You're not looking in the right place. Microsoft, love it or hate it, worked out a long time ago that 'filename' and 'metadata' aren't necessarily the same thing. The filename and path are just handy locational indexes, and don't necessarily need to mean *anything*.
But you can have both... Metadata and reasonably named "locational indexes". Is it so strange to think that people, particularly administrators, might want to have some idea what a file does and why it is there just be noting its "locational index?" I see this is a significant flaw in the design of Windows. And then there is the Registry, of course. Who would have guessed that users might actually want/need to edit it manually. Certainly not Microsoft. That is just poor planning on their part and I won't excuse it.
You don't break legacy just because it's fun. Microsoft gets this right, even if they had to tread over it a fair bit in vista, and add some nasty hacks to deal with most of the fallout.
You can break legacy. It isn't fun, but it doesn't have to be disastrous either. Apple did it with OS X. And then they did it again when moving from PPC to x86. The only reason Microsoft can't do it is because they've got so much inertia. And it will be their downfall. Though it would probably help if Microsoft didn't wait 4-5 years between major releases (more granular change). Even if Microsoft did want to break legacy, everyone has gotten so used to the old flaws that they can't change. Vista might well be awesome. But the reality is that many people will still be running XP even 5 years from now. Apple, on the other hand, has gotten people accustomed to significant changes.
As for random stuff appearing in random places, try dealing with commercial software.
Fortunately I don't have to much on Linux. I will admit that much of the mess in Windows is as much the fault of developers as it is with Microsoft. But that distribution of responsibility doesn't make using and administering Windows any more pleasant.
We can't be responsible for what third parties do, however. Neither can apple (I just *love* dealing with adobe's software on apples, btw. Or Zend Developer Framework. mmmhm. ) Nor you. Install maya on linux sometime. Or matlab, or something else that you can't fuck with the organisational structure of, because the licensing server would crack the shits.
Indeed, Adobe does make a mess out of a Mac, that is for sure. Fortunately, the majority of applications I use on the Mac just drop right into/Applications without having to run instalers or uninstallers or worry about random libraries and temp files showing up in/System/Library. Apple has done a MUCH better job of encouraging reasonable software design... at least as far as logical distribution of application data. Microsoft could learn a lot from Apple, methinks.
Of course it matters. All kinds of bad things happen when you spew files into system folders. Ever here of DLL Hell? It also matters in terms of amenability and troubleshooting. I should be able to tell roughly what a file does just by look at its name and the folder it is in.
Really? Don't you think it is important to differentiate between OS libraries and application libraries? I do.
How about utilty programs?
It's not part of the OS, it shouldn't be in the OS folder.
Then why did they ship with the OS?
Hell, what about IE? Microsoft seems to think it is part of the OS. Should that be in C:\Windows too?
Well, Microsoft's retardedness about IE being part of the operating system aside, it's not part of the OS, thus it doesn't go in the Windows folder.
Their retardedness doesn't end there. Browse C:\Windows for a few minutes.
No, the fact that there are flaws doesn't make it a bloody mess
Wow, you should be a politician. So how many flaws == a bloody mess then? When does it become a mess?
At any rate, c:\windows as it stands isn't ideal, but your suggestion that we should abolish it altogether is far less ideal. What we need is to refine the system that's already there (ie, organize things inside c:\windows better), not abolish it.
What system? You mean the system that puts desktop wallpapers directly in C:\Windows? The system that puts temporary files in the same place? I don't 'see much of a system. It is a mess. Have you used Windows so long that you don't even notice it? I'm a slob and even *I* can see that it is a senseless mess of files that needs a complete overhaul.
Dude, if you can't hack that right now, how are you dealing with unix instead?
Because at least Unix has conventions.
If any platform's based on a standard of bizarre naming due to space saving stupidity, that's it.
