Hey, get with the program, everyone is over the name change now and actually thinks it's a good idea, plus Nintendo got a mass of publicity over the device for it into the bargain.
I fail to understand why a company such as Corel carries on plugging away at it when it would seem (to me at least) to be far more sensible just to sell its remaining assets to someone else and close up shop. Is it just the brand that keeps them going? Who buys their products? I didn't even know they still existed.
Re:Microsoft and/or Windows have hit the wall?
on
WinFS Gets the Axe
·
· Score: 1
In retrospect, it's remarkable how smart Apple was to go the route they did with OS X
I completely agree, but to be fair Apple had a fraction of the user and software base to worry about. For Microsoft to start fresh would take a much larger set of balls, to put it bluntly.
I asked my optician why he still wore glasses and why he didn't get surgery. His response - his sight is too valuable to him. If my optician is telling me that, I'm sure as hell not going to have it done.
This really is a no brainer. A bank or any other such institution should not need floppy, CDROM or USB devices enabled or even installed on the majority of its front of house PCs. Simple. And when I mean enabled I mean physically, ie if the PC cannot be purchased without USB sockets, disconnect them from inside the machine.
This is the same problem that so much technology suffers from, ie bloat. After the initial problems have been solved the manufacturers reach a point where the product is as useful as it's going to get before the next major leap in technology. In the mean time in order to get the same consumers to spend more money with them they pile on glitter that looks cool but actually isn't useful to most people, and in a lot of cases gets in the way of the basic functions. Instead of concentrating on what actually matters, ie reliability, ease of use, we get more problems, and obfuscation.
I'm convinced that there is a gap in the market for a manufacturer that can combine good design, reliable and cheap into products most people actually want. Implement a feedback loop of listening to customers needs and problems and implementing fixes and features they actually want and you end up with products that are refined over time rather than bloated.
Of course this wouldn't serve the average Slashdot reader, but most people aren't your average Slashdot reader.
I'm convinced that the sequence is actually a big piece of ASCII art. Find the correct line width, print the whole thing off and stand back. I'm guessing it will spell out something like "Sorry for the inconvenience".
This has gone beyond a joke now, Word had all that 95% of it's users needed around '95 / '98. Why do I need such bloat in my word processor when I can already use a perfectly capable browser to type 5 lines of text?
Here's an idea, how about modularising the application such that when I buy it I get the very basic functionality, but having paid for it I get the oppertunity to download and install all the extra features I need? This allows the software company to carry on developing bloat, yet the users only carry as much as they need (or indeed as much as their low spec machines are capable of running).
The software company could perhaps even charge less for the basic version, and then charge individually per feature the user wants to download. I would be more enclined to buy software that was cheaper and only did what I wanted it to do rather than a massive number of features that I am never going to use.
This also means less buggy application (I only have the bugs for the features I'm using), less time in downloading updates as I only have to update the module itself, and only the modules that I have installed.
Hell, you could even charge 3rd parties that wish to develop and sell features themselves by implementing some sort of 'Official Feature' scheme.
Why is the parent modded as funny? This is entirely the point. Oracle are not in the least bit interested in making things easy because making things difficult is where they earn their money. Their software is a nightmare to install and manage where other databases that are capable of 100% of what 95% of people need from a database are a breeze (PostgreSQL). If I were an Ubuntu developer the LAST thing I would want would be Oracle getting their grubby fingers all over it and making a big mess out of it.
My guess is that there will be a lot of duplication of large files, between people and also within a single user's mail box. One way to get around this would be to strictly impose a mail box limit, then provide a common, structured file system to which people can save documents and email links around instead of the files themselves. Open a section of this file system on a secured extranet site in case outsiders need access.
Long answer: I really don't want to re-write the ENTIRE GUI for each platform I port my app to. Would you?
Certainly not, that's what an abstraction layer is for. As a Java GUI coder I would be presented with a single GUI API, and then it's up to the JVM developers to map that API into the GUI/toolkit of the OS I happen to be running the code on.
The only argument against this I can think of is that there isn't a good set of lowest common denominator widgets available across the board. But I can't believe that's the case?
Sun build in support the leading toolkits, then let the user decide which one they want.
how does Java know which one to use?
Config file? Part of the install/config process for the JVM asks me what toolkit I'm using, or even does a search and gives me a list of available toolkits on the machine to choose from.
Except that in my (and apparently many other people's) experience it doesn't work. Java apps look like Java apps, ie they don't fit in with the look and feel of the underlying GUI, they feel slow and cludgy, simple clipboard commands are not always implemented, etc. I'm sure I'm not the only person who's heart sinks when I fire up a new app only to discover it is Java.
This may be a dumb question, but why can't Java just provide access to the existing desktop GUI (Windows, OSX, QT, whatever) rather than re-inventing the wheel with it's own set of widgets that inevitably don't look or behave like native apps?
Google had two options. They could either censor some of their results, or China would censor all of their results.
Actually they had three options, censor themselves, let the Chinese authorities censor, or not to do business in China at all until such time that there would be no need to censor.
I've been using Tomato Torrent for a couple of months now since I got fed up with Azureus taking up so much resource. It's hardly fully featured, but it does the job without any fuss.
Slashdot Mirror
...that's a space station!
Honestly, how much hassle is a mouse cable really? I can't say it's ever bothered me.
I read that as "Mice Produced Using Artificial SPAM". I need sleep.
Hey, get with the program, everyone is over the name change now and actually thinks it's a good idea, plus Nintendo got a mass of publicity over the device for it into the bargain.
