads or Twitter/Facebook services which I don't care about or want anyway. Facebook API disabled in every site I visit? I can only be happy about that.
Just enable the few cache sites for things like jquery, and you're golden. No unwanted crap and sites run faster. NoScript is awesome. Anyway, these days one has more than one browser installed. Usually one of them is Chrome. I use Firefox with NoScript for general web browsing. When I want to use Facebook, Google Calendar (ie. full-on apps) I use Chrome. Nothing easier. And, separating my browsing from my app use, I don't have to worry about things like FB tracking me all over the web or any other shenanigans.
Mobile computing is the future -- just ignore the battery life.
And that people like sitting down - it's relaxing and a good way to drink tea, and when seated, you need a screen which is at eye level or you get a sore neck. It's also rather distracting being mobile when you're trying to use Office, Photoshop, SAP, CAD, etc. Information on the screen is often too small to work with using your fingers, tactile keyboards are more efficient and ergonomic than virtual touch-screen ones, etc.
The desktop isn't going away any time soon. Video never quite killed the radio star.
Exactly. The summary even has Zuck and Gates in the same sentence, which is crazy. Gates is a proven business leader, Zuck got there by sheer good fortune and hasn't proven he can run anything yet. The value of the company is based largely on all the hype around "social" at the moment. We'll see how he goes after the perception correction.
It takes a lot of market insight to keep a company of that size running in front of their competitors. Just look at Apple post-Jobs; their patents are keeping competitors at bay for now, but without further innovation they will go back to being the niche player. We'll see if Zuck can start intentionally doing what he so far has done largely by happy accident and fortuitous timing.
This is true, but from a job-security standpoint, the individual developer (if not doing something quite specialised) doesn't have much. As a role they're important, but individually they are replaceable. This is why I like working in smaller companies; you tend to know relatively more about what makes the company tick, so you're more individually valuable. And it's nicer than feeling like a small cog in a huge machine.
I would actually pay for a little pedal power charger to sit under my desk at work or a table out anywhere - cafe, etc. Medium resistance slow pedal exercise while I work, charging my laptop battery while I use it, able to be used anywhere. Why not? I think it's a great idea.
Well, I've been waiting for them to update the "Like" button so it has 3 options: 1. "Like" (default) 2. "Support" - can be used for a cause or product, or for a friend's "my dog just died" post where "like" isn't exactly appropriate. 3. "Want"
So perhaps soon they'll do the last one, and I'm sure eventually the "support" type one will come.
Laws have never once curbed popular behavior without huge losses of life and civil war.
I don't know, it was once quite popular to have slaves, marry minors, smoke in restaurants and condescend to women. I don't recall conscription to the brigades in those cases.
Slashdot Mirror
The simple answer to all this is - look at Reddit or any normal discussion forum that functions well without real names. There are many of them.
Reddit & /. have proven methods of self-regulating with mods, and normal discussion forums are often collections of people with the same interest, so why would they misbehave? They're environments where your online identity is centred around *reputation within the space*, which makes your real identity irrelevant. In fact Reddit is divided into areas of interest (subreddits) where people also tend to want to maintain their status and the general quality of the group.
So the problem with social media is not a problem of identification *of the individual*, it a problem of identification *with the medium*. Reddit and other forums have a high level of investment and identification with the group. If you're on Twitter or FB commenting on other people's pages and stuff, which have little blowback to your own online persona - you don't lose anything in the online space - then there is obviously little incentive to behave.
TL;DR: Everyone cares about the reputation of their online profile, pseudonym or not. Twitter & FB don't have reputation systems, so bad behaviour has no consequence. On forums with a reputation system (ie. most of them), behaviour is generally not a problem. A rep system is a carrot - forcing real names is a stick.
Showing total # posts on the user's comment title line? And their overall karma.
Normal forums show that sort of thing.. longevity, rep and # posts. Why not here?
Logic is down from $1k to $200, Aperture from $500 to $80, etc..
Jesus, as if developers aren't devalued enough. As a developer, the feeling I have about my job has gone from "valuable professional" 10 years ago to "this far from being outsourced to India". Programmers used to be seen as rocket scientists, or at least impressive propeller heads, back in the 80's and prior. Masters of the arcane, there to help with our specialist knowledge and talented wizardry.
Now we play second fiddle to marketing, and if it's not in social media nobody cares anyway. You're a "tech". A worker bee. And there are thousands of other worker bees waiting to do your job for 1/10th of your wage as soon as distance collaboration tools mature. When you're told you can work from home a few days a week, start to worry - they're just testing to see if they can replace you with someone who works from home is Lithuania.
Or a 20-something who knows just as much as you do, because the technology changes so fast you don't actually get more skilled as you get older. Sure you're more rigorous, more familiar with good practice, but who cares about quality of code when everything's in bloody beta anyway! The UX guy has got all the Wireframes up on MockFlow for you, Amazon does all the heavy lifting, all you have to do is... SCRIPT it. That scripty stuff that kids get into these days. Geez, stop being so precious about it, it's not rocket science, it's just a web site!
Hm, that went on longer that I'd intended. :)
This sort of measure is a waste of time. Lots of people are going to do it just to get the attention of being arrested with no consequences anyway.