Really? Ok, lets open up C:\Windows on one of our Windows servers. Hmmm a folder named "$hf_mig$". I suppose you know what that means or what convention that follows? Or C:\Windows\adam. Kinda looks like it might be some directory tools. Maybe ADAM = Active Directory AdMinistration? What's that doing there anyway? I could keep going down the list. I suppose there is a very good reason why there are.BMP files in C:\Windows? Desktop wallpapers? Come on. I wonder if they're related the other brilliantly named files such as SET2.tmp and SET3.tmp in that same directory. And don't get me started on the insanity that is C:\Windows\System32. Hardly a single file/folder that doesn't use 8.3 naming. I haven't clue what have that stuff is doing there.
Infact, name any mature platform that's based on reasonable standards for it's underlying API's and structure.
First of all, I was only talking about superficial organization. And if you want to see something nice, have a look at OS X some time. Not only is the System (/System) well organized, but most applications are neatly self contained in/Applications/Some.app. They usually don't spew files all over the place when installed. You know where the term DLL Hell comes from, don't you?
Didn't think you could. While it's true that things like the FHS are helping on the unix side, try telling an oldschool developer like oracle that they need to follow it. They'll laugh. and laugh.
I could give fuck-all what Oracle thinks. My Debian systems are very well organized, thank you very much. I don't find desktop wallpapers in/usr/lib. I don't find temporary files for applications in/usr/bin. FreeBSD is even cleaner. The system files never change unless I explicitly do an upgrade. All supplementary software (ports, mostly) goes in/usr/local. With Windows, on the other hand, who knows what strange and wonderful new files I might find dumped in C:\Windows tomorrow. Maybe $hf_mig2$. WHich would be version 2.0 of whtever that is, i guess.
Completely get rid of DOS concepts like drive letters... Why? What's wrong with them?
They are unnecessary and problematic. For example, if you have a network drive mapped and plug in a removable drive that wants to use the same drive letter, you have problems. Anyway, maybe it is just personal preference, but I find that drive letters are just too static, arbitrary, and undescriptive. They serve no functional purpose that isn't better solved by volume names and having a single filesystem hierarchy.
Make a new default shell that doesn't look and feel like COMMAND.COM.
All command-line shells feel the same (and yes, I've used them on Linux and OS X), I don't know what you expect them to do here.
Maybe coming from Windows they all look and feel the same. But coming from a background of doing real work through the commandline, there's a world of difference. Dunno what else to tell say.
Completely restructure the OS files so you don't have a single folder (C:\Windows) that is essentially a dumping ground for so much crap.
TERRIBLE idea. Now, just dumping everything into c:\windows isn't a good idea either, but what we need is to enforce logical folder structure inside that root folder. This is one area where Windows has the right idea: system files should all stem from one root folder, just as long as they're organized well within said folder. Having c:\windows\ { folder1...folderN} makes an order of magnitude more sense than having c:\ {folder1...folderN}. They're all OS files, put them in the same damn root folder.
Ah, but what happens when an application needs to install a shared library or some other plugin type thing? Does that go in the OS folder or somewhere else? How about utilty programs? Hell, what about IE? Microsoft seems to think it is part of the OS. Should that be in C:\Windows too?
If you ever get a chance, have a look at how OS X is laid out. All folders are accurately named and structured. Theres/System for purely OS related files and other folders such as/Library for in-between type stuff. They're not stuck on using the antiquated 8.3 naming scheme by default that Microsoft in its infinite wisdom still seems to think is approrpiate even though Windows has had long filenames for over a decade. Please. You might be able to apologize for Microsoft in other areas, but logical organization of the system is not one of them. Windows is quite simply a bloody mess. There is nothing they have done right there. They just puked in C:\Windows and C:\Progra~1 and called it an OS.
I download all my TV shows from Bittorrent. I don't even have cable. Why should I? If I'm just going to Tivo/MythTV the shows and skip commercials anyway, why not cut out the cable-TV middle-man?
Though I think it may have had the opposite long term effect on my viewing. I don't see ads for new shows so I don't hear about them like I used to. I only have like 4 shows that I watch regularly and if they were ever canceled, chances are that I would simply watch less. So downloading shows and skipping commercials has weened me off of television on the whole.
Doesn't bode well for the producers. They have to balance between the number of people who might, like me, just give up on broadcast television and those who'll use Bittorrent only to sample shows and then switch to regular TV. I suspect that more people will begin to see what a ripoff cable/satelite TV is and switch to "piracy" in the long term.
