>Ok, this is just nitpicking and doesn't add anything to the discussion, but >in most of Europe, manual gear shift is the standard and will remain so for long.
Yep, I forgot that TWIAVBP. But my original point still holds: what works for one person doesn't necessarily work for another.
As much as I'm a geek myself, I also know something of design and usability. And the last person I'd want designing my User Interface, GUI or CLI, is an engineer!
"Sure, see, just type cwer72 -woiuerxcvz and it'll do it right every time. Oh, yeah, it's mnemonic, you know the 1997 top ten hit by the frogmen?"
Actually, you're right. Many of the Windows NT problems are related to application issues. (Of course, some would see this as an inherent weakness of the OS; depending on the circumstance, that may be a deciding factor.)
I was recently at a Microsoft Partners function that was attended by three Windows 2000 developers. One of them discussed specifically the question of why Windows/IIS web servers needed to be rebooted so often. Here's (approximately) what he said: "We found that they weren't always rebooting because they needed to, but because they wanted it to happen under their control, not when the machine decided it was needed. When we examined the problems, we found most of them were within IIS itself, relating to locked files and non-terminating scripts. Under Windows 2000, IIS runs as a service that you can stop and start by itself without rebooting the OS, and you can schedule it to happen when you want."
So, in essence, they worked around the problem by providing a more robust solution. Now you can schedule your web services to automatically shut down and restart themselves, without a time-consuming hardware reboot.
I can say from using both W2K Professional (beta) and Server (gold) that it's far more robust than Windows NT 4.0. You could always achieve good reliability with NT by carefully limiting your choice of hardware and running only software that was needed, but that's no longer going to be as necessary. I still have my beefs with Microsoft, but reliability isn't going to be nearly as high on the list as it used to. ----
>Guys, what Linux needs is a better approach to it's GUI. It would be great if we >could use Mac's code. They should release their code as an open source product. >I believe that MAC is taking their user interfaces seriously and that >this is something that Linux is missing. Go Open Mac!
Linux DOES need a better approach to its GUI(s). Let's not oversimplify, though.
The power of the Macintosh GUI isn't in its code, per se, but in the <a href="http://google.com/search?query=apple%20human %20interface%20guidelines&num=50">Apple Human Interface Guidelines</a> that were developed in large part as a result of Jobs bringing all those Xerox people over to Cupertino. They were academics and serious about these issues, so they diligently tested and honed their principles. As a result the Mac interface is clean and usable, in many ways just hte opposite of the Microsoft marketing-driven Windows GUI, where everybody is supposed to follow the rules but Redmond (MS programmers are notorious for having side-by-side widgets with entirely different interface approaches). The original HIG were excessively rigid (i.e. requiring only ONE way to do something, which meant you couldn't have keyboard shortcuts -- but those were introduced later), but by being based on principles they remained a useful foundation for interface design right up until recently.
The sad part is that Apple has apparently abandoned these principles; the new MacOS X interface is a graphic designer's wet dream, and a horrifying sight to usability people like <a href="http://www.asktog.com/">Bruce "Tog" Tognazzini</a> who was on the original team. If you need to know what the new Mac will look like, check out the Quicktime client; the new philosophy seems to be to make every application like a little handheld Sony appliance, common interface elements and mouseable operation be damned.
Thus, what I believe the Gnome/KDE folks should do is carefully read those Apple Human Interface Guidelines from 15 years ago, and apply as much of that as they can to building a proper usabile interface for Linux that doesn't feel like a crazy-quilt mix of styles. I'm not saying it's in bad shape now, but aside from skins and themes, it's far from pretty. A more consistent interface will go a long way toward allowing Linux to creep out of the server market and onto non-hacker desktops. ----
When they say browser here, they don't mean a _web_ browser; instead they mean what became the Finder. The _web_ browser paradigm is based on hypertext within the document. The _document_ browser paradigm is based on a hierarchical file list and simultaneous (or triggered) display of the document.
Put another way, the document browser lacked the interactivity of a web browser. But it certainly was a precursor; it simply awaited the invention of a viable hypertext system by Tim Berners-Lee et al. to enhance its capabilities. These were all gradual evolutionary steps that had their roots in academic thinktanks long before the average person could make use of them.
Of course, the beauty of the Lisa was that Apple was actually trying to give this power to the average user. ----
>Heh, also from a Mac vs PC chicken or egg debate, >they said that the Lisa UI was first introduced >at the National Computer Convention in 1980, >about 5 years before Windows 1 was released.
Chicken/Egg? Is there anyone who denies that the Lisa was the first graphical personal computer on the market? In any event, aside from Apple, there were a number of companies working on bringing GUIs to personal computers, including GEM, TopView, and the Microsoft/IBM collaboration that was to become OS/2 and Windows after they parted company. (It might have hit the market even sooner if it had not been for their infighting.)
>Shouldn't windows 1 have been released in the >year 1? Just a question.
Nyuck nyuck.
>At any rate, im sure this will get flamed to >hell, but at least now we have evidence to set >the record straight.
I ask again, who says differently? A lot of people were actually alive then (it may surprise you to konw) and they remember these events pretty clearly. Again, who ever said Windows came first? Yeesh. The flammage is bad enough without making up nonexistent arguments.
>Ironically enough, now we seem to be moving back >towards a CLI, simply for the sheer power that >comes with CLI. Gui is like putting a blanket >over a puzzle and trying to put the puzzle >together by moving the blanket around.
Well, CLI is certainly never going to be the interface of choice for your average desktop worker, just as manual transmission is not the favorite way of changing gears. The GUI is faster and easier for certain tasks. (I certainly prefer writing in a GUI vs. writing in vi.) The CLI is faster and easier for certain other tasks (e.g. managing a server, importing lists of users and rights). If you're referring to Linux, well, keep in mind that even Linux as it grows will have to encompass more than one interface paradigm.
