No, and look at how much marketshare Apple had to lose before they decided to do something about it.
They're still suffering badly from NIH, it's just that the lack of Oxygen (cash) made them delusional for a while. The other time was their short stint of clone Macintoshes.
Now that they're selling the OS separate from the machine, I'm surprised Compaq hasn't stepped up to the plate and conquered yet another ripe proprietary system. If they could do it once, why not again?
So, since you believe anything good should only be done by the original company to invent it, I assume you buy nothing but IBM parts if you have a PC, and would never think of using anything non-Apple with your Mac, and that if you have a PC, it would have to run an MS operating system.
Also, I must assume you drive a Ford, should you have a car. And that you haven't bought a modem since Hayes went out of business, and that your phone is made by Bell or AT&T, etc, etc.
In my opinion, if something works well, why _not_ use it? It's exactly that sort of NIH mentality that helps keep Apple at position #2.
7500e is a 2x drive, and, IIRC, wasn't particularly fast for the time it was produced. At 2x you can burn just about any quality of media. 9500i is a 12x drive. You're pretty lucky that the cheapie discs worked with a drive at the time you bought that... Have you tested them lately?;-) The new cheap discs are good even up to 40x, so today it doesn't matter, unless you care about how long you're going to store your data (or compatibility with older drives).
But, at the time a 24x burner was hot stuff and 12x was still being sold commonly, cheap discs were a really poor bet. Or so was my experience with a cheap 100 pack from Future Shop that would only burn at 4x.
>By the way, the quality started going down after the Laserjet 4, not III.
Okay, lets split hairs =:^) It was after the laserjet 4 Si. The regular LaserJet 4, and 4+ were the start of the "let's replace anything possible with plastic" mentality that's lead to today's HP laser printers that creak when you lean on them and dissassemble like a $40 VCR.
HP was never really in the CD RW business. And for the time they were, they (for a stretch) used Philips crap drives that blew up faster than the $10 CD-ROM special from the corner computer shop.
HP is actually not in much business of making computer stuff at all. I would venture to guess that 90% of their computer stuff is OEMed. Just FYI...:-)
They really (Compaq and HP) are trying their damndest to stop making _anything_, it seems to me. No more calculators, not much scientific equipment, constant attempts to destroy the Alpha processors, etc, etc. Anything you buy from Compaq or HP is a crapshoot. I'd say the only thing you can trust to be consistent is their service, but I'm pretty sure that's farmed out too.
Hey, same thing for me too (LG 40x burner). But then again, I've never burned a Ritek OEM CD at more than 24x (I buy the $15 100 piece spindles). There's no point, since even if they could handle it (which they probably can't) it's only a minute or so faster.
But if you pair up poor media with an average drive at full speed you're asking for trouble...
Damn... and I thought it was simply that because old VW beetles weren't luxury vehicles, it was the license plate that was the biggest feature. Hence, truth in advertising.
>How would you suggest handling London's congestion problems?
Hmmm... one could always improve the overcrowded subway that forces people to use their cars. As someone who vacationed in London, I certainly wasn't prepared for the fact that there isn't even breathing room in those old subway cars.;-)
Otherwise, a tax isn't going to make any difference. In the US, people drive on toll roads all the time -- they could care less if they have to pay a fee to use them. The idea of doing the same thing (taxing a road) in an attempt to stop people from using it is ludicrous, or at least it is at 5 pounds a day. If it were in the 50 to 100 pounds a day range, I could see it.
Otherwise, you'll still end up with the same split of people using congested and un-congested roads. It's just that the people on the congested roads will be doing it for free (since they'll be outside the zone) and they'll be all the people who are cheap, and the core will have less traffic, and people who aren't cheap.
In the end, this is just moving the problem from one spot to another. Sorta like those 1 km high smokestacks cities would build for factories to make sure that the pollution isn't their problem.:-)
The answer is better public transportation in London. In other places I don't advocate it, but the demand in London is so high, I think it would be invaluable to go as far as building a second set of subway tracks to handle the load. There's just that many people who want to ride the underground.
Just my 2 cents.
(Sorry for the misconception about the camers. Being that I'm from a relatively unserveilled country, it made me feel very creepy being in London. Didn't even want to scratch my ass in public.)