So the random laptop battery I have handy is rated 10.8V, 4.8Ah -- 52Wh. 5 minutes for 80% charge (from 10% to 90%, you're unlikely to let it go all the way to zero) is just shy of 500 watts. Your average wall outlet is easily capable of that (12A at 115V is a nice, conservative estimate).
Sure, but unless you up the DC voltage to the laptop, you're looking at 40A (@ ~12V) through the cord to your laptop. So you'd have a fairly bulky cord. Not a deal killer, but something to consider. Dunno how small you could make a 40A wall wart.
Well, you don't necessarily have to do it in 5 minutes, even 10 woudl be nice. And if you upped teh voltage to 48V or something you wouldn't have to pass much more than 10A. But maybe there'd be some safety concerns with that kind of laptop plug.
It would be the same old same old if the SP1 solved the most obvious flaws of the OS. But the thing is this SP will not solve the application compatibility issues, which in my opinion is one of the big reasons why people don't move to Vista.
It is a strange position Microsoft has gotten themselves into. People demand that they support perfectly software that is targeted for a system that is over 12 years old and at the same time users demand that Microsoft make major architectural changes (for security, primarily). If you're IBM, you go with supporting the old systems till the very end (it helps if the system was solid to begin with). If you're Apple, you plod forward with reckless abandon, often leaving user of an OS with a major revision that is only 4 years old in the dust. Both are valid approaches as it depends on on your audience, but you have to pick one, IMO.
I'd like to see Microsoft make a major new architectural change. As in, dump Win32. Completely get rid of DOS concepts like drive letters (ya, I know you can mount filesytems similar to unix, but it isn't the default and seems to have limitations). Make a new default shell that doesn't look and feel like COMMAND.COM. Completely restructure the OS files so you don't have a single folder (C:\Windows) that is essentially a dumping ground for so much crap. Support old apps only in a sandbox similar to OS X's Classic. Use a "fat" executable/library file format so nobody has to worry about what CPU they happen to be running. Apple, for example, makes going from 32 to 64 bit completely seemless. And even the switch to x86 was mostly painless.
But I'm guessing it won't happen any time soon. Microsoft users will be be stuck with Vista for another 5 years, at least. That is, if they even bother upgrading. A good portion of people will probably still be running XP 5 years from now. I find that strange because, as a OS X and Linux user, running even a 4 year old OS is unthinkable.
Ok, but is the OS *still* organized like crap? I mean, is C:\Windows still a dumping ground for a bunch of arbitrarily named data files, log files, drivers, and libraries using, for the most part, the old 8.3 naming convention?
Am I the one one who finds it amusing that we have betas and release candidates for service packs? And then we often get patches to fix service packs after they finally do release it.
Future tech support calls:
Tech: "What version are you running?"
User "Lemme check. Looks like version '2007 SP1b Build 3567 Patch Level 3'"
Tech: "Sir, you should be at version 2007 SP1b Build 3768 Patch Level 2"
User: "Wait, is that newer or older than what I have now?"
Tech: "It is a newer build of an older patch. You can download it from our web site, but if you do install it, you will not be able to install older builds of newer patches."
User: "Uh, OK?"
Tech: "You may also want to try running the beta version 2008 which I hear from our dev tech is just awesome after you apply all the prerelease sub patches."
How can companies run like this? IN my mind I see this as a big waste of effort and money on Best Buy's part.
Once you've gotten to the point of having full time lawyers (and I'm sure a company the size of Best Buy has many), doing shit like this becomes second nature. I mean, if you've got the manpower, presumably salaried, you can have them do whatever you want as long as it fits in their 9 to 5 work day and not "waste" anything. WHo knows, maybe they just had some downtime in legal and the lawyers got a little bored.
They say that idle hands are the devil's playground. And that's just hands in general. What do you think that says about lawyer hands in particular? Best Buy probably tasked them with this frivolous legal activity merely to avoid unleashing the horrific fury of idle lawyer hands! I wouldn't be surprised if the fear of bored/idle lawyers is the source of half the litigation in the US.
