How so? How would helping developers figure out what users use and what they would likely need more training/more obvious presentation in the UI hurt MS? Presumably the infrastructure to report generic user stats already exists because it is used by Windows Office etc. They would just have to publish the API and find a way to determine who to send the info to (for example the registered developer in the Win Logo program). It's not rocket science and it isn't any different than what MS users have been used too/willing to do for the last decade or more.
As a third party you get a bit of info back from MS already: when your app crashes and someone clicks the "send info to MS" MS forwards that on to the developer. There is even talk of making the Windows logo process for apps revokable if the developers don't fix the problems. It would be nice if they put it right into the APIs not sure technically how it would work but it could just be a runtime constant needed to turn on logging in the UI of a.Net app say. Bundles everything up and sends it off to the developer. I imagine it isn't being done already because of security concerns but I think they could make it so it goes to MS so that they can have some sort of control to make sure that identifying info isn't being sent, etc. It would be great for devs because you'd get to see what features the users are using, what ones you think they are missing that would help their workflow etc. No more spending time working on a buried feature that know one is using, or fixing bugs on a rarely used feature over a highly used one because you didn't know.
Agreed the ribbon is a superior interface. It wasn't MS talking down to users I've saw several talks on Channel 9 talking about UI design. Have you saw those little "do you want to send feedback to MS" dialogs you get when apps open? Well they get giggity giggity amounts of data showing who is using what and how many clicks it is taking them to find the right toolbar etc. They also get lots of feature requests, 80+% of them are already in the product the customers just didn't know it and couldn't find it. So... the ribbon. Common options are grouped together right on the main "page" of the app, things are context dependent etc. You might not like the particular choice in solution but it worked: some features have had orders of magnitude more usage because of this I seem to recall. Literally very useful features that were always there just know one knew them. I imagine Apple is the same why with the added benefit that they always tried to make the computer "friendly" aka were specifically not targeting "power users" that wanted to discover every little setting in a complex UI.
Anyways UI doesn't have to stay the same because "that is the way it's always been" and it is easy because people don't have to learn new stuff for the simple fact that new computer users are constantly entering the market. The PC market is still growing quickly (10+% a year) with a big proportion of the excess in developing countries where they might never have had a computer before, or kids. If it is the first time you used a word processor than the ribbon might become the "that is the way it is always done" feature you don't want to change. Regardless at some point companies need to get the innovations into the product and someone is going to have to learn them.
That said what could have been done is keep the old UI as an option. You could have the classic "skin" and the new ribbon skin probably would have been the way I'd go. I suspect MS went they way they did for a couple reasons: less bugs because less things you have to keep consistent with eachother, and user discoverability: users hate change, they would quickly turn off the ribbon, and then continue to not find the features that would help them, send in support/feature requests for things that have been in the product since the early 90's (I'm not kidding there are feature requests for things like "I want to make a form letter"). It might be big brother deciding the users are stupid, but after terrabytes of data comes in and is studied you can only say that the results show that the average user is an idiot or at least is only discovering and using a small percentage of the features that could help them (eg. menu->copy menu-> paste rather than keyboard shortcuts) so you bubble them all up so that they are at least only one click away. Designing good UI is hard, the best is when you get things right and the thing the user wants to do is one click away sometimes that means you need to admit that the average person has no clue what the difference is between "editing" and "formating" is and can't be bothered to look through 20 buttons on each toolbar to see what they do. Heck a lot of coders can't be bothered using the features in their IDE eg. Visual Studio: do you hate it when your intellisense goes away and you want to get the dropdown list again because you chose the wrong thing? Most developers just keep back spacing till they get back to the period than hit period again, there is an easier way: ctrl shift, most people don't know this, most don't bother to look it up but is saves dozens of key strokes an hour (at least with my clumbsy coding).
Not to mention that in the US the more money/better job you are the better chance you are to be able to just walk in and get treated right away. In socialized healthcare everyone waits equally and the care is provided based on medical need. That is what scares the bejesus out of some, mostly republicans, it would be something that money couldn't make better for you.
