Yup, need to make ULs work after clicking "submit" too. Where "work" means "display with bullets".
Also, if you want, scrap all the shit you did on the last redesign, too, because I just have it all turned off anyway.
Seriously: if the site becomes a bloated piece of shit, or detracts from the ability to make and read comments, Slashdot will die a (richly deserved) digg-like death.
UTF-8 support, so I can copy and paste text from a page with smart quotes and not have it look like ass.
A basic rich-text editor for comments. Bold, ital, underline, link, OL, UL, and quote should about do it. Strikethrough, superscript, and subscript if you wanna get fancy.
Finally, make ULs work properly when you click "preview". (And maybe "submit". Not sure about that. I'll let you know in a bit.)
Re:"We believed we knew better what customers need
on
How BlackBerry Blew It
·
· Score: 0
Ooh, back down to 2, with no replies? I see the BB fans are out in force. I guess the aversion to facts isn't limited to the company. I'm sure your petty gestures will save them! In the meantime, I hear there are some Amiga fans having cookies and punch in Building 3 if you want to commiserate.
Re:"We believed we knew better what customers need
on
How BlackBerry Blew It
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
"The problem wasn't that we stopped listening to customers," said one former RIM insider. "We believed we knew better what customers needed long term than they did."
The problem was being brain-dead in the face of fucking facts.
"Consumers would say, 'I want a faster browser.' We might say, 'You might think you want a faster browser, but you don't want to pay overage on your bill.'"
To which I would say "I'm paying $30/mo for unlimited data. Make your shit work."
"'Well, I want a super big very responsive touchscreen.' 'Well, you might think you want that, but you don't want your phone to die at 2 p.m.'"
To which I would say "My friend's iPhone lasts all day no problem. Make your shit work."
> given that the largest manufacturer of phones at > the time was already on the market with real gps > enabled phones when apple was announcing it's > first phone with what fanbois at the time called > "virtual gps"...
I'd rather have Google Maps as it shipped on the original iPhone with just cell-tower triangulation, than a "real" GPS and the shitty-ass, small-screen maps that came with Nokias and BlackBerries of the day. Apple's #1 innovation was doing things that didn't suck out loud. Ever use the browser on a pre-Apple cell phone? They weren't just bad compared to the iPhone -- they were bad, period. You didn't even need something great to compare them to. They were so bad I was inspired to write about them a href="http://slashdot.org/journal/156498/web-browsers-on-pdas">in late 2006. Oh, and before Apple was around to strong-arm companies into creating decent data plans, cellular data was expensive as hell.
> nothing to do with battery technology.
Hard to say how the battery life compared, because I used my company-issued BB for NOTHING but short calls and occasional emails, versus my iPhone, which did MANY things and did them all VERY WELL. The iPhone isn't perfect for everyone, but for most people, all they need to do is get through a day on a charge, and most people do. As long as you sleep in the same room with an electrical outlet, that's usually enough.
Hear, hear. Damn them for not being able to accommodate every possible obscure need and edge case!
Are you really just now discovering that "they've automatically shoved out iOS 7 on new phones with no way to downgrade"? You mean, they are SHIPPING NEW DEVICES with the new OS, just like they've done the previous FIVE TIMES -- i.e., EVERY TIME -- they've released a new model?
If you really, really, really needed devices with iOS 6, you had 10 days between the announcement of the 5c/5s and the first availability date to buy, and judging by history, you had MONTHS notice that new devices with the new system were coming in summer or early fall. EVERY iPhone has been released within the same 4-month window.
iPhone release dates: 1st gen: June 29, 2007 3G: July 11, 2008 3GS: June 19, 2009 4: June 24, 2010 4S: October 14, 2011 5: September 21, 2012 5C and 5S: September 20, 2013
You know what would have made it a really useful comparison? Telling how much water you can get out of a cubic foot of typical Earth garden soil.
Also: how much water is left in the soil? Will it still stick together, or did you just generate (1 cubic foot minus two pints) of moon dust? The Mayo Clinic says we need about 3 liters of water per day (they mean quarts, natch) so that's 6 cubic feet of dirt processed per person per day.
