IMO the underlying point of the One Button Controversy is that a global UI like the menubar isn't the best place to inform users of contextual actions. You end up having menus spontaneously appearing and disappearing, which is not clear to the user unless they are staring at that space.
I have the same complaint about the MS Ribbon, which sprouts weird extra tabs under some conditions.
A class of product exists in the marketplace, but has only received lukewarm adoption for a variety of reasons
To call tablet adoption "lukewarm" is quite an exaggeration. Tablets have bombed every time someone has tried it. A lot of that has to do with poor implementation, but the fact of the matter is that the tablet form factor can be very awkward in a lot of cases, and that's the first hurdle to get over.
Not to say that Apple's tablet won't be the most wonderful thing ever, but IMO there's no comparison here to smart phones or even MP3 players.
Yes and no, I obviously can't show proprietary data from client A to client B, but it's worth using as a smell-check for similar audiences.
And one could endlessly quibble over the correctness, but IMO the existence of this data is still vastly preferable to a bunch of internet trolls or PHBs claiming "nobody uses browser XYZ".
I know, i know, i might not get all the fine points of American culture, but how exactly can someone sue the company over this? They're just acting as an internet provider.
The problem isn't the internet porn itself, its that people start passing it around and showing it off and create the nebulous situation of a "hostile environment". (And as rtaylor said, companies manage the threat of lawsuits, not whether they would actually win.)
In this sense the softcore/bikini stuff is almost worse, because most people have enough sense to not print out torture porn and pin it up all over their cubical.
Exactly what I was thinking. The IT security people would shit bricks if they discovered such a tunnel, and you wouldn't know until you were facing a room full of very somber-faced HR goons.
I suppose it works in your typical small business that installed websense to keep folks from jerking off, but in that case you can usually talk to the 'IT guy' and get an exception for whatever you need.
Except I have other data available, and stats from both large and small ecommerce sites are generally in-line with these published "marketshare" reports. Which leads me to believe that, yes, these reports somewhat accurately reflect general web use trends, even if they are "worthless" for a technology site developer.
Then again, I'm not really interested if Apple is 7% or 9% this month, or whether Linux is more or less popular than the iPhone or whatever advocacy crap people come up with.
Since I mostly have used these numbers to prioritize testing, or occasionally to make the argument that "Yes we really do need to support Browser X", it really doesn't matter a whole lot if the premises are flawed because absolutely nothing important is riding on them.
None of these surveys claim to be a statistically valid sample, and nobody with half-a-brain believes that they are. Maybe its only you who is confused..
In fact, I can think of nothing more "worthless" than demanding data that does not exist and is effectively impossible to collect. It still is useful to see general browser trends across large pools of sites, despite that.
Eh, maybe the stats are "worthless" to sad OS/Browser fanboys who are arguing over every last 0.1%.
But the general trend of the web browser is useful and interesting. These kinds of browser stats are how we tracked the rise-and-fall of Netscape, the rise and stagnation of IE, and the rise of Firefox. People do use this sort of information for development and testing priority, flawed methodology and all.
And you will never have a non-"flawed" methodology for capturing this information, even for the users on your own site. (How do you identify a unique user? how do you know they aren't faking their user agent string? Who is a person and who is a bot? etc) If you can't deal with fuzzy information, don't leave the basement.
The question is whether the Y2K programmers actually fixed the date storage, or only kludged some logic around it (year4 = (year2<20) ? year2+2000:year2+1900). I have a feeling some of those systems which received last-minute fixes are going to blow up with date bugs at some later date.
Compaq's business products (Deskpro line) were top-of-the-line. They were elegantly-engineered tanks that ran pretty much forever.
True. However, by the Pentium-II era this was over, and the Deskpros were just like any other junk.
Compaq's servers were also top-notch for x86 kit. When HP bought Compaq out, they discontinued their own line of servers and replaced them with Compaq's.
Pretty sure Microsoft just put their brandname on the Softcard. You could buy Apple ][ Z-80 boards from many manufacturers, but the CP/M software was sold by Microsoft.
I think you're right that the markets are converging, but prior to the netbook taking off, a $400 laptop was a boat-anchor. There weren't many 4lbs ULV laptops in that price range on the shelves six months ago.
