My father's response to Carr's article
on
Why I.T. Matters
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
My father's been in IT since the beginning (about 30 years). Here's what he had to say about Carr's article (from my email archives):
---
This is a horrible article in many more ways than I thought. The author is fundamentally wrong, and I intend to prove why.
The foundations of his "fundamental error" can be found early on in the article, when he draws a parallel between IT and various other "things" (telegraph, engines, etc.). Go check it out, neatr the bottom of the second page (page 6 in the original HBR pagination). In the attached PDF, you'll see my yellow highlights, and my annotations, which summarize my objections to the article.
Here's the fundamental error. The parallel he makes is not valid at all. You can tell by observing that the author's examples (steam engine, railroad, telegraph, telephone, generator, internal combustion engine) do NOT fit his argument AT ALL - because they are NOT in any way similar or comparable to IT.
First off, those examples are NOT technologies. They are instances, mere temporal "instantiations" of some technologies. Second, when you look at his numerous examples, you can see that they are merely milestones - some of the many - that have characterized the development path of just TWO technologies: the technology of transportation, and the technology of communication. And you also realize that each new milestone in that list DID represent strategic competitive advantage, regardless of the ubiquity of the two underlying technologies (which have been around nearly forever).
In a very real sense, then, it is RIGHT THERE that the author begins to unwittingly undermine his own argument:
If it is indeed true (as it is, and as he himself later states) that each of those milestones DID create strategic advantage for early adopters and smart or insightful users (key detail, please take notice: for early adopters and smart or insightful users) -- it then follows that there IS ample historical proof of the great long-term strategic value that is inherent in communication technology and in transportation technology. The ubiquity of those technologies is an irrelevant issue, it is entirely besides the point. People have ALWAYS had some form of transportation and and some form of communication. But that dosn't mean that each of those technologies "doesn't matter". Quite the opposite, they both DO matter a lot. But what evidently must matter THE MOST, self-evidently for me but apparently not for the author, must be the FORMS they take, the HOWS of the ways in which the techology is being UTILIZED and/or EXPLOITED, which ultimately boils down to that key but little-noticed clause about early adopters and smart insightful users!...
When everybody walked, the first wheel made a key difference. When everyone had wheels, the first horse made a key difference. And so on, and so forth... But that's precisely what the author FAILS TO SEE in the proper light, even though he often uses examples that suggest precisely the opposite of his conclusions.
Through this fundamental initial error of perspective, the author's whole viewpoint is fatally skewed and blindsighted throuhgout the article. From the shallowness of this initial analysis, and from the appalling intellectual superficiality of these fundamental non-sequiturs which are put forth as his basic premises and laid out up front as keystones of his whole perspective -- the author ends up drawing even more fallacious and yet VERY DANGEROUS conclusions.
His conclusions are dangerous to the innumerable run-of-the-mill, middle-of-the-road, mediocre managers everywhere, who are not mentally equipped to catch this fundamental ERROR in the author's argument, and who therefore will be lulled into BELIEVING the author's conclusions.
I maintain that these managers, and their businesses, will be SWEPT AWAY INTO OBLIVION, just as they've been in the past, by those other and much more sharp-minded managers who don't believe this bullshit for a mi
I can see why some people think Debian is fading into irrelevance. Even running sid feels like you're "behind the curve" (in terms of what my Gentoo friends are emerging), and sid is already well ahead of sarge and perhaps years ahead of woody.
Nonetheless, instead of complaining about it, why not help a hand. One first project ot look is Debian on the Desktop.
Maybe from there desktop users can pull enough weight to a) get the latest desktop packages into sid (or at least, at worst, experimental); b) utilize existing apt-get source framework to allow for rapid from-source installs of bleeding edge apps, to reduce packaging time; c) further tweak app to prevent the already-rare occurences of dependecy hell (or, more appropriately, must-remove-to-upgrade hell).