I fail to understand why a company such as Corel carries on plugging away at it when it would seem (to me at least) to be far more sensible just to sell its remaining assets to someone else and close up shop. Is it just the brand that keeps them going? Who buys their products? I didn't even know they still existed.
In retrospect, it's remarkable how smart Apple was to go the route they did with OS X
I completely agree, but to be fair Apple had a fraction of the user and software base to worry about. For Microsoft to start fresh would take a much larger set of balls, to put it bluntly.
I asked my optician why he still wore glasses and why he didn't get surgery. His response - his sight is too valuable to him. If my optician is telling me that, I'm sure as hell not going to have it done.
SkySeer only one syllable away from SkyNet....
This really is a no brainer. A bank or any other such institution should not need floppy, CDROM or USB devices enabled or even installed on the majority of its front of house PCs. Simple. And when I mean enabled I mean physically, ie if the PC cannot be purchased without USB sockets, disconnect them from inside the machine.
This backspace is intentionally left blank.
This is the same problem that so much technology suffers from, ie bloat. After the initial problems have been solved the manufacturers reach a point where the product is as useful as it's going to get before the next major leap in technology. In the mean time in order to get the same consumers to spend more money with them they pile on glitter that looks cool but actually isn't useful to most people, and in a lot of cases gets in the way of the basic functions. Instead of concentrating on what actually matters, ie reliability, ease of use, we get more problems, and obfuscation.
I'm convinced that there is a gap in the market for a manufacturer that can combine good design, reliable and cheap into products most people actually want. Implement a feedback loop of listening to customers needs and problems and implementing fixes and features they actually want and you end up with products that are refined over time rather than bloated.
Of course this wouldn't serve the average Slashdot reader, but most people aren't your average Slashdot reader.
I'm convinced that the sequence is actually a big piece of ASCII art. Find the correct line width, print the whole thing off and stand back. I'm guessing it will spell out something like "Sorry for the inconvenience".
This has gone beyond a joke now, Word had all that 95% of it's users needed around '95 / '98. Why do I need such bloat in my word processor when I can already use a perfectly capable browser to type 5 lines of text?
Here's an idea, how about modularising the application such that when I buy it I get the very basic functionality, but having paid for it I get the oppertunity to download and install all the extra features I need? This allows the software company to carry on developing bloat, yet the users only carry as much as they need (or indeed as much as their low spec machines are capable of running).
The software company could perhaps even charge less for the basic version, and then charge individually per feature the user wants to download. I would be more enclined to buy software that was cheaper and only did what I wanted it to do rather than a massive number of features that I am never going to use.
This also means less buggy application (I only have the bugs for the features I'm using), less time in downloading updates as I only have to update the module itself, and only the modules that I have installed.
Hell, you could even charge 3rd parties that wish to develop and sell features themselves by implementing some sort of 'Official Feature' scheme.
What a useful feature this will be, a lot of people have told me my intelligence has been lacking.
Why is the parent modded as funny? This is entirely the point. Oracle are not in the least bit interested in making things easy because making things difficult is where they earn their money. Their software is a nightmare to install and manage where other databases that are capable of 100% of what 95% of people need from a database are a breeze (PostgreSQL). If I were an Ubuntu developer the LAST thing I would want would be Oracle getting their grubby fingers all over it and making a big mess out of it.
They used flint drills to remove cavities
Em, a cavity is a hole, so can someone tell me how you remove a hole with a drill?
What ranking can a search engine apply to a search query of one word, as this poster has used?
My guess is that there will be a lot of duplication of large files, between people and also within a single user's mail box. One way to get around this would be to strictly impose a mail box limit, then provide a common, structured file system to which people can save documents and email links around instead of the files themselves. Open a section of this file system on a secured extranet site in case outsiders need access.
Long answer: I really don't want to re-write the ENTIRE GUI for each platform I port my app to. Would you?
Certainly not, that's what an abstraction layer is for. As a Java GUI coder I would be presented with a single GUI API, and then it's up to the JVM developers to map that API into the GUI/toolkit of the OS I happen to be running the code on.
The only argument against this I can think of is that there isn't a good set of lowest common denominator widgets available across the board. But I can't believe that's the case?
Do Sun support QT or GTK? Or both?
Sun build in support the leading toolkits, then let the user decide which one they want.
how does Java know which one to use?
Config file? Part of the install/config process for the JVM asks me what toolkit I'm using, or even does a search and gives me a list of available toolkits on the machine to choose from.
Except that in my (and apparently many other people's) experience it doesn't work. Java apps look like Java apps, ie they don't fit in with the look and feel of the underlying GUI, they feel slow and cludgy, simple clipboard commands are not always implemented, etc. I'm sure I'm not the only person who's heart sinks when I fire up a new app only to discover it is Java.
This may be a dumb question, but why can't Java just provide access to the existing desktop GUI (Windows, OSX, QT, whatever) rather than re-inventing the wheel with it's own set of widgets that inevitably don't look or behave like native apps?
It's the Vogon Constructor Fleet clearig a way for the new bypass. We're next!
Google had two options. They could either censor some of their results, or China would censor all of their results.
Actually they had three options, censor themselves, let the Chinese authorities censor, or not to do business in China at all until such time that there would be no need to censor.
I've been using Tomato Torrent for a couple of months now since I got fed up with Azureus taking up so much resource. It's hardly fully featured, but it does the job without any fuss.