Yeah, it seemed perfectly in character to me, too.
BTW - when it was my turn to ask for his autograph, I felt obligated to inform him that I had borrowed three of his characters for a novel I was writing.
His response?
"Just make sure you file the serial numbers off..."
Some writers like Heinlein were probably ok with work being published posthumously. He was well known to believe that he wrote for a paycheck, and everything he wrote was to published. He supposedly said the day that his publisher rejected a work was the day he would walk across the street to another publisher.
For those who are more selective, destruction is the best option.
Actually, the day his publisher rejected a book WAS the day he "walked across the street" to another publisher, never to return.
In 1959, Charles Scribner's Sons rejected Heinlein's novel Starship Troopers as "too mature and too controversial" for their juvenile imprint. Heinlein immediately ended his exclusive contract with the firm and his agent was quickly able to strike a deal with Putnam's to publish the book, instead. Starship Troopers marked the beginning of his polemical middle period as a novelist, a trend which I tend to think was at least in part due to his "liberation" from the stuffy confines of Scribner's editorial policies.
I've always been grateful that I got to meet the man in person at Octocon II in Santa Rosa in 1977. He'd been a hero of mine since I was 7 years old - and, in person, he did not disappoint. It just so happened that I was assigned to work security at the door, while RAH and Theodore Sturgeon spent all day signing autographs at a table in the back of the bloodmobile that he (or, more likely, his wife Virginia) had talked the 'con's organizers into welcoming. Despite the long hours and the repetitive nature of his self-assigned task, he was unfailingly courteous to the stream of blood doners who waited with sometimes-voluminous stacks of books in hand for their chance at his signature.
The only exception was a hippie type who wandered into the coach after the blood collection was done for the day and, practically wagging his non-existent tail, requested an autograph. When the author asked him if he'd donated blood, he said "No.". Heinlein then inquired, "I take it they wouldn't allow you to donate?" The guy shook his head and replied, "Nah. I don't believe in that stuff." The great man tossed his unsigned book back across the table, looked him dead in the eye, and said, in a voice as cold as liquid helium, "You, sir, are unwelcome here. Leave. Now."
Which he did, figurative tail between his legs.
That was my only personal experience with Heinlein, but it sure left a lasting impression...
Music radio (as opposed to talk/news radio) gave up on innovating altogether back in the 20th century. I blame ClearChannel (now known as iHeartMedia) and its ilk for that.
Back in the day - which is to say "the 1960's and 70's" - radio programming was mostly done by people who actually cared about music. Program Directors, as they were called, actively searched for new and interesting artists to whom they could expose their audiences. Formats became increasingly fluid, mixing genres and styles, and playlists often included thousands of songs. And albums - because progressive radio stations would sometimes play entire album sides. The three-minute rule was largely abandoned, as artists tackled longer-form compositions. It really was a golden age for music.
Then the MBAs took over, and radio went straight into the toilet.
Instead of trying to broaden their appeal, radio stations narrowed the audiences they catered to. No more mixing rock and country and jazz on a single playlist. You wanted rock, you had to listen to a rock station. You wanted country, you had to switch to a country station. And, if you wanted jazz - well jazz didn't attract sponsors, so, outside of urban markets, you were pretty much s.o.l. You could find R&B, though, in the form of soul stations, until disco took over and soul pretty much vanished overnight. Radio became, in a word, "balkanized": hopelessly divided into ever-smaller audience segments, each being fed a fast-dwindling playlist of hits.
Which takes us to "market research", the new payola, where record labels pay for the privilege of having tracks they select "tested" for audiences - by being played at the top of the hour, every hour, for however long the label chooses to keep paying for "research".
Is it any wonder that audiences - especially milennial audiences - have chosen to abandon in droves this profoundly corrupt, accounting-driven music distribution model in favor of personally-customizable streaming services, where they get to pick their own playlists, instead of having MBAs drive bought-and-paid-for playlists down their throats?
Oh, and did I mention the endless commercials... ?
How are software patents still a thing in these backwards jurisdictions?
Article I, section 8 of the U.S. constitution states that, among many other powers granted to it, Congress shall have the power: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries".
Using another power granted to it by Article I, section 8, Congress created the now-voluminous corpus of Federal law known as the U. S. Code. Title 35 of that code - which has been amended several times since its inception - established the U. S. Patent and Trademark Office to administer the Federal grants of exclusive rights to authors and inventors. The duration of those grants is also set by Congress (and has been steadily increased with each revision to Title 35 since the passage of the first Patent Act in 1799). What "inventions" are eligible for patent protection is defined in TItle 35, beginning with section 101.
Whether a patent application is granted or not is determined by patent examiners, who are members of the Patent and Trademark Office staff, and who are assumed to be competent to judge the patent-worthiness of an application. Decisions of patent examiners are subject to challenge - and patents wrongly granted can be recinded - but the process is cumbersome, lengthy, and expensive, so challengers without deep pockets and strong motivation are rare.
Most knowlegeable parties agree the current system is profoundly broken, but, because it's up to Congress to fix it, and a lot of patentholders are also major political campaign finance contributors, nothing fundamental to that system has been seriously revisited in the context of lawmaking in modern times. Nor is it likely to be in the near future.
This stuff is almost all copyright-protected, proprietary software, not open source.
So is Windows. Yet a binary-compatible free replacement for Windows userspace exists, and it's called Wine. GNU itself is a source-compatible free replacement for UNIX. So why not commission a free replacement for these proprietary plug-ins?
Suggesting costly high-value-labor- and resource-intensive projects to produce alternatives to literally HUNDREDS of different proprietary products is... unhelpful.