The Microsoft method is to (as you said) put a blanket over the top, hide the complexity. I don't think it's emblematic of all approaches to writing a GUI, however. The GUI is one interactive way of accessing functionality, if it's written right. It's only when it begins to get in the way of the functionality (try adding ten users in a row, or setting up a piece of hardware without the wizard) that the GUI becomes a liability. ----
Of course Microsoft uses workarounds. Defects (the more generic term) may be resolved in numerous ways, from a workaround to documentation to a code fix. Microsoft uses a quality assurance methodology to determine ahead of time what will be a showstopper and what acceptable resolutions are. ----
Windows 2000 is the most stable "dot zero" Microsoft release I've ever seen. This report of 65,000 bugs is completely divorced from any reality.
Windows 2000 isn't for the home desktop user anyway. Windows 2000 is for corporate networks, and with some exceptions, only makes sense when it's networked together with other Windows 2000 machines. ----
Nice idealized philosophy, but haven't you ever encountered this situation: * Customer reports bug. * Technician/Developer tries to duplicate bug, and fails.
Besides, not all bugs are "debugged" by fixing the software. Some bugs are marked for workarounds, others become warnings (don't use this with that), and so forth. Unless you have unlimited funds and unlimited time, you can never "fix" all bugs.
(By the way, the "infamous" Chevy Nova actually sold just fine in Latin America. The urban legend that it didn't arose later.) ----
>According to a story on ZDNET, Sm@rt Reseller got an internal MS memo that says Windows 2000 >has 63,000 "defects" (if you read the article the number goes up to 65,000+ bugs), and that's the >same Windows that will be out on Feb. 17! Is this what MS suggests putting on people's workstations >and installing on production servers? What do you think?
(By the way, when is the Extrans going to work again? Taco? Taco? Bueller?)
This "HeUnique" goombah needs a) a little computer science education, b) to read more carefully, c) to sit down and take a deep breath before posting.
First, the ZDNet article refers to 63,000 "defects", but not all defects are bugs. As reading it makes clear, some defects are simply usability issues, some are shortfalls in meeting intended functionality, others are simply things that cause end-user confusion. To equate all these with software bugs that make the product unusable indicates many things, starting with a lack of real-world experience delivering software to end-users, and obviously including no exposure to the product in question.
Of course Microsoft suggests putting this in a production environment. That's what a piece of software achieving release MEANS. Release does not mean the software works perfectly. It means it meets customer or client expectations, which in a properly managed relationship, are equal to the deliverable. If you've led the client to believe they'll get platinum and you deliver brass, that says more about you than the client. But if you say by X we can deliver brass, or we can wait until Y if you insist on silver, Z for gold... then it becomes a relationship that both parties will be happy with. That is what is meant by a "zero-defect" delivery of product.
I hope that HeUnique doesn't continue to help Slashdot slide into the abyss of adolescent BBS flammage. ----
My company's in the Windows 2000 beta program, too, and we moved all the servers to Windows 2000 about one release candidates prior to gold.
Just because it's "beta" doesn't mean it doesn't work. Just because something has "bugs" doesn't mean they affect you and your configuration. Windows 2000 is very stable by any standard. ----
The word "discover" is certainly politically loaded, but I don't think you can deny that Columbus was the first significant European expedition to arrive here, and that began one of the most significant migrations in human history.
Somebody was bound to do it eventually. The populations here didn't have the technology or the economy (for easily demonstrable geographic and historical reasons) to compete with the Europeans.
It's simply a matter of perspective. Instead of denying the obvious, suggest a better name than "discovery". ----
The author Jared Diamond makes a convincing case (Guns, Germs, and Steel) that the economics just weren't there to sustain Viking colonies, even if the climate hadn't changed. There were never any long-term permanent residences on the continent, and the difference in resources and available technologies was too great. On the other hand, when Southern Europeans arrived in the West Indies, they were much more technologically and economically prepared to take advantage. ----
cmuncey touches on a number of excellent points! Many of the posts are indeed WRONG: this has no relevance to either the FIRST (free speech) or FOURTH (search and seizure) amendments, since this is a CIVIL lawsuit. Not only are the rules of evidence different from a criminal trial ("preponderance of the evidence" vs. "beyond a reasonable doubt" -- remember how OJ lost the wrongful death lawsuit?), but the rules of discovery PERMIT subpoenas of practically anything that might be tangentially related. Since there are no criminal charges -- nobody can go to jail -- the same protections DO NOT APPLY.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled misinformed Slashdot rant-orgy. ----
late reply, but maybe you'll see this in your log.
I said there was one mission to fix Hubble. You are correct, the first mission was an unplanned one to correct the optics. That was the mission I referred to.
As I stated, while it was unfortunate that the main mirror was imperfect, it was still able to perform good science: this is something that is made clear by Eric Chaisson, who was the Science Director of the Space Telescope Science Institute at the time.
As for the gyro replacement, this was a planned refit that was known to be necessary for many months. Shuttle scheduling pushed the original maintenance mission back many months, and when the Hubble ran out of working gyros, the shuttle was rescheduled as soon as possible to replace them.
Call it whatever you like; my point stands. The most recent Hubble servicing mission was already planned and expected. The fact that Hubble shut down and waited for the mission is irrelevant.
When you are due a 3000 mile oil change, and the oil change place is closed, and you stop driving your car until you can take it in for the oil change -- is that a "fix"? That's close to what happened here. ----
I'm disappointed once again in the lack of research on slashdot posts.
Nowhere was it mentioned in the original post that this was a result of discussions between the United Auto Workers and Ford during their last contract negotiation. As a result, about half the posts here on the topic questioned the company's motives and intentions, even suspecting that the company wanted to track their internet usage, or limit it to approved sites. Neither appears to be the case.