The F-16 is difficult to fly due to its natural instability. It's a good candidate to be operated by a computer. (I mean, it can be told where to go by a human, but the second-to-second flying should be handled by a machine.)
> One of the (very few) selling points for the new > iPhone 5C and 5S is that they now come with > Apple's spreadsheet program for free, so - yes, > apparently this is a thing people want?
Oh really? You think a sizable portion of the 9 million sales this weekend were because it now comes with 3 apps that cost (I think) $10 each? I think it's actually the opposite -- they probably sell relatively few copies of any iWork apps, so now they're throwing it in for free as a nice little value-add. They've also started giving away iMovie and iPhoto for iOS.
They're all pretty mature programs; I'm sure they're not spending a ton of developer-hours on it anymore. And it's not just a phone thing. They come with any new iOS device that ships with iOS 7.
> If the stats tell us that distracted driving is > causing a huge number of traffic accidents
But do the stats tell us that? It's possible that there's been a rise in recent years that I'm not aware of but it's not like there's all of a sudden 5x as many accidents as there were 10 years ago. I've been occasionally annoyed by someone texting at a red light but as far as that goes, I'd rather people do it at a light than while moving.
But what happens if you want to c/p a third thing? Get a 4-button mouse?
I use a desktop clipboard util and it works fine. And I've *never* liked the whole select/middle-click thing because it's the exact *opposite* of what I want to do: a million times a day while writing or coding, I select a chunk of text, copy, select another chunk, and hit 'paste' to replace it with the first chunk. "Selections instantly go to the clipboard" makes that not work.
Well, at least one of those numbers has been trending downward for 5 years, so in a year or two, it'll be closer to ten.
And if you're going to say "But Microsoft could grow their share with this acquisition!" -- please. If that were the case they'd be doing stellar business with their Nokia agreement (not a purchase, but close enough) from a couple years back.
MS and BB both had great share (of a small market) at the time the iPhone came out and they both pissed that away in the years since. Does anyone really think the two of them joining forces now would make magic happen? Tying to anchors together does not yield something that will float. Exhibit A: HP & Palm.
If I were Apple, I'd buy BB in a heartbeat, just for the patents. As others have pointed out, BB's asking price is really close to Apple's revenue from this weekend's iPhone sales. Apple is sitting on about $150B in cash, so this would be 3% of that. (MIght even help with some of those pesky repatriating issues.)
> You're a software company, stop trying to make > profit on hardware! Sell the hardware cheap and > make the money from sales through the app store! > You make the Xbox, haven't you learned anything > from how console sales work yet?
> No, it doesn't. It counts the number of visitors of a > particular web site that have content strings that > claim they are using an iPad.
Yes! I'm sure TONS of people are using Android tablets or Surfaces but changing their user agents to make it look like they're using iPads. Because then it will look like iPads are more popular and then... sorry, I couldn't think of a single reason that anyone would do that. Someone who loves Apple but is forced to use a competing tablet by their employer? Seriously, I got nothing. Get a better version of a page? If anything, you change your UA to say "something on Desktop", not "something on iPad".
Even if some people are doing it, I can't imagine it's enough to throw off the numbers. "Number of people setting non-iPads to send 'iPad' in their user agent string" divided by "about 90 million" equals a very, very small number.
No, he means the early 2000s when they were working on... uh... Windows Mobile.That's how the missed the, uh, mobile thing.
In all seriousness, MS whiffed on mobile the same way they ignored the WWW in the early days. Even though they somewhat saw it coming, they badly guessed on the direction. They only did as well as they did because they were in the position to put that little blue 'E' on every desktop out-of-the-box. (Remember when you used to sign up for an ISP and they'd send you a CD with TCP/IP software and some browsers on it? Imagine if that remained the only way people got their first browser.) In mobile, it doesn't look like they're going to get a second chance. Apple's iPhone business became bigger than all of MS in just five short years.
> And givent he fact that most testers probably wont > find a test candidate to chop a finger off ill guess i > just... have to take your word for it?
