Windows has a poor UI, so they give us contextual menus. Right, I'm still with you. Without universal application specifications, hot keys are a nightmare. Ok, that's understandable.
So, what does Apple do? "Compromise" and take the ever-so horrid contextual menus and combine them with a two-handed hot key that is neither convient nor intuitive. That obvious and understandable mouse button is replaced by an awkward key combo that isn't universally applicable (as I understand it, most of the programs that support it are ports from Windows).
Sure, it makes some sense that new users won't understand the second mouse button, but they certainly won't understand the key-click either. If Apple really wants to maintain a consistant and simplified design, they need to get rid of contextual menus all together and aide true UI design, rather than merely emulate a second mouse button.
Ahh.. lovely how that Tripod site comes with a free popup banner just to remind you how annoying popups are.
If Opera 4 ever becomes stable again, Opera has the option to prevent the Javascript window open command. Instead, the new popup would appear in the main window itself, so instead of closing it you hit the back button. It was still annoying but the main benefit was that you could only open one popup at a time and the window open on close trigger was rendered useless (as you're not closing it but going back).
"Like any open source project, if you choose to operate outside of the mainstream, it's not up to the mainstream to validate and support your particular fork."
Isn't that what I said? I didn't say it was a bad thing, nor did I say it was a problem, merely that in this case, Be is the mainstream.
It's not in the license as such. The controls are more like if we don't like it, it doesn't touch the "official" codebase. These rules even apply to indenting and commenting. They're neither strict nor intrusive, but they do insure that things get done the way Be wants them done.
Yeah you can take the source and do what you would with it, but you'd have to maintain all of it yourself, convince BeOS users everywhere to use it instead of the Be-sanctioned option, and go without any support from Be. Instead of "do it our way or we'll sue you," it's "do it our way or we won't help you and neither will anyone else."
that the more attractive parts of BeOS will be merely copied to more popular operating systems (your cultural and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own),
that the open source BeOS will be fragmented and refuse to move in any one direction, and, ultimately,
that Be won't be able to sustain itself on an open source business model.
If you look at the OpenTracker project, Be's foret into open source, you can see the kind of controls Be has put in place to prevent these things from happening.
Be has said in the past that if it were to their advantage, they would consider licensing or opening the source to most of the BeOS. Under no circumstances, said Be, would the source to the app_server or kernel be released, tying the rest of the code to Be.
R5 Pro was always stable for me, and 5.0.1 seems to fix a number of problems.
Huge MPG files are not a good idea BeOS, as the MediaPlayer tries to cache the entire file in memory before playing, so unless you've got gobs of RAM it won't play well. If you don't have enough RAM, it'll try to fit it all into virtual memory, which slows down playback incredibly.
It makes for faster and smoother playback of small files but absolutely horrid playback of large ones. I'm guessing what happened to you was related to a lack of available memory.
BeOS always has been good for what I use it for, and I rarely run into any problems, the most major of which can usually be ignored while you save your work and shut down the system. The big "white-screen-of-death" bugs usually come as a result of unsupported hardware.
Re:Review: Jon Katz's "Review: 'Titan A.E.'"
on
Review: 'Titan A.E.'
·
· Score: 1
It seems very Earth-centric and rather pompus, but here's my explanation of why the Titan needed to be destroyed:
Humans are a very "adaptive" species, and are adept at facing challenges when united.
Because of #1, humans were on the verge of becoming an "intersteller super-power," which could eventually rival the Drej.
When the Drej destroyed Earth, Earth was isolated and undeveloped; the Drej decided to take the humans out before the humans had the power to rival the Drej.
With the destruction of Earth, humans are isolated and disparate. This lack of a home to unite the species nullifies #1, "humanity's true power."
Now that the humans have their new home, they've regained #1, and can now fight together against the Drej in a united effort; this collective strength will protect them from the Drej and ultimately defeat the Drej once and for all.