Audio DSP is a pretty specialized area, and studio-quality DSP's require the participation of professional audio engineers and producers to develop. You're proposing that somebody - and it sure as hell isn't going to be yours truly - pay the freight for a team of programmers to learn how the many, disparate pieces of rackmount hardware work and what they do in terms of altering the audio signal (which would require somebody to provide them with examplars of these multi-thousand-dollar devices on long-term loan), then develop software to emulate them sufficiently well that top producers and audio engineers would be willing to use them in a commercial, production environment. Who do you propose finance such an effort?
The only practical solution I can see is to raise the consciousness of existing plug-in developers regarding UI usability to the point that they'll actually make it a priority in future products and bugfix releases for current, popular plug-ins. That, in turn, means raisng a big enough stink about the dismal quality of current plug-in UI's to get theose developers' attention. TFS is a small step in that direction. So is this sub-thread.
But, to have any practical positive effect, the issue really needs to attain a significantly higher profile than it's ever going to get from one/. story...
his complaint about being forced to use a mouse to adjust rotary knob-style controls is entirely valid - and many (if not most) VST audio plug-ins for DAWs provide NO scrollwheel functionality. You HAVE to move the damned knob around its full travel via click-and-drag (which usually means you have to "let go" at the 12:00 position, shift the mouse slightly to the right, "grab" the knob from the other side, and drag it back down to adjust it from 50% to 100%).
Congratulations. You just condensed TFA down to the length it probably should have been in the first place. In fact, there is more of value in your paragraph above than that entire article, as it actually describes a problem instead of just complaining about "damn knobs". Otherwise it is worthless snide drivel making fun of people for creating skinning art. Well, I guess it did serve as a pretty screenshot gallery.
Now, you suggest one solution for fixing this type of UX knob. One that requires two hands, but still at least you suggest one. Others here seem to like the idea of replacing knobs with sliders. Still others are fine with knobs as long as after you click on them it is a linear motion to turn them, with the knob only serving to tell the app what thing to tune. Personally I'd say why make people click on them, just use the scrollwheel on whatever you are mouse over... and click/drag if you need to go fine grained.
But you're right I don't use this kind of kit, so go argue it over with your compatriots and come back when you have some solid suggestions, then maybe someone who knows how to code will help you out.
No, you still don't get it. Sorry.
This stuff is almost all copyright-protected, proprietary software, not open source. Nobody can legally "fix" it except the company or individual who made it to begin with. The problem both the OP and I am complaining about is that the UI's are resolutely "pretty", not practical - and they're going to stay that way until the UI designers acquire a clue about usability.
Don't hold your breath waiting for that.
Basically, those of us who use pro audio software are S.O.L., because the highest-quality, most useful effects, etc. all suffer from this same design philosophy: Make the UI look as exactly as possible like the rack-mount hardware it emulates. And the hell with usablilty, as long as it's fucking pretty.
Incidentally, I blame the Apple fanboy environment for that. Jobs himself was all about usability, but 3rd-party software designers seem to champion esthetics over ease of use. Because ProTools dominates the commercial recording studio marketplace (and because ProTools is first and foremost a Mac-native application that only gets ported to other platforms, rather than developed specifically for them), it's the Mac mindframe that dictates the look and feel of its plug-ins. Unfortunately, the VST crowd has adopted the "identical look-and-feel" paradigm as well - with the same tooth-grinding results for the actual users.
I'm firmly of the opinion that software developers (and hardware developers, too, for that matter) ought to be legally required to eat their own dogfood in a production environment for a minimum of six months before being permitted to inflict their brainchildren on we poor mortals. I think it'd cut down on the amount of crappy UI's and broken functionality of commercial products by a good 99%...
BTW - the Digitech floor effects editor I mentioned does not require you to hold down the mouse button. Click on the control to highlight it and you're then free to use the up and down keys to change its value. (You can also use the mouse to do that, if you enjoy carpal tunnel syndrome, of course.)
First, the author provides no solid complaint. Just that "there are knobs, and I don't know what most of them do". The latter is a matter of documentation, not UX, and for the former he offers zero in the way of alternatives. He complains that you have to control the knobs with a mouse... as opposed to what, real knobs? Does he suggest something like using mouseover-then-scrollwheel as opposed to drag-the-knob? No not even that. Instead he complains about retro app skins.
Factually no. You're completely mischaraterizing the OP's complaint.
First of all, he in no way says or implies "I don't know what most of them do." Full stop. Secondly, his complaint about being forced to use a mouse to adjust rotary knob-style controls is entirely valid - and many (if not most) VST audio plug-ins for DAWs provide NO scrollwheel functionality. You HAVE to move the damned knob around its full travel via click-and-drag (which usually means you have to "let go" at the 12:00 position, shift the mouse slightly to the right, "grab" the knob from the other side, and drag it back down to adjust it from 50% to 100%). It's cumbersome as all hell, and it's often tooth-grindingly difficult to properly fine tune levels on as many as a dozen or more knobs on a single effect, filter, amp emulator, etc in what is typically a chain of them - sometimes a very long chain of them.
The same thing is true of plug-ins for AU, AAX and other formats, so ProTools users get to enjoy levels of frustration equal to those of we Cakewalk or Reaper users, too.
Oh, and did I mention that usable documentation for audio plug-ins is as commonplace as saddle-trained unicorns?
It's true that some clueful designers do allow you to click on a control, then use the keyboard arrows or numberpad to adjust its value. (Digitech's excellent floor effects editor springs to mind here.) They deserve kudos - but let me assure you that there aren't enough of 'em around to noticably diminish the kudo supply.