Logic much? How's this: if it won't get a reading at all, a match can't happen. So: find a cadaver. Press the finger onto the pad. No reading? No match possible.
This isn't like typewriter repair, where as long as there's one guy in the country who can still do it, you can get your typewriter fixed. There needs to be enough companies willing to pay for BB products and services to keep the company afloat. You might have noticed a sharp downward trend in BB's cash flow in recent years. For every company that thinks they "can't live without" BlackBerry, there are a literally a hundred others saying "yeah, we'll make do without." And that number of "we'll make do"s goes up every year.
> The iPhone initially was allowed, but when folks > found out that they were locked down and that > they had to use only the software the company > mandated for security reasons, the iPhones were > returned and Blackberry devices issued instead.
Ah, so you see, there are other options. And that's what you'll go back to once BB is done circling the drain. Since does I.T. worry about "user happiness" when there's "security" at stake? Here's a phone, it does email, it's all you can do, now go piss off.
Besides, I'm sure Android will copy BB's dual work/personal mode thing soon enough. Apple? Don't count on it. They're doing just fine without, thankyouverymuch.
For those with bad eyes, is the new OS easier to read, harder, or about the same? Several people in my family are now at the "hold phone at arm's length to read it" age, and initial screenshots of thin grey text on white have me worried.
Bumping up the font size only helps some, and it reduces how much text you can see on a screen at once. Also, it's not a system-wide setting -- you can make notes and texts bigger but not the names of icons on the home screens or the words in alerts.
The most recent version of FF on OS X 10.6.8 (work computer) introduced a new behavior: with a few windows open, it'll suddenly use 100% of one core. I'll close every window (but leave the app running) and it STILL uses 100% of one core. I'll be interested to see if they fix that.
Slashdot Mirror
... raised by the new design: "Will they go ahead with it, even when 99% of the comments here (no exaggeration) are negative?"
They did last time. Thank God they left in "classic" mode. If that goes, I go.
Yup, need to make ULs work after clicking "submit" too. Where "work" means "display with bullets".
Also, if you want, scrap all the shit you did on the last redesign, too, because I just have it all turned off anyway.
Seriously: if the site becomes a bloated piece of shit, or detracts from the ability to make and read comments, Slashdot will die a (richly deserved) digg-like death.
Things I don't like:
As for changes you SHOULD make:
Finally, make ULs work properly when you click "preview". (And maybe "submit". Not sure about that. I'll let you know in a bit.)
Ooh, back down to 2, with no replies? I see the BB fans are out in force. I guess the aversion to facts isn't limited to the company. I'm sure your petty gestures will save them! In the meantime, I hear there are some Amiga fans having cookies and punch in Building 3 if you want to commiserate.
"The problem wasn't that we stopped listening to customers," said one former RIM insider. "We believed we knew better what customers needed long term than they did."
The problem was being brain-dead in the face of fucking facts.
"Consumers would say, 'I want a faster browser.' We might say, 'You might think you want a faster browser, but you don't want to pay overage on your bill.'"
To which I would say "I'm paying $30/mo for unlimited data. Make your shit work."
"'Well, I want a super big very responsive touchscreen.' 'Well, you might think you want that, but you don't want your phone to die at 2 p.m.'"
To which I would say "My friend's iPhone lasts all day no problem. Make your shit work."
> given that the largest manufacturer of phones at
> the time was already on the market with real gps
> enabled phones when apple was announcing it's
> first phone with what fanbois at the time called
> "virtual gps"...
I'd rather have Google Maps as it shipped on the original iPhone with just cell-tower triangulation, than a "real" GPS and the shitty-ass, small-screen maps that came with Nokias and BlackBerries of the day. Apple's #1 innovation was doing things that didn't suck out loud. Ever use the browser on a pre-Apple cell phone? They weren't just bad compared to the iPhone -- they were bad, period. You didn't even need something great to compare them to. They were so bad I was inspired to write about them a href="http://slashdot.org/journal/156498/web-browsers-on-pdas">in late 2006. Oh, and before Apple was around to strong-arm companies into creating decent data plans, cellular data was expensive as hell.