If that someone is a government, and if that government is using tax money to buy that OS, you would suggest the public take no interest in it?
>Most folks only care that they can do what they need to do (the computer is a tool), not what other people are doing (religion).
Most folks would bitch and moan if they found out that the city was spending $300 on each shovel if they could get them for next to nothing. You would suggest that's religion?
Wow, I guess _everything_ is a religion to you...
>My needs may not be anything like yours and why are you trying to tell me what I should be running on my machine?
You work for the government, then, I assume. Otherwise, exactly where did he say, you, individually, couldn't blow your money on anything you like?
When did people get so apathetic about what their government buys?
This is exactly why you don't let your city put up cameras to patrol the streets instead of police officers. If they're controlled by the government, they'll just find a way to tax you with them, among other problems.
The city of London is getting EXACTLY what it deserves. I just hope more of it comes their way.
And this, my friends, is exactly why only stupid companies write into your contract that any work you do is instantly owned by the company, and that your rights to it are immediately removed.
If they do that, then yes, the company is liable. Their choice would likely be to redevelop on the 18-month old system and stop all development on the current version while lawyers fight it out.
If the company is smart and doesn't claim to instantly own a worker's code, they can simply disclaim responsibility by saying that they didn't write it, and that they don't want it.
Sorry -- but you, sir, are in another EXTREME minority. As in, 9/282 extreme, or 3% extreme. And 2 of the 9 quotes seem to be from a feline-o-phile story... which sort of worries me. I really had no clue that such literature existed, until today. Another 2 of the 9 are from the same person, Ed Arditti. So, striking out the unusual literature, and not giving credit for dupes, I'm down to 6. Which makes it a 98% advantage for the non-points team.
If you'd like, I'll email Ed Arditti and see if he can shed some light on to his wildly unsupported claim.
Now, if only 3% of the connected world says you're right, you'll need to provide me with some much harder evidence. Like, perhaps, at least an actual known slashdot account that you're willing to back up that claim with (both that it's a misquote, and what the difference is, exactly. Preferably referring to the UK, which is the land we're talking about). Otherwise, I'm more likely to believe I've been probed by aliens. At least in that case I'd have a reason for my constipation today that isn't related to McDonald's.
Since we're talking about the UK, squatters rule. In fact, this attitude seems to pervail in about 25% of the world (europe). AFAIK, the idea that squatters have no rights at all is part of an EXTREME minority of the world (about 5% of the world's population).
Posession is very much 9/10s of the law. Any lawyer will tell you that, and it's about the only true thing they'll ever tell you.
I had this discussion earlier: What if part of the space shuttle that just blew up landed on your property and you chose to keep it, violating laws against meddling with federal investigations? What powers does the government have to recover it (no, not just put you in jail, but actually recover the item)? And if they do recover it, how much will you be able to sue for?
Posession of anything that isn't outright illegal is 9/10s of the law. That's why there's special "drug war" laws that allow the government to take your drug paraphenalia. Without them, upon release from prison, they'd have to hand your bong/crack pipe back, because they're yours.
>One recommendation, if you try doing it yourself, that bulb solder remover from the 'Shack' is crap. Get the spring loaded one.
It's more than crap -- it's dangerous to your parts. Never use an ungrounded iron on anything that has unsocketed chips on it. Ever.
[ Yes, I've said that before. I'm saying it again, because people I know that buy the usual $5 iron from Radio Hack usually are the same people who complain about their ICs always being faulty -- and they're not dummies, normally, either. ]
Since time has gone by and there's no more guesses, I'll tell the correct answer:
The pen/pencil combo is gravity based. The pen will only eject the pencil when the 0,5 written on the button is facing the top while the pen is held level and the button on the "top" (now side) is pushed. If the pen is turned the other way (or any way not "normal") the pen will eject.
Weird, huh? Just like a lot of crappy software I've used... My favourite are the ones where too much/too little whitespace in the config file breaks it, and there's no warnings in the config file itself about this. Fun.
At least I haven't had any software that requires me to reorient my computer -- yet.
>when your job consists of using Word 97 and occasionally IE, how much can *possibly* go wrong to the point that they become frustrated?
Even the most simplistic tools can be a nightmare to use if the interface is a mess.
Case in point: Pencils. Yes, pencils. Easy to use, right?
