You should be more concerned with being a good role model. Nationalism is only a force for good when its interests happen to align with the preservation or advancement of civilization. Using it as justification to marginalize a group of underpaid, exploited fellow nerds is foolish, and will not be viewed kindly by history. It also won't give anyone back their jobs; those will just leave with the companies that created them, along with the GDP.
The ribbon really isn't the same thing as a flat look. The two are totally independent of one another. Take a look at this screenshot, for example: Windows 7 with visual styles turned off—no doubt familiar to anyone who's managed a recent Windows Server or used RDP. It's still full of the newfangled conveniences you loathe, despite being cast in traditional 90s bezels.
This is the point where the holier-than-thou crowd says you should know all the hotkey combinations for everything if you want to be efficient. Those never changed, creating a nightmare for anyone who wants to learn them in the post-ribbon Word.
The H-1B visa was a mistake. Even in Canada, employers have to go through a lengthy Labour Market Impact Assessment process before they can hire a temporary foreign worker, and some companies have had their privileges to do so revoked because they misrepresented their case and made it look like Canadians weren't available to do the job. We also have tighter salary laws. Extreme sub-market wages hurt everyone in the end—including the company, which ends up with damaged morale, weakened culture, and subpar work caused by inadequate training.
Almost all of the biggest offenders were iOS apps, so if you never had an iPhone you were spared the vast majority of incidents where skeuomorphism caused problems. Ideally, you're right, skeuomorphism should be helpful, but many designers used it to create the illusion of quality by borrowing images and textures from physical objects that they perceived as being valuable. Here is a thorough breakdown of the nausea of the era.
It's a little sharper than that—the current generation of interface designs was a direct reaction to the previous decade's tradition of absurd skeuomorphism. The moment Steve Jobs died, Apple did an about-face and started following Microsoft's Win8/Modern/Metro UI lead. It may look like a step backward to those who from the Windows 2000 and Gnome 2 era, since there's a loss of visual cues, but the flatness of current interfaces is way better than what the classics became in the post-Windows XP era: bloated, overdesigned, pseudo-real-objects cluttered with mismatched shadows and conflicting perspective angles. You couldn't tell what was a button there, either! At least now there's a consistency and a return to the actual use of design guidelines.
That said, there are still a lot of cases where literacy in idioms dominates: for example, the largely inexplicable convention of swiping sideways on a list to reveal 'delete' or 'edit' buttons in mobile apps. That's probably where you and the UX designers run into the most difficulty. But two decades ago, every "how-to-use-a-computer" class targeted at seniors started with how to operate a mouse—so, as I think you've already recognized, it's important to try to take these things with a grain of salt, and recognize that no one is completely objective when it comes to understanding the culture of computer operation.
No, they use FUD, brand name recognition, and bundling, and charge obnoxiously inflated rates. Quite a few less-savvy customers end up badly gouged. My landlord is one of them. He's stuck with a ridiculously overpriced DSL package from Bell because of Fibe TV—and his location, deep in the heart of metropolitan Toronto, is mysteriously not eligible for the actual fibre-optic-to-the-pole service promised in marketing material. If you actually read the entire article, you'll see mention of lobbyist groups trying to get the CRTC to change their practices of trusting incumbents to actually keep their prices competitive due to competition.
If you RTFA, you'll discover the little nugget of joy that the CRTC declined to regulate prices—again. So all those rural areas are going from terrible service to unaffordable service. I don't think the big telcos are that upset about this particular demand; they get money to overhaul their infrastructure (where needed) and can double-dip by charging their customers as much as they want afterward. It seems that this probably won't be changing any time soon.
In my high school cafeteria, half an hour from the bridge south into the US, they accepted US currency—at a 1:1 exchange rate with the Canadian dollar. It was considered something of a faux pas. Generally people here will tell you to go to a bank.
Not just the supply ship; it would be a type including the initial colony transport. Perhaps he means to steal it himself at the ribbon-cutting ceremony?
Curiously, not being manufactured by IBM has utterly failed to disqualify Macs. The ThinkPad is a pretty robust piece of hardware even under Lenovo; I imagine the devs at IBM who use them just think of it as outsourcing.
Of course it's unrealistic armchair-libertarian drivel: the magnetosphere is a harsh mistress, after all.
What's interesting about this development is that it isn't a nearly-entirely American endeavour, which is often the case with such ambitions; Asgardia seems to be Russian and the AIRC supporting it is Viennese. I suspect we'll see a lot more anti-authoritarian behaviour from Europeans in the coming years as a) the EU weakens, b) the Internet transmits political memes that were previously comparatively contained by media limitations like talk radio and poor English literacy, and c) people already exposed to (b) come of age.
The much more feasible version of "let's get off the Earth so we can get away from our countries' laws" is called seasteading, and generally involves a platform in international waters. There's one clear non-Libertarian, non-American example of seasteading (Sealand, UK) which is fairly old and unusually successful by micronation standards. These days, however, the idea is generally associated with these guys, who have been funded by Peter Thiel. They, unquestionably, are primarily concerned with ways to dodge regulation. Without a realistic means of building such a gigantic physical presence, though, they certainly aren't going to be doing much of that; at best they'd end up creating their own passports that no one would accept.