From what I can tell, this probably came out of a discussion that can be summarized, roughly, as: "We can't pay that much for a non-tech-savvy workforce." "Well, then, help make that workforce tech-savvy."
In fact, this was specifically mentioned as part of <a href="http://www.uaw.org/contract99/ford/index.htm l">the UAW/Ford contract agreement</a> back in October; Ford agreed to study it as part of a broader initiative to extend educational services to workers and their families.
According to <a href="http://www.ford.com/default.asp?pageid=106&s toryid=674">the Ford press release</a>, access will not be through the corporate network but through the ISP PeoplePC via UUNET.
Under US income tax laws, the cost of a service provided by the company as a benefit will have to be subtracted from the market value, and the difference taxed the same as income. Enforcement is always difficult with such benefits, though. ----
It's short-sighted to blame NASA for the problems with ISS.
ISS is first and foremost a politically-based program that is underwritten by Congress for reasons other than advancing science. It may well help advance science in certain ways, but it explicitly will not help us get to Mars, except in generating more reams of data on weightless living.
What ISS is, mainly, is a prototype international PROJECT that only incidentally happens to be an engineering feat at 212 nautical miles above sea level.
The Interim Control Module was first proposed a long time ago, and initial construction took place last year (converting some prior classified project's equipment that had never been launched). The schedule was revised many times to allow for the ICM launch if the Russian control module wasn't ready by N; N has come and gone and been reset a couple of times since then, for both US and Russian reasons (shuttle wiring, Proton launch failure).
NASA, all things being equal, would readily launch the ICM in a New York minute if it would keep the ISS project funded and running. Unfortunately, the decisions about such things are really made at a very high political level, and launching the ICM would be a major embarassment for Russia. The White House doesn't want that, so the ICM will <b>only</b> be launched if there's <b>no other way</b> to prevent the existing pieces (Zarya, Node I) from de-orbiting on their own.
NASA was always smart about this; their hands were tied. If you'd like to know more about how the ISS came to be a US/Russian/European/Japanese project, I suggest reading Brian Burroughs's _Dragonfly_ (about the Shuttle-Mir astronauts, including the fire and collision). ----
It's interesting that they should publish this article, since their entire business model depends on e-mailing at least four people (Representative, both Senators, President) every time somebody votes in one of their (non-scientific) online polls.
Sure, it makes it easy for the "average citizen" to "speak out", but how much attention are they going to really pay to form e-mails -- in effect, political spam -- from an online poll site? (We all should know to be skeptical of any online poll; I've seen many of them spammed by somebody going to a particular political forum and posting a link.) The respondents to these polls are self-selected; the polls are not scientific in any way. They don't even have any way to verify whether the respondent is represented by the people they say that they claim. They don't even have a way of verifying that people are citizens, let alone US residents or voters!
I've heard the following rule of thumb for getting a Congressman to listen to you: * a personal visit is worth ten phone calls * a phone call is worth ten letters * a letter is worth ten faxes * a fax is worth ten e-mails
Keeping in mind that no matter what, very few of these communications besides the top one actually involve directly reaching the office-holder. For the most part, the staff merely files the communication and marks the opinion on a chart somewhere; if you get a reply (and most personal letters are eventually replied to), it will be a polite form reply, barely indicating that the original letter was actually read (especially if the opinion isn't shared by the representative); something like "Your views are very important to us; the N budget is very important to every American; etc.".
None of this is anything like the idea some may have of e-mailing "Sen. Joe Smith" and getting back a nice note, "liked what you said about the budget, thanks, Joe". Why the e-mail model should be more directly responsive than the snail mail model is an assertion that eludes me. Today, each person in Congress represents about 570,000 people, of whom perhaps 225,000 are voters.
I'm not sure what an electronic Congress would really look like, but I'm quite sure that it isn't the model that the business of Vote.com has. It might be an interactive web page; it might involve secure clients or digital signatures. It certainly shouldn't be based on spam. ----
He's not my favored Democratic candidate, so I don't know why I'm doing this; maybe just to combat the analysis of the teeny-brained.
* Internet quote: "In an interview shown on CNN on Tuesday, Gore was asked about his vision and his experience and he mentioned that while he served in Congress, 'I took the initiative in creating the Internet.'" [AP story] Obviously the word used is not "invented" though it is commonly reported that way; and "created" is probably too strong, especially since as we all know the history of the internet goes back to the 1960s ARPANET. But he did have a hand in legislation during that period when nobody else was paying attention.
* Love Canal: "'I called for a congressional investigation and a hearing. I looked around the country for other sites like that. I found a little place in upstate New York called Love Canal. Had the first hearing on that issue,' Gore said. That was the one that started it all.... We made a huge difference and it was all because one high school student got involved.'"
Now, one can quibble over the phrase "started it all" -- did he mean that was the start of cleaning up Love Canal, or the start of Congressional attention to the toxic waste problem? The latter is NOT in question:
"In August of 1978, Gore did chair hearings on the matter by the House Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations - two months after the Love Canal homes were evacuated and President Carter declared the neighborhood a disaster area." [CapitalWatch, last December]
This local Love Canal chronology makes clear that while the emergency was dealt with thanks to the local representative and the EPA, Gore was indeed the first subcommittee chairman (3/21/79) to begin looking into the matter.
* Now, finally, the Earned Income Credit issue: I can't find the original quote, but the discussion/question was about EXPANDING the Earned Income Tax Credit, a bill which he most certainly did sponsor while in Congress.
So, are these gaffes, or are they just journalists and opponents looking for any opportunity to try to turn a remark of his into a gaffe? There certainly was truth in everything he said. Go ahead, sputter, say "it was an exaggeration", but what he said was factual. Self-serving; but factual.