Your comment makes it clear that you have little (by which I mean "zero") experience with professional audio recording, mixing, and mastering software - which, if you read TFS carefully, is the actual subject of the OP's complaint. What that means, in turn, is that you are completely unqualified even to express an opinion on the subject.
Of course, this is/., so I'm sure you won't let THAT stop you...
My comment was not intended to be sneering, and I apologize that it came off that way. I agree with your comment here, by the way.
Tech should serve people, rather than the other way around
I particularly agree with this. Perhaps where we disagree is what counts as "serving people".
I suspect we don't - disagree, that is.
I hold no brief for Sonos (although I'm pretty sure that the OP twisted the thrust of its announcement to suit/.'s current, clickbait agenda). I take fairly aggressive measures to protect my own privacy online. And I am anything but blind to the dangers that big datamining poses to mine, yours, and everyone else's. Nor do I in any way endorse planned obsolescense and/or forced upgrades - especially when those "upgrades" benefit only the dataminers, not the consumer (I'm looking at YOU here, Microsoft).
But, as a former sysadmin and onetime tech journalist, I feel the pain of the common user. It's simply wrong to expect people to have to be computer experts merely to be able to USE computers. Given how often I find myself grinding my teeth over application incompatibilites, driver issues, and the like, I have to wonder how in the name of all that's sensical regular users manage to cope...
Because lots of people want things they can just plug in and make work, and they're willing to give up a ludicrous amount of freedom and money in order to avoid even the small amount of effort needed to install and configure their own systems.
Yeesh.
Look, the vast majority of the population doesn't have the knowledge or technical chops even to begin to install and configure systems that integrate streaming technology with home audio systems. Full stop. And to insist that they are somehow morons or fools because that's true is incredibly elitist and short-sighted.
It's not just Cleetus the Slack-jawed Yokel or great-grandma in that number. Most medical doctors, for instance, simply don't have the time even to learn the terminology, much less the tech, because the technical reading their own field requires consumes seriously non-trivial amounts of their "free" time - which is further limited by the mountains of paperwork and email they have to wade through at the end of each workday. So, they can choose to spend their weekends playing golf, or they can spend it familiarizing themselves with streaming technology. Likewise, millenials tend to be severely underemployed, which means that, in order to escape from their parents' basements, they're forced to work multiple gigs. Add in the endless time sink of social media, and you're basically asking them to choose between becoming geeks or Snapchatting with their buds.
I could easily go on, but I shouldn't have to. The plain fact is, Slashdotters tend to be geeks to begin with. And, because they also tend to hang around geek social circles, it's easy for them to assume that all the really intelligent folks in the world automatically make those same choices. They don't. And they shouldn't have to.
Tech should serve people, rather than the other way around - and tech geeks are in the distinct minority wrt the population at large. THEY are normal - WE are not. The fact that Sonos and its ilk exploit their ignorance of - and, quite frankly, their profound lack of interest in - independence from vendors, privacy tradeoffs, and tech geekiness in general can't be held against them. If you don't understand that a problem even exists, and have no strong motivation to find out that it does, that's not a moral failing. It's a fact of life.
It's been a long, LONG time since it was possible for a single human to know everything there is to know. Even being a broadly-informed generalist is becoming more and more difficult by the day, simply because there's so freakin' MUCH to learn. And whole new fields of knowledge come into existence on a regular basis, so we all have to choose what we'll focus on and what we straight out don't have time for.
Personally, I make a lot of room for other subjects simply by having less than zero interest in sportsball...
For me? Yes, you are. But only because the movie-going experience so thoroughly and comprehensively sucks, here in the 21st century version of America.
Back when I was young, and we rode our pet dinosaurs to school (uphill both ways), going to the movies was a compleely immersive experience. No, we didn't have sooper-dooper Dullby sound systems, or especially convincing special effects, and the seats weren't nearly as comfortable as they are these days. But what we did have was a culture of respect for the experience. People might talk during the "Let's all go to the lobby!" concessions promo, but the absolute picosecond the newsreel started (yes, I'm that old), everyone in the theater shut all the fucking way up, and we all merged into that singular, collective creature: an audience.
There weren't any cell phones in those days, so, if you wanted to make a phone call, you had to go to the lobby to do it. There were theater employees called "ushers" (and usherettes), who would stand at the back of the auditorium (there was only one per theater back then - and, blelieve it or not, it usually had a balcony section to increase its capacity still further). Their job was to escort lobby-blinded patrons back to their seats, and to be on the lookout for "hijinks" and that most despised of all sub-human species, "talkers".
Talkers got ONE warning. That was it. Open your yap again, and you would be politely escorted out of the building. Get escorted out of the building too many times, and you would be banned from re-entering. Forever. And if you tried to pick a fight with an usher, well, there were plenty of aspiring knights-errant who were willing to lend him/her a hand in escorting you out of the building, only minus the "politely" part.
And that - plus the sheer size of the audience - made the experience an entirely different one that what modern movie-goers are subjected to. Everyone (except those hijinks-prone kids) was there to watch the movie. Not make and recieve a half-dozen phone calls, check their Facebook feed, chat with their posse, or carry on a shouted conversation with/exhortation to the characters on the screen. The screen was huge, the house was usually full, and the experience of seeing a movie with a room full of strangers, all raptly attentive, was satisfying in a way that watching the same movie in a theater today simply can't be. It wasn't a matter of degree. It was a matter of kind - an experience of a kind that simply no longer exists in the 21st century.
At least, not here, in the land of the free and the home of the entitled nitwit it doesn't. In other countries, YMMV - and it probably does. But in the USA, we've fully embraced out inner oaf, and the theater owners sit with folded hands and let their patrons progressively degrade the movie-going experience to the point where I, personally, would not go to the theater if you paid me to do so, because I just don't need the aggravation.
