Well, if you actually have an application that uses a three-button mouse, than yeah, that third button is nice. But there aren't a lot of those, and anyway it's not what IBM/Lenovo had in mind when they invented the thing.
I worked at a colo provider that was a few miles from the San Andreas fault. Which is where it had to be — convenience to Silicon Valley was a big selling point. So they took lots of measures to make the facility survivable in case of a quake.
Earthquakes, tornados, floods, hurricanes — every location has a potential for disaster. It's stupid to pretend that you can find a place that's perfectly safe. Instead, you find one that reasonably safe, and do your best to anticipate the risks you can't eliminate.
It's amazing how many Slashdotters think that the only computers are those used by individuals. In serious organization, you have hundreds or thousands of people using your systems, and maintaining a separate password file for each one is just unthinkable. So you have a central authentication facility, such as Active Directory, NIS, or LDAP.
You must love flame wars. Being able to wave what somebody wrote under their noses doesn't accomplish anything, except that you get to trade accusations of "reading out of context" and "you're missing the point."
Trading email over a contentious issue always degenerates into childish crap, in my experience. Whenever I have an interchange like that, I immediately try to talk in person or on the phone. Conversations that would be flame wars online usually can be turned into something like consensus in simple, plain talking.
This requires some patience, of course, I recently had a difference of opinion with one guy who didn't seem to understand my priorities. Once our emails got out of hand, I gave him a phone call. Talking to him required a lot of patience — he's one of those people who has to think 5 seconds before each sentence, and gets upset if you interrupt him — but we did eventually come to a meeting of the minds, something we never would have done if we'd kept the convesation online.
Now, you do sometimes need to put a conversation on the record. But holding the conversation online is not a good way to do that. You end up with long, complicated emails where nobody agrees as to what exactly people said. Instead, you wait until the conversation is over, then you send all interested parties a concise summary of your understanding of who agreed to what, and who told who to do what. If nobody contradicts you, then they've tactitly bought into your understanding of the conversation, and are not in a position to disavow what they said. And if somebody does contradict you, so much the better, because it means that you misunderstood something that was said.
Indeed, both the keys that Microsloth made everybody add to their keyboards, the Windows key and the context menu key, are pretty useless. They have great potential, but MS's own UI designer seem to have forgotten that they're there.
Then again, I sometime want to access the Start menu from keyboard — it's easier than fiddling with the pointing stick. But the fact that my old Thinkpad doesn't have a Windows key is not a problem: I just hit Ctrl-Escape.
Which reminds me of the following issues from the article:
Rather than having a trackpad the X60s uses a one of IBM's signature red pointing sticks. This choice may be a bit disappointing to some people, but I have to say that I very much prefer it to a trackpad. The stick is used with three mouse buttons, one of which is for scrolling.
There must be a lot of people who find trackpads useful, since most laptops use them, and you can even buy them for desktop PCs (they're supposed to be more ergonomic than mice). But I positively hate using them. It's difficult to maneuver the mouse across a big display with them, and the distinction between a slide and a click is too subtle for my clumsy fingers. The absence of a trackpad from most Thinkpad models is a major plus for me.
That third mouse button is a complete mystery to me. It's very hard to use, and doesn't do anything you can't do with page-up and page-down. Now if there were a wheel....
The author of the article seems to think that this model's maximum of 512 mb is a major sin, even though he notes that it has no effect on performance. I'm glad that people are finally beginning to recognize the importance of RAM in system performance, instead of fixating on the CPU. But if you have enough RAM for your applications to function without swapping (and common applications rarely need anything like 512 mb), extra RAM is as useless as high octane gas in a Honda Civic.
I'm beginning to think that most people don't know about the association with Jonestown. Which goes a long way to explaining why the expression is so popular. Still doesn't explain how people who do know about the connection (and there seem to be a lot of them) using mass suicide as a positive metaphor.
...drinking the Kool-Aid is an act of unquestioning blind allegiance, with no critical thought involved
That's a very logical definition, but I have never heard "drink the Kool-Aid" used that way. It always means "accept a new idea". That's certainly the case here: when the writer said "Microsoft has drunk the Kool-Aid" he certainly didn't mean that Microsoft has sword "unquestioning blind allegiance" to web standards. That would make no sense, since Microsoft has resisted web standards for years!
Where's the contradiction? ASP is just a server-side scripting language. W3C specifications describe what the HTML and CSS is supposed to look like once it reaches the brower. It would be absurd for them to specify where that markup comes from!
I'm a technical writer. I use the web to research the stuff I write about. It's essential. I seem to recall that I was able to do research before I had an internet connection — but I'm damned if I remember how!
Do you realize that works out to 9 hours of down time per year?
If that were true, it wouldn't be so bad. What happens in the real world is that somebody gets his own 9 hours, and plus the 9 hours of a bunch of other customers!
Heck, the whole push for a "standard" is a huge win for Microsoft in that they've fought that battle before (and quite often won, Java being the only exception that springs to mind).
Not really an exception, since Java isn't a standard — it's a proprietary, trademarked specification. There's actually nothing to prevent creating an incompatible version of Java, as long as you don't call it Java.
You could almost say that's what Microsoft ended up doing after Sun successfully enforced its trademark. True,.NET is a lot different from Java, but the basic idea is the same (except for "Write Once Run Anywhere", which was never more than a lame marketing slogan), and was implemented by the same people who did MS's version of Java.
Burn-in is a potential problem in CRTs and Plasma displays because they ultimately use the same technology to represent colors -- phosphors.
I'm an ignoramus when it comes to display technology, but I was under the impression that our computer monitors stopped being subject to burning once we graduated to VGA technology, even when we use CRTs. Certainly I haven't seen burnin on any monitor since that transition. I assume this is because of the specific kind of phosphor used in VGA CRTs — and not used in plasma displays.