But please, don't do what I do. Don't whine. Just try and help. I think Debian needs a community of [young] desktop users to sort of provide a voice alongside the old-timers who care more about stable servers than Gnome 2.6 or whatnot.
One of the great RSI myths is that trackballs are better for you than mice. Repetetive movement of your thumb directly causes harm to your wrist in much greater degrees than does movement of a mouse, especially a properly designed mouse like the Quill.
The second myth is that wrist rests are good for you, which they are not, under any circumstances. By resting your wrist on a pad, you are forcefully reducing bloodflow, and asking for trouble. Your wrists shouldn't lay on ANYTHING.
You can get RSI from typing also. Sticking to a shell doesn't save you.
The most important thing is making sure your wrists don't touch anything, and making sure your chair is such that you can keep your elbows at 90 degrees and comfortably use your keyboard and mouse.
For those of us who require mouses (i.e. when I do design work), I highly reccomend the Quill. It's a bit expensive, but 100x more comfortable and much better designed, especially from the wrist POV. Took me one week to get fully adjusted; now I'm just as accurate with it as I was with my IntelliMouseExplorer (I know that doesn't look possible, but it is; this mouse actually feels MORE natural).
The other important thing is taking breaks. Use DrWrite (which is now built-in to Gnome's Keyboard preference pane) or if you run Windows, use Breaktime by Kadmi software.
Any Windows app worth its salt allows you to choose how to end lines. Adding ^M to the end of line is something a lot of Windows programs do, but Dreamweaver lets you disable it...
Go to Preferences-->Code Format-->Line Breaks. Choose Unix (or Mac OS, or Windows).
Basically, any half-way smart businessman who actually understood business trends would have seen the Napster revolution, and though "here's a way to profit," not "here's a reason to sue."
It's very simple. If the RIAA, instead of taking the angle that MP3 downloading was "pirating," had decided that it was just the new, preferred distribution channel of consumers, then with some quick work and smart marketing, people would be _BUYING_ all their MP3s today. If the labels had embraced the new, faster, more flexible medium for music storage (namely, people's hard drives and MP3 players), they could have profited like mad.
Of course some people would have still stolen MP3s, but in much the same way that some people "steal" CDs by buying burned copies on the streets of New York.
The bottom line is, when fat cats get comfortable, they don't want to rock the boat, even if in rocking it they save everyone on board. I want the RIAA to die a horrible death. Not because I don't respect intellectual property (which is owned by the artists, let's remember, and not the RIAA), but because it is purely a business organization (an "industry association"), and it failed in its only real capacity: to notice and adapt to business trends in order to allow the record industry to respond to changing economic climates. It deserves to be destroyed now--it did it to itself. If I were a record label, I wouldn't be screaming to sue piraters: I'd be screaming to dismantle the RIAA for not realizing what should have been done years ago, before Shawn Fanning became a geek superstar.
First of all, I'm not sure if this post's purpose was to brag about MIT or if it was to brag about a Powerbook. But anyway, I'll leave that alone.
I don't see why it's modded Insightful. I'm in a CS department of a less prestigious school (but still a good one) and in the advanced courses running OS X makes life difficult. It's not because there aren't Mac dev tools available (which there are), but because some courses dive into assembly to understand machine architecture (there is a distinct x86 bias for obvious reasons) and if you're running Mac OS you have to do all this work through Virtual PC, which can be a pain.
Of course, I just realized parent might not even be majoring in CS, since MIT has other majors (with higher enrollment nowadays, I bet!...)
They used to sell one of Sager's notebooks for $500-600 more and call it their own simply because they spraypainted it grey and inserted an "Alienware" label where it used to say "Sager."
One of my friends spent $2600 on that Alienware and my other one spent $1999 on the equivalent Sager. Both of them ended up having problems after a year because the Sager has a badly designed cooling system.
The bottom line is, Alienware doesn't even pick good models to resell at high prices. I wouldn't trust their notebook. They need to find shitty manufacturers who will let them resell their notebook for a profit by putting a rubberized stupid-looking cover on the top of the LCD screen.