Were it that I had mod points! I think the title tells us more about the Ars writer than it does about anything else; your interpretation is much more consistent with the actual study's tone:
Abstract: Most theories of motivation have highlighted that human behavior is guided by the hedonic principle, according to which our choices of daily activities aim to minimize negative affect and maximize positive affect. However, it is not clear how to reconcile this idea with the fact that people routinely engage in unpleasant yet necessary activities. To address this issue, we monitored in real time the activities and moods of over 28,000 people across an average of 27 d using a multiplatform smartphone application. We found that people’s choices of activities followed a hedonic flexibility principle. Specifically, people were more likely to engage in mood-increasing activities (e.g., play sports) when they felt bad, and to engage in useful but mood-decreasing activities (e.g., housework) when they felt good. These findings clarify how hedonic considerations shape human behavior. They may explain how humans overcome the allure of short-term gains in happiness to maximize long-term welfare.
You shut your mouth! APK is a national treasure. Like the World's Largest Ball of Yarn, or Donald Trump's toupee. Anyone who can envision a Slashdot without his enlightened and charming meditations is a dirty, dirty heliocentrist.
...
More soberly, I honestly think he has schizophrenia. His writing and formatting is consistent with that exhibited in TimeCube and bears some resemblance to that of Francis E. Dec, Esq.
Notably, SoylentNews did not screw this one up. Their summary accurately captured the tone and content of the whole article. The hell, Slashdot? Are you trying to make this unpleasant?
Strassenbahnhaltestelle and Polenüberfallenmittelstoff aren't exactly English words, now are they? Check out this article summary, though. Have you ever seen anyone hyphenate "IP-address" like that before?
The typo was never the issue; it was the non-sequitur of mentioning World War II. It's generally regarded as pretty darn insensitive to imply that the Germany of today has spiritual continuity with the Nazis.
I still can't figure out what everyone's so upset about. In response to community backlash, Oculus has decided to change its DRM policy (again) to allow HTC Vive games to play on the Oculus Rift virtual-reality system.
I'm pretty sure it's just you. In response to community backlash, Oculus has decided to change its DRM policy (again) to allow HTC Vive games to play on the Oculus Rift virtual-reality system.
Slashdot Mirror
You should be more concerned with being a good role model. Nationalism is only a force for good when its interests happen to align with the preservation or advancement of civilization. Using it as justification to marginalize a group of underpaid, exploited fellow nerds is foolish, and will not be viewed kindly by history. It also won't give anyone back their jobs; those will just leave with the companies that created them, along with the GDP.
The ribbon really isn't the same thing as a flat look. The two are totally independent of one another. Take a look at this screenshot, for example: Windows 7 with visual styles turned off—no doubt familiar to anyone who's managed a recent Windows Server or used RDP. It's still full of the newfangled conveniences you loathe, despite being cast in traditional 90s bezels.
This is the point where the holier-than-thou crowd says you should know all the hotkey combinations for everything if you want to be efficient. Those never changed, creating a nightmare for anyone who wants to learn them in the post-ribbon Word.
The H-1B visa was a mistake. Even in Canada, employers have to go through a lengthy Labour Market Impact Assessment process before they can hire a temporary foreign worker, and some companies have had their privileges to do so revoked because they misrepresented their case and made it look like Canadians weren't available to do the job. We also have tighter salary laws. Extreme sub-market wages hurt everyone in the end—including the company, which ends up with damaged morale, weakened culture, and subpar work caused by inadequate training.
Almost all of the biggest offenders were iOS apps, so if you never had an iPhone you were spared the vast majority of incidents where skeuomorphism caused problems. Ideally, you're right, skeuomorphism should be helpful, but many designers used it to create the illusion of quality by borrowing images and textures from physical objects that they perceived as being valuable. Here is a thorough breakdown of the nausea of the era.
It's a little sharper than that—the current generation of interface designs was a direct reaction to the previous decade's tradition of absurd skeuomorphism. The moment Steve Jobs died, Apple did an about-face and started following Microsoft's Win8/Modern/Metro UI lead. It may look like a step backward to those who from the Windows 2000 and Gnome 2 era, since there's a loss of visual cues, but the flatness of current interfaces is way better than what the classics became in the post-Windows XP era: bloated, overdesigned, pseudo-real-objects cluttered with mismatched shadows and conflicting perspective angles. You couldn't tell what was a button there, either! At least now there's a consistency and a return to the actual use of design guidelines.
That said, there are still a lot of cases where literacy in idioms dominates: for example, the largely inexplicable convention of swiping sideways on a list to reveal 'delete' or 'edit' buttons in mobile apps. That's probably where you and the UX designers run into the most difficulty. But two decades ago, every "how-to-use-a-computer" class targeted at seniors started with how to operate a mouse—so, as I think you've already recognized, it's important to try to take these things with a grain of salt, and recognize that no one is completely objective when it comes to understanding the culture of computer operation.