> nothing to do with battery technology.
Hard to say how the battery life compared, because I used my company-issued BB for NOTHING but short calls and occasional emails, versus my iPhone, which did MANY things and did them all VERY WELL. The iPhone isn't perfect for everyone, but for most people, all they need to do is get through a day on a charge, and most people do. As long as you sleep in the same room with an electrical outlet, that's usually enough.
The mobile computer revolution will make the personal computer revolution look like the minicomputer revolution.
Hear, hear. Damn them for not being able to accommodate every possible obscure need and edge case!
Are you really just now discovering that "they've automatically shoved out iOS 7 on new phones with no way to downgrade"? You mean, they are SHIPPING NEW DEVICES with the new OS, just like they've done the previous FIVE TIMES -- i.e., EVERY TIME -- they've released a new model?
If you really, really, really needed devices with iOS 6, you had 10 days between the announcement of the 5c/5s and the first availability date to buy, and judging by history, you had MONTHS notice that new devices with the new system were coming in summer or early fall. EVERY iPhone has been released within the same 4-month window.
iPhone release dates:
1st gen: June 29, 2007
3G: July 11, 2008
3GS: June 19, 2009
4: June 24, 2010
4S: October 14, 2011
5: September 21, 2012
5C and 5S: September 20, 2013
You know what would have made it a really useful comparison? Telling how much water you can get out of a cubic foot of typical Earth garden soil.
Also: how much water is left in the soil? Will it still stick together, or did you just generate (1 cubic foot minus two pints) of moon dust? The Mayo Clinic says we need about 3 liters of water per day (they mean quarts, natch) so that's 6 cubic feet of dirt processed per person per day.
Really; It can; OMG that's amazing; Why did I never know this before;;;;;
The F-16 is difficult to fly due to its natural instability. It's a good candidate to be operated by a computer. (I mean, it can be told where to go by a human, but the second-to-second flying should be handled by a machine.)
> One of the (very few) selling points for the new
> iPhone 5C and 5S is that they now come with
> Apple's spreadsheet program for free, so - yes,
> apparently this is a thing people want?
Oh really? You think a sizable portion of the 9 million sales this weekend were because it now comes with 3 apps that cost (I think) $10 each? I think it's actually the opposite -- they probably sell relatively few copies of any iWork apps, so now they're throwing it in for free as a nice little value-add. They've also started giving away iMovie and iPhoto for iOS.
They're all pretty mature programs; I'm sure they're not spending a ton of developer-hours on it anymore. And it's not just a phone thing. They come with any new iOS device that ships with iOS 7.
> If the stats tell us that distracted driving is
> causing a huge number of traffic accidents
But do the stats tell us that? It's possible that there's been a rise in recent years that I'm not aware of but it's not like there's all of a sudden 5x as many accidents as there were 10 years ago. I've been occasionally annoyed by someone texting at a red light but as far as that goes, I'd rather people do it at a light than while moving.
But what happens if you want to c/p a third thing? Get a 4-button mouse?
I use a desktop clipboard util and it works fine. And I've *never* liked the whole select/middle-click thing because it's the exact *opposite* of what I want to do: a million times a day while writing or coding, I select a chunk of text, copy, select another chunk, and hit 'paste' to replace it with the first chunk. "Selections instantly go to the clipboard" makes that not work.
Well, at least one of those numbers has been trending downward for 5 years, so in a year or two, it'll be closer to ten.
And if you're going to say "But Microsoft could grow their share with this acquisition!" -- please. If that were the case they'd be doing stellar business with their Nokia agreement (not a purchase, but close enough) from a couple years back.
MS and BB both had great share (of a small market) at the time the iPhone came out and they both pissed that away in the years since. Does anyone really think the two of them joining forces now would make magic happen? Tying to anchors together does not yield something that will float. Exhibit A: HP & Palm.