And show me one other politician who has said nothing that is self-serving. ----
Correction: One mission to fix the Hubble; two missions to upgrade it.
The Hubble was designed from the very beginning, in the early 70s, to be upgraded and serviced by the shuttle. While it was extremely unfortunate that the mirror flaw was not detected before it was on orbit, Hubble was able to do useful science even then; and after the fix it's performed superbly.
The gyros were expected to wear out, just maybe not so fast. The only real problem that's resulted was a bit of downtime, since the shuttle fleet was grounded for safety reasons last year (representing excellent quality control on the part of the shuttle teams); that wasn't Hubble's fault, though, and it went into safe mode as designed.
Estimating shuttle costs is an art, not a science, depending on how you include extraneous costs. Most people call a shuttle mission budget about HALF a $billion. Probably this is 5 to 10 times the cost that was expected during the Hubble design phase, but we're also flying the shuttle much less than expected -- which has nothing to do with Hubble.
I have no love for NASA; read _The Hubble Wars_ and you'll understand how the policitians and engineers took places in line before the scientists on this project far too many times. But in the end it's been a (qualified) success in so many ways.
In short, Hubble wasn't any more "broken" than your car is when you take it to Midas for new brake shoes. ----
My employer made the uninformed decision to "upgrade" all of our servers (both Netware 4.11 and Solaris 2.5.1 as well as an older Onyx system) to Win2K when it becomes available. I'm on the system admin team, and I'm seriously thinking of leaving.
Well, if you want to continue in the Netware or Solaris worlds, you'd better leave. Win2000 isn't that bad, though. (It doesn't sound like you have enough experience to say that they're "uninformed".)
Another note about the management there is that they're total assholes... When we decommissioned a SPARCserver 690MP (4x180MHz, 512MB RAM) and two SPARCstation 10s they fucking *SMASHED* it up
The other poster is correct: this is done for compliance with tax write-off rules. If it's documented as completely destroyed, they can write off the full remaining value. Granted, few companies do this, but I was at a place that upgraded everyone to 14" color monitors (from 12" amber monitors; this was a while ago), and even though the old monitors worked perfectly fine, we were instructed to use a hammer to smash all the screens. ----
it always seemed that everything they did was designed to make it harder for NetWare servers to operate with Windows workstations properly and I admire Novell for overcomming all the burdens that M$ laid in their path. As far as I remember Novell was silent about these things, but all the admin could experience them heavily
I absolutely agree. One of the most frustrating things is that WinNT's command line cannot run Novell command-line utilities. Of coruse, MS would innocently shake their heads and say the utils were written for DOS and CMD.EXE is not DOS -- but at the same time they would tout NT as a respectable partner in Novell-based networks. Very frustrating; you were limited to using the GUI tools (point click ad infinitum) or keeping an extra workstation around to run the command-line stuff.
(Why the hell couldn't MS write a REAL dos emulator for NT? It wasn't just Novell that would benefit. Morons.)
Essentially, Microsoft seemed to have a strategy of getting NT into an organization (e.g. as a SQL server), in effect touting the benefits of a mixed organization, then to turn around tout an all-MS environment as superior to a mixed one. They certainly didn't bend over backwards to make them play nicely together. ----
What planet are you from? Novell Netware is everywhere. It doesn't need DOS to run; it's a Network Operating System. It can do file and print services, which is what it's best at. It's also capable of doing database and application services through additional software called modules (which are basically like services), but these were marginalized in the market due to their proprietary nature. NT is really better for running application services (e.g. SQL Server), and much more easily and flexibly administered. Novell always held the lead for mission-critical data centers, though, with SMP, fault tolerance, RAID, et cetera, all before MS released the first NT.
There are many, many corporate sites who run Novell Netware for file servers, possibly also for print servers, and run NT for domain and profile administration and application servers. But NT tends to make inroads like this and then stop, partly because the MIS departments are heavy with Novell-certified professionals who've used Netware for 15-odd years.
Part of the Win2000 bid by MS is to finally replace the remaining Novell servers in these organizations. ----
The government should cut welfare by 50% and redirect some money into nasa.
Well, that's a legitimate opinion. Welfare spending has been reduced significantly already, though. Besides, I don't happen to believe that throwing money at NASA is going to solve anything: as long as the shuttle/station program dominates the budget, there will never be enough for planetary science.
We have no business of feeding the children of 3rd world countries
Not from the welfare budget. Are you one of those who (according to polls) believes that 15-20% of our budget goes to "foreign aid"? Not only was that never true, the current figure is 0.5% of the federal budget.
We feed them and the population goes up exponentially making the problem worse.
Actually, population growth is leveling off. Social scientists agree that modern societies with a middle class are the primary cause of the dropping birth rate. The only places where hunger is still a major problem are regions ravaged by war, in particular the Horn of Africa: Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somalia. In any case, the vast majority of foreign aid goes not to "feeding people", but to infrastructure projects that improve economies and quality of life.
Your perceptions seem to have been formed in the 1970s, when there was a massive drought in Saharan Africa and the West spent $billions on feeding desperate populations. Times have changed; you might want to read a newspaper one of these days. Not that I expect a troll with your credentials to do anything that might involve encountering actual facts. ----
if you have a decent relationship with your bank, and they're not a bunch of twinks, you should be able to work something out with them should this particular wave of fraud affect you - even if you have a debit card.
Sure, but how many people are that lucky? The point I'm making is that there is no such legal protection, but many people assume that there is because they're familiar with credit cards. Debit cards may look like credit cards, and use the same sale procedures, but legally, they're not the same. ----
Slashdot Mirror
>Ok, this is just nitpicking and doesn't add anything to the discussion, but
>in most of Europe, manual gear shift is the standard and will remain so for long.