How about this one:
I bought a neat little pen, made in Japan, with no english instructions, and no diagrams. It's actually a pen and pencil in one. Neat little tool, and looks real nice on the outside.
Now, with this pen, I spent about 30 minutes trying to figure out how to select the pencil instead of the pen. It consists of the usual push button on top, which, when exposed, lets you fill the pencil with lead and there is a little tiny button on the side marked 0,5, which, when pushed, retracts the current selection.
Now, I think it'll be more fun for me not to tell you how to get the pencil to show instead of the pen. You tell me what you'd do to make it happen.
My bets are you'll get it wrong.;-) And if you do, it shows that no matter how easy something is to use, it can go wrong.
Here's another simple tool that's a PITA to use properly: China markers. It took me a little bit to figure out how to get more marker out from the thing.
There's all sorts of examples like this that just go to show simplicity of the tool doesn't equal an intitive interface.
I'd say this topic warrants a newspaper article. It's an ongoing problem, which computers have done nothing but exasperate to extreme proportions.
Slashdot Mirror
>BSD and KHTML were invented at Apple?
No, and look at how much marketshare Apple had to lose before they decided to do something about it.
They're still suffering badly from NIH, it's just that the lack of Oxygen (cash) made them delusional for a while. The other time was their short stint of clone Macintoshes.
Now that they're selling the OS separate from the machine, I'm surprised Compaq hasn't stepped up to the plate and conquered yet another ripe proprietary system. If they could do it once, why not again?
So, since you believe anything good should only be done by the original company to invent it, I assume you buy nothing but IBM parts if you have a PC, and would never think of using anything non-Apple with your Mac, and that if you have a PC, it would have to run an MS operating system.
Also, I must assume you drive a Ford, should you have a car. And that you haven't bought a modem since Hayes went out of business, and that your phone is made by Bell or AT&T, etc, etc.
In my opinion, if something works well, why _not_ use it? It's exactly that sort of NIH mentality that helps keep Apple at position #2.
7500e is a 2x drive, and, IIRC, wasn't particularly fast for the time it was produced. At 2x you can burn just about any quality of media. ;-)
9500i is a 12x drive. You're pretty lucky that the cheapie discs worked with a drive at the time you bought that... Have you tested them lately?
The new cheap discs are good even up to 40x, so today it doesn't matter, unless you care about how long you're going to store your data (or compatibility with older drives).
But, at the time a 24x burner was hot stuff and 12x was still being sold commonly, cheap discs were a really poor bet. Or so was my experience with a cheap 100 pack from Future Shop that would only burn at 4x.
>By the way, the quality started going down after the Laserjet 4, not III.
Okay, lets split hairs =:^) It was after the laserjet 4 Si. The regular LaserJet 4, and 4+ were the start of the "let's replace anything possible with plastic" mentality that's lead to today's HP laser printers that creak when you lean on them and dissassemble like a $40 VCR.
Just the way I see it...
And I thought OS X was a unix variant...
If it still is, why don't you just use this? It was the utility that made a linux box a permanent addition to my home...
The only drives that don't work with that are a little less than a decade old, AFAIK...
I think I'd like to get one of these drives just to add "THIS SIDE DOWN" as the tattoo...
HP was never really in the CD RW business. And for the time they were, they (for a stretch) used Philips crap drives that blew up faster than the $10 CD-ROM special from the corner computer shop.
:-)
HP is actually not in much business of making computer stuff at all. I would venture to guess that 90% of their computer stuff is OEMed. Just FYI...
They really (Compaq and HP) are trying their damndest to stop making _anything_, it seems to me. No more calculators, not much scientific equipment, constant attempts to destroy the Alpha processors, etc, etc. Anything you buy from Compaq or HP is a crapshoot. I'd say the only thing you can trust to be consistent is their service, but I'm pretty sure that's farmed out too.
Oh well...
Hey, same thing for me too (LG 40x burner). But then again, I've never burned a Ritek OEM CD at more than 24x (I buy the $15 100 piece spindles). There's no point, since even if they could handle it (which they probably can't) it's only a minute or so faster.
But if you pair up poor media with an average drive at full speed you're asking for trouble...
>It was in the box, sealed, and it worked. It just wouldn't burn onto any of the CDs I had (Memorex).