The sooner we let all the internet trolls expose themselves and realise nobody is listening, the sooner they'll give up and people will stop caring anyway. Comes part and parcel with the internet. Unfortunately all the media attention is basically piping this normal virtual silliness into the real world. What's the point of that?
Leave it where it deserves to be - little briefly blinking letters on a screen with a half-life of 2 minutes, if people will just leave it alone.
How can you possibly say it was priced too high? If all of the shares Facebook was selling were bought by someone at $38, then that was the correct price.
You're leaving something very important out of that assessment. By your logic, if I held up this bottle of oil, proclaimed it will make all your hair grow back, and sold all my stock for a high price on that expectation - that means it was priced correctly?
Let me give you another example: I have some AAA rated, mortgage-backed loans to sell you.
Now, what's that one element which may be missing from your assessment of value? One hint - it has nothing to do with money.
The point is that Apple is the innovator here
Did they invent the smartphone? No.
Did they invent mobile digital media players? No.
Did they invent mobile computing? No.
Did they invent the App Store? No. (Steam for example is an app store).
they're the first ones to bring together the myriad of design features into a well balanced and cohesive whole
Sure, although "well balanced and cohesive" is completely subjective. But yes, it sold very well, they're very good at making products "cool" and nice to use. That doesn't mean they make the "best" product either. Even "best" is subjective. But they sold well.
Right now, however, I believe Samsung phones sell at least as much as iPhones do. So which is "best" or "more innovative"?
All Apple is doing is playing hardball with patents, which they can do because the US patent system is ridiculous and lets people patent shit like the shape of a rectangular device. That's completely wrong. At the same time, one can't blame Apple, *as a company* for doing that, because they have a legal responsibility to their shareholders to use any leverage they can.
So this really comes down to both patent law and commercial law that, together, lead to completely dysfunctional marketplace behaviour like this.
If the result is silky smooth navigation in nearly all apps
Unless all the apps you run are games, when have you not seen "smooth navigation" in Windows applications? I have XP on my laptop and the only time I have to wait for an application to do something, whether it's Office or Visual Studio or Photoshop, is when it's accessing the hard disk.
One exception is Adobe Lightroom, but that's because its stupid UI spends half the time trying to look fancy instead of just doing what I want it to do.
I have Win 7 on my PC but XP still on my laptop. The one main thing I really loathe about Win 7 is Windows Explorer. The file explorer. I had to make sure all my folders were set to "General Items", so it at least didn't slow down too much. I *hate* how backspace is now "Back" instead of "parent folder". I *never* used the Back button on XP, but there was always a parent folder button for me. ALT-UpArrow is a PITA.
I can't get rid of the "tool bar" or whatever it's called, with the "Organise" and "Include in Library" buttons - why it's not hide-able is beyond me. I never use it, it just wastes a lot of space and looks hideous anyway. CTRL-I used to open Favourites in XP. That was useful. There doesn't seem to be a shortcut to open the Navigation Pane in Win 7. That's just retarded.
Right-clicking the Windows Explorer window icon (top left) in XP used to give me the same context menu options as if I'd right-clicked the folder itself. That's gone in Win 7. I've no idea how to get the folder context items, apart from going to the parent folder and doing it from there. You'd think you'd be able to right-click the clickable "breadcrumb" path items, but no, that does sweet F.A. as well.
Basically Windows Explorer in Windows 7 is brain damaged and one of the main reasons I still love using XP on my laptop.
And don't get me started on the Windows 7 Control Panel. Suddenly it's alphabetically sorted *across the page* and works like pages of a *web application*, as if suddenly the UI paradigm of web apps is considered superior to opening separate applications with their own special window. You know, like using Windows. I mean seriously... when you want to flip around the Control Panel apps, you don't want to fuck around with the BACK button like a fucking web application because someone in MS thought it was "the hip thing to do".
They got better reviews then they deserved considering how many reviewers adored the thing, but the market didn't care.
Judging a technology based purely on market success makes you sound more like a fan of business than a fan of technology. Whether it's Betamax vs VHS or Blu-ray vs HD DVD, the factors are a lot more complex that simply who the market "cares about".
What is it with the desparate need to never, ever blame wackos like this for their own acts?
What is it with people who refuse to see the point and divert to a completely different topic?
There is a big difference between 1 whacko with a machete and 1 whacko with a bomb/gun.
I, for one, much prefer living a society where guns are hard to come by so whackos can't just casually decide to gun down a lot of people. Not saying it never happens, but it happens a shitload less than in the U.S. per capita. In 2010 there were 8775 firearm murders in the U.S., which is 68% of all murders. Over half. Here in Oz, firearms account for 15% of murders.
I tend to think that making it harder for the average person to kill is generally a good thing.
We waited for this for too long!
I don't know... I lived through the whole "Evil Micro$oft" era but, these days, I kind of think MS and Google are all that is left of *comparatively* reasonable technology companies. I'd rather Apple and Facebook continue to have some serious competition, at least so that we have alternatives.
Hopefully this will just be the kick in the pants MS needs to get it together.