Yep, I forgot that TWIAVBP. But my original point still holds: what works for one person doesn't necessarily work for another.
As much as I'm a geek myself, I also know something of design and usability. And the last person I'd want designing my User Interface, GUI or CLI, is an engineer!
"Sure, see, just type cwer72 -woiuerxcvz and it'll do it right every time. Oh, yeah, it's mnemonic, you know the 1997 top ten hit by the frogmen?"
:)
----
Well, sure, TeX is approaching a "bug-free" state. There's no feature creep. That's not a valid comparison with an evolving commercial product.
----
Actually, you're right. Many of the Windows NT problems are related to application issues. (Of course, some would see this as an inherent weakness of the OS; depending on the circumstance, that may be a deciding factor.)
I was recently at a Microsoft Partners function that was attended by three Windows 2000 developers. One of them discussed specifically the question of why Windows/IIS web servers needed to be rebooted so often. Here's (approximately) what he said: "We found that they weren't always rebooting because they needed to, but because they wanted it to happen under their control, not when the machine decided it was needed. When we examined the problems, we found most of them were within IIS itself, relating to locked files and non-terminating scripts. Under Windows 2000, IIS runs as a service that you can stop and start by itself without rebooting the OS, and you can schedule it to happen when you want."
So, in essence, they worked around the problem by providing a more robust solution. Now you can schedule your web services to automatically shut down and restart themselves, without a time-consuming hardware reboot.
I can say from using both W2K Professional (beta) and Server (gold) that it's far more robust than Windows NT 4.0. You could always achieve good reliability with NT by carefully limiting your choice of hardware and running only software that was needed, but that's no longer going to be as necessary. I still have my beefs with Microsoft, but reliability isn't going to be nearly as high on the list as it used to.
----
>Guys, what Linux needs is a better approach to it's GUI. It would be great if we
n %20interface%20guidelines&num=50">Apple Human Interface Guidelines</a> that were developed in large part as a result of Jobs bringing all those Xerox people over to Cupertino. They were academics and serious about these issues, so they diligently tested and honed their principles. As a result the Mac interface is clean and usable, in many ways just hte opposite of the Microsoft marketing-driven Windows GUI, where everybody is supposed to follow the rules but Redmond (MS programmers are notorious for having side-by-side widgets with entirely different interface approaches). The original HIG were excessively rigid (i.e. requiring only ONE way to do something, which meant you couldn't have keyboard shortcuts -- but those were introduced later), but by being based on principles they remained a useful foundation for interface design right up until recently.
>could use Mac's code. They should release their code as an open source product.
>I believe that MAC is taking their user interfaces seriously and that
>this is something that Linux is missing. Go Open Mac!
Linux DOES need a better approach to its GUI(s). Let's not oversimplify, though.
The power of the Macintosh GUI isn't in its code, per se, but in the <a href="http://google.com/search?query=apple%20huma
The sad part is that Apple has apparently abandoned these principles; the new MacOS X interface is a graphic designer's wet dream, and a horrifying sight to usability people like <a href="http://www.asktog.com/">Bruce "Tog" Tognazzini</a> who was on the original team. If you need to know what the new Mac will look like, check out the Quicktime client; the new philosophy seems to be to make every application like a little handheld Sony appliance, common interface elements and mouseable operation be damned.
Thus, what I believe the Gnome/KDE folks should do is carefully read those Apple Human Interface Guidelines from 15 years ago, and apply as much of that as they can to building a proper usabile interface for Linux that doesn't feel like a crazy-quilt mix of styles. I'm not saying it's in bad shape now, but aside from skins and themes, it's far from pretty. A more consistent interface will go a long way toward allowing Linux to creep out of the server market and onto non-hacker desktops.
----
When they say browser here, they don't mean a _web_ browser; instead they mean what became the Finder. The _web_ browser paradigm is based on hypertext within the document. The _document_ browser paradigm is based on a hierarchical file list and simultaneous (or triggered) display of the document.
Put another way, the document browser lacked the interactivity of a web browser. But it certainly was a precursor; it simply awaited the invention of a viable hypertext system by Tim Berners-Lee et al. to enhance its capabilities. These were all gradual evolutionary steps that had their roots in academic thinktanks long before the average person could make use of them.
Of course, the beauty of the Lisa was that Apple was actually trying to give this power to the average user.
----
>Heh, also from a Mac vs PC chicken or egg debate,
>they said that the Lisa UI was first introduced
>at the National Computer Convention in 1980,
>about 5 years before Windows 1 was released.
Chicken/Egg? Is there anyone who denies that the Lisa was the first graphical personal computer on the market? In any event, aside from Apple, there were a number of companies working on bringing GUIs to personal computers, including GEM, TopView, and the Microsoft/IBM collaboration that was to become OS/2 and Windows after they parted company. (It might have hit the market even sooner if it had not been for their infighting.)
>Shouldn't windows 1 have been released in the >year 1? Just a question.
Nyuck nyuck.
>At any rate, im sure this will get flamed to
>hell, but at least now we have evidence to set
>the record straight.
I ask again, who says differently? A lot of people were actually alive then (it may surprise you to konw) and they remember these events pretty clearly. Again, who ever said Windows came first? Yeesh. The flammage is bad enough without making up nonexistent arguments.
>Ironically enough, now we seem to be moving back
>towards a CLI, simply for the sheer power that
>comes with CLI. Gui is like putting a blanket
>over a puzzle and trying to put the puzzle
>together by moving the blanket around.
Well, CLI is certainly never going to be the interface of choice for your average desktop worker, just as manual transmission is not the favorite way of changing gears. The GUI is faster and easier for certain tasks. (I certainly prefer writing in a GUI vs. writing in vi.) The CLI is faster and easier for certain other tasks (e.g. managing a server, importing lists of users and rights). If you're referring to Linux, well, keep in mind that even Linux as it grows will have to encompass more than one interface paradigm.