Not to mention that when I bought an Alienware desktop (this was like 5 years ago--that computer definitely didn't last me for life, kiddo), AW was a small company that actually had real tech support (i.e. my GeForce overheated and died, and when I called them they overnighted me a new one, no charge). Nowadays, they are just like every other tech support troupe--probably based out of India, but if not, just as bad.
Keynote is an absolute jewel. Just a short anecdote... I gave a talk at my university about Debian Linux aimed at people who want to see how far the Linux desktop has come (I'm running unstable, so easy there...) and what they can expect from Linux. It also dealt with a lot of the ideas behind Free Software, some of the big thinkers (ESR, Stallman, Perens, though not all in the same breath), and it covered with the great advantages of Debian's package management, etc.
Well, I had to give this talk at our student center, and so I obviously wasn't going to lug my desktop PC along, even though it is an SFF. I own a used Powerbook G4, which I've been lovin' because of my ability (through Fink) to get the latest Linux necessities but still have access to the wealth of proprietary software I enjoy using (Photoshop, InDesign, Dreamweaver, etc.)
I was planning on using OpenOffice to make the presentation, but at that point OOo wasn't running too easily on OS X, and it occasionally crashed on me. I didn't feel like showing off a piece of OSS that crashed constantly as a way of convincing newbs. So I went to the local educational discount store and picked up a copy of Keynote, expecting Powerpoint aquafied.
WOA, was I wrong. This program, with only a few minor exceptions, should be the UI design BIBLE practically. Within an hour of playing I had everything I needed to make a really slick presentation. When you move elements around they click into place, and INTELLIGENT alignment bars appear to help you align other elements with existing ones. The templates are smart rather than inhibitive, and they are actually beautiful designed. The fonts are crisp and clear and perfectly antialiased, the transitions are smooth and (sometimes) 3D accelerated, the support for Quicktime movie files and MP3s is superb. Not only that, but after my talk, I was able to export the presentation to a Quicktime file and burn it to a CD, all without a hitch.
This was all so slick that it got me into trouble. Someone at the lecture asked, "Was this presentation made with OpenOffice, because it's really cool..." and I had to tell him that I used Apple Keynote, with a collective sigh from the room.
I said, "Don't worry, OO is getting there." Yea, right. I was lying just to make everyone feel better. OO will never get there. Keynote is like an entirely different way of thinking. I wouldn't even call them the same kind of tool in this case. Word processors are word processors, but there are presentation programs and then there is Keynote.
--- THERE'S STILL HOPE... ---
That's not to say Linux is doomed on the desktop. I'm a Linux desktop user. But developers definitely need to take lessons from some of these proprietary gems. Just a short list of applications whose UI principles I'd like to see utilized in the Linux desktop world:
o MS Office v. X - has many differences in UI design versus MS Office for Windows, particularly the formatting pane. o Macromedia Dreamweaver - still the most efficient way to build websites within a graphical environment, and it's because the GUI is smartly designed. o Watson - if you run OS X, check it out. Swiss-army-knife search tool, and to be fair check out the Windows "sorta-equivalent", Copernic. o Tune Up Utilities 2003 for Windows - has a wonderful "integrator" program with a great UI, should be imitated for any collection of tools like a control panel. o Winamp - huh what? Yes. A media player that doesn't imitate iTunes (like Rhytmbox), but also includes "media library" functionality and mp3/aac/ogg ripping, and is Winamp skinnable. So either improvements to xmms or something altogether new. I, for one, hate iTunes and its design. o DVD Shrink - This is a good example of one of those "one-function" programs that just lets you see all the options and click "go" and everything works. acidrip and dvd::rip both have this sort of "single use tool" aspect to them, but their GUIs are still just wrappers to cli tools, such
Sure, let's all just pretend Free Trade Works No Matter What. Once upon time, people used to emphasize Communism Works No Matter What, and the results were excellent. Such is how idealogy works, except in America we don't look at "Free Trade" as an ideology because all its proponents have convinced of the wonderful brainwashing trick called TINA--"There Is No Alternative."