Forgive my ignorance if this is obvious, but why would you want to do that?
For applications that are richer and more responsive than traditional, page refreshing apps. Webmail and calendaring, for example. Also, administrative interfaces for various hardware such as routers, network copiers, etc. These things don't work very well with document oriented interfaces, IMO.
Surely using AJAX should be a complement to traditional web pages, not a replacement. I like seeing the URL change as I browse different resources on the web, and as a user am repelled by apps which break my back button, don't let me save state, and basically break the web. This really annoys me about gmail - though I understand there that they're dealing with info you're not generally going to make public, so the lack of bookmarking ability doesn't matter so much. The old Apple store was a good example of how this really breaks the user experience. They have even put in a whole load of nonsense in the address (1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa/wa in every url !!!!) to try to hide the fact they're stuffing gobbledygook in there when there should be state info. Very bad design. I think now they've fixed it up a bit so that you can at least bookmark or share an URL with a product range, if not a specific product.
What's wrong with Gmail in this regard? What do you want to bookmark in Gmail? I don't necessarily think that all the web should turn into AJAX stuff, but there are certainly instances where a platform neutral, no-local-install desktop-like app is very convenient. And since Java has apparently failed to deliver on that front, I look to web browsers.
Then again, I'm almost always going to prefer using a native desktop app if it exists. I mean, Gmail is good for what it is, but when I'm sitting at my own computer, I'm running Apple Mail and aggregating several mailboxes into a single place (thank you Google for implementing IMAP!).
If your app loads only a single page, presumably it doesn't feature any resources that the user might want to refer to again with a URI, share with a URI, or otherwise come back to? The searches can't be saved except within your web app? It can't be cached by the web server/client? There are so many downsides to this and so few upsides. Interestingly, it seems Rails is moving more towards the opposite of this; exploring REST as a way of providing specific URIs for specific content, rather than trying to make web pages into a desktop application in a browser window.
Indeed, the vast majority of my experience programming with AJAX is through Rails. Rails makes it fairly straightforward to fall back to non-ajax behavior. But at the same time, it would be fairly difficult to implement a Gmail-like app if only because Rails provides few of the client side application controls beyond the basic HTML inputs.
True, but there's little point in doing XHR if you're not manipulating the DOM. They go hand in hand. Together they make up "AJAX" as is commonly implemented. While doing XHR and manipulating the DOM are, in and of themselves, not particularly difficult, making a a truely rich desktop-like application using them can be tricky. Especially considering the relative sparseness of HTML with regards to application control.
Doing simple AJAX stuff is easy. Drag/drop a few lists. Insert a new div into the page... Anyone who's used Ruby on Rails knows that. The hard(ish) part is making an app that is completely AJAX. As in, loads from a single page and never refreshes after that. Though I haven't tried toolkits like GWT. Maybe using one of those is just as easy as developing a desktop application.
And even if they did go through the US, how hard is it to get 216 AMD processors through retail stores and ship them home? Reminds me of the encryption export restrictions. It's friggin' software! They only need a single copy of code to reproduce encryption for themselves. And it isn't like encryption is some huge secret. It isn't like they can't just download openssl.
Clearly all they intend to do is rewrite history books. There's a lot of history books out there. Might take a supercomputer to accomplish! Simply erasing Isreal from maps would be a relatively easy task which could be accomplished with just a few dozen Linux PCs, The Gimp, and the erase tool.
If evolution was still allowed to take it's proper course
Yeah! And how about those birds? I say let gravity take its "proper course" and make the birds fall from the sky!
Enough with this ignorant misconception that evolution has a "proper" course. Evolution is simply a change in allele frequency over time. No more, no less. Whether it ultimately helps, improves, or destroys a particular species is completely irrelevant to the definition of evolution. And there is no distinction between 'proper' evolution and 'improper' evolution. There is no ultimate destiny that we have some moral imperative to fullfill. So give it up.
The reality is that for as long as humans have been a social species we've helped the weak and/or injured to survive to some degree or another. Maybe modern technology allows us to do that to a much more significant degree, but there it is. That is just how social groups work. Humans don't tend to survive well on their own. If every human was left to his or her own natural defenses (even allowing for an 18 or so years to mature), we'd go probably go extinct.