The Microsoft method is to (as you said) put a blanket over the top, hide the complexity. I don't think it's emblematic of all approaches to writing a GUI, however. The GUI is one interactive way of accessing functionality, if it's written right. It's only when it begins to get in the way of the functionality (try adding ten users in a row, or setting up a piece of hardware without the wizard) that the GUI becomes a liability.
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Of course Microsoft uses workarounds. Defects (the more generic term) may be resolved in numerous ways, from a workaround to documentation to a code fix. Microsoft uses a quality assurance methodology to determine ahead of time what will be a showstopper and what acceptable resolutions are.
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Sure, that's fine. But he wasn't addressing you.
Windows 2000 is the most stable "dot zero" Microsoft release I've ever seen. This report of 65,000 bugs is completely divorced from any reality.
Windows 2000 isn't for the home desktop user anyway. Windows 2000 is for corporate networks, and with some exceptions, only makes sense when it's networked together with other Windows 2000 machines.
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Nice idealized philosophy, but haven't you ever encountered this situation:
* Customer reports bug.
* Technician/Developer tries to duplicate bug, and fails.
Besides, not all bugs are "debugged" by fixing the software. Some bugs are marked for workarounds, others become warnings (don't use this with that), and so forth. Unless you have unlimited funds and unlimited time, you can never "fix" all bugs.
(By the way, the "infamous" Chevy Nova actually sold just fine in Latin America. The urban legend that it didn't arose later.)
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>According to a story on ZDNET, Sm@rt Reseller got an internal MS memo that says Windows 2000
... then it becomes a relationship that both parties will be happy with. That is what is meant by a "zero-defect" delivery of product.
>has 63,000 "defects" (if you read the article the number goes up to 65,000+ bugs), and that's the
>same Windows that will be out on Feb. 17! Is this what MS suggests putting on people's workstations
>and installing on production servers? What do you think?
(By the way, when is the Extrans going to work again? Taco? Taco? Bueller?)
This "HeUnique" goombah needs a) a little computer science education, b) to read more carefully, c) to sit down and take a deep breath before posting.
First, the ZDNet article refers to 63,000 "defects", but not all defects are bugs. As reading it makes clear, some defects are simply usability issues, some are shortfalls in meeting intended functionality, others are simply things that cause end-user confusion. To equate all these with software bugs that make the product unusable indicates many things, starting with a lack of real-world experience delivering software to end-users, and obviously including no exposure to the product in question.
Of course Microsoft suggests putting this in a production environment. That's what a piece of software achieving release MEANS. Release does not mean the software works perfectly. It means it meets customer or client expectations, which in a properly managed relationship, are equal to the deliverable. If you've led the client to believe they'll get platinum and you deliver brass, that says more about you than the client. But if you say by X we can deliver brass, or we can wait until Y if you insist on silver, Z for gold
I hope that HeUnique doesn't continue to help Slashdot slide into the abyss of adolescent BBS flammage.
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My company's in the Windows 2000 beta program, too, and we moved all the servers to Windows 2000 about one release candidates prior to gold.
Just because it's "beta" doesn't mean it doesn't work. Just because something has "bugs" doesn't mean they affect you and your configuration. Windows 2000 is very stable by any standard.
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The word "discover" is certainly politically loaded, but I don't think you can deny that Columbus was the first significant European expedition to arrive here, and that began one of the most significant migrations in human history.
Somebody was bound to do it eventually. The populations here didn't have the technology or the economy (for easily demonstrable geographic and historical reasons) to compete with the Europeans.
It's simply a matter of perspective. Instead of denying the obvious, suggest a better name than "discovery".
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The author Jared Diamond makes a convincing case (Guns, Germs, and Steel) that the economics just weren't there to sustain Viking colonies, even if the climate hadn't changed. There were never any long-term permanent residences on the continent, and the difference in resources and available technologies was too great. On the other hand, when Southern Europeans arrived in the West Indies, they were much more technologically and economically prepared to take advantage.
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cmuncey touches on a number of excellent points! Many of the posts are indeed WRONG: this has no relevance to either the FIRST (free speech) or FOURTH (search and seizure) amendments, since this is a CIVIL lawsuit. Not only are the rules of evidence different from a criminal trial ("preponderance of the evidence" vs. "beyond a reasonable doubt" -- remember how OJ lost the wrongful death lawsuit?), but the rules of discovery PERMIT subpoenas of practically anything that might be tangentially related. Since there are no criminal charges -- nobody can go to jail -- the same protections DO NOT APPLY.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled misinformed Slashdot rant-orgy.
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late reply, but maybe you'll see this in your log.
I said there was one mission to fix Hubble. You are correct, the first mission was an unplanned one to correct the optics. That was the mission I referred to.
As I stated, while it was unfortunate that the main mirror was imperfect, it was still able to perform good science: this is something that is made clear by Eric Chaisson, who was the Science Director of the Space Telescope Science Institute at the time.
As for the gyro replacement, this was a planned refit that was known to be necessary for many months. Shuttle scheduling pushed the original maintenance mission back many months, and when the Hubble ran out of working gyros, the shuttle was rescheduled as soon as possible to replace them.
Call it whatever you like; my point stands. The most recent Hubble servicing mission was already planned and expected. The fact that Hubble shut down and waited for the mission is irrelevant.
When you are due a 3000 mile oil change, and the oil change place is closed, and you stop driving your car until you can take it in for the oil change -- is that a "fix"? That's close to what happened here.