Most of it isn't explicitly stated anywhere in the movie, but that's what I got out of it.
BEGIN WHY-THIS-MOVIE-DOESN'T-SUCK: I've said it before and I'll say it again: just because this movie is animated doesn't mean it's Anime; Anime is a whole different genre, a much better genre. Titan AE is a great step for American animation; it's definately not up to par with Anime, but head and shoulders above most domestic animation.
Everything that happened was predictable, and I mean everything.
You mean you could have predicted Han So--err I mean the captain was going to betray the kid to the Derj? As translucent as the characters were, no one I talked to saw that coming.
The main thing to remember is that Titan AE is an American film. Compared to the great Anime out there, yes, it is lacking. However, in terms of American animation, Titan AE is a great accomplishment and not to be dismissed so quickly.
And no, just because Highlander 2 and 3 were written by crackheads doesn't mean this one will suck; it's based on the series (which was kicking ass toward the end), and includes both Connor, Duncan, and, get this, Methos. Methos is worth the ticket price alone my friend. If you aren't aware of the later episodes of the series, Methos is the oldest living immortal (~5000 years old), pretty damned cool, and played by an excellent actor.
Of all the things I wrote, I didn't expect to be caught on such a trival issue. I wasn't really commenting about the Free Software Movement or Stallman (I'll admit I know little about either), but I meant only to point out my feelings on the GPL, which are rather unrelated to the topic except for the restrictive aspect of the GPL. The GPL is not magic; it is software license that is given the same power as any license agreement attached to a Microsoft product by copyright law. By abolishing that copyright power, we abolish the GPL, and so I provided a bit of my history with the GPL so that readers would understand my position.
Ok, ok I'm going out on a limb here... I think IP* needs to die. As technology becomes more and more sophisticated, it will become harder and harder to stop piracy. The only solution to this is to stop the advancement of technology, to build controls into the hardware and software on both ends, to build a proprietary Internet, something I don't think anyone wants. To stop Napster is one thing, but are we prepared to stop peer-to-peer filesharing all together? Would we be willing to give up our broadband connections to insure that we won't download huge data files? The choice, as I see it, is between the open and decentralized advancement of technology, something that has a proven track record at improving, enhancing, and expanding society, or an industry that exists solely to continue its own existence.
The principle side-effect of the death of IP is the driving force of capitalism. IP is a central part of technology; can technology survive without IP? I'll be honest and say I don't know. Feel free, slashdotters, to get me on this point.
My bias: I'm a BeOS-zealot most of the time, and it has taken a little compromising of views to reach this opinion. I've never been a real big fan of the GPL, but mainly because of the force it carries, given to it by copyright law and IP.
* Intellectual Property, referring to music, software, anything that is valuable because of its arrangement, rather than the sum of its parts.
Apply this to morality and you get the statement above.
Remember, as well, that trading music against the will of its creator is not immoral in the same sense that stealing a candy bar is. The former is dubbed immoral by our laws and society, while the latter actually affects someone in a tangible way through the lack of the candy bar. It is plausible to understand that someone would not consider the former to be immoral, as it is an artificial construct (though a perfectly valid one).
Maybe Napster should sue the RIAA for exposing their trade secrets. I mean, if it's a trade secret that Photoshop 6 is coming out, then it must a trade secret that Napster is used for piracy!
I've seen a few screen shots of the Media Player 7 beta, and I've seen it running on a few machines (normal users can download a beta of the player itself). I've refused to download it because I know it's beta and probably subject to the problems you mention above. However, you refer to "skin mode;" does that mean that there is a way out of skin mode? Can I use the old interface from Media Player 6?
Take Microsoft's new mouse... all they did was add a tailight really. Sun had the optical mouse in use a long time ago (granted, you had to have the reflective pad..but that was HOW many YEARS ago?).