So, instead, I sit in my living room, with my 7.1 sound system, and watch (mostly pirated) movies on my modest, 40-inch flat screen. And, although I really miss the movie-going experience I remember so fondly from my youth (Just as a for-instance, I was lucky enough to live in Honolulu when 2001: A Space Odyssey premiered - it was one of only 6 cities in the USA which enjoyed the distinction of an exclusive, 6-week engagement - at the Cinerama Theater on King Street, downtown. It was a reserved-seat performance, and I was lucky enough to get a center seat, albeit in the third row, which turned out to be just a little bit closer to the screen than would have been optimal. When the lights went down and the curtain opened up, a hush fell over the audience. Which, y'know, was pretty normal for then. What was very different was that there was no concessions pitch, no newsreel, no previews of coming attractions. Instead, when the screen lit up, we were in
Selling more convertible stock means more dilution. Selling bonds means that they want to hang onto their share in the company, and feel that paying interest after the plant is online is worth the benefit of not having to dilute.
Exactly so.
Junk bond status begins at BBB- rating. That doesn't mean they aren't a good investment. It merely means that they carriy greater risk than do "investment grade" bonds. What type of risk that consists of, and the degree of risk involved varies from bond issue to bond issue. Wikipedia's article on high-yield debt is fairly well-written, and it does a good job of explaining the basics. I recommend it to people who feel tempted to throw the term "junk bond" around without actually understanding what that actually means.
Elon haters are legion. Many of them are "car guys" who bet their reputations - and in some cases their shirts - that Tesla would fail before it ever sold a car. They resent Musk because he proved them wrong. Others are Washington beltway bandits who fear the disruptive effects of SpaceX's success on the defense industry gravy train, because it's their oxen that stand to be gored by it...
This seems to be a big issue with overseas sellers - I point to China because they're the most common - and shipping. My $5-20 item may come with free shipping, but when it arrives and is broken or turns out to be a fake piece of crap, the return cost may end up being more than the value of the item (especially if I want it tracked and within a reasonable time period).
I buy quite a bit of stuff from Chinese sellers on eBay - mostly cables and adapters, because "American" versions of those things are pretty much all manufactered there, anyway. Occasionally an item I purchase is defective, or unsuited for my purpose. (Most recently, it was a $5 cloth dust cover for an 88-key digital workstation.) I've never had any trouble obtaining a refund, and the sellers have never demanded I physically return the items.
The language barrier is sometimes an issue, of course, but patience and persistence are key virtues for such interactions...
yes, and you know why we, as consumers, won't touch e-bay? precisely because it's a haven for these exact sellers who don't care about their customers.
If you won't stand behind your product, e-bay is the perfect place to sell, as the buyers there expect that level (or lack of) support.
If you DO stand behind your product, than continue to sell on Amazon, this change won't affect you.
You are 100% incorrect.
I buy a great many things from eBay. (In fact, last week I bought my 350th item.) While I have had bad experiences with some sellers, including recently, eBay has always responded to my complaints, and every dispute I've filed has been resolved in my favor. Moreover, some months ago, eBay contacted me via email to inform me that a seller from whom I'd just purchased a Jeggs screwdriver set had been hacked, and the listing I'd bought was bogus. I was advised to request a refund, which I did. Paypal sent me email telling me I had received my refund less than an hour later.
Beyond outright hacking, I've won disputes that were more subtle. For instance, I bought a Behringer USB500 microphone preamp from a New York seller, then discovered that I could get the same unit from Musician's Friend for a better price, plus 8% back in loyalty points. So, less than an hour after I bought the item, I requested the sale be cancelled. That cancellation request was made at 1:00 am EDT, long before the seller could have generated a shipping label. When I received notice at 10:31 am that I couldn't cancel the sale, because the item had been shipped, I immediately contacted eBay customer service to complain. They referred my complaint to their risk management team (who deal with rogue sellers), and urged me to file a request for a refund with Paypal. I did that, and Paypal's rep instructed me to refuse delivery of the item, and wait for the USPS to report it as having been returned to the sender. I did as they suggested, and three days later I got email telling me I'd received a full refund.
Oh, and because the idiot seller had refused to cancel the order, I was able to leave strongly negative feedback about the transaction - so she only screwed herself. I was merely somewhat inconvenienced.
Now this may seem to support your centention that eBay is a hive of bad-faith sellers, but my own experience has been that exactly the opposite is true. Yes, there are some bad eggs, but by paying attention to their ratings, and buying only from sellers that have sold at least 100 items, I've had bad experiences with fewer than half-a-dozen purchases, in more than 350 transactions thus far - and, again, all of those problems have been resolved in my favor.
For the record, I have no relationship with eBay other than as a customer. I own none of their stock, I have no friends or relatives that work for them, and I have never been an eBay seller. I just buy stuff from them because it's usually significantly cheaper than buying the same stuff from Amazon. My relationship with Musician's Friend is exactly the same: I'm a highly-satisfied customer, who buys stuff from them because they offer competitive pricing, loyalty points via their Backstage Pass program (which is free to join), and outstanding customer service. That's it. That's all...
It's the government for you. I remember seeing an audio/video tech job posted on the USA Jobs website. It was nothing special, similar to an IT job and only paid around $55k at the time (not many years ago). However, they wanted the person to have a PhD!
It's not just the government, friend. I recall an ad in the SF Chronicle back in 1996 seeking a webmaster for a corporate site. Among the requirements was 7 years experience in HTML coding - which I found pretty amusing, given that Sir Tim created the very first web browser ever in 1989.