Or maybe you are being overly sensitive.
With reference to a particular South Park episode, I tend to think the kind of guy who can't understand why women might find this sort of thing objectionable is comparable to the kind of white American who can't understand what it means to be a black American. That is, most white people; or, in this case, most males.
Just face it - you don't get it. Neither do I, but I don't use that as the basis for saying someone else is over-reacting.
Personally the flat Metro look takes all the character out of software.
I like some kind of texture. Almost every app out there, web or native, has some kind of "depth" to many UI elements. Metro is entirely, utterly, flat. I think they've made a serious, serious mistake in that way. I just have this feeling in my bones that it is wrong, and it will actually take away the visceral attachment people have to software they like using, simply because it's *characterless*.
I think I finally see the point to the Ribbon now though. Not that it makes me want to use it. But it's to make using Office on tablets easier, by basically turning the most common functions into buttons, instead of using menus.
Not exactly sure why a slightly enlarged toolbar couldn't have done the same thing (including being totally customisable) but I think it makes a kind of sense looked at that way. At least it doesn't make any sense to me any other way. :)
Yep as a sole trader I still use Office 2003, most of my clients have 2010 and I have no trouble reading stuff they send me. I do have a VM install of 2010 just in case, but only needed it once for an Excel doc that had data lookup lists on a separate sheet.
Yes, it's simply the ribbon. It's simply that I can work faster using 2003's normal menus. The ribbon slows me down, every time, all the time. It doesn't feel natural, it looks chaotic, gave it a few chances and said no thanks. I still don't know why they made it mandatory and so messed up everyone's workflow. Same with Win8. It's the sort of thing that turns people off your company (MS I mean).
It's possible they're just worried about mobile phones messing with the electronics of the pump, more than an explosive risk.
If you fill your tank (a mechanical process) but somehow the pump crashes and doesn't clock up the proper amount, they lose money. It may be a rare but possible effect. Of course they wouldn't want to tell people *that*, because then everyone would be trying it.
It's possible they're just worried about mobile phones messing with the electronics of the pump, more than an explosive risk.
But seriously, expecting to browse the modern web with noscript enabled just isn't sane.
Really? Works fine for me. Most script is in the same domain as the page, which is enabled by default. It's only cross-domain scripts that are off by default, and they're usually only needed for delivering ads or Twitter/Facebook services which I don't care about or want anyway. Facebook API disabled in every site I visit? I can only be happy about that.
Just enable the few cache sites for things like jquery, and you're golden. No unwanted crap and sites run faster. NoScript is awesome. Anyway, these days one has more than one browser installed. Usually one of them is Chrome. I use Firefox with NoScript for general web browsing. When I want to use Facebook, Google Calendar (ie. full-on apps) I use Chrome. Nothing easier. And, separating my browsing from my app use, I don't have to worry about things like FB tracking me all over the web or any other shenanigans.
Mobile computing is the future -- just ignore the battery life.
And that people like sitting down - it's relaxing and a good way to drink tea, and when seated, you need a screen which is at eye level or you get a sore neck. It's also rather distracting being mobile when you're trying to use Office, Photoshop, SAP, CAD, etc. Information on the screen is often too small to work with using your fingers, tactile keyboards are more efficient and ergonomic than virtual touch-screen ones, etc.
The desktop isn't going away any time soon. Video never quite killed the radio star.
Exactly. The summary even has Zuck and Gates in the same sentence, which is crazy. Gates is a proven business leader, Zuck got there by sheer good fortune and hasn't proven he can run anything yet. The value of the company is based largely on all the hype around "social" at the moment. We'll see how he goes after the perception correction.
It takes a lot of market insight to keep a company of that size running in front of their competitors. Just look at Apple post-Jobs; their patents are keeping competitors at bay for now, but without further innovation they will go back to being the niche player. We'll see if Zuck can start intentionally doing what he so far has done largely by happy accident and fortuitous timing.
Zuck: Dumb fucks.
And yet, if he'd posted that here, he'd likely get +5 insightful.
developers will make or break your project
This is true, but from a job-security standpoint, the individual developer (if not doing something quite specialised) doesn't have much. As a role they're important, but individually they are replaceable. This is why I like working in smaller companies; you tend to know relatively more about what makes the company tick, so you're more individually valuable. And it's nicer than feeling like a small cog in a huge machine.
I run my laptop with a stationary bike.
I would actually pay for a little pedal power charger to sit under my desk at work or a table out anywhere - cafe, etc. Medium resistance slow pedal exercise while I work, charging my laptop battery while I use it, able to be used anywhere. Why not? I think it's a great idea.
What else is left?
Well, I've been waiting for them to update the "Like" button so it has 3 options:
1. "Like" (default)
2. "Support" - can be used for a cause or product, or for a friend's "my dog just died" post where "like" isn't exactly appropriate.
3. "Want"
So perhaps soon they'll do the last one, and I'm sure eventually the "support" type one will come.
Laws have never once curbed popular behavior without huge losses of life and civil war.
I don't know, it was once quite popular to have slaves, marry minors, smoke in restaurants and condescend to women. I don't recall conscription to the brigades in those cases.