Instead, they are allowed to live full lives in modern society, possibly passing their defective genes along in the pool.
In an introductory type course, you're most likely not going to touch on any of the more advanced features of Photoshop. You'll probably be doing the basics like layers, channels, color theory, etc. And all of that is in the Gimp. Once you know those basics it is just a matter of figuring out where the right menus and panels are in another program. Of course, teh same culd be said for old versions of Photoshop. So I don't think it really matters much one way or another. I'd lean towards the old version of PHotoshop just because it is the defacto standard.. not necessarily for any feature differences.
As for Flash.. I dunno that much about it. I know ther ere some OSS authoring tools, but I get the impression that they aren't really very usable. So the old version of Flash is really the only option.
But Dreamweaver is most DEFINITELY optional/negotiable. Web development does not require Dreamweaver.. nor is it any kind of standard. SOme people like it, ya, but you hardly need to to learn the basics of HTML and CSS.\
He didn't say you didn't. All Americans have the right to bitch their opinion. But you can't expect privacy You write your number up on the toilet wall and all expectations of privacy are foresaken. Nobody forced you to expose yourself to the world, so your "opinion" will be dully noted and flushed down said toilet.
I can expect that my identity won't be used for marketing without my explicit approval. It MUST be opt-in. For example, just because my number is the phone book (public), doesn't mean the book publisher has the right to write "This guy endorses Tide laundry detergent.' next to my name because I bought Tide once at a store affiliated with the phone book publishes. You want my endorsement? Show me a contract.
I mean what are you going to do about it? What can you do?
I suppose I could try suing if, for example, sensitive information was exposed by making public my purchases. Depends on the privacy agreement on the site, I suppose. Or i coudl blog about it and get a lot of other people to make a big fuss (as is happening now).
? They are Facebook and you are an impotent may fly. If privacy is important to you then next time get a fair price for it.
It isn't just about privacy. In the case of this facebook thing, your identity is being used and your opinions are being misrepresented by implying that you endorse something just because you bought it.
Bullshit yourself./Read/. Nowhere did he say you had no right to voice your opinion. He said he thought it was a fair trade, the provision of information for site access.You may differ: if so, complain and don't use. He didn't say "STFU and suck it up, big boy."
Why not complain and still use? I mean, if the service is important enough to you (and it is for many people). Even better, take the simple steps required to block the marketing by blacklisting the host/dir from which the js is loaded from... and complain for the sake of others who might not be savvy enough to block.
Personally, I think it's a fair trade. What do you expect when you put all your personal information in to a web-site that is free to use? They have to make money some how and the easiest way to do that is to sell your information on to other people or come to agreements with other companies to find ways to market to you.
If you don't like that then don't use Facebook!
Bullshit. We all have the right to voice our opinions regardless of how much we pay for a service. Besides, I'm sure Facebook would rather hear complaints from users than have a mass exodus for no apparent reason. I know from first hand experience how frustrating it is to find out that there's been some problem with a site/service for weeks or months that could have been fixed in a matter of minutes if someone had said something.
$30k for an "average" car? Are you suckers really paying that much for your "average" transportation? Shit. For $30k you better be getting a luxury car.
Slashdot Mirror
But you can have both... Metadata and reasonably named "locational indexes". Is it so strange to think that people, particularly administrators, might want to have some idea what a file does and why it is there just be noting its "locational index?" I see this is a significant flaw in the design of Windows. And then there is the Registry, of course. Who would have guessed that users might actually want/need to edit it manually. Certainly not Microsoft. That is just poor planning on their part and I won't excuse it.
You can break legacy. It isn't fun, but it doesn't have to be disastrous either. Apple did it with OS X. And then they did it again when moving from PPC to x86. The only reason Microsoft can't do it is because they've got so much inertia. And it will be their downfall. Though it would probably help if Microsoft didn't wait 4-5 years between major releases (more granular change). Even if Microsoft did want to break legacy, everyone has gotten so used to the old flaws that they can't change. Vista might well be awesome. But the reality is that many people will still be running XP even 5 years from now. Apple, on the other hand, has gotten people accustomed to significant changes.