Frankly the two extra thumb buttons (that work in both Netscape and Opera in addition to IE) and the ergonomic design are really what convinced me to buy the Explorer. The mouseball free, super accurate operation is just an added bonus for me.
Last time I checked, the following things were true: 1) It is not illegal to be neo-Nazi in the US 2) It is not illegal to traffic in Nazi memorabilia in the US 3) Yahoo! is a US-based company 4) Yahoo! has violated no US laws
Therefore, I don't see any problem as far as Yahoo! is concerned. As far as the French are concerned, I say let people be assholes. If they want to be Nazi worshipper idiots, let them. Just because it offends people isn't a good enough reason. There are WWII survivors in the US and there are people who spend their days dress as a Nazi in the US. The country is big enough that they don't frequently mix. So, the Nazis don't cause any problems, and we don't restrict their right to be dumbass Nazis.
Well, would you buy stuff from the Columbine shooting? Stuff from that building (in Oklahoma(sp?)) they blew up? Stuff from a 747 detonated by terrorists?
Maybe you would, but if you had someone close to you killed because of those, you probably wouldn't.
I'm sure if you talked to all of the survivors of the Columbine shooting and the relatives of those who died, you'd find a number of them with some sort of momento of the attack. It's part of the grieving process for some people.
There's a half-wrecked piece of the federal building in Oklahoma still standing at the memorial to the attack, commemorated just this past April 19th. Almost all of the relatives of those who died have been to the site, and many unrelated people see it daily.
The "probably wouldn't" part of your statement is a huge assumption. Let people live their lives as they choose. To deny people to see the past just because it may be disconcerting to someone somewhere is insane.
"Your freedom to move your arm ends where my nose begins."
Trying to impose some sort of external, artificial pricing model (i.e., "free") is at odds with the underlying economy and society in which most of us live.
The original Ask Slashdot question asks in a round-about way: "will free beer software kill the OSS movement?" And, by inference, if free beer software is on a path to kill the OSS movement, what can we do to stop it?
This guy was just pointing out why we don't need to stop Free Beer software and why we shouldn't.
To summarize: the market will decide if it wants free beer or free speech, something both of you seem to agree on. He isn't saying that free speech software is wrong by any means; it's up to the developer whether or not s/he wants to give it away for free.
According to dictionary.com, "Ouch!" isn't a sentance in English either, but an interjection. This then means the French do it "the right way;" it's no different in English.
"How now! interjections? Why, then, some be of laughing, as, ah, ha, he!" --Shak.
Maybe I'm blind, but I don't get ouebe (or is it ouèbe like the other poster suggested?). I've even got a few years of high school French under my belt.
OH HEY! Just got it, I think. "Web?" Silly me. Kept thinking ooh-ebb-ey.
For the rest of it, I think you're mostly right. I read (in MS Word which was nit-picking about my French spelling), that French people have created a word--Canadianismes--describing words of Canadian origin that aren't acceptable in "official" French. Most notably, these Canadianismes include technical terms and descriptions of animals and plants foreign to France. While unacceptable in formal French, there are no replacements offered, so you have to describe it in context.
So you can use the word for the word you can't use, but not the word itself! Silly French people!
As I understand it, the point of Esperanto is to remove arbitrary limitations and exceptions used by "evolved" languages, while in fact it does nothing but create limitations and exceptions of it its own. Perhaps not many, but enough to perclude its vaulted position as such a great language. Just the little bit about pronunciation was enough to turn me off as a native English speaker.
If I was going to create a universal language to replace the crooked system of modern linguistics, I'd call this guy up and get him to give it a once-over first.
Heh, then there's the problem with acceptance in an increasingly Hispanic America. Logically, English speakers think "yes," and I'm sure most of them will interpret it as "si" in the Spanish sense, missing the point entirely. It does serve a logical purpose, but its use would be lost on most people.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sorry there, but that's just insane.
Windows has a poor UI, so they give us contextual menus. Right, I'm still with you. Without universal application specifications, hot keys are a nightmare. Ok, that's understandable.