There's something to be said of the sex-appeal of a 'purse-sized' computer too, so I'm not sure if people are totally ignorant of the tradeoffs.
Actually they are. People get angry when stuff is removed from wikipedia, but they never offer a positive argument of what should or should not be allowed. Effectively they want everything.
I should note I have no idea what goes on in the German version.
Because Windows doesn't run on it. I saw a piece on Google news about the netbook fad dying. The premise is that they lost sight of their original goals and are just becoming low powered laptops. IMO, this is mainly down to trying to get windows on netbooks.
I think just the opposite - Windows (especially XP) runs great on atom-based systems, so people are buying them as a primary computers instead of secondary gadgets. (The crowd around the netbook counter at the local Best Buy certainly did not look like the kind of people with multiple PCs.)
If the netbook fad is "dying", it is because WinTel killed it to protect their margins.
A lot of articles get duplicated in custom wikis, thus you get lots of duplicated work.
There simply isn't a "one-size-fits-all" editorial policy that could encompass every possible wiki.
Unless, you are arguing that Wikipedia shouldn't have an editorial policy at all, in which case it's Geocities 2.0 and not an encyclopedia.
(And for the record, I think many of Wikipedia's policies are braindead, but the "my farts deserve their own wiki page" mentality on Slashdot is maddening.)
On many topics the English entry is almost unintelligible because it's just one (correctly sourced) quote after the other. God forbid someone trying to turn it into a whole instead of a disjointed mess because that might be interpreted as original research.
That's my main complaint as well, many wikipedia articles read as a disconnected stream of random footnoted facts.
However, I'm not sure if this because people are scared of original research, or just because editing is harder work than adding bits of information. The "more is better" mentality doesn't help either.
The chances are pretty slim that I'd ever want Star-Trek trivia, but it's not hurting anybody. That slim chance isn't zero. In case I ever do happen to need such info, where else could I rely on finding it?
There are like 8 different Trekkie wikis with different editorial rules. IIRC Memory Alpha is the main one.
Star Trek Wikipedia articles are a good example, because they used to be just of terrible quality, full "some fans believe..." crap and many of them written as if the show was real and not fiction. Since the other wikis have started up, most of the "Star Trek really happened" kooks moved on, and the Wikipedia articles are of much better quality.
There's no real problem with the "trivial" popular culture stuff as long as it meets the standards for every other Wikipedia article. But the point of Wikipedia is not to be the repository for anything that any crazy retard wants to type on the Internet about their favorite TV show. That's what Geocities was for.
So? We're talking about a time when a top-end PC cost $3500.
And a top-end UNIX workstation cost $20,000. Gee, I can't imagine why the $3500 PC with the $300 Windows NT sold. Especially after the Pentium Pro almost closed the performance gap.
(Not to mention that if you wanted UNIX with that PC, you had to go to SCO.)
The part you left out is that SVR-anything cost something like $5,000 per machine.
Also the entire UNIX workstation environment rolled over and died when Windows NT hit the market. Essentially nothing was done for a decade until Linux started taking hold. Sun couldn't even be arsed to change the color scheme from the vintage Reagan-era pastels until a couple years ago.
Except that IE8 is perfectly capable of emulating both IE6's and IE7's standards-noncompliance modes.
Nope, IE8 does not emulate IE6, which is the chief problem here. (It does emulate IE5, however.)
In fact, CSS2 that "works" in IE6 is almost guaranteed to break in IE8 or any other modern browser.
Re:I guess you could call it a ...
on
A Requiem For Saab
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Even back in the pre-GM days, Saab used a lot of other companies' technology. The auto business is so capital intensive, its almost impossible not to run it in a global manner.
The real problem with Saab was that GM a lousy job in applying its global tech. Exhibit A is rebadging a Chevy Blazer SUV as a Saab. The 9-5 was also something like 12 years old and was just being replaced with a shared platform when Saab was killed.
Inconclusive. Developers and users like the store model. If the store sold polished browser apps (like bookmarks with a little authentication piece), would end-users even notice the difference in many cases?
It obviously wouldn't work for every app, but the "find a restaurant/movie theater near me" apps are essentially internet applications anyway with a little bit of native display logic.
Slashdot Mirror
IMO the underlying point of the One Button Controversy is that a global UI like the menubar isn't the best place to inform users of contextual actions. You end up having menus spontaneously appearing and disappearing, which is not clear to the user unless they are staring at that space.
