Now, MS is coming out with a new version of office that again offers no reason to upgrade, and now they change the interface?
A significant change in the interface may be a compelling reason to upgrade in itself. I haven't played with OpenOffice recently, and I obviously haven't had the chance to play with MS Office 12 yet. But I'd be willing to bet that MS Office 12 has a much better learning curve than OpenOffice. Certainly it can't be that much worse than MS Office 11.
In order to work, someone must either run the Opener script with Administrator privileges, or the attacker must have physical access to the machine to use an alternate boot device and select "ignore permissions" on the internal drive. Sure, it will do bad things to a Mac. I'm unaware of any system in common use on which running untrusted programs with administrator privileges is a Bad Idea.
One version of the Opener script can be found here.
Have you gone into the Apple Store and seen the populace that buys these computers? I'm not going to say *all* of them are novices, but I've noticed a fair amount of the people are mom-and-pop types who have zero computer experience.
Have you gone into a CompUSA and seen the populace that buys those computers? I'm not going to say *all* of them are novices...
If Apple has a reputation for making a computer that's easier to use than a PC, more power to them. I use my PowerBook constantly at home, and find that for ease-of-use and productivity it compares favorably to every other computer I've ever used.
(For the record, I'm a system adminstrator who manages Linux and Windows 2k3, and came out of a position where I did desktop support for Windows 95, 98, and XP.)
Say you send one 1MB Word document to 100 of your colleagues. In a relational database-based, Single Instance Store-driven mail server, that document takes up exactly 1MB on the server. If somebody in the organization forwards the Word doc to the remaining 900 people in your organization, how much space does it take on the server? 1MB.
Well... technically, there's going to be a little bit of space taken up by the mailbox-to-message relationship. But otherwise, I'm with you 100%.
I wonder, though, if there isn't a good way of hybridizing the two systems. If you used a maldir setup, but only stored a reference to a message stored elsewhere on the system in the actual maildir, you could get the single instance store, but get to keep it in the filesystem in a format only marginally more complicated to manage......maybe. At the very least, it'd be a good way to burn up some spare inodes you have lying around.
Apologies for going off on a tangent, but precisely what the fuck is with all those links on the linked article? Pop-up windows were bad: pop-up divs and layers are worse. Now we have companies like IntelliTXT vomiting multiple tiny pop-up divs in pages, waiting to dazzle you with scores of sponsored links every time you accidentally mouse over one of their keywords.
I dobut that'll happen. I have a Motorola V550, and used bluetooth to transfer a small mp3 to the phone, just to see if I could set it as a ringtone. Worked with no problem. Now, whenever my wife calls me, I get the first few bars of "Fell in love with a girl," by the White Stripes.
Since the capability existed prior to the iTunes features, I doubt they'd strip it out, but hey, stranger things have been known to happen.
(I only went through this exercise because it pissed me off that wireless companies would charge two bucks for a cheesy polyphonic ringtone, but that I could get the actual song online at iTunes for US$.99.)
This really highlights the difference, in my view, between the "free software" (read: Free Software Foundation) and "open source" (read: most everyone else) camps. If I'm not terribly mistaken, a clause denying the use of GPL software to companies that use DRM technologies/hold software patents would violate the definition of open source software, according to the Open Source Initiative. Specifically, I'm looking at clauses 5, 6, and 9.
5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons.
6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.
9. License Must Not Restrict Other Software The license must not place restrictions on other software that is distributed along with the licensed software. For example, the license must not insist that all other programs distributed on the same medium must be open-source software.
Heh. A friend of mine used to do system administration for a compny that specializes in remote conferencing. Every once in a while she'd be called in deliver the "stop looking at porn" warning to someone.
Near the end, she considered employing a "I 3 porn" screensaver on the desktops of the people she'd busted.
(Incidentally: she's left IT and now teaches yoga, and is about a thousand times happier.)
Oh, for god's sake. Look, just because you happen to think Carmack roxors your video card's soxors doesn't make him the be-all end-all of game development.
This article is about creativity in game design. Carmack doesn't have much to do - indeed, doesn't want much to do - with game design. He writes the engines, and lets other people handle the gameplay.
Oh, and incidentally, the last three games id software published were, what? Doom 3, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and Quake 3. In those three games, the most innovative feature offered was the ability to blow up Rob Zombie.
What is the big deal about desktop searching, anyway? Are people REALLY having so much trouble finding files on their own computer?
The short answer: yes.
The longer answer: the issue isn't limited to "finding files on their own computer," although it's easy to misinterpret it that way. Usually, finding an individual file isn't that hard, assuming you already know what the file is. What if...
...you're looking for something which is in one of hundreds of similarly named files, all in the same directory?
...you're looking something out of a file that someone sent you as an e-mail attachment which didn't have an immediately obvious name?
...you want to round up everything on your hard drive which is related to a given keyword: images, e-mails, word documents, spreadsheets, mp3s, ad nauseum?