Capital is free to move, but laborers are not. If a corporation sees a market that has cheaper labor, it is free to move its capital into that market (read: country) and start up factories there, reaping the benefits. Meanwhile, if I, as a poor suffering laborer, want to move into another market, things are not quite so easy.
"Free Trade" is a misnomer. It's "Free" for corporations and concentrations of wealth to do what they want, while it's chains and shackles for the rest of us, the laborers. We're stuck exactly where we are, stuck with whatever hand the prevailing corporations of the day deal to us.
I want to remind everyone that the reason corporations exist is because at some point we granted corporate charters (that's We, The People, granted corporate charters) which could be revoked if the corporations did not serve our economic interests. During many years of judicial distortion, corporations gained rights of personhood, and, through further distortion, became not just people, but people who get the rights of being a person but do not have any of the responsibilities (if a corporation steals, it is not prosecuted as a person who steals, but as an entity with thieves within).
What a distortion it is to think that we, the people, want corporations whose leaders can enjoy the benefits of the US but not give anythink back the country that allowed it to exist. What do I mean by this? They don't give us taxes, because they base their corporation in the Caymans, or whatever. They don't give us jobs, because the outsource. But the upper crust of the corporation benefits from the American lifestyle, and the corporation itself benefits from the captive American market.
If this were a different day, any corporation that could be described in this way would not be allowed to exist. But nowadays, we have schmucks like Friedman telling us it's just the matter of course, that Free Trade will prevail. That people accept this as anything other than a heavy pile of bullshit blows my mind.
This is not about us American laborers being able to compete with those cheap Indians. It's about us not jumping headlong into a world where we allow corporations the rights to do whatever they want, include exploit our market and our laws, without serving the public's economic interest in the slightest.
I hope this becomes and STAYS a national issue. If we have politicians worth a damn, they'll understand that this may be the single most important issue in the coming years. We cannot be manipulated into buying into an idealogy that does serve us. And this is an idealogy, like any other.
You can see it here. From the way these reviewers seem to describe Threedegrees, it is basically a limited IRC chat (10 at a time, why 10?) with some other features that already exist elsewhere (the common playlist idea isn't new, and "Winks" is just a cute, marketable term), and a bunch of stuff that you can see in iStorm.
One difference is, iStorm doesn't talk about "marketing its product to 13-24 year olds." The developers see it as a tool for brainstorming. The other difference is, iStorm is probably actually used to help people think through ideas, whereas Threedegrees will be yet another way (along with AIM, Counterstrike, and most college social life) for people to just sit around engaging in mental masturbation.
Convince you that you're wrong? How about the 150+ praise emails I've recieved ever since posting my NHF? How about the thousands of posts on the message board @ LNO... I mean, for chrissakes, LNO's message board competes with Slashdot in terms of posts... the only difference is that trolls like yourself don't reign down there.
Hell, if I even got to help one person, and I've helped way more than that, I'd praise that site.
Most of your arguments are against specific people's posts on LNO and not against the site itself. Your whole argument is invalid. It's like saying Slashdot sucks because of assfaces like you.
"Including the home page which does not strike me as at all simple and/or inviting to people who want to try linux but aren't sure where to start or where they stand."
What the? Linux newbies aren't idiots... maybe? They don't need to be pampered with a text-only page in big header font that says "LINUX HELP HERE." I'd be offended by that, if the design was as if for age groups 3-5. Simply because LNO has the style of a news page, that looks cool and classy and maybe (to you) complicated, doesn't mean it is at all daunting the appeal of Linux newbies to get started on a new linux system.
So basically, Sensei is a great newbie helper by creating a site that helps all Linux Newbies out in one way or another. You can't get the fix to any given linux problem any quicker than the LNO message board, and you can't find any more easier-to-read-and-follow tutorials than the NHF section. If you're not convinced that you're wrong now, I don't know what to tell you.