My only point was that there are legitimate reasons for wanting to withdraw information. You don't seem to disagree with that, so why are you arguing with me? You should try reading posts before responding to them, instead of trotting out the standard response to the standard argument you assume the other person is making.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, if you actually have an application that uses a three-button mouse, than yeah, that third button is nice. But there aren't a lot of those, and anyway it's not what IBM/Lenovo had in mind when they invented the thing.
I worked at a colo provider that was a few miles from the San Andreas fault. Which is where it had to be — convenience to Silicon Valley was a big selling point. So they took lots of measures to make the facility survivable in case of a quake.
Earthquakes, tornados, floods, hurricanes — every location has a potential for disaster. It's stupid to pretend that you can find a place that's perfectly safe. Instead, you find one that reasonably safe, and do your best to anticipate the risks you can't eliminate.
It's amazing how many Slashdotters think that the only computers are those used by individuals. In serious organization, you have hundreds or thousands of people using your systems, and maintaining a separate password file for each one is just unthinkable. So you have a central authentication facility, such as Active Directory, NIS, or LDAP.
You must love flame wars. Being able to wave what somebody wrote under their noses doesn't accomplish anything, except that you get to trade accusations of "reading out of context" and "you're missing the point."
Trading email over a contentious issue always degenerates into childish crap, in my experience. Whenever I have an interchange like that, I immediately try to talk in person or on the phone. Conversations that would be flame wars online usually can be turned into something like consensus in simple, plain talking.
This requires some patience, of course, I recently had a difference of opinion with one guy who didn't seem to understand my priorities. Once our emails got out of hand, I gave him a phone call. Talking to him required a lot of patience — he's one of those people who has to think 5 seconds before each sentence, and gets upset if you interrupt him — but we did eventually come to a meeting of the minds, something we never would have done if we'd kept the convesation online.
Now, you do sometimes need to put a conversation on the record. But holding the conversation online is not a good way to do that. You end up with long, complicated emails where nobody agrees as to what exactly people said. Instead, you wait until the conversation is over, then you send all interested parties a concise summary of your understanding of who agreed to what, and who told who to do what. If nobody contradicts you, then they've tactitly bought into your understanding of the conversation, and are not in a position to disavow what they said. And if somebody does contradict you, so much the better, because it means that you misunderstood something that was said.
Indeed, both the keys that Microsloth made everybody add to their keyboards, the Windows key and the context menu key, are pretty useless. They have great potential, but MS's own UI designer seem to have forgotten that they're there.
Then again, I sometime want to access the Start menu from keyboard — it's easier than fiddling with the pointing stick. But the fact that my old Thinkpad doesn't have a Windows key is not a problem: I just hit Ctrl-Escape.
Which reminds me of the following issues from the article:
There must be a lot of people who find trackpads useful, since most laptops use them, and you can even buy them for desktop PCs (they're supposed to be more ergonomic than mice). But I positively hate using them. It's difficult to maneuver the mouse across a big display with them, and the distinction between a slide and a click is too subtle for my clumsy fingers. The absence of a trackpad from most Thinkpad models is a major plus for me.
That third mouse button is a complete mystery to me. It's very hard to use, and doesn't do anything you can't do with page-up and page-down. Now if there were a wheel....
The author of the article seems to think that this model's maximum of 512 mb is a major sin, even though he notes that it has no effect on performance. I'm glad that people are finally beginning to recognize the importance of RAM in system performance, instead of fixating on the CPU. But if you have enough RAM for your applications to function without swapping (and common applications rarely need anything like 512 mb), extra RAM is as useless as high octane gas in a Honda Civic.
That explains why they still have that stupid IBM-in-RGB logo, even though the product is no longer made by IBM.
My department recently bought an Acer 64-bit "Ferrari" for our collective use. God, what nightmare!
And Firefox has a plugin to do that. And IE7 can scale a whole web page.
And you know this to be true because....?
I'm beginning to think that most people don't know about the association with Jonestown. Which goes a long way to explaining why the expression is so popular. Still doesn't explain how people who do know about the connection (and there seem to be a lot of them) using mass suicide as a positive metaphor.
That's idiotic. Because some of the .NET API doesn't work the way you think it should, no program that uses .NET can be w3c compliant?
And if we were talking about visual studio you'd have a point. RTFA is bad enough, but you didn't even read the fucking headline!
Where's the contradiction? ASP is just a server-side scripting language. W3C specifications describe what the HTML and CSS is supposed to look like once it reaches the brower. It would be absurd for them to specify where that markup comes from!
If you're not stupid, why are you an early adopter?
I'm a technical writer. I use the web to research the stuff I write about. It's essential. I seem to recall that I was able to do research before I had an internet connection — but I'm damned if I remember how!
Not really an exception, since Java isn't a standard — it's a proprietary, trademarked specification. There's actually nothing to prevent creating an incompatible version of Java, as long as you don't call it Java.
You could almost say that's what Microsoft ended up doing after Sun successfully enforced its trademark. True, .NET is a lot different from Java, but the basic idea is the same (except for "Write Once Run Anywhere", which was never more than a lame marketing slogan), and was implemented by the same people who did MS's version of Java.
My only point was that there are legitimate reasons for wanting to withdraw information. You don't seem to disagree with that, so why are you arguing with me? You should try reading posts before responding to them, instead of trotting out the standard response to the standard argument you assume the other person is making.
Great. Planet Huitzilopochtli!
No solution is perfect, so one solution is as good as another? I'm glad you don't do my taxes!
Not so! How could the alien fail to notice that planet 3 is inhabited by the most important species in the whole universe!