The fact is that the standard "directory/filename" method of organizing data requires a lot of consistent upkeep to work well over time, and is just terrible at storing information that other apps want to keep organized for you (eg, any mail application). Want to see this in action? Go to any medium-or-larger sized organization, browse to their file server, and drill down into a couple of random folders. Point at the screen and ask someone to tell you what's stored there. I'll bet money that the majority of people will have no idea what they're looking at, and it only gets worse once the people who put the files there leave, or the projects get stale - tons of files noone needs, sitting there because noone thinks they have the authority to say "I can go ahead and delete this now."
One more brief example: I recently bought the PDF version of Agile Web Devlopment with Rails online, and saved it - along with every "beta book" they sent me - in my "~/Documents/Documentation/" folder. Not hard to remember that at all, but it's still faster for me to hit command-space, type "agile rails", and click on the first result, than it is for me to double click the finder, drill down to that directory, and double-click the file.
Perhaps it's just a quirk of my coverage area, but I routinely got better coverage with phones from both Verizon and Cingular (I'm with Cingular now) than I did with my Nextel.
And even Wegman's system is just an extension of the same thing I see in most supermarket deli departments. Ask for a half pound of potato salad sometime and watch them print the barcode.
(I mean, or not. The point is that the only difference is the self-serveness of it.)
Quake was still something you'd "Exit into DOS mode" for.
I'm surprised at how many people forget stuff like this. I suppose noone remembers WinQuake?
(Ah, how fondly I remember watching packets for my game server die trying to get out MAE-East, and how all the affected players suddenly appeared to be wearing skates due to the fresh new client-side prediction code. On occasions where it got particularly bad, we'd compliment each other on our triple-axels.)
At our high school, near the end of every year there was an event called the "Lunch Bunch," or the "Lunch Munch," where bands would get to play in the school courtyard for a few hours at lunchtime.
For some reason, I decided to play in bare feet. And I noticed an odd tingle in my fingertips when I stood on the asphault, which had metal bits mixed in to it.
By the end of the song, I was getting shocked outright. That's the hardest I've ever had to work to pull off a song in concert.
Re:True and it wasn't just Quantum
on
10 Computer Mishaps
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· Score: 3, Funny
A "cow-orker?" Sweet lord, I can't stop picturing a "cow-orker!"
Oh, gee, thanks for that visual. Now I'm gonna have it stuck in my head the rest of the day.
Just by way of addendum, the "not this, or no nothing" approach has been used in a variety of related scenarios. For example, if you run an organization which conducts family planning or health counseling and receive federal funding, you may not even mention abortion to any of your advisees. If you do, you lose your federal funding. In pro-choice circles, this is known as the Global Gag Rule.
Does anyone here know of a good reference for balancing the "gee-whiz, nifty" aspects of ajax techniques with designing towards accessibility? I like the thought of, say, livesearch, but dislike the idea of breaking support for text-to-speech readers, assistive devices, et cetera.
In fact, the article in the story might have a terrific section about just this issue. But I wouldn't know, because the server fell over worse than I do after a gin-and-tonic bender.
Slashdot Mirror
A significant change in the interface may be a compelling reason to upgrade in itself. I haven't played with OpenOffice recently, and I obviously haven't had the chance to play with MS Office 12 yet. But I'd be willing to bet that MS Office 12 has a much better learning curve than OpenOffice. Certainly it can't be that much worse than MS Office 11.
Yeah. And how many viruses are written in assembler?
(in other words, Apple's move to Intel isn't going to mean a damn thing to virus writers, unless it's by virtue of more people installing Virtual PC.)
Erk. That should have read, "...is a Good Idea."
Time for the afternoon caffeine break, clearly.
Fer chrissake, Opener is a bash script .
In order to work, someone must either run the Opener script with Administrator privileges, or the attacker must have physical access to the machine to use an alternate boot device and select "ignore permissions" on the internal drive. Sure, it will do bad things to a Mac. I'm unaware of any system in common use on which running untrusted programs with administrator privileges is a Bad Idea.
One version of the Opener script can be found here.
Have you gone into a CompUSA and seen the populace that buys those computers? I'm not going to say *all* of them are novices...
If Apple has a reputation for making a computer that's easier to use than a PC, more power to them. I use my PowerBook constantly at home, and find that for ease-of-use and productivity it compares favorably to every other computer I've ever used.
(For the record, I'm a system adminstrator who manages Linux and Windows 2k3, and came out of a position where I did desktop support for Windows 95, 98, and XP.)
And now I see downthread that this is basically how Cyrus works. Doh.
Well... technically, there's going to be a little bit of space taken up by the mailbox-to-message relationship. But otherwise, I'm with you 100%.
I wonder, though, if there isn't a good way of hybridizing the two systems. If you used a maldir setup, but only stored a reference to a message stored elsewhere on the system in the actual maildir, you could get the single instance store, but get to keep it in the filesystem in a format only marginally more complicated to manage...
Apologies for going off on a tangent, but precisely what the fuck is with all those links on the linked article? Pop-up windows were bad: pop-up divs and layers are worse. Now we have companies like IntelliTXT vomiting multiple tiny pop-up divs in pages, waiting to dazzle you with scores of sponsored links every time you accidentally mouse over one of their keywords.
Blech.