So, what does Apple do? "Compromise" and take the ever-so horrid contextual menus and combine them with a two-handed hot key that is neither convient nor intuitive. That obvious and understandable mouse button is replaced by an awkward key combo that isn't universally applicable (as I understand it, most of the programs that support it are ports from Windows).
Sure, it makes some sense that new users won't understand the second mouse button, but they certainly won't understand the key-click either. If Apple really wants to maintain a consistant and simplified design, they need to get rid of contextual menus all together and aide true UI design, rather than merely emulate a second mouse button.
Ahh.. lovely how that Tripod site comes with a free popup banner just to remind you how annoying popups are.
If Opera 4 ever becomes stable again, Opera has the option to prevent the Javascript window open command. Instead, the new popup would appear in the main window itself, so instead of closing it you hit the back button. It was still annoying but the main benefit was that you could only open one popup at a time and the window open on close trigger was rendered useless (as you're not closing it but going back).
In the midst of your Star Trek spelling lesson you misspelled captain.
"Like any open source project, if you choose to operate outside of the mainstream, it's not up to the mainstream to validate and support your particular fork."
Isn't that what I said? I didn't say it was a bad thing, nor did I say it was a problem, merely that in this case, Be is the mainstream.
It's not in the license as such.
The controls are more like if we don't like it, it doesn't touch the "official" codebase. These rules even apply to indenting and commenting. They're neither strict nor intrusive, but they do insure that things get done the way Be wants them done.
Yeah you can take the source and do what you would with it, but you'd have to maintain all of it yourself, convince BeOS users everywhere to use it instead of the Be-sanctioned option, and go without any support from Be. Instead of "do it our way or we'll sue you," it's "do it our way or we won't help you and neither will anyone else."
I haven't seen a single MPG file over 50mb play well under MediaPlayer, so it must be doing something wrong.
- that the more attractive parts of BeOS will be merely copied to more popular operating systems (your cultural and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own),
- that the open source BeOS will be fragmented and refuse to move in any one direction, and, ultimately,
- that Be won't be able to sustain itself on an open source business model.
If you look at the OpenTracker project, Be's foret into open source, you can see the kind of controls Be has put in place to prevent these things from happening.Be has said in the past that if it were to their advantage, they would consider licensing or opening the source to most of the BeOS. Under no circumstances, said Be, would the source to the app_server or kernel be released, tying the rest of the code to Be.
R5 Pro was always stable for me, and 5.0.1 seems to fix a number of problems.
Huge MPG files are not a good idea BeOS, as the MediaPlayer tries to cache the entire file in memory before playing, so unless you've got gobs of RAM it won't play well. If you don't have enough RAM, it'll try to fit it all into virtual memory, which slows down playback incredibly.
It makes for faster and smoother playback of small files but absolutely horrid playback of large ones. I'm guessing what happened to you was related to a lack of available memory.
BeOS always has been good for what I use it for, and I rarely run into any problems, the most major of which can usually be ignored while you save your work and shut down the system. The big "white-screen-of-death" bugs usually come as a result of unsupported hardware.
- Humans are a very "adaptive" species, and are adept at facing challenges when united.
- Because of #1, humans were on the verge of becoming an "intersteller super-power," which could eventually rival the Drej.
- When the Drej destroyed Earth, Earth was isolated and undeveloped; the Drej decided to take the humans out before the humans had the power to rival the Drej.
- With the destruction of Earth, humans are isolated and disparate. This lack of a home to unite the species nullifies #1, "humanity's true power."
Now that the humans have their new home, they've regained #1, and can now fight together against the Drej in a united effort; this collective strength will protect them from the Drej and ultimately defeat the Drej once and for all.Most of it isn't explicitly stated anywhere in the movie, but that's what I got out of it.