The problem is that HR people rarely have the slightest clue as to the actual skill set required for any given technical position, so they just pile on the qualifications without the slightest regard for their relevance, or for the real-world evolution of technology. (Note that actual tech firms operate differently, of course - but I'm talking here about plain vanilla, old-school businesses. You know: the kind that regard computers as glorified typewriters and/or adding machines.)
Actually, the original CNBC article is at fault here. It opens as stupid and sensational, without actually attempting to accurately describe the position until the 3rd frigging paragraph.
So, in other words, business as usual for cable news "journalism"... ?
Gates had "Vision"?
Yeah, steal the LIZA interface, steal the DOS (from MPM-86),
Steal the Basic Interpreter (from the Dartmouth),
"Embrace, and expand" every standard to make them proprietary (Engulf and Devour),
use Permatemp labor until caught.....
if that is "vision" in Capitalism, I'll take better trains every single day
All of what you say is true. But:
a. He had the vision to retain the rights to BASIC, rather than selling it outright to IBM,
b. He had the vision to retain the right to sell unbranded versions of DOS to other vendors than IBM,
c. He had the vision to realize that, despite the fact that OS/2's technology was inherently superior to Windows 3.x's, reneging on his OS/2 partnership with IBM would allow Microsoft to dominate the desktop windowing interface market, and
d. He had the vision to push beyond the complacency that nearly destroyed post-Jobs Apple and replace the 16-bit Windows 95 shell with the 32-bit (and later 64-bit) Windows 2000 and subsequently WIndows XP.
There are plenty of other examples of him seeing what an absurd nonentity such as Ballmer was completely oblivious to, but I think I've made my point sufficiently clear.
True vision can be employed for good or ill, but it's foolish to refuse to acknowledge it exists, regardless of the purpose it's put to.
Meh, for every person who achieves something there's ten people who want to slap them down and find their faults and their weaknesses and belittle whatever they do. Everything from jocks bullying nerds to the people who have to hate on Jobs, Ballmer, Ellison, Zuckerberg, Jimbo Wales, Musk etc. almost out of principle.
I fail to see how either Ballmer or Ellison belongs in the company of the other individuals you list. Ballmer is an MBA candidate who never displayed the slightest trace of vision, invention, or originality (unlike Gates, who, love him or hate him, built a career and a company that achieved market dominance based on his having all three). For proof of his profound unfitness as an executive, you need look only as far as his slavish insistence on the stacked ranking model for employee reviews. Ellison had one good idea - a multiuser relational database for businesses - and an ethos of profound ruthlessness and exploitation with regard to his customers that's based on his bullshit interpretation of bushido. Neither one is what I'd call a positive role model.
The other guys, though, are genuine visionaries, IMnsHO...
Asking for help from (and offering help to) like-minded people isn't even remotely the same as being forced on pain of imprisonment to do the same thing, after, of course, also being forced to pay for a huge body of for-profit middle-men and their supporting infrastructure that do exactly nothing towards the actual expense (say, funding a surgery) being met.
E.U. member states agreed [last month] on an ambitious new open-access (OA) target. All scientific papers should be freely available by 2020, the Competitiveness Council - a gathering of ministers of science, innovation, trade, and industry - concluded after a 2-day meeting in Brussels.
Unfortunately, that was just the Competitiveness Council's resolution. To put actual teeth into it as an EU policy will require action by the European Parlaiment.
In the meantime, there's the Unpaywall extension for Firefox and Chrome. If there's a non-paywalled version of a journal article available on the Web, it'll find it for you. (And it pays to check back, because free versions often become available sometime after the initial publication of a journal article.)
And both links are garbage click bait for WSJ (paywalled) and Fortune (nearly blank page.)
You have to enable scripts from fortune.com to see the article. I just have NoScript enable them temporarily, then close the window and revoke the authorization when I'm done reading.
The WSJ link IS just a teaser, though. To read the whole article, you have to subscribe...
I'm on Project Fi, which includes automagic VPN protection on other than trusted WiFi networks. I'm also a belt-suspenders-and-staples kind of a guy, so I have VPNUnlimited's Android client installed on my Nexus 6, as well.
Because fuck a whole bunch of Jeff Bezos, anyway.
(And, yes, I'm well aware of the irony of the above sentiment, given my.sig. My mind is a hobgoblin-free zone.)
Slashdot Mirror
RockDoctor observed:
Nice anecdote. Sounds very Heinlein.
Yeah, it seemed perfectly in character to me, too.
BTW - when it was my turn to ask for his autograph, I felt obligated to inform him that I had borrowed three of his characters for a novel I was writing.
His response?
"Just make sure you file the serial numbers off ..."
fermion stated:,/p>
Some writers like Heinlein were probably ok with work being published posthumously. He was well known to believe that he wrote for a paycheck, and everything he wrote was to published. He supposedly said the day that his publisher rejected a work was the day he would walk across the street to another publisher.
For those who are more selective, destruction is the best option.
Actually, the day his publisher rejected a book WAS the day he "walked across the street" to another publisher, never to return.
In 1959, Charles Scribner's Sons rejected Heinlein's novel Starship Troopers as "too mature and too controversial" for their juvenile imprint. Heinlein immediately ended his exclusive contract with the firm and his agent was quickly able to strike a deal with Putnam's to publish the book, instead. Starship Troopers marked the beginning of his polemical middle period as a novelist, a trend which I tend to think was at least in part due to his "liberation" from the stuffy confines of Scribner's editorial policies.