I have the same complaint about the MS Ribbon, which sprouts weird extra tabs under some conditions.
A class of product exists in the marketplace, but has only received lukewarm adoption for a variety of reasons
To call tablet adoption "lukewarm" is quite an exaggeration. Tablets have bombed every time someone has tried it. A lot of that has to do with poor implementation, but the fact of the matter is that the tablet form factor can be very awkward in a lot of cases, and that's the first hurdle to get over.
Not to say that Apple's tablet won't be the most wonderful thing ever, but IMO there's no comparison here to smart phones or even MP3 players.
Obviously the site data is preferable, but you can't use it if the site doesn't exist yet.
Yes and no, I obviously can't show proprietary data from client A to client B, but it's worth using as a smell-check for similar audiences.
And one could endlessly quibble over the correctness, but IMO the existence of this data is still vastly preferable to a bunch of internet trolls or PHBs claiming "nobody uses browser XYZ".
I know, i know, i might not get all the fine points of American culture, but how exactly can someone sue the company over this? They're just acting as an internet provider.
The problem isn't the internet porn itself, its that people start passing it around and showing it off and create the nebulous situation of a "hostile environment". (And as rtaylor said, companies manage the threat of lawsuits, not whether they would actually win.)
In this sense the softcore/bikini stuff is almost worse, because most people have enough sense to not print out torture porn and pin it up all over their cubical.
Exactly what I was thinking. The IT security people would shit bricks if they discovered such a tunnel, and you wouldn't know until you were facing a room full of very somber-faced HR goons.
I suppose it works in your typical small business that installed websense to keep folks from jerking off, but in that case you can usually talk to the 'IT guy' and get an exception for whatever you need.
Except I have other data available, and stats from both large and small ecommerce sites are generally in-line with these published "marketshare" reports. Which leads me to believe that, yes, these reports somewhat accurately reflect general web use trends, even if they are "worthless" for a technology site developer.
Then again, I'm not really interested if Apple is 7% or 9% this month, or whether Linux is more or less popular than the iPhone or whatever advocacy crap people come up with.
Since I mostly have used these numbers to prioritize testing, or occasionally to make the argument that "Yes we really do need to support Browser X", it really doesn't matter a whole lot if the premises are flawed because absolutely nothing important is riding on them.
Also, to people who understand statistics.
None of these surveys claim to be a statistically valid sample, and nobody with half-a-brain believes that they are. Maybe its only you who is confused..
In fact, I can think of nothing more "worthless" than demanding data that does not exist and is effectively impossible to collect. It still is useful to see general browser trends across large pools of sites, despite that.
Eh, maybe the stats are "worthless" to sad OS/Browser fanboys who are arguing over every last 0.1%.
But the general trend of the web browser is useful and interesting. These kinds of browser stats are how we tracked the rise-and-fall of Netscape, the rise and stagnation of IE, and the rise of Firefox. People do use this sort of information for development and testing priority, flawed methodology and all.
And you will never have a non-"flawed" methodology for capturing this information, even for the users on your own site. (How do you identify a unique user? how do you know they aren't faking their user agent string? Who is a person and who is a bot? etc) If you can't deal with fuzzy information, don't leave the basement.
The question is whether the Y2K programmers actually fixed the date storage, or only kludged some logic around it (year4 = (year2<20) ? year2+2000:year2+1900). I have a feeling some of those systems which received last-minute fixes are going to blow up with date bugs at some later date.
Right. On the Apple II it was called "Microsoft CP/M".
Compaq's business products (Deskpro line) were top-of-the-line. They were elegantly-engineered tanks that ran pretty much forever.
True. However, by the Pentium-II era this was over, and the Deskpros were just like any other junk.
Compaq's servers were also top-notch for x86 kit. When HP bought Compaq out, they discontinued their own line of servers and replaced them with Compaq's.
Pretty sure Microsoft just put their brandname on the Softcard. You could buy Apple ][ Z-80 boards from many manufacturers, but the CP/M software was sold by Microsoft.
I think you're right that the markets are converging, but prior to the netbook taking off, a $400 laptop was a boat-anchor. There weren't many 4lbs ULV laptops in that price range on the shelves six months ago.