I dobut that'll happen. I have a Motorola V550, and used bluetooth to transfer a small mp3 to the phone, just to see if I could set it as a ringtone. Worked with no problem. Now, whenever my wife calls me, I get the first few bars of "Fell in love with a girl," by the White Stripes.
Since the capability existed prior to the iTunes features, I doubt they'd strip it out, but hey, stranger things have been known to happen.
(I only went through this exercise because it pissed me off that wireless companies would charge two bucks for a cheesy polyphonic ringtone, but that I could get the actual song online at iTunes for US$.99.)
Er... 4. 4 TB of ram, is what I meant.
Way to blow the punchline, sb.
Yeah, but it'll be dog slow. Longhorn should have 2 TB of ram, at the least.
Incorrect. That's a paraphrasing of the second rule of being a spell check Nazi: "If you are a spell check nazi, you will spell check your own post."
The first rule is, of course, "Do not talk about spell check nazis."
Heh. A friend of mine used to do system administration for a compny that specializes in remote conferencing. Every once in a while she'd be called in deliver the "stop looking at porn" warning to someone.
Near the end, she considered employing a "I 3 porn" screensaver on the desktops of the people she'd busted.
(Incidentally: she's left IT and now teaches yoga, and is about a thousand times happier.)
Oh, for god's sake. Look, just because you happen to think Carmack roxors your video card's soxors doesn't make him the be-all end-all of game development.
This article is about creativity in game design. Carmack doesn't have much to do - indeed, doesn't want much to do - with game design. He writes the engines, and lets other people handle the gameplay.
Oh, and incidentally, the last three games id software published were, what? Doom 3, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and Quake 3. In those three games, the most innovative feature offered was the ability to blow up Rob Zombie.
If that was the determining factor, why didn't they evaluate Solaris on x86, instead of SPARC?
The short answer: yes.
The longer answer: the issue isn't limited to "finding files on their own computer," although it's easy to misinterpret it that way. Usually, finding an individual file isn't that hard, assuming you already know what the file is. What if...
The fact is that the standard "directory/filename" method of organizing data requires a lot of consistent upkeep to work well over time, and is just terrible at storing information that other apps want to keep organized for you (eg, any mail application). Want to see this in action? Go to any medium-or-larger sized organization, browse to their file server, and drill down into a couple of random folders. Point at the screen and ask someone to tell you what's stored there. I'll bet money that the majority of people will have no idea what they're looking at, and it only gets worse once the people who put the files there leave, or the projects get stale - tons of files noone needs, sitting there because noone thinks they have the authority to say "I can go ahead and delete this now."
One more brief example: I recently bought the PDF version of Agile Web Devlopment with Rails online, and saved it - along with every "beta book" they sent me - in my "~/Documents/Documentation/" folder. Not hard to remember that at all, but it's still faster for me to hit command-space, type "agile rails", and click on the first result, than it is for me to double click the finder, drill down to that directory, and double-click the file.
Perhaps it's just a quirk of my coverage area, but I routinely got better coverage with phones from both Verizon and Cingular (I'm with Cingular now) than I did with my Nextel.
And even Wegman's system is just an extension of the same thing I see in most supermarket deli departments. Ask for a half pound of potato salad sometime and watch them print the barcode.
(I mean, or not. The point is that the only difference is the self-serveness of it.)
I'm surprised at how many people forget stuff like this. I suppose noone remembers WinQuake?
(Ah, how fondly I remember watching packets for my game server die trying to get out MAE-East, and how all the affected players suddenly appeared to be wearing skates due to the fresh new client-side prediction code. On occasions where it got particularly bad, we'd compliment each other on our triple-axels.)
At our high school, near the end of every year there was an event called the "Lunch Bunch," or the "Lunch Munch," where bands would get to play in the school courtyard for a few hours at lunchtime.
For some reason, I decided to play in bare feet. And I noticed an odd tingle in my fingertips when I stood on the asphault, which had metal bits mixed in to it.
By the end of the song, I was getting shocked outright. That's the hardest I've ever had to work to pull off a song in concert.
A "cow-orker?" Sweet lord, I can't stop picturing a "cow-orker!"
Oh, gee, thanks for that visual. Now I'm gonna have it stuck in my head the rest of the day.
Isn't orking cows illegal in most states?
Bravo for a well presented post.
Just by way of addendum, the "not this, or no nothing" approach has been used in a variety of related scenarios. For example, if you run an organization which conducts family planning or health counseling and receive federal funding, you may not even mention abortion to any of your advisees. If you do, you lose your federal funding. In pro-choice circles, this is known as the Global Gag Rule.
Does anyone here know of a good reference for balancing the "gee-whiz, nifty" aspects of ajax techniques with designing towards accessibility? I like the thought of, say, livesearch, but dislike the idea of breaking support for text-to-speech readers, assistive devices, et cetera.
In fact, the article in the story might have a terrific section about just this issue. But I wouldn't know, because the server fell over worse than I do after a gin-and-tonic bender.
"You're Abe Frohman."
"Yes."
"The Sausage King of Chicago."
One of my favorite flicks.