Number 7 in executions and #1 in percentage of population in prision. USA #1. Might be #1 for foreign nationals that are in prison without charges or legal process but that is okay as long as they are brown right?
If they paid for the research proving that it was effective yes. I would limit patents to the use that they apply for though. So ASA expiring patent for "headache" would mean that generics could be used for headaches after the patent expires. If Bayer or someone else than studied and found that it was useful for something else they could get the patent for that use. Obviously over the counter drugs are a bad example because they are so readily available but prescription meds something like that could work. It would also give universities a way to get funding: they might not have the resources to develop a drug from scratch or to do the initial safety testing. But they might be able to determine that the drug also works on another interesting pathway for a different disease. At worst then money would go to the universities at best the laws of where it was discovered would mean that the new patent is a publicly funded research/public good and anyone could manufacture for free.
Drugs don't just magically get approved for new uses. Companies spend millions in trials and legal fees to get it approved for the new use. They then need to market it so that docs will actually prescribe it for that use, deal with insurance companies to make sure they will reimburse for the drug when used for that reason etc. How many 0.02c pills do you need to sell to get your money back? Should companies just not pay for the studies since if they are stuck selling the drug for pennies they can't recoup the cost of the research? Usually the largest market use of the drug is the first one that they patent (headaches, fever for ASA say) so what is left is relatively low dose, or lose count users (elderly people taking 1/10th doses for heart for example).
So they aren't usually chasing tonnes of potentially new users, they are chasing the few people that will really benefit from the drug. Perhaps a way around this would be to amend the patent laws so that people/companies are free to experiment with other uses for a patented drug. So if a drug is patented as a "blood thinner" than if someone else pays for the research and finds another use they can market their own version for that particular use. Could be the best of both worlds: corps get their money back from the primary use, public research could find the smaller volume uses and be free to license them to generics makers to keep the prices low for the people that often have much more severe medical issues that the drug works for.
They also don't allow you to take the seeds from the plants that you grow from their seeds. You have to buy new seed every year. I suspect that might be more of the reason. They really want to cover all angles so that people that are customers are forced to keep coming back every year.
As opposed to what? An Apple product given hype long before it is even publicly described but shipping "on time"/aka about a month after whenever they get around to publically announce it? MS is hugely more open early on in the process but it means that they have little idea when things will ship because they are still getting/accepting feature requests, no where near zero bug bounce etc (some would say they never get there:-)) for a long time after people start hyping their new product. Apple just doesn't tell you anything until they are ready (or it leaks). Google just throws crap up and if people like it they keep it (after years of "Beta" I'm looking at you GMail), if they don't they get rid of it.
My guess: Win will own the corporate tablet market 80+%. Maybe ~25% of tablet/netbook type devices people buy for home use since people will feel "more comfortable" buying something they know will work with the programs they are used to. Funny thing for home use for a lot of people: even though it is their personal computer they still in my experience, base a part of the decision on "will it do the stuff I do at work?" which for most people means windows. They might dual boot but few people go completely Windowsless.
Your computer boots in normal + 80s wow that's performance. Mine takes a full 5min before it is useable. But that said a lot of it is my fault: svn, apache, sql server on my desktop for dev work. They probably would argue the bloatware is needed to manage the infrastructure it still wouldn't be a justification for wasting peoples time by buying inferior hardware that is just management being cheap with IT investments. My work: do dev work in a 19" screen. Tried to convince them to let me use a bigger monitor. Turns out they were buying 22" for a bunch of workstations (anything bigger and senior management had to approve it). One of them is on a computer that isn't being used. I asked to use that monitor at least until it is actually needed on another computer: "can't do that the funding was approved for use X". Yeah but it isn't being used for X, it isn't being used at all (extra workstation in the area). Argh. I do a lot of development in multiple locations so having for example a C# program open side by side with a vb one would be nice. Can't really do it and see what I'm doing with ~6" of horizontal space per window. Oh well I'm 40% less productive but they saved $200 so it must be worth it.