There's something to be said of the sex-appeal of a 'purse-sized' computer too, so I'm not sure if people are totally ignorant of the tradeoffs.
There is hardly anyone that is arguing for that.
Actually they are. People get angry when stuff is removed from wikipedia, but they never offer a positive argument of what should or should not be allowed. Effectively they want everything.
I should note I have no idea what goes on in the German version.
Because Windows doesn't run on it. I saw a piece on Google news about the netbook fad dying. The premise is that they lost sight of their original goals and are just becoming low powered laptops. IMO, this is mainly down to trying to get windows on netbooks.
I think just the opposite - Windows (especially XP) runs great on atom-based systems, so people are buying them as a primary computers instead of secondary gadgets. (The crowd around the netbook counter at the local Best Buy certainly did not look like the kind of people with multiple PCs.)
If the netbook fad is "dying", it is because WinTel killed it to protect their margins.
A lot of articles get duplicated in custom wikis, thus you get lots of duplicated work.
There simply isn't a "one-size-fits-all" editorial policy that could encompass every possible wiki.
Unless, you are arguing that Wikipedia shouldn't have an editorial policy at all, in which case it's Geocities 2.0 and not an encyclopedia.
(And for the record, I think many of Wikipedia's policies are braindead, but the "my farts deserve their own wiki page" mentality on Slashdot is maddening.)
On many topics the English entry is almost unintelligible because it's just one (correctly sourced) quote after the other. God forbid someone trying to turn it into a whole instead of a disjointed mess because that might be interpreted as original research.
That's my main complaint as well, many wikipedia articles read as a disconnected stream of random footnoted facts.
However, I'm not sure if this because people are scared of original research, or just because editing is harder work than adding bits of information. The "more is better" mentality doesn't help either.
The chances are pretty slim that I'd ever want Star-Trek trivia, but it's not hurting anybody. That slim chance isn't zero. In case I ever do happen to need such info, where else could I rely on finding it?
There are like 8 different Trekkie wikis with different editorial rules. IIRC Memory Alpha is the main one.
Star Trek Wikipedia articles are a good example, because they used to be just of terrible quality, full "some fans believe..." crap and many of them written as if the show was real and not fiction. Since the other wikis have started up, most of the "Star Trek really happened" kooks moved on, and the Wikipedia articles are of much better quality.
There's no real problem with the "trivial" popular culture stuff as long as it meets the standards for every other Wikipedia article. But the point of Wikipedia is not to be the repository for anything that any crazy retard wants to type on the Internet about their favorite TV show. That's what Geocities was for.
So? We're talking about a time when a top-end PC cost $3500.
And a top-end UNIX workstation cost $20,000. Gee, I can't imagine why the $3500 PC with the $300 Windows NT sold. Especially after the Pentium Pro almost closed the performance gap.
(Not to mention that if you wanted UNIX with that PC, you had to go to SCO.)
The part you left out is that SVR-anything cost something like $5,000 per machine.
Also the entire UNIX workstation environment rolled over and died when Windows NT hit the market. Essentially nothing was done for a decade until Linux started taking hold. Sun couldn't even be arsed to change the color scheme from the vintage Reagan-era pastels until a couple years ago.
Except that IE8 is perfectly capable of emulating both IE6's and IE7's standards-noncompliance modes.
Nope, IE8 does not emulate IE6, which is the chief problem here. (It does emulate IE5, however.)
In fact, CSS2 that "works" in IE6 is almost guaranteed to break in IE8 or any other modern browser.
Even back in the pre-GM days, Saab used a lot of other companies' technology. The auto business is so capital intensive, its almost impossible not to run it in a global manner.
The real problem with Saab was that GM a lousy job in applying its global tech. Exhibit A is rebadging a Chevy Blazer SUV as a Saab. The 9-5 was also something like 12 years old and was just being replaced with a shared platform when Saab was killed.
Just like how webapps on the desktop never caught on, because native APIs are more capable, right?
Developers AND users don't want browser apps
Inconclusive. Developers and users like the store model. If the store sold polished browser apps (like bookmarks with a little authentication piece), would end-users even notice the difference in many cases?
It obviously wouldn't work for every app, but the "find a restaurant/movie theater near me" apps are essentially internet applications anyway with a little bit of native display logic.