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I'm disappointed once again in the lack of research on slashdot posts.
m l">the UAW/Ford contract agreement</a> back in October; Ford agreed to study it as part of a broader initiative to extend educational services to workers and their families.
s toryid=674">the Ford press release</a>, access will not be through the corporate network but through the ISP PeoplePC via UUNET.
Nowhere was it mentioned in the original post that this was a result of discussions between the United Auto Workers and Ford during their last contract negotiation. As a result, about half the posts here on the topic questioned the company's motives and intentions, even suspecting that the company wanted to track their internet usage, or limit it to approved sites. Neither appears to be the case.
From what I can tell, this probably came out of a discussion that can be summarized, roughly, as:
"We can't pay that much for a non-tech-savvy workforce."
"Well, then, help make that workforce tech-savvy."
In fact, this was specifically mentioned as part of <a href="http://www.uaw.org/contract99/ford/index.ht
According to <a href="http://www.ford.com/default.asp?pageid=106&
Under US income tax laws, the cost of a service provided by the company as a benefit will have to be subtracted from the market value, and the difference taxed the same as income. Enforcement is always difficult with such benefits, though.
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It's short-sighted to blame NASA for the problems with ISS.
ISS is first and foremost a politically-based program that is underwritten by Congress for reasons other than advancing science. It may well help advance science in certain ways, but it explicitly will not help us get to Mars, except in generating more reams of data on weightless living.
What ISS is, mainly, is a prototype international PROJECT that only incidentally happens to be an engineering feat at 212 nautical miles above sea level.
The Interim Control Module was first proposed a long time ago, and initial construction took place last year (converting some prior classified project's equipment that had never been launched). The schedule was revised many times to allow for the ICM launch if the Russian control module wasn't ready by N; N has come and gone and been reset a couple of times since then, for both US and Russian reasons (shuttle wiring, Proton launch failure).
NASA, all things being equal, would readily launch the ICM in a New York minute if it would keep the ISS project funded and running. Unfortunately, the decisions about such things are really made at a very high political level, and launching the ICM would be a major embarassment for Russia. The White House doesn't want that, so the ICM will <b>only</b> be launched if there's <b>no other way</b> to prevent the existing pieces (Zarya, Node I) from de-orbiting on their own.
NASA was always smart about this; their hands were tied. If you'd like to know more about how the ISS came to be a US/Russian/European/Japanese project, I suggest reading Brian Burroughs's _Dragonfly_ (about the Shuttle-Mir astronauts, including the fire and collision).
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It's interesting that they should publish this article, since their entire business model depends on e-mailing at least four people (Representative, both Senators, President) every time somebody votes in one of their (non-scientific) online polls.
Vote.com "about us" page
Sure, it makes it easy for the "average citizen" to "speak out", but how much attention are they going to really pay to form e-mails -- in effect, political spam -- from an online poll site? (We all should know to be skeptical of any online poll; I've seen many of them spammed by somebody going to a particular political forum and posting a link.) The respondents to these polls are self-selected; the polls are not scientific in any way. They don't even have any way to verify whether the respondent is represented by the people they say that they claim. They don't even have a way of verifying that people are citizens, let alone US residents or voters!
I've heard the following rule of thumb for getting a Congressman to listen to you:
* a personal visit is worth ten phone calls
* a phone call is worth ten letters
* a letter is worth ten faxes
* a fax is worth ten e-mails
Keeping in mind that no matter what, very few of these communications besides the top one actually involve directly reaching the office-holder. For the most part, the staff merely files the communication and marks the opinion on a chart somewhere; if you get a reply (and most personal letters are eventually replied to), it will be a polite form reply, barely indicating that the original letter was actually read (especially if the opinion isn't shared by the representative); something like "Your views are very important to us; the N budget is very important to every American; etc.".
None of this is anything like the idea some may have of e-mailing "Sen. Joe Smith" and getting back a nice note, "liked what you said about the budget, thanks, Joe". Why the e-mail model should be more directly responsive than the snail mail model is an assertion that eludes me. Today, each person in Congress represents about 570,000 people, of whom perhaps 225,000 are voters.
I'm not sure what an electronic Congress would really look like, but I'm quite sure that it isn't the model that the business of Vote.com has. It might be an interactive web page; it might involve secure clients or digital signatures. It certainly shouldn't be based on spam.
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He's not my favored Democratic candidate, so I don't know why I'm doing this; maybe just to combat the analysis of the teeny-brained.
... We made a huge difference and it was all because one high school student got involved.'"
* Internet quote: "In an interview shown on CNN on Tuesday, Gore was asked about his vision and his experience and he mentioned that while he served in Congress, 'I took the initiative in creating the Internet.'" [AP story] Obviously the word used is not "invented" though it is commonly reported that way; and "created" is probably too strong, especially since as we all know the history of the internet goes back to the 1960s ARPANET. But he did have a hand in legislation during that period when nobody else was paying attention.
* Love Canal: "'I called for a congressional investigation and a hearing. I looked around the country for other sites like that. I found a little place in upstate New York called Love Canal. Had the first hearing on that issue,' Gore said. That was the one that started it all.
Now, one can quibble over the phrase "started it all" -- did he mean that was the start of cleaning up Love Canal, or the start of Congressional attention to the toxic waste problem? The latter is NOT in question:
"In August of 1978, Gore did chair hearings on the matter by the House Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations - two months after the Love Canal homes were evacuated and President Carter declared the neighborhood a disaster area."
[CapitalWatch, last December]
This local Love Canal chronology makes clear that while the emergency was dealt with thanks to the local representative and the EPA, Gore was indeed the first subcommittee chairman (3/21/79) to begin looking into the matter.
* Now, finally, the Earned Income Credit issue: I can't find the original quote, but the discussion/question was about EXPANDING the Earned Income Tax Credit, a bill which he most certainly did sponsor while in Congress.