Slashdot Mirror
My father's been in IT since the beginning (about 30 years). Here's what he had to say about Carr's article (from my email archives):
---
This is a horrible article in many more ways than I thought.
The author is fundamentally wrong, and I intend to prove why.
The foundations of his "fundamental error" can be found early on in the article, when he draws a parallel between IT and various other "things" (telegraph, engines, etc.). Go check it out, neatr the bottom of the second page (page 6 in the original HBR pagination). In the attached PDF, you'll see my yellow highlights, and my annotations, which summarize my objections to the article.
Here's the fundamental error. The parallel he makes is not valid at all. You can tell by observing that the author's examples (steam engine, railroad, telegraph, telephone, generator, internal combustion engine) do NOT fit his argument AT ALL - because they are NOT in any way similar or comparable to IT.
First off, those examples are NOT technologies. They are instances, mere temporal "instantiations" of some technologies. Second, when you look at his numerous examples, you can see that they are merely milestones - some of the many - that have characterized the development path of just TWO technologies: the technology of transportation, and the technology of communication. And you also realize that each new milestone in that list DID represent strategic competitive advantage, regardless of the ubiquity of the two underlying technologies (which have been around nearly forever).
In a very real sense, then, it is RIGHT THERE that the author begins to unwittingly undermine his own argument:
If it is indeed true (as it is, and as he himself later states) that each of those milestones DID create strategic advantage for early adopters and smart or insightful users (key detail, please take notice: for early adopters and smart or insightful users) -- it then follows that there IS ample historical proof of the great long-term strategic value that is inherent in communication technology and in transportation technology. The ubiquity of those technologies is an irrelevant issue, it is entirely besides the point. People have ALWAYS had some form of transportation and and some form of communication. But that dosn't mean that each of those technologies "doesn't matter". Quite the opposite, they both DO matter a lot. But what evidently must matter THE MOST, self-evidently for me but apparently not for the author, must be the FORMS they take, the HOWS of the ways in which the techology is being UTILIZED and/or EXPLOITED, which ultimately boils down to that key but little-noticed clause about early adopters and smart insightful users!...
When everybody walked, the first wheel made a key difference.
When everyone had wheels, the first horse made a key difference.
And so on, and so forth...
But that's precisely what the author FAILS TO SEE in the proper light, even though he often uses examples that suggest precisely the opposite of his conclusions.
Through this fundamental initial error of perspective, the author's whole viewpoint is fatally skewed and blindsighted throuhgout the article. From the shallowness of this initial analysis, and from the appalling intellectual superficiality of these fundamental non-sequiturs which are put forth as his basic premises and laid out up front as keystones of his whole perspective -- the author ends up drawing even more fallacious and yet VERY DANGEROUS conclusions.
His conclusions are dangerous to the innumerable run-of-the-mill, middle-of-the-road, mediocre managers everywhere, who are not mentally equipped to catch this fundamental ERROR in the author's argument, and who therefore will be lulled into BELIEVING the author's conclusions.
I maintain that these managers, and their businesses, will be SWEPT AWAY INTO OBLIVION, just as they've been in the past, by those other and much more sharp-minded managers who don't believe this bullshit for a mi
Direct from Bangalore!
that's lend a hand, not help a hand...
and, in c, "app" should be "apt."
Don't do what I do. Preview your posts. grr.
I can see why some people think Debian is fading into irrelevance. Even running sid feels like you're "behind the curve" (in terms of what my Gentoo friends are emerging), and sid is already well ahead of sarge and perhaps years ahead of woody.
Nonetheless, instead of complaining about it, why not help a hand. One first project ot look is Debian on the Desktop.
Maybe from there desktop users can pull enough weight to a) get the latest desktop packages into sid (or at least, at worst, experimental); b) utilize existing apt-get source framework to allow for rapid from-source installs of bleeding edge apps, to reduce packaging time; c) further tweak app to prevent the already-rare occurences of dependecy hell (or, more appropriately, must-remove-to-upgrade hell).