It all depends right? Powerful enough is a relative term. Doesn't much matter if it takes 0.25 sec longer to open a file in a home environment but how about business if it takes 0.25 seconds to go to the next customer/patient/part page on your system? if you are living in that system all day it could save you 10min a day lets say. 10min at 25/hr average salary and it only takes a month or so to justify a better processor. Since IT tends to churn machines on a 2-5 year cycle there is a lot of saved time to be had by buying better equipment.
IE apparently but the article links say "desktop browser", makes me wonder what it looks like for all browsers regardless of device. Seems kind of funny all the attention that the move to tablets and smartphones get in the media that we are still comparing browsers based on their desktop market share. I suspect Safari would have a much larger market share if all the other devices (iPad iPhone) were added. Similarly for Chrome with the android devices. So... would IE still be number one? Would anyone be getting close to knocking them off?
Not to mention: Bill Atkinson left Apple in 1990 Jobs came back in 1997. So seeing as HC was mainly a Bill thing from what I know, HC was long long gone before Steve even thought of coming back.
Re:But don't hinder the average user from becoming
on
Why Was Hypercard Killed?
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And pay us oodles of money because we are the wizards and they the pages. Works for me. People interested in a craft will figure out the tools. People not interested won't care to learn they'll get someone else to do it for them. Ex. I'm not interested in masonary. When I needed brick work done I didn't say "well I only need a chisel, a hammer, and a bucket to mix motar". I didn't care, it didn't interest me, I certainly couldn't be bothered spending the time to become proficient in the task so I paid a few grand and had someone that already knew what they are doing to do the work for me. Works for me, they got the sunburn while I played videogames.
It is also a matter of who's time does it save? Perhaps burning 2 weeks of your time is worth it because it is saving your boss that 6 hours twice a year, or your customer who is frustrated with the process. Or automating is the only way it will get done. As it: the user just won't do that step unless you make it really easy for them. Ex. add the time you started this task to this spreadsheet every day will you? Versus a form popping up asking "what's your task"? In my experience automation tasks often happen because there isn't anything better for you to do. Say your doing sys admin work. 20hrs a week you are sitting around because things are running smoothly. So you spend that time automating things so that each week the remaining time required becomes less and less. You can than manage more things, or spend more time reading comic books or whatever.
Lastly a huge justification for automation: things are done consistently. Forms are completely filled out, user accounts are profiled correctly, network shares have group rights assigned appropriately etc. If you do things manually you might forget something, or leave random stuff incorrect later (ex. employee leaves a department but no one knows what they have access too, what they should have access to etc, so it is always a manual process doing any change).
So true. Even the non-average user (I work with people with PhDs in nuclear physics) often don't care to learn to program. Buy/make me something that does X, I don't care how just do it is how they operate. Which is fine. Not everyone needs to know how to code. I don't need to know how to wire my house, or fix my car. I go to someone that knows that and pay them. I am interested in coding, so I built up that skill. Others are interested in cooking so they do that etc. I think this is why these visual based programming environments haven't really caught on other than not surprisingly for the UI design. Everything else the people interested in coding the app will likely be comfortable going to code and the ones that aren't will probably have already gone somewhere (virtual or physical) to get someone else's solution.
True pick of projects can be nice. If you work from home it becomes more of a push system: hey you here's your work. That said if you can land on a large project that is doing something you like you can be months between needing to find something else anyways. I don't think I'd go for the work from home but come in occasionally kind of job. First I'm a physicist/software engineer so jobs that suit me are geographically very disperse so chances of me finding a job where I want to live is slim and if they are going to offer me to work from home some times it really makes the justification of the relocating a lot worse (so I'm moving myself across the country so I'll be nearby for the biweekly Tuesday meeting, really?).
The solution is not to give a shit. Work hard. Do good work but as you've proven you can do good work from home, so... if the pinheads get rid of you find another job. The 1-2hrs a day you save + $30 or so in gas a day more than compensates you for the lack of watercooler bullshit in my opinion. Extra bonus: no watercooler bullshit. About 90% of that is just speculation/your co worker bitching about how much the job sucks for the 20th time anyways.