BEGIN WHY-THIS-MOVIE-DOESN'T-SUCK:
I've said it before and I'll say it again: just because this movie is animated doesn't mean it's Anime; Anime is a whole different genre, a much better genre. Titan AE is a great step for American animation; it's definately not up to par with Anime, but head and shoulders above most domestic animation.
Everything that happened was predictable, and I mean everything.
You mean you could have predicted Han So--err I mean the captain was going to betray the kid to the Derj? As translucent as the characters were, no one I talked to saw that coming.
The main thing to remember is that Titan AE is an American film. Compared to the great Anime out there, yes, it is lacking. However, in terms of American animation, Titan AE is a great accomplishment and not to be dismissed so quickly.
Highlander 4: Endgame comes out this August, and you say this year is crap? HAH!
And no, just because Highlander 2 and 3 were written by crackheads doesn't mean this one will suck; it's based on the series (which was kicking ass toward the end), and includes both Connor, Duncan, and, get this, Methos. Methos is worth the ticket price alone my friend. If you aren't aware of the later episodes of the series, Methos is the oldest living immortal (~5000 years old), pretty damned cool, and played by an excellent actor.
copy and paste this link to see a spoiler
Of all the things I wrote, I didn't expect to be caught on such a trival issue. I wasn't really commenting about the Free Software Movement or Stallman (I'll admit I know little about either), but I meant only to point out my feelings on the GPL, which are rather unrelated to the topic except for the restrictive aspect of the GPL. The GPL is not magic; it is software license that is given the same power as any license agreement attached to a Microsoft product by copyright law. By abolishing that copyright power, we abolish the GPL, and so I provided a bit of my history with the GPL so that readers would understand my position.
Ok, ok I'm going out on a limb here... I think IP* needs to die. As technology becomes more and more sophisticated, it will become harder and harder to stop piracy. The only solution to this is to stop the advancement of technology, to build controls into the hardware and software on both ends, to build a proprietary Internet, something I don't think anyone wants. To stop Napster is one thing, but are we prepared to stop peer-to-peer filesharing all together? Would we be willing to give up our broadband connections to insure that we won't download huge data files? The choice, as I see it, is between the open and decentralized advancement of technology, something that has a proven track record at improving, enhancing, and expanding society, or an industry that exists solely to continue its own existence.
The principle side-effect of the death of IP is the driving force of capitalism. IP is a central part of technology; can technology survive without IP? I'll be honest and say I don't know. Feel free, slashdotters, to get me on this point.
My bias:
I'm a BeOS-zealot most of the time, and it has taken a little compromising of views to reach this opinion. I've never been a real big fan of the GPL, but mainly because of the force it carries, given to it by copyright law and IP.
* Intellectual Property, referring to music, software, anything that is valuable because of its arrangement, rather than the sum of its parts.
A person is smart; people are stupid.
Apply this to morality and you get the statement above.
Remember, as well, that trading music against the will of its creator is not immoral in the same sense that stealing a candy bar is. The former is dubbed immoral by our laws and society, while the latter actually affects someone in a tangible way through the lack of the candy bar. It is plausible to understand that someone would not consider the former to be immoral, as it is an artificial construct (though a perfectly valid one).
Maybe Napster should sue the RIAA for exposing their trade secrets. I mean, if it's a trade secret that Photoshop 6 is coming out, then it must a trade secret that Napster is used for piracy!
I've seen a few screen shots of the Media Player 7 beta, and I've seen it running on a few machines (normal users can download a beta of the player itself). I've refused to download it because I know it's beta and probably subject to the problems you mention above. However, you refer to "skin mode;" does that mean that there is a way out of skin mode? Can I use the old interface from Media Player 6?
Take Microsoft's new mouse... all they did was add a tailight really. Sun had the optical mouse in use a long time ago (granted, you had to have the reflective pad..but that was HOW many YEARS ago?).