But please, don't do what I do. Don't whine. Just try and help. I think Debian needs a community of [young] desktop users to sort of provide a voice alongside the old-timers who care more about stable servers than Gnome 2.6 or whatnot.
One of the great RSI myths is that trackballs are better for you than mice. Repetetive movement of your thumb directly causes harm to your wrist in much greater degrees than does movement of a mouse, especially a properly designed mouse like the Quill.
The second myth is that wrist rests are good for you, which they are not, under any circumstances. By resting your wrist on a pad, you are forcefully reducing bloodflow, and asking for trouble. Your wrists shouldn't lay on ANYTHING.
You can get RSI from typing also. Sticking to a shell doesn't save you.
The most important thing is making sure your wrists don't touch anything, and making sure your chair is such that you can keep your elbows at 90 degrees and comfortably use your keyboard and mouse.
For those of us who require mouses (i.e. when I do design work), I highly reccomend the Quill. It's a bit expensive, but 100x more comfortable and much better designed, especially from the wrist POV. Took me one week to get fully adjusted; now I'm just as accurate with it as I was with my IntelliMouseExplorer (I know that doesn't look possible, but it is; this mouse actually feels MORE natural).
The other important thing is taking breaks. Use DrWrite (which is now built-in to Gnome's Keyboard preference pane) or if you run Windows, use Breaktime by Kadmi software.
Any Windows app worth its salt allows you to choose how to end lines. Adding ^M to the end of line is something a lot of Windows programs do, but Dreamweaver lets you disable it...
Go to Preferences-->Code Format-->Line Breaks. Choose Unix (or Mac OS, or Windows).
Basically, any half-way smart businessman who actually understood business trends would have seen the Napster revolution, and though "here's a way to profit," not "here's a reason to sue."
It's very simple. If the RIAA, instead of taking the angle that MP3 downloading was "pirating," had decided that it was just the new, preferred distribution channel of consumers, then with some quick work and smart marketing, people would be _BUYING_ all their MP3s today. If the labels had embraced the new, faster, more flexible medium for music storage (namely, people's hard drives and MP3 players), they could have profited like mad.
Of course some people would have still stolen MP3s, but in much the same way that some people "steal" CDs by buying burned copies on the streets of New York.
The bottom line is, when fat cats get comfortable, they don't want to rock the boat, even if in rocking it they save everyone on board. I want the RIAA to die a horrible death. Not because I don't respect intellectual property (which is owned by the artists, let's remember, and not the RIAA), but because it is purely a business organization (an "industry association"), and it failed in its only real capacity: to notice and adapt to business trends in order to allow the record industry to respond to changing economic climates. It deserves to be destroyed now--it did it to itself. If I were a record label, I wouldn't be screaming to sue piraters: I'd be screaming to dismantle the RIAA for not realizing what should have been done years ago, before Shawn Fanning became a geek superstar.
Don't be successful.
First of all, I'm not sure if this post's purpose was to brag about MIT or if it was to brag about a Powerbook. But anyway, I'll leave that alone.
I don't see why it's modded Insightful. I'm in a CS department of a less prestigious school (but still a good one) and in the advanced courses running OS X makes life difficult. It's not because there aren't Mac dev tools available (which there are), but because some courses dive into assembly to understand machine architecture (there is a distinct x86 bias for obvious reasons) and if you're running Mac OS you have to do all this work through Virtual PC, which can be a pain.
Of course, I just realized parent might not even be majoring in CS, since MIT has other majors (with higher enrollment nowadays, I bet!...)
They used to sell one of Sager's notebooks for $500-600 more and call it their own simply because they spraypainted it grey and inserted an "Alienware" label where it used to say "Sager."
One of my friends spent $2600 on that Alienware and my other one spent $1999 on the equivalent Sager. Both of them ended up having problems after a year because the Sager has a badly designed cooling system.