Dev work can often be that way. You can spend hours figuring out how to get something to work but only check in 10 lines of code that day. If your in the office and people can see you checking user groups like crazy and the like no problem. But if your working from home all the boss sees is that you only checked in 10 lines today versus 200 yesterday. Must have been slacking off.
I'm guessing here but wouldn't just installing the normal Kindles OS be sufficient? I suspect the devices are physically identical so the "full Kindle" OS should work.
Notice how they use different zip utilities, I thought that funny. I'm viewing from an xp box with 7 zip. I gz, untarred the outer bundle only to see the above crap. So you can go file by file and untar, unzip things again except some are tar.gz which is fine and some are tar.bz2 which 7 zip doesn't support. I realize tools exist that can solve this problem just funny that they were inconsistant with their compression. Also I don't much see the point in tar.*z subdirectories. zip the folders than tar the zips that way you still can extract the individual folders/files if you want but you don't end up with a nested cludge of tar.
It is intrusive I think because it somewhat accomplishes the goal: a novice can't figure out how to hack the DRM so it is bad. My thoughts on this: as long as some form exists without DRM stop your whining. If the device doesn't work the way you want it to don't use it.
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How so? How would helping developers figure out what users use and what they would likely need more training/more obvious presentation in the UI hurt MS? Presumably the infrastructure to report generic user stats already exists because it is used by Windows Office etc. They would just have to publish the API and find a way to determine who to send the info to (for example the registered developer in the Win Logo program). It's not rocket science and it isn't any different than what MS users have been used too/willing to do for the last decade or more.
As a third party you get a bit of info back from MS already: when your app crashes and someone clicks the "send info to MS" MS forwards that on to the developer. There is even talk of making the Windows logo process for apps revokable if the developers don't fix the problems. It would be nice if they put it right into the APIs not sure technically how it would work but it could just be a runtime constant needed to turn on logging in the UI of a .Net app say. Bundles everything up and sends it off to the developer. I imagine it isn't being done already because of security concerns but I think they could make it so it goes to MS so that they can have some sort of control to make sure that identifying info isn't being sent, etc. It would be great for devs because you'd get to see what features the users are using, what ones you think they are missing that would help their workflow etc. No more spending time working on a buried feature that know one is using, or fixing bugs on a rarely used feature over a highly used one because you didn't know.
Anyways UI doesn't have to stay the same because "that is the way it's always been" and it is easy because people don't have to learn new stuff for the simple fact that new computer users are constantly entering the market. The PC market is still growing quickly (10+% a year) with a big proportion of the excess in developing countries where they might never have had a computer before, or kids. If it is the first time you used a word processor than the ribbon might become the "that is the way it is always done" feature you don't want to change. Regardless at some point companies need to get the innovations into the product and someone is going to have to learn them.
That said what could have been done is keep the old UI as an option. You could have the classic "skin" and the new ribbon skin probably would have been the way I'd go. I suspect MS went they way they did for a couple reasons: less bugs because less things you have to keep consistent with eachother, and user discoverability: users hate change, they would quickly turn off the ribbon, and then continue to not find the features that would help them, send in support/feature requests for things that have been in the product since the early 90's (I'm not kidding there are feature requests for things like "I want to make a form letter"). It might be big brother deciding the users are stupid, but after terrabytes of data comes in and is studied you can only say that the results show that the average user is an idiot or at least is only discovering and using a small percentage of the features that could help them (eg. menu->copy menu-> paste rather than keyboard shortcuts) so you bubble them all up so that they are at least only one click away. Designing good UI is hard, the best is when you get things right and the thing the user wants to do is one click away sometimes that means you need to admit that the average person has no clue what the difference is between "editing" and "formating" is and can't be bothered to look through 20 buttons on each toolbar to see what they do. Heck a lot of coders can't be bothered using the features in their IDE eg. Visual Studio: do you hate it when your intellisense goes away and you want to get the dropdown list again because you chose the wrong thing? Most developers just keep back spacing till they get back to the period than hit period again, there is an easier way: ctrl shift, most people don't know this, most don't bother to look it up but is saves dozens of key strokes an hour (at least with my clumbsy coding).