Fortunately I don't have to much on Linux. I will admit that much of the mess in Windows is as much the fault of developers as it is with Microsoft. But that distribution of responsibility doesn't make using and administering Windows any more pleasant.
Indeed, Adobe does make a mess out of a Mac, that is for sure. Fortunately, the majority of applications I use on the Mac just drop right into
-matthew
Of course it matters. All kinds of bad things happen when you spew files into system folders. Ever here of DLL Hell? It also matters in terms of amenability and troubleshooting. I should be able to tell roughly what a file does just by look at its name and the folder it is in.
Really? Don't you think it is important to differentiate between OS libraries and application libraries? I do.
Then why did they ship with the OS?
Their retardedness doesn't end there. Browse C:\Windows for a few minutes.
Wow, you should be a politician. So how many flaws == a bloody mess then? When does it become a mess?
What system? You mean the system that puts desktop wallpapers directly in C:\Windows? The system that puts temporary files in the same place? I don't 'see much of a system. It is a mess. Have you used Windows so long that you don't even notice it? I'm a slob and even *I* can see that it is a senseless mess of files that needs a complete overhaul.
-matthew
Because at least Unix has conventions.
Really? Ok, lets open up C:\Windows on one of our Windows servers. Hmmm a folder named "$hf_mig$". I suppose you know what that means or what convention that follows? Or C:\Windows\adam. Kinda looks like it might be some directory tools. Maybe ADAM = Active Directory AdMinistration? What's that doing there anyway? I could keep going down the list. I suppose there is a very good reason why there are
First of all, I was only talking about superficial organization. And if you want to see something nice, have a look at OS X some time. Not only is the System (/System) well organized, but most applications are neatly self contained in
I could give fuck-all what Oracle thinks. My Debian systems are very well organized, thank you very much. I don't find desktop wallpapers in
-matthew
They are unnecessary and problematic. For example, if you have a network drive mapped and plug in a removable drive that wants to use the same drive letter, you have problems. Anyway, maybe it is just personal preference, but I find that drive letters are just too static, arbitrary, and undescriptive. They serve no functional purpose that isn't better solved by volume names and having a single filesystem hierarchy.
Maybe coming from Windows they all look and feel the same. But coming from a background of doing real work through the commandline, there's a world of difference. Dunno what else to tell say.
Ah, but what happens when an application needs to install a shared library or some other plugin type thing? Does that go in the OS folder or somewhere else? How about utilty programs? Hell, what about IE? Microsoft seems to think it is part of the OS. Should that be in C:\Windows too?
If you ever get a chance, have a look at how OS X is laid out. All folders are accurately named and structured. Theres
-matthew
I download all my TV shows from Bittorrent. I don't even have cable. Why should I? If I'm just going to Tivo/MythTV the shows and skip commercials anyway, why not cut out the cable-TV middle-man?
Though I think it may have had the opposite long term effect on my viewing. I don't see ads for new shows so I don't hear about them like I used to. I only have like 4 shows that I watch regularly and if they were ever canceled, chances are that I would simply watch less. So downloading shows and skipping commercials has weened me off of television on the whole.
Doesn't bode well for the producers. They have to balance between the number of people who might, like me, just give up on broadcast television and those who'll use Bittorrent only to sample shows and then switch to regular TV. I suspect that more people will begin to see what a ripoff cable/satelite TV is and switch to "piracy" in the long term.
Sure, but unless you up the DC voltage to the laptop, you're looking at 40A (@ ~12V) through the cord to your laptop. So you'd have a fairly bulky cord. Not a deal killer, but something to consider. Dunno how small you could make a 40A wall wart.
-matthew
Well, you don't necessarily have to do it in 5 minutes, even 10 woudl be nice. And if you upped teh voltage to 48V or something you wouldn't have to pass much more than 10A. But maybe there'd be some safety concerns with that kind of laptop plug.