No, they use FUD, brand name recognition, and bundling, and charge obnoxiously inflated rates. Quite a few less-savvy customers end up badly gouged. My landlord is one of them. He's stuck with a ridiculously overpriced DSL package from Bell because of Fibe TV—and his location, deep in the heart of metropolitan Toronto, is mysteriously not eligible for the actual fibre-optic-to-the-pole service promised in marketing material. If you actually read the entire article, you'll see mention of lobbyist groups trying to get the CRTC to change their practices of trusting incumbents to actually keep their prices competitive due to competition.
If you RTFA, you'll discover the little nugget of joy that the CRTC declined to regulate prices—again. So all those rural areas are going from terrible service to unaffordable service. I don't think the big telcos are that upset about this particular demand; they get money to overhaul their infrastructure (where needed) and can double-dip by charging their customers as much as they want afterward. It seems that this probably won't be changing any time soon.
Well, there's this story...
In my high school cafeteria, half an hour from the bridge south into the US, they accepted US currency—at a 1:1 exchange rate with the Canadian dollar. It was considered something of a faux pas. Generally people here will tell you to go to a bank.
Not just the supply ship; it would be a type including the initial colony transport. Perhaps he means to steal it himself at the ribbon-cutting ceremony?
Curiously, not being manufactured by IBM has utterly failed to disqualify Macs. The ThinkPad is a pretty robust piece of hardware even under Lenovo; I imagine the devs at IBM who use them just think of it as outsourcing.
Muphry's Law. Any spelling/grammar/language usage flame post will inevitably involve at least one mistake.
Tada: it's a micronation... in space!
Of course it's unrealistic armchair-libertarian drivel: the magnetosphere is a harsh mistress, after all.
What's interesting about this development is that it isn't a nearly-entirely American endeavour, which is often the case with such ambitions; Asgardia seems to be Russian and the AIRC supporting it is Viennese. I suspect we'll see a lot more anti-authoritarian behaviour from Europeans in the coming years as a) the EU weakens, b) the Internet transmits political memes that were previously comparatively contained by media limitations like talk radio and poor English literacy, and c) people already exposed to (b) come of age.
The much more feasible version of "let's get off the Earth so we can get away from our countries' laws" is called seasteading, and generally involves a platform in international waters. There's one clear non-Libertarian, non-American example of seasteading (Sealand, UK) which is fairly old and unusually successful by micronation standards. These days, however, the idea is generally associated with these guys, who have been funded by Peter Thiel. They, unquestionably, are primarily concerned with ways to dodge regulation. Without a realistic means of building such a gigantic physical presence, though, they certainly aren't going to be doing much of that; at best they'd end up creating their own passports that no one would accept.
Believe it or not, NASA has worried about language safety too.
Sadly, that joke is so old that it now has several answers. From newest to oldest, give-or-take:
It looks like Evil is the preferred option.
It's not mispronounced; the first screenshot in this article shows that the menu item (third from the left) is in fact spelled "manbang" and pronounced (using X-SAMPA) as /man.baN/, equivalent to how a conservative English accent would say "man bang" (with open front unrounded A) Here's the Wikipedia article on Korean phonology if you want to analyse it yourself.
...Is it possible you're salty because someone forgot to invite you to participate in Manbang?
You shut your mouth! APK is a national treasure. Like the World's Largest Ball of Yarn, or Donald Trump's toupee. Anyone who can envision a Slashdot without his enlightened and charming meditations is a dirty, dirty heliocentrist.
...
More soberly, I honestly think he has schizophrenia. His writing and formatting is consistent with that exhibited in TimeCube and bears some resemblance to that of Francis E. Dec, Esq.
2000 + (2000 - 1984) = 2016. Please consult your YouTube Crackpot Numerology Handbook for further explanation.
Notably, SoylentNews did not screw this one up. Their summary accurately captured the tone and content of the whole article. The hell, Slashdot? Are you trying to make this unpleasant?
Yes, but it would be non-binding, and if more than 50% vote Remove, then the Slashdot editor who posted the poll will have to step down.
Strassenbahnhaltestelle and Polenüberfallenmittelstoff aren't exactly English words, now are they? Check out this article summary, though. Have you ever seen anyone hyphenate "IP-address" like that before?
The typo was never the issue; it was the non-sequitur of mentioning World War II. It's generally regarded as pretty darn insensitive to imply that the Germany of today has spiritual continuity with the Nazis.
I still can't figure out what everyone's so upset about. In response to community backlash, Oculus has decided to change its DRM policy (again) to allow HTC Vive games to play on the Oculus Rift virtual-reality system.
I'm pretty sure it's just you. In response to community backlash, Oculus has decided to change its DRM policy (again) to allow HTC Vive games to play on the Oculus Rift virtual-reality system.