I've always been grateful that I got to meet the man in person at Octocon II in Santa Rosa in 1977. He'd been a hero of mine since I was 7 years old - and, in person, he did not disappoint. It just so happened that I was assigned to work security at the door, while RAH and Theodore Sturgeon spent all day signing autographs at a table in the back of the bloodmobile that he (or, more likely, his wife Virginia) had talked the 'con's organizers into welcoming. Despite the long hours and the repetitive nature of his self-assigned task, he was unfailingly courteous to the stream of blood doners who waited with sometimes-voluminous stacks of books in hand for their chance at his signature.
The only exception was a hippie type who wandered into the coach after the blood collection was done for the day and, practically wagging his non-existent tail, requested an autograph. When the author asked him if he'd donated blood, he said "No.". Heinlein then inquired, "I take it they wouldn't allow you to donate?" The guy shook his head and replied, "Nah. I don't believe in that stuff." The great man tossed his unsigned book back across the table, looked him dead in the eye, and said, in a voice as cold as liquid helium, "You, sir, are unwelcome here. Leave. Now."
Which he did, figurative tail between his legs.
That was my only personal experience with Heinlein, but it sure left a lasting impression ...
Music radio (as opposed to talk/news radio) gave up on innovating altogether back in the 20th century. I blame ClearChannel (now known as iHeartMedia) and its ilk for that.
Back in the day - which is to say "the 1960's and 70's" - radio programming was mostly done by people who actually cared about music. Program Directors, as they were called, actively searched for new and interesting artists to whom they could expose their audiences. Formats became increasingly fluid, mixing genres and styles, and playlists often included thousands of songs. And albums - because progressive radio stations would sometimes play entire album sides. The three-minute rule was largely abandoned, as artists tackled longer-form compositions. It really was a golden age for music.
Then the MBAs took over, and radio went straight into the toilet.
Instead of trying to broaden their appeal, radio stations narrowed the audiences they catered to. No more mixing rock and country and jazz on a single playlist. You wanted rock, you had to listen to a rock station. You wanted country, you had to switch to a country station. And, if you wanted jazz - well jazz didn't attract sponsors, so, outside of urban markets, you were pretty much s.o.l. You could find R&B, though, in the form of soul stations, until disco took over and soul pretty much vanished overnight. Radio became, in a word, "balkanized": hopelessly divided into ever-smaller audience segments, each being fed a fast-dwindling playlist of hits.
Which takes us to "market research", the new payola, where record labels pay for the privilege of having tracks they select "tested" for audiences - by being played at the top of the hour, every hour, for however long the label chooses to keep paying for "research".
Is it any wonder that audiences - especially milennial audiences - have chosen to abandon in droves this profoundly corrupt, accounting-driven music distribution model in favor of personally-customizable streaming services, where they get to pick their own playlists, instead of having MBAs drive bought-and-paid-for playlists down their throats?
Oh, and did I mention the endless commercials ... ?
Trogre asked:
How are software patents still a thing in these backwards jurisdictions?
Article I, section 8 of the U.S. constitution states that, among many other powers granted to it, Congress shall have the power: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries".
Using another power granted to it by Article I, section 8, Congress created the now-voluminous corpus of Federal law known as the U. S. Code. Title 35 of that code - which has been amended several times since its inception - established the U. S. Patent and Trademark Office to administer the Federal grants of exclusive rights to authors and inventors. The duration of those grants is also set by Congress (and has been steadily increased with each revision to Title 35 since the passage of the first Patent Act in 1799). What "inventions" are eligible for patent protection is defined in TItle 35, beginning with section 101.
Whether a patent application is granted or not is determined by patent examiners, who are members of the Patent and Trademark Office staff, and who are assumed to be competent to judge the patent-worthiness of an application. Decisions of patent examiners are subject to challenge - and patents wrongly granted can be recinded - but the process is cumbersome, lengthy, and expensive, so challengers without deep pockets and strong motivation are rare.
Most knowlegeable parties agree the current system is profoundly broken, but, because it's up to Congress to fix it, and a lot of patentholders are also major political campaign finance contributors, nothing fundamental to that system has been seriously revisited in the context of lawmaking in modern times. Nor is it likely to be in the near future.
IANAL ...
tepples inquired:
This stuff is almost all copyright-protected, proprietary software, not open source.
So is Windows. Yet a binary-compatible free replacement for Windows userspace exists, and it's called Wine. GNU itself is a source-compatible free replacement for UNIX. So why not commission a free replacement for these proprietary plug-ins?
Suggesting costly high-value-labor- and resource-intensive projects to produce alternatives to literally HUNDREDS of different proprietary products is ... unhelpful.
Audio DSP is a pretty specialized area, and studio-quality DSP's require the participation of professional audio engineers and producers to develop. You're proposing that somebody - and it sure as hell isn't going to be yours truly - pay the freight for a team of programmers to learn how the many, disparate pieces of rackmount hardware work and what they do in terms of altering the audio signal (which would require somebody to provide them with examplars of these multi-thousand-dollar devices on long-term loan), then develop software to emulate them sufficiently well that top producers and audio engineers would be willing to use them in a commercial, production environment. Who do you propose finance such an effort?
The only practical solution I can see is to raise the consciousness of existing plug-in developers regarding UI usability to the point that they'll actually make it a priority in future products and bugfix releases for current, popular plug-ins. That, in turn, means raisng a big enough stink about the dismal quality of current plug-in UI's to get theose developers' attention. TFS is a small step in that direction. So is this sub-thread.