It is a strange position Microsoft has gotten themselves into. People demand that they support perfectly software that is targeted for a system that is over 12 years old and at the same time users demand that Microsoft make major architectural changes (for security, primarily). If you're IBM, you go with supporting the old systems till the very end (it helps if the system was solid to begin with). If you're Apple, you plod forward with reckless abandon, often leaving user of an OS with a major revision that is only 4 years old in the dust. Both are valid approaches as it depends on on your audience, but you have to pick one, IMO.
I'd like to see Microsoft make a major new architectural change. As in, dump Win32. Completely get rid of DOS concepts like drive letters (ya, I know you can mount filesytems similar to unix, but it isn't the default and seems to have limitations). Make a new default shell that doesn't look and feel like COMMAND.COM. Completely restructure the OS files so you don't have a single folder (C:\Windows) that is essentially a dumping ground for so much crap. Support old apps only in a sandbox similar to OS X's Classic. Use a "fat" executable/library file format so nobody has to worry about what CPU they happen to be running. Apple, for example, makes going from 32 to 64 bit completely seemless. And even the switch to x86 was mostly painless.
But I'm guessing it won't happen any time soon. Microsoft users will be be stuck with Vista for another 5 years, at least. That is, if they even bother upgrading. A good portion of people will probably still be running XP 5 years from now. I find that strange because, as a OS X and Linux user, running even a 4 year old OS is unthinkable.
Ok, but is the OS *still* organized like crap? I mean, is C:\Windows still a dumping ground for a bunch of arbitrarily named data files, log files, drivers, and libraries using, for the most part, the old 8.3 naming convention?
Err, that should have been "Am I the only one.."
Am I the one one who finds it amusing that we have betas and release candidates for service packs? And then we often get patches to fix service packs after they finally do release it.
Future tech support calls:
Tech: "What version are you running?"
User "Lemme check. Looks like version '2007 SP1b Build 3567 Patch Level 3'"
Tech: "Sir, you should be at version 2007 SP1b Build 3768 Patch Level 2"
User: "Wait, is that newer or older than what I have now?"
Tech: "It is a newer build of an older patch. You can download it from our web site, but if you do install it, you will not be able to install older builds of newer patches."
User: "Uh, OK?"
Tech: "You may also want to try running the beta version 2008 which I hear from our dev tech is just awesome after you apply all the prerelease sub patches."
User: "Uh..."
"Kent. This is God. Stop playing with yourself."
Sorry, but the summary reminded me of the movie "Real Genius."
Once you've gotten to the point of having full time lawyers (and I'm sure a company the size of Best Buy has many), doing shit like this becomes second nature. I mean, if you've got the manpower, presumably salaried, you can have them do whatever you want as long as it fits in their 9 to 5 work day and not "waste" anything. WHo knows, maybe they just had some downtime in legal and the lawyers got a little bored.
They say that idle hands are the devil's playground. And that's just hands in general. What do you think that says about lawyer hands in particular? Best Buy probably tasked them with this frivolous legal activity merely to avoid unleashing the horrific fury of idle lawyer hands! I wouldn't be surprised if the fear of bored/idle lawyers is the source of half the litigation in the US.
-matthew
For applications that are richer and more responsive than traditional, page refreshing apps. Webmail and calendaring, for example. Also, administrative interfaces for various hardware such as routers, network copiers, etc. These things don't work very well with document oriented interfaces, IMO.
What's wrong with Gmail in this regard? What do you want to bookmark in Gmail? I don't necessarily think that all the web should turn into AJAX stuff, but there are certainly instances where a platform neutral, no-local-install desktop-like app is very convenient. And since Java has apparently failed to deliver on that front, I look to web browsers.
Then again, I'm almost always going to prefer using a native desktop app if it exists. I mean, Gmail is good for what it is, but when I'm sitting at my own computer, I'm running Apple Mail and aggregating several mailboxes into a single place (thank you Google for implementing IMAP!).
Indeed, the vast majority of my experience programming with AJAX is through Rails. Rails makes it fairly straightforward to fall back to non-ajax behavior. But at the same time, it would be fairly difficult to implement a Gmail-like app if only because Rails provides few of the client side application controls beyond the basic HTML inputs.