Obtuse Anglos was deported I thought.
Not to mention that in the US the more money/better job you are the better chance you are to be able to just walk in and get treated right away. In socialized healthcare everyone waits equally and the care is provided based on medical need. That is what scares the bejesus out of some, mostly republicans, it would be something that money couldn't make better for you.
Number 7 in executions and #1 in percentage of population in prision. USA #1. Might be #1 for foreign nationals that are in prison without charges or legal process but that is okay as long as they are brown right?
If they paid for the research proving that it was effective yes. I would limit patents to the use that they apply for though. So ASA expiring patent for "headache" would mean that generics could be used for headaches after the patent expires. If Bayer or someone else than studied and found that it was useful for something else they could get the patent for that use. Obviously over the counter drugs are a bad example because they are so readily available but prescription meds something like that could work. It would also give universities a way to get funding: they might not have the resources to develop a drug from scratch or to do the initial safety testing. But they might be able to determine that the drug also works on another interesting pathway for a different disease. At worst then money would go to the universities at best the laws of where it was discovered would mean that the new patent is a publicly funded research/public good and anyone could manufacture for free.
So they aren't usually chasing tonnes of potentially new users, they are chasing the few people that will really benefit from the drug. Perhaps a way around this would be to amend the patent laws so that people/companies are free to experiment with other uses for a patented drug. So if a drug is patented as a "blood thinner" than if someone else pays for the research and finds another use they can market their own version for that particular use. Could be the best of both worlds: corps get their money back from the primary use, public research could find the smaller volume uses and be free to license them to generics makers to keep the prices low for the people that often have much more severe medical issues that the drug works for.
Cost of clinical trials/marketing the drug for the new purpose? Probably doesn't justify a 100X price increase but still its worth something.
They also don't allow you to take the seeds from the plants that you grow from their seeds. You have to buy new seed every year. I suspect that might be more of the reason. They really want to cover all angles so that people that are customers are forced to keep coming back every year.
My guess: Win will own the corporate tablet market 80+%. Maybe ~25% of tablet/netbook type devices people buy for home use since people will feel "more comfortable" buying something they know will work with the programs they are used to. Funny thing for home use for a lot of people: even though it is their personal computer they still in my experience, base a part of the decision on "will it do the stuff I do at work?" which for most people means windows. They might dual boot but few people go completely Windowsless.
Your computer boots in normal + 80s wow that's performance. Mine takes a full 5min before it is useable. But that said a lot of it is my fault: svn, apache, sql server on my desktop for dev work. They probably would argue the bloatware is needed to manage the infrastructure it still wouldn't be a justification for wasting peoples time by buying inferior hardware that is just management being cheap with IT investments. My work: do dev work in a 19" screen. Tried to convince them to let me use a bigger monitor. Turns out they were buying 22" for a bunch of workstations (anything bigger and senior management had to approve it). One of them is on a computer that isn't being used. I asked to use that monitor at least until it is actually needed on another computer: "can't do that the funding was approved for use X". Yeah but it isn't being used for X, it isn't being used at all (extra workstation in the area). Argh. I do a lot of development in multiple locations so having for example a C# program open side by side with a vb one would be nice. Can't really do it and see what I'm doing with ~6" of horizontal space per window. Oh well I'm 40% less productive but they saved $200 so it must be worth it.
It all depends right? Powerful enough is a relative term. Doesn't much matter if it takes 0.25 sec longer to open a file in a home environment but how about business if it takes 0.25 seconds to go to the next customer/patient/part page on your system? if you are living in that system all day it could save you 10min a day lets say. 10min at 25/hr average salary and it only takes a month or so to justify a better processor. Since IT tends to churn machines on a 2-5 year cycle there is a lot of saved time to be had by buying better equipment.