If I were Apple, I'd buy BB in a heartbeat, just for the patents. As others have pointed out, BB's asking price is really close to Apple's revenue from this weekend's iPhone sales. Apple is sitting on about $150B in cash, so this would be 3% of that. (MIght even help with some of those pesky repatriating issues.)
> You're a software company, stop trying to make
> profit on hardware! Sell the hardware cheap and
> make the money from sales through the app store!
> You make the Xbox, haven't you learned anything
> from how console sales work yet?
All they've learned from the XBox is how not to make a profit in a dozen years so you can see why they'd want to try a different strategy with the Surface.
> No, it doesn't. It counts the number of visitors of a
> particular web site that have content strings that
> claim they are using an iPad.
Yes! I'm sure TONS of people are using Android tablets or Surfaces but changing their user agents to make it look like they're using iPads. Because then it will look like iPads are more popular and then... sorry, I couldn't think of a single reason that anyone would do that. Someone who loves Apple but is forced to use a competing tablet by their employer? Seriously, I got nothing. Get a better version of a page? If anything, you change your UA to say "something on Desktop", not "something on iPad".
Even if some people are doing it, I can't imagine it's enough to throw off the numbers. "Number of people setting non-iPads to send 'iPad' in their user agent string" divided by "about 90 million" equals a very, very small number.
No, he means the early 2000s when they were working on... uh... Windows Mobile. That's how the missed the, uh, mobile thing.
In all seriousness, MS whiffed on mobile the same way they ignored the WWW in the early days. Even though they somewhat saw it coming, they badly guessed on the direction. They only did as well as they did because they were in the position to put that little blue 'E' on every desktop out-of-the-box. (Remember when you used to sign up for an ISP and they'd send you a CD with TCP/IP software and some browsers on it? Imagine if that remained the only way people got their first browser.) In mobile, it doesn't look like they're going to get a second chance. Apple's iPhone business became bigger than all of MS in just five short years.
> And givent he fact that most testers probably wont ... have to take your word for it?
> find a test candidate to chop a finger off ill guess i
> just
Logic much? How's this: if it won't get a reading at all, a match can't happen. So: find a cadaver. Press the finger onto the pad. No reading? No match possible.
> How long does it take to etch a PCB (mould) and
> how long does it take for gelatine to cool down
> (finger cast)?
I don't know. How long does it take to use Google and learn that your method won't fucking work?
This isn't like typewriter repair, where as long as there's one guy in the country who can still do it, you can get your typewriter fixed. There needs to be enough companies willing to pay for BB products and services to keep the company afloat. You might have noticed a sharp downward trend in BB's cash flow in recent years. For every company that thinks they "can't live without" BlackBerry, there are a literally a hundred others saying "yeah, we'll make do without." And that number of "we'll make do"s goes up every year.
> The iPhone initially was allowed, but when folks
> found out that they were locked down and that
> they had to use only the software the company
> mandated for security reasons, the iPhones were
> returned and Blackberry devices issued instead.
Ah, so you see, there are other options. And that's what you'll go back to once BB is done circling the drain. Since does I.T. worry about "user happiness" when there's "security" at stake? Here's a phone, it does email, it's all you can do, now go piss off.
Besides, I'm sure Android will copy BB's dual work/personal mode thing soon enough. Apple? Don't count on it. They're doing just fine without, thankyouverymuch.
Amateur hour is over! Blackberry's gonna come in and show you how it's done!
* I almost kept a straight face while typing this post.
> Cydia started as an alternative to the App Store
Actually, didn't it pre-date the app store?
For those with bad eyes, is the new OS easier to read, harder, or about the same? Several people in my family are now at the "hold phone at arm's length to read it" age, and initial screenshots of thin grey text on white have me worried.
Bumping up the font size only helps some, and it reduces how much text you can see on a screen at once. Also, it's not a system-wide setting -- you can make notes and texts bigger but not the names of icons on the home screens or the words in alerts.
The most recent version of FF on OS X 10.6.8 (work computer) introduced a new behavior: with a few windows open, it'll suddenly use 100% of one core. I'll close every window (but leave the app running) and it STILL uses 100% of one core. I'll be interested to see if they fix that.