-matthew
True, but there's little point in doing XHR if you're not manipulating the DOM. They go hand in hand. Together they make up "AJAX" as is commonly implemented. While doing XHR and manipulating the DOM are, in and of themselves, not particularly difficult, making a a truely rich desktop-like application using them can be tricky. Especially considering the relative sparseness of HTML with regards to application control.
Doing simple AJAX stuff is easy. Drag/drop a few lists. Insert a new div into the page... Anyone who's used Ruby on Rails knows that. The hard(ish) part is making an app that is completely AJAX. As in, loads from a single page and never refreshes after that. Though I haven't tried toolkits like GWT. Maybe using one of those is just as easy as developing a desktop application.
And even if they did go through the US, how hard is it to get 216 AMD processors through retail stores and ship them home? Reminds me of the encryption export restrictions. It's friggin' software! They only need a single copy of code to reproduce encryption for themselves. And it isn't like encryption is some huge secret. It isn't like they can't just download openssl.
Clearly all they intend to do is rewrite history books. There's a lot of history books out there. Might take a supercomputer to accomplish! Simply erasing Isreal from maps would be a relatively easy task which could be accomplished with just a few dozen Linux PCs, The Gimp, and the erase tool.
Yeah! And how about those birds? I say let gravity take its "proper course" and make the birds fall from the sky!
Enough with this ignorant misconception that evolution has a "proper" course. Evolution is simply a change in allele frequency over time. No more, no less. Whether it ultimately helps, improves, or destroys a particular species is completely irrelevant to the definition of evolution. And there is no distinction between 'proper' evolution and 'improper' evolution. There is no ultimate destiny that we have some moral imperative to fullfill. So give it up.
The reality is that for as long as humans have been a social species we've helped the weak and/or injured to survive to some degree or another. Maybe modern technology allows us to do that to a much more significant degree, but there it is. That is just how social groups work. Humans don't tend to survive well on their own. If every human was left to his or her own natural defenses (even allowing for an 18 or so years to mature), we'd go probably go extinct.
Oh noes!!111!!!
In an introductory type course, you're most likely not going to touch on any of the more advanced features of Photoshop. You'll probably be doing the basics like layers, channels, color theory, etc. And all of that is in the Gimp. Once you know those basics it is just a matter of figuring out where the right menus and panels are in another program. Of course, teh same culd be said for old versions of Photoshop. So I don't think it really matters much one way or another. I'd lean towards the old version of PHotoshop just because it is the defacto standard.. not necessarily for any feature differences.
As for Flash.. I dunno that much about it. I know ther ere some OSS authoring tools, but I get the impression that they aren't really very usable. So the old version of Flash is really the only option.
But Dreamweaver is most DEFINITELY optional/negotiable. Web development does not require Dreamweaver.. nor is it any kind of standard. SOme people like it, ya, but you hardly need to to learn the basics of HTML and CSS.\
I can expect that my identity won't be used for marketing without my explicit approval. It MUST be opt-in. For example, just because my number is the phone book (public), doesn't mean the book publisher has the right to write "This guy endorses Tide laundry detergent.' next to my name because I bought Tide once at a store affiliated with the phone book publishes. You want my endorsement? Show me a contract.
I suppose I could try suing if, for example, sensitive information was exposed by making public my purchases. Depends on the privacy agreement on the site, I suppose. Or i coudl blog about it and get a lot of other people to make a big fuss (as is happening now).
It isn't just about privacy. In the case of this facebook thing, your identity is being used and your opinions are being misrepresented by implying that you endorse something just because you bought it.
Why not complain and still use? I mean, if the service is important enough to you (and it is for many people).
Even better, take the simple steps required to block the marketing by blacklisting the host/dir from which the js is loaded from... and complain for the sake of others who might not be savvy enough to block.
Bullshit. We all have the right to voice our opinions regardless of how much we pay for a service. Besides, I'm sure Facebook would rather hear complaints from users than have a mass exodus for no apparent reason. I know from first hand experience how frustrating it is to find out that there's been some problem with a site/service for weeks or months that could have been fixed in a matter of minutes if someone had said something.
$30k for an "average" car? Are you suckers really paying that much for your "average" transportation? Shit. For $30k you better be getting a luxury car.