So, are these gaffes, or are they just journalists and opponents looking for any opportunity to try to turn a remark of his into a gaffe? There certainly was truth in everything he said. Go ahead, sputter, say "it was an exaggeration", but what he said was factual. Self-serving; but factual.
And show me one other politician who has said nothing that is self-serving.
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Correction: One mission to fix the Hubble; two missions to upgrade it.
The Hubble was designed from the very beginning, in the early 70s, to be upgraded and serviced by the shuttle. While it was extremely unfortunate that the mirror flaw was not detected before it was on orbit, Hubble was able to do useful science even then; and after the fix it's performed superbly.
The gyros were expected to wear out, just maybe not so fast. The only real problem that's resulted was a bit of downtime, since the shuttle fleet was grounded for safety reasons last year (representing excellent quality control on the part of the shuttle teams); that wasn't Hubble's fault, though, and it went into safe mode as designed.
Estimating shuttle costs is an art, not a science, depending on how you include extraneous costs. Most people call a shuttle mission budget about HALF a $billion. Probably this is 5 to 10 times the cost that was expected during the Hubble design phase, but we're also flying the shuttle much less than expected -- which has nothing to do with Hubble.
I have no love for NASA; read _The Hubble Wars_ and you'll understand how the policitians and engineers took places in line before the scientists on this project far too many times. But in the end it's been a (qualified) success in so many ways.
In short, Hubble wasn't any more "broken" than your car is when you take it to Midas for new brake shoes.
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My employer made the uninformed decision to "upgrade" all of our servers (both Netware 4.11 and Solaris 2.5.1 as well as an older Onyx system) to Win2K when it becomes available. I'm on the system admin team, and I'm seriously thinking of leaving.
Well, if you want to continue in the Netware or Solaris worlds, you'd better leave. Win2000 isn't that bad, though. (It doesn't sound like you have enough experience to say that they're "uninformed".)
Another note about the management there is that they're total assholes... When we decommissioned a SPARCserver 690MP (4x180MHz, 512MB RAM) and two SPARCstation 10s they fucking *SMASHED* it up
The other poster is correct: this is done for compliance with tax write-off rules. If it's documented as completely destroyed, they can write off the full remaining value. Granted, few companies do this, but I was at a place that upgraded everyone to 14" color monitors (from 12" amber monitors; this was a while ago), and even though the old monitors worked perfectly fine, we were instructed to use a hammer to smash all the screens.
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it always seemed that everything they did was designed to make it harder for NetWare servers to operate with Windows workstations properly and I admire Novell for overcomming all the burdens that M$ laid in their path. As far as I remember Novell was silent about these things, but all the admin could experience them heavily
I absolutely agree. One of the most frustrating things is that WinNT's command line cannot run Novell command-line utilities. Of coruse, MS would innocently shake their heads and say the utils were written for DOS and CMD.EXE is not DOS -- but at the same time they would tout NT as a respectable partner in Novell-based networks. Very frustrating; you were limited to using the GUI tools (point click ad infinitum) or keeping an extra workstation around to run the command-line stuff.
(Why the hell couldn't MS write a REAL dos emulator for NT? It wasn't just Novell that would benefit. Morons.)
Essentially, Microsoft seemed to have a strategy of getting NT into an organization (e.g. as a SQL server), in effect touting the benefits of a mixed organization, then to turn around tout an all-MS environment as superior to a mixed one. They certainly didn't bend over backwards to make them play nicely together.
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What planet are you from? Novell Netware is everywhere. It doesn't need DOS to run; it's a Network Operating System. It can do file and print services, which is what it's best at. It's also capable of doing database and application services through additional software called modules (which are basically like services), but these were marginalized in the market due to their proprietary nature. NT is really better for running application services (e.g. SQL Server), and much more easily and flexibly administered. Novell always held the lead for mission-critical data centers, though, with SMP, fault tolerance, RAID, et cetera, all before MS released the first NT.
There are many, many corporate sites who run Novell Netware for file servers, possibly also for print servers, and run NT for domain and profile administration and application servers. But NT tends to make inroads like this and then stop, partly because the MIS departments are heavy with Novell-certified professionals who've used Netware for 15-odd years.
Part of the Win2000 bid by MS is to finally replace the remaining Novell servers in these organizations.
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The government should cut welfare by 50% and redirect some money into nasa.
Well, that's a legitimate opinion. Welfare spending has been reduced significantly already, though. Besides, I don't happen to believe that throwing money at NASA is going to solve anything: as long as the shuttle/station program dominates the budget, there will never be enough for planetary science.
We have no business of feeding the children of 3rd world countries
Not from the welfare budget. Are you one of those who (according to polls) believes that 15-20% of our budget goes to "foreign aid"? Not only was that never true, the current figure is 0.5% of the federal budget.
We feed them and the population goes up exponentially making the problem worse.
Actually, population growth is leveling off. Social scientists agree that modern societies with a middle class are the primary cause of the dropping birth rate. The only places where hunger is still a major problem are regions ravaged by war, in particular the Horn of Africa: Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somalia. In any case, the vast majority of foreign aid goes not to "feeding people", but to infrastructure projects that improve economies and quality of life.
Your perceptions seem to have been formed in the 1970s, when there was a massive drought in Saharan Africa and the West spent $billions on feeding desperate populations. Times have changed; you might want to read a newspaper one of these days. Not that I expect a troll with your credentials to do anything that might involve encountering actual facts.
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if you have a decent relationship with your bank, and they're not a bunch of twinks, you should be able to work something out with them should this particular wave of fraud affect you - even if you have a debit card.
Sure, but how many people are that lucky? The point I'm making is that there is no such legal protection, but many people assume that there is because they're familiar with credit cards. Debit cards may look like credit cards, and use the same sale procedures, but legally, they're not the same.
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