Yeah, Memorex, eh?
Memorex == OEM Ritek == Junk.
I've not yet met a burner that handles their media well. Maybe a laser cutter would do...
Damn... and I thought it was simply that because old VW beetles weren't luxury vehicles, it was the license plate that was the biggest feature. Hence, truth in advertising.
Time to go back to reading stuff that is funny...
Really, replacing the connector isn't hard, requires no soldering, and cost me $17 CDN just a couple of years ago.
So if you take it (the charge) to court as a mistake, it stays on the system for the next year or so until your court date?
Great....
Which button is it???~!?//!?11
LOCK WORKSTATION, logout, shutDown, _Change Password, TaSK L1st, or Cncel?
I MUST KNWO! Give me answer! Pleez! NOW! Right NOW! PLEAEEHZ! PLEEZ!
>How would you suggest handling London's congestion problems?
;-)
:-)
Hmmm... one could always improve the overcrowded subway that forces people to use their cars. As someone who vacationed in London, I certainly wasn't prepared for the fact that there isn't even breathing room in those old subway cars.
Otherwise, a tax isn't going to make any difference. In the US, people drive on toll roads all the time -- they could care less if they have to pay a fee to use them. The idea of doing the same thing (taxing a road) in an attempt to stop people from using it is ludicrous, or at least it is at 5 pounds a day. If it were in the 50 to 100 pounds a day range, I could see it.
Otherwise, you'll still end up with the same split of people using congested and un-congested roads. It's just that the people on the congested roads will be doing it for free (since they'll be outside the zone) and they'll be all the people who are cheap, and the core will have less traffic, and people who aren't cheap.
In the end, this is just moving the problem from one spot to another. Sorta like those 1 km high smokestacks cities would build for factories to make sure that the pollution isn't their problem.
The answer is better public transportation in London. In other places I don't advocate it, but the demand in London is so high, I think it would be invaluable to go as far as building a second set of subway tracks to handle the load. There's just that many people who want to ride the underground.
Just my 2 cents.
(Sorry for the misconception about the camers. Being that I'm from a relatively unserveilled country, it made me feel very creepy being in London. Didn't even want to scratch my ass in public.)
>Why do you care what OS someone else is running?
If that someone is a government, and if that government is using tax money to buy that OS, you would suggest the public take no interest in it?
>Most folks only care that they can do what they need to do (the computer is a tool), not what other people are doing (religion).
Most folks would bitch and moan if they found out that the city was spending $300 on each shovel if they could get them for next to nothing. You would suggest that's religion?
Wow, I guess _everything_ is a religion to you...
>My needs may not be anything like yours and why are you trying to tell me what I should be running on my machine?
You work for the government, then, I assume. Otherwise, exactly where did he say, you, individually, couldn't blow your money on anything you like?
When did people get so apathetic about what their government buys?
This is exactly why you don't let your city put up cameras to patrol the streets instead of police officers. If they're controlled by the government, they'll just find a way to tax you with them, among other problems.
The city of London is getting EXACTLY what it deserves. I just hope more of it comes their way.
>You do realize that C doesn't include a standard GUI API, and that many programs require GUIs these days?
I suppose they didn't include one because they didn't want to pull a "java" and rewrite the GUI language all the time, making old code trash.
At least I can still compile K&R's "Hello World" test on GCC 3.0...
>Tell me, Mr. Anderson, what good is a phone call when you are unable to speak?
;-)
Perfectly fine, if you ask me. Phone have buttons. Hook me up with a phone and someone with a live brain on the other end and I'm all set.
And this, my friends, is exactly why only stupid companies write into your contract that any work you do is instantly owned by the company, and that your rights to it are immediately removed.
If they do that, then yes, the company is liable. Their choice would likely be to redevelop on the 18-month old system and stop all development on the current version while lawyers fight it out.
If the company is smart and doesn't claim to instantly own a worker's code, they can simply disclaim responsibility by saying that they didn't write it, and that they don't want it.
But, IANAL, so ask yours if that's the case.
Well, either lawyers don't use the internet, or you belong on Penn & Teller's Bullshit!.