Frankly the two extra thumb buttons (that work in both Netscape and Opera in addition to IE) and the ergonomic design are really what convinced me to buy the Explorer. The mouseball free, super accurate operation is just an added bonus for me.
Last time I checked, the following things were true:
1) It is not illegal to be neo-Nazi in the US
2) It is not illegal to traffic in Nazi memorabilia in the US
3) Yahoo! is a US-based company
4) Yahoo! has violated no US laws
Therefore, I don't see any problem as far as Yahoo! is concerned. As far as the French are concerned, I say let people be assholes. If they want to be Nazi worshipper idiots, let them. Just because it offends people isn't a good enough reason. There are WWII survivors in the US and there are people who spend their days dress as a Nazi in the US. The country is big enough that they don't frequently mix. So, the Nazis don't cause any problems, and we don't restrict their right to be dumbass Nazis.
Well, would you buy stuff from the Columbine shooting? Stuff from that building (in Oklahoma(sp?)) they blew up? Stuff from a 747 detonated by terrorists?
Maybe you would, but if you had someone close to you killed because of those, you probably wouldn't.
I'm sure if you talked to all of the survivors of the Columbine shooting and the relatives of those who died, you'd find a number of them with some sort of momento of the attack. It's part of the grieving process for some people.
There's a half-wrecked piece of the federal building in Oklahoma still standing at the memorial to the attack, commemorated just this past April 19th. Almost all of the relatives of those who died have been to the site, and many unrelated people see it daily.
The "probably wouldn't" part of your statement is a huge assumption. Let people live their lives as they choose. To deny people to see the past just because it may be disconcerting to someone somewhere is insane.
"Your freedom to move your arm ends where my nose begins."
Trying to impose some sort of external, artificial pricing model (i.e., "free") is at odds with the underlying economy and society in which most of us live.
The original Ask Slashdot question asks in a round-about way: "will free beer software kill the OSS movement?" And, by inference, if free beer software is on a path to kill the OSS movement, what can we do to stop it?
This guy was just pointing out why we don't need to stop Free Beer software and why we shouldn't.
To summarize: the market will decide if it wants free beer or free speech, something both of you seem to agree on. He isn't saying that free speech software is wrong by any means; it's up to the developer whether or not s/he wants to give it away for free.
According to dictionary.com, "Ouch!" isn't a sentance in English either, but an interjection. This then means the French do it "the right way;" it's no different in English.
"How now! interjections? Why, then, some be of laughing, as, ah, ha, he!" --Shak.
Maybe I'm blind, but I don't get ouebe (or is it ouèbe like the other poster suggested?). I've even got a few years of high school French under my belt.
OH HEY! Just got it, I think. "Web?" Silly me. Kept thinking ooh-ebb-ey.
For the rest of it, I think you're mostly right. I read (in MS Word which was nit-picking about my French spelling), that French people have created a word--Canadianismes--describing words of Canadian origin that aren't acceptable in "official" French. Most notably, these Canadianismes include technical terms and descriptions of animals and plants foreign to France. While unacceptable in formal French, there are no replacements offered, so you have to describe it in context.
So you can use the word for the word you can't use, but not the word itself! Silly French people!
As I understand it, the point of Esperanto is to remove arbitrary limitations and exceptions used by "evolved" languages, while in fact it does nothing but create limitations and exceptions of it its own. Perhaps not many, but enough to perclude its vaulted position as such a great language. Just the little bit about pronunciation was enough to turn me off as a native English speaker.
If I was going to create a universal language to replace the crooked system of modern linguistics, I'd call this guy up and get him to give it a once-over first.
I mean, if it's not perfect, what's the point?
You do realize that buying it second hand negates the warranty?
Heh, then there's the problem with acceptance in an increasingly Hispanic America. Logically, English speakers think "yes," and I'm sure most of them will interpret it as "si" in the Spanish sense, missing the point entirely. It does serve a logical purpose, but its use would be lost on most people.