The bottom line is, Alienware doesn't even pick good models to resell at high prices. I wouldn't trust their notebook. They need to find shitty manufacturers who will let them resell their notebook for a profit by putting a rubberized stupid-looking cover on the top of the LCD screen.
Not to mention that when I bought an Alienware desktop (this was like 5 years ago--that computer definitely didn't last me for life, kiddo), AW was a small company that actually had real tech support (i.e. my GeForce overheated and died, and when I called them they overnighted me a new one, no charge). Nowadays, they are just like every other tech support troupe--probably based out of India, but if not, just as bad.
Stay away... and please do your research.
Keynote is an absolute jewel. Just a short anecdote... I gave a talk at my university about Debian Linux aimed at people who want to see how far the Linux desktop has come (I'm running unstable, so easy there...) and what they can expect from Linux. It also dealt with a lot of the ideas behind Free Software, some of the big thinkers (ESR, Stallman, Perens, though not all in the same breath), and it covered with the great advantages of Debian's package management, etc.
Well, I had to give this talk at our student center, and so I obviously wasn't going to lug my desktop PC along, even though it is an SFF. I own a used Powerbook G4, which I've been lovin' because of my ability (through Fink) to get the latest Linux necessities but still have access to the wealth of proprietary software I enjoy using (Photoshop, InDesign, Dreamweaver, etc.)
I was planning on using OpenOffice to make the presentation, but at that point OOo wasn't running too easily on OS X, and it occasionally crashed on me. I didn't feel like showing off a piece of OSS that crashed constantly as a way of convincing newbs. So I went to the local educational discount store and picked up a copy of Keynote, expecting Powerpoint aquafied.
WOA, was I wrong. This program, with only a few minor exceptions, should be the UI design BIBLE practically. Within an hour of playing I had everything I needed to make a really slick presentation. When you move elements around they click into place, and INTELLIGENT alignment bars appear to help you align other elements with existing ones. The templates are smart rather than inhibitive, and they are actually beautiful designed. The fonts are crisp and clear and perfectly antialiased, the transitions are smooth and (sometimes) 3D accelerated, the support for Quicktime movie files and MP3s is superb. Not only that, but after my talk, I was able to export the presentation to a Quicktime file and burn it to a CD, all without a hitch.
This was all so slick that it got me into trouble. Someone at the lecture asked, "Was this presentation made with OpenOffice, because it's really cool..." and I had to tell him that I used Apple Keynote, with a collective sigh from the room.
I said, "Don't worry, OO is getting there." Yea, right. I was lying just to make everyone feel better. OO will never get there. Keynote is like an entirely different way of thinking. I wouldn't even call them the same kind of tool in this case. Word processors are word processors, but there are presentation programs and then there is Keynote.
---
THERE'S STILL HOPE...
---
That's not to say Linux is doomed on the desktop. I'm a Linux desktop user. But developers definitely need to take lessons from some of these proprietary gems. Just a short list of applications whose UI principles I'd like to see utilized in the Linux desktop world:
o MS Office v. X - has many differences in UI design versus MS Office for Windows, particularly the formatting pane.
o Macromedia Dreamweaver - still the most efficient way to build websites within a graphical environment, and it's because the GUI is smartly designed.
o Watson - if you run OS X, check it out. Swiss-army-knife search tool, and to be fair check out the Windows "sorta-equivalent", Copernic.
o Tune Up Utilities 2003 for Windows - has a wonderful "integrator" program with a great UI, should be imitated for any collection of tools like a control panel.
o Winamp - huh what? Yes. A media player that doesn't imitate iTunes (like Rhytmbox), but also includes "media library" functionality and mp3/aac/ogg ripping, and is Winamp skinnable. So either improvements to xmms or something altogether new. I, for one, hate iTunes and its design.
o DVD Shrink - This is a good example of one of those "one-function" programs that just lets you see all the options and click "go" and everything works. acidrip and dvd::rip both have this sort of "single use tool" aspect to them, but their GUIs are still just wrappers to cli tools, such
Sure, let's all just pretend Free Trade Works No Matter What. Once upon time, people used to emphasize Communism Works No Matter What, and the results were excellent. Such is how idealogy works, except in America we don't look at "Free Trade" as an ideology because all its proponents have convinced of the wonderful brainwashing trick called TINA--"There Is No Alternative."