Sorry -- but you, sir, are in another EXTREME minority. As in, 9/282 extreme, or 3% extreme. And 2 of the 9 quotes seem to be from a feline-o-phile story... which sort of worries me. I really had no clue that such literature existed, until today. Another 2 of the 9 are from the same person, Ed Arditti. So, striking out the unusual literature, and not giving credit for dupes, I'm down to 6. Which makes it a 98% advantage for the non-points team.
If you'd like, I'll email Ed Arditti and see if he can shed some light on to his wildly unsupported claim.
Now, if only 3% of the connected world says you're right, you'll need to provide me with some much harder evidence. Like, perhaps, at least an actual known slashdot account that you're willing to back up that claim with (both that it's a misquote, and what the difference is, exactly. Preferably referring to the UK, which is the land we're talking about). Otherwise, I'm more likely to believe I've been probed by aliens. At least in that case I'd have a reason for my constipation today that isn't related to McDonald's.
>That doesn't count on any court ever existed on earth. If I get your house because you were on vacation for 9 years doesn't make me an owner.
No, that's where you're quite wrong.
Since we're talking about the UK, squatters rule. In fact, this attitude seems to pervail in about 25% of the world (europe). AFAIK, the idea that squatters have no rights at all is part of an EXTREME minority of the world (about 5% of the world's population).
Posession is very much 9/10s of the law. Any lawyer will tell you that, and it's about the only true thing they'll ever tell you.
I had this discussion earlier: What if part of the space shuttle that just blew up landed on your property and you chose to keep it, violating laws against meddling with federal investigations? What powers does the government have to recover it (no, not just put you in jail, but actually recover the item)? And if they do recover it, how much will you be able to sue for?
Posession of anything that isn't outright illegal is 9/10s of the law. That's why there's special "drug war" laws that allow the government to take your drug paraphenalia. Without them, upon release from prison, they'd have to hand your bong/crack pipe back, because they're yours.
>One recommendation, if you try doing it yourself, that bulb solder remover from the 'Shack' is crap. Get the spring loaded one.
It's more than crap -- it's dangerous to your parts. Never use an ungrounded iron on anything that has unsocketed chips on it. Ever.
[ Yes, I've said that before. I'm saying it again, because people I know that buy the usual $5 iron from Radio Hack usually are the same people who complain about their ICs always being faulty -- and they're not dummies, normally, either. ]
Since time has gone by and there's no more guesses, I'll tell the correct answer:
The pen/pencil combo is gravity based. The pen will only eject the pencil when the 0,5 written on the button is facing the top while the pen is held level and the button on the "top" (now side) is pushed. If the pen is turned the other way (or any way not "normal") the pen will eject.
Weird, huh? Just like a lot of crappy software I've used... My favourite are the ones where too much/too little whitespace in the config file breaks it, and there's no warnings in the config file itself about this. Fun.
At least I haven't had any software that requires me to reorient my computer -- yet.
>The problem is that to date, nobody in the OSS world has done so.
Well, in that case, I suggest we wrap this with quicktime.
Then we'll have the OSS QT codec everyone wants. Not to mention lossless video that's still compressed better than sound has ever been. Sweet.
>when your job consists of using Word 97 and occasionally IE, how much can *possibly* go wrong to the point that they become frustrated?
;-) And if you do, it shows that no matter how easy something is to use, it can go wrong.
Even the most simplistic tools can be a nightmare to use if the interface is a mess.
Case in point: Pencils. Yes, pencils. Easy to use, right?
How about this one:
I bought a neat little pen, made in Japan, with no english instructions, and no diagrams. It's actually a pen and pencil in one. Neat little tool, and looks real nice on the outside.
Now, with this pen, I spent about 30 minutes trying to figure out how to select the pencil instead of the pen. It consists of the usual push button on top, which, when exposed, lets you fill the pencil with lead and there is a little tiny button on the side marked 0,5, which, when pushed, retracts the current selection.
Now, I think it'll be more fun for me not to tell you how to get the pencil to show instead of the pen. You tell me what you'd do to make it happen.
My bets are you'll get it wrong.
Here's another simple tool that's a PITA to use properly: China markers. It took me a little bit to figure out how to get more marker out from the thing.
There's all sorts of examples like this that just go to show simplicity of the tool doesn't equal an intitive interface.
I'd say this topic warrants a newspaper article. It's an ongoing problem, which computers have done nothing but exasperate to extreme proportions.