But, to have any practical positive effect, the issue really needs to attain a significantly higher profile than it's ever going to get from one /. story ...
skids responded:>/p>
his complaint about being forced to use a mouse to adjust rotary knob-style controls is entirely valid - and many (if not most) VST audio plug-ins for DAWs provide NO scrollwheel functionality. You HAVE to move the damned knob around its full travel via click-and-drag (which usually means you have to "let go" at the 12:00 position, shift the mouse slightly to the right, "grab" the knob from the other side, and drag it back down to adjust it from 50% to 100%).
Congratulations. You just condensed TFA down to the length it probably should have been in the first place. In fact, there is more of value in your paragraph above than that entire article, as it actually describes a problem instead of just complaining about "damn knobs". Otherwise it is worthless snide drivel making fun of people for creating skinning art. Well, I guess it did serve as a pretty screenshot gallery.
Now, you suggest one solution for fixing this type of UX knob. One that requires two hands, but still at least you suggest one. Others here seem to like the idea of replacing knobs with sliders. Still others are fine with knobs as long as after you click on them it is a linear motion to turn them, with the knob only serving to tell the app what thing to tune. Personally I'd say why make people click on them, just use the scrollwheel on whatever you are mouse over... and click/drag if you need to go fine grained.
But you're right I don't use this kind of kit, so go argue it over with your compatriots and come back when you have some solid suggestions, then maybe someone who knows how to code will help you out.
No, you still don't get it. Sorry.
This stuff is almost all copyright-protected, proprietary software, not open source. Nobody can legally "fix" it except the company or individual who made it to begin with. The problem both the OP and I am complaining about is that the UI's are resolutely "pretty", not practical - and they're going to stay that way until the UI designers acquire a clue about usability.
Don't hold your breath waiting for that.
Basically, those of us who use pro audio software are S.O.L., because the highest-quality, most useful effects, etc. all suffer from this same design philosophy: Make the UI look as exactly as possible like the rack-mount hardware it emulates. And the hell with usablilty, as long as it's fucking pretty.
Incidentally, I blame the Apple fanboy environment for that. Jobs himself was all about usability, but 3rd-party software designers seem to champion esthetics over ease of use. Because ProTools dominates the commercial recording studio marketplace (and because ProTools is first and foremost a Mac-native application that only gets ported to other platforms, rather than developed specifically for them), it's the Mac mindframe that dictates the look and feel of its plug-ins. Unfortunately, the VST crowd has adopted the "identical look-and-feel" paradigm as well - with the same tooth-grinding results for the actual users.
I'm firmly of the opinion that software developers (and hardware developers, too, for that matter) ought to be legally required to eat their own dogfood in a production environment for a minimum of six months before being permitted to inflict their brainchildren on we poor mortals. I think it'd cut down on the amount of crappy UI's and broken functionality of commercial products by a good 99% ...
BTW - the Digitech floor effects editor I mentioned does not require you to hold down the mouse button. Click on the control to highlight it and you're then free to use the up and down keys to change its value. (You can also use the mouse to do that, if you enjoy carpal tunnel syndrome, of course.)
skids scoffed:
Actually, no.
First, the author provides no solid complaint. Just that "there are knobs, and I don't know what most of them do". The latter is a matter of documentation, not UX, and for the former he offers zero in the way of alternatives. He complains that you have to control the knobs with a mouse... as opposed to what, real knobs? Does he suggest something like using mouseover-then-scrollwheel as opposed to drag-the-knob? No not even that. Instead he complains about retro app skins.
Factually no. You're completely mischaraterizing the OP's complaint.
First of all, he in no way says or implies "I don't know what most of them do." Full stop. Secondly, his complaint about being forced to use a mouse to adjust rotary knob-style controls is entirely valid - and many (if not most) VST audio plug-ins for DAWs provide NO scrollwheel functionality. You HAVE to move the damned knob around its full travel via click-and-drag (which usually means you have to "let go" at the 12:00 position, shift the mouse slightly to the right, "grab" the knob from the other side, and drag it back down to adjust it from 50% to 100%). It's cumbersome as all hell, and it's often tooth-grindingly difficult to properly fine tune levels on as many as a dozen or more knobs on a single effect, filter, amp emulator, etc in what is typically a chain of them - sometimes a very long chain of them.
The same thing is true of plug-ins for AU, AAX and other formats, so ProTools users get to enjoy levels of frustration equal to those of we Cakewalk or Reaper users, too.
Oh, and did I mention that usable documentation for audio plug-ins is as commonplace as saddle-trained unicorns?
It's true that some clueful designers do allow you to click on a control, then use the keyboard arrows or numberpad to adjust its value. (Digitech's excellent floor effects editor springs to mind here.) They deserve kudos - but let me assure you that there aren't enough of 'em around to noticably diminish the kudo supply.
Your comment makes it clear that you have little (by which I mean "zero") experience with professional audio recording, mixing, and mastering software - which, if you read TFS carefully, is the actual subject of the OP's complaint. What that means, in turn, is that you are completely unqualified even to express an opinion on the subject.
Of course, this is /., so I'm sure you won't let THAT stop you ...
JohnFen explained:
My comment was not intended to be sneering, and I apologize that it came off that way. I agree with your comment here, by the way.
Tech should serve people, rather than the other way around
I particularly agree with this. Perhaps where we disagree is what counts as "serving people".
I suspect we don't - disagree, that is.
I hold no brief for Sonos (although I'm pretty sure that the OP twisted the thrust of its announcement to suit /.'s current, clickbait agenda). I take fairly aggressive measures to protect my own privacy online. And I am anything but blind to the dangers that big datamining poses to mine, yours, and everyone else's. Nor do I in any way endorse planned obsolescense and/or forced upgrades - especially when those "upgrades" benefit only the dataminers, not the consumer (I'm looking at YOU here, Microsoft).