IE apparently but the article links say "desktop browser", makes me wonder what it looks like for all browsers regardless of device. Seems kind of funny all the attention that the move to tablets and smartphones get in the media that we are still comparing browsers based on their desktop market share. I suspect Safari would have a much larger market share if all the other devices (iPad iPhone) were added. Similarly for Chrome with the android devices. So ... would IE still be number one? Would anyone be getting close to knocking them off?
Not to mention: Bill Atkinson left Apple in 1990 Jobs came back in 1997. So seeing as HC was mainly a Bill thing from what I know, HC was long long gone before Steve even thought of coming back.
And pay us oodles of money because we are the wizards and they the pages. Works for me. People interested in a craft will figure out the tools. People not interested won't care to learn they'll get someone else to do it for them. Ex. I'm not interested in masonary. When I needed brick work done I didn't say "well I only need a chisel, a hammer, and a bucket to mix motar". I didn't care, it didn't interest me, I certainly couldn't be bothered spending the time to become proficient in the task so I paid a few grand and had someone that already knew what they are doing to do the work for me. Works for me, they got the sunburn while I played videogames.
Lastly a huge justification for automation: things are done consistently. Forms are completely filled out, user accounts are profiled correctly, network shares have group rights assigned appropriately etc. If you do things manually you might forget something, or leave random stuff incorrect later (ex. employee leaves a department but no one knows what they have access too, what they should have access to etc, so it is always a manual process doing any change).
So true. Even the non-average user (I work with people with PhDs in nuclear physics) often don't care to learn to program. Buy/make me something that does X, I don't care how just do it is how they operate. Which is fine. Not everyone needs to know how to code. I don't need to know how to wire my house, or fix my car. I go to someone that knows that and pay them. I am interested in coding, so I built up that skill. Others are interested in cooking so they do that etc. I think this is why these visual based programming environments haven't really caught on other than not surprisingly for the UI design. Everything else the people interested in coding the app will likely be comfortable going to code and the ones that aren't will probably have already gone somewhere (virtual or physical) to get someone else's solution.
True pick of projects can be nice. If you work from home it becomes more of a push system: hey you here's your work. That said if you can land on a large project that is doing something you like you can be months between needing to find something else anyways. I don't think I'd go for the work from home but come in occasionally kind of job. First I'm a physicist/software engineer so jobs that suit me are geographically very disperse so chances of me finding a job where I want to live is slim and if they are going to offer me to work from home some times it really makes the justification of the relocating a lot worse (so I'm moving myself across the country so I'll be nearby for the biweekly Tuesday meeting, really?).
The solution is not to give a shit. Work hard. Do good work but as you've proven you can do good work from home, so ... if the pinheads get rid of you find another job. The 1-2hrs a day you save + $30 or so in gas a day more than compensates you for the lack of watercooler bullshit in my opinion. Extra bonus: no watercooler bullshit. About 90% of that is just speculation/your co worker bitching about how much the job sucks for the 20th time anyways.
Dev work can often be that way. You can spend hours figuring out how to get something to work but only check in 10 lines of code that day. If your in the office and people can see you checking user groups like crazy and the like no problem. But if your working from home all the boss sees is that you only checked in 10 lines today versus 200 yesterday. Must have been slacking off.
I'm guessing here but wouldn't just installing the normal Kindles OS be sufficient? I suspect the devices are physically identical so the "full Kindle" OS should work.
Notice how they use different zip utilities, I thought that funny. I'm viewing from an xp box with 7 zip. I gz, untarred the outer bundle only to see the above crap. So you can go file by file and untar, unzip things again except some are tar.gz which is fine and some are tar.bz2 which 7 zip doesn't support. I realize tools exist that can solve this problem just funny that they were inconsistant with their compression. Also I don't much see the point in tar.*z subdirectories. zip the folders than tar the zips that way you still can extract the individual folders/files if you want but you don't end up with a nested cludge of tar.
It is intrusive I think because it somewhat accomplishes the goal: a novice can't figure out how to hack the DRM so it is bad. My thoughts on this: as long as some form exists without DRM stop your whining. If the device doesn't work the way you want it to don't use it.
You can and in my experience it works perfectly. The only problem is pdf to something else which tends to muck up the block breaks.