Capital is free to move, but laborers are not. If a corporation sees a market that has cheaper labor, it is free to move its capital into that market (read: country) and start up factories there, reaping the benefits. Meanwhile, if I, as a poor suffering laborer, want to move into another market, things are not quite so easy.
"Free Trade" is a misnomer. It's "Free" for corporations and concentrations of wealth to do what they want, while it's chains and shackles for the rest of us, the laborers. We're stuck exactly where we are, stuck with whatever hand the prevailing corporations of the day deal to us.
I want to remind everyone that the reason corporations exist is because at some point we granted corporate charters (that's We, The People, granted corporate charters) which could be revoked if the corporations did not serve our economic interests. During many years of judicial distortion, corporations gained rights of personhood, and, through further distortion, became not just people, but people who get the rights of being a person but do not have any of the responsibilities (if a corporation steals, it is not prosecuted as a person who steals, but as an entity with thieves within).
What a distortion it is to think that we, the people, want corporations whose leaders can enjoy the benefits of the US but not give anythink back the country that allowed it to exist. What do I mean by this? They don't give us taxes, because they base their corporation in the Caymans, or whatever. They don't give us jobs, because the outsource. But the upper crust of the corporation benefits from the American lifestyle, and the corporation itself benefits from the captive American market.
If this were a different day, any corporation that could be described in this way would not be allowed to exist. But nowadays, we have schmucks like Friedman telling us it's just the matter of course, that Free Trade will prevail. That people accept this as anything other than a heavy pile of bullshit blows my mind.
This is not about us American laborers being able to compete with those cheap Indians. It's about us not jumping headlong into a world where we allow corporations the rights to do whatever they want, include exploit our market and our laws, without serving the public's economic interest in the slightest.
I hope this becomes and STAYS a national issue. If we have politicians worth a damn, they'll understand that this may be the single most important issue in the coming years. We cannot be manipulated into buying into an idealogy that does serve us. And this is an idealogy, like any other.
You can see it here. From the way these reviewers seem to describe Threedegrees, it is basically a limited IRC chat (10 at a time, why 10?) with some other features that already exist elsewhere (the common playlist idea isn't new, and "Winks" is just a cute, marketable term), and a bunch of stuff that you can see in iStorm.
One difference is, iStorm doesn't talk about "marketing its product to 13-24 year olds." The developers see it as a tool for brainstorming. The other difference is, iStorm is probably actually used to help people think through ideas, whereas Threedegrees will be yet another way (along with AIM, Counterstrike, and most college social life) for people to just sit around engaging in mental masturbation.
Maybe I'm being too harsh.
Hell, if I even got to help one person, and I've helped way more than that, I'd praise that site.
Most of your arguments are against specific people's posts on LNO and not against the site itself. Your whole argument is invalid. It's like saying Slashdot sucks because of assfaces like you.
"Including the home page which does not strike me as at all simple and/or inviting to people who want to try linux but aren't sure where to start or where they stand."
What the? Linux newbies aren't idiots... maybe? They don't need to be pampered with a text-only page in big header font that says "LINUX HELP HERE." I'd be offended by that, if the design was as if for age groups 3-5. Simply because LNO has the style of a news page, that looks cool and classy and maybe (to you) complicated, doesn't mean it is at all daunting the appeal of Linux newbies to get started on a new linux system.
So basically, Sensei is a great newbie helper by creating a site that helps all Linux Newbies out in one way or another. You can't get the fix to any given linux problem any quicker than the LNO message board, and you can't find any more easier-to-read-and-follow tutorials than the NHF section. If you're not convinced that you're wrong now, I don't know what to tell you.