But, as a former sysadmin and onetime tech journalist, I feel the pain of the common user. It's simply wrong to expect people to have to be computer experts merely to be able to USE computers. Given how often I find myself grinding my teeth over application incompatibilites, driver issues, and the like, I have to wonder how in the name of all that's sensical regular users manage to cope ...
JohnFen sneered:,/p>
Because lots of people want things they can just plug in and make work, and they're willing to give up a ludicrous amount of freedom and money in order to avoid even the small amount of effort needed to install and configure their own systems.
Yeesh.
Look, the vast majority of the population doesn't have the knowledge or technical chops even to begin to install and configure systems that integrate streaming technology with home audio systems. Full stop. And to insist that they are somehow morons or fools because that's true is incredibly elitist and short-sighted.
It's not just Cleetus the Slack-jawed Yokel or great-grandma in that number. Most medical doctors, for instance, simply don't have the time even to learn the terminology, much less the tech, because the technical reading their own field requires consumes seriously non-trivial amounts of their "free" time - which is further limited by the mountains of paperwork and email they have to wade through at the end of each workday. So, they can choose to spend their weekends playing golf, or they can spend it familiarizing themselves with streaming technology. Likewise, millenials tend to be severely underemployed, which means that, in order to escape from their parents' basements, they're forced to work multiple gigs. Add in the endless time sink of social media, and you're basically asking them to choose between becoming geeks or Snapchatting with their buds.
I could easily go on, but I shouldn't have to. The plain fact is, Slashdotters tend to be geeks to begin with. And, because they also tend to hang around geek social circles, it's easy for them to assume that all the really intelligent folks in the world automatically make those same choices. They don't. And they shouldn't have to.
Tech should serve people, rather than the other way around - and tech geeks are in the distinct minority wrt the population at large. THEY are normal - WE are not. The fact that Sonos and its ilk exploit their ignorance of - and, quite frankly, their profound lack of interest in - independence from vendors, privacy tradeoffs, and tech geekiness in general can't be held against them. If you don't understand that a problem even exists, and have no strong motivation to find out that it does, that's not a moral failing. It's a fact of life.
It's been a long, LONG time since it was possible for a single human to know everything there is to know. Even being a broadly-informed generalist is becoming more and more difficult by the day, simply because there's so freakin' MUCH to learn. And whole new fields of knowledge come into existence on a regular basis, so we all have to choose what we'll focus on and what we straight out don't have time for.
Personally, I make a lot of room for other subjects simply by having less than zero interest in sportsball ...
bazmail sneered:
Am I right?
For me? Yes, you are. But only because the movie-going experience so thoroughly and comprehensively sucks, here in the 21st century version of America.
Back when I was young, and we rode our pet dinosaurs to school (uphill both ways), going to the movies was a compleely immersive experience. No, we didn't have sooper-dooper Dullby sound systems, or especially convincing special effects, and the seats weren't nearly as comfortable as they are these days. But what we did have was a culture of respect for the experience. People might talk during the "Let's all go to the lobby!" concessions promo, but the absolute picosecond the newsreel started (yes, I'm that old), everyone in the theater shut all the fucking way up, and we all merged into that singular, collective creature: an audience.
There weren't any cell phones in those days, so, if you wanted to make a phone call, you had to go to the lobby to do it. There were theater employees called "ushers" (and usherettes), who would stand at the back of the auditorium (there was only one per theater back then - and, blelieve it or not, it usually had a balcony section to increase its capacity still further). Their job was to escort lobby-blinded patrons back to their seats, and to be on the lookout for "hijinks" and that most despised of all sub-human species, "talkers".
Talkers got ONE warning. That was it. Open your yap again, and you would be politely escorted out of the building. Get escorted out of the building too many times, and you would be banned from re-entering. Forever. And if you tried to pick a fight with an usher, well, there were plenty of aspiring knights-errant who were willing to lend him/her a hand in escorting you out of the building, only minus the "politely" part.
And that - plus the sheer size of the audience - made the experience an entirely different one that what modern movie-goers are subjected to. Everyone (except those hijinks-prone kids) was there to watch the movie. Not make and recieve a half-dozen phone calls, check their Facebook feed, chat with their posse, or carry on a shouted conversation with/exhortation to the characters on the screen. The screen was huge, the house was usually full, and the experience of seeing a movie with a room full of strangers, all raptly attentive, was satisfying in a way that watching the same movie in a theater today simply can't be. It wasn't a matter of degree. It was a matter of kind - an experience of a kind that simply no longer exists in the 21st century.
At least, not here, in the land of the free and the home of the entitled nitwit it doesn't. In other countries, YMMV - and it probably does. But in the USA, we've fully embraced out inner oaf, and the theater owners sit with folded hands and let their patrons progressively degrade the movie-going experience to the point where I, personally, would not go to the theater if you paid me to do so, because I just don't need the aggravation.
So, instead, I sit in my living room, with my 7.1 sound system, and watch (mostly pirated) movies on my modest, 40-inch flat screen. And, although I really miss the movie-going experience I remember so fondly from my youth (Just as a for-instance, I was lucky enough to live in Honolulu when 2001: A Space Odyssey premiered - it was one of only 6 cities in the USA which enjoyed the distinction of an exclusive, 6-week engagement - at the Cinerama Theater on King Street, downtown. It was a reserved-seat performance, and I was lucky enough to get a center seat, albeit in the third row, which turned out to be just a little bit closer to the screen than would have been optimal. When the lights went down and the curtain opened up, a hush fell over the audience. Which, y'know, was pretty normal for then. What was very different was that there was no concessions pitch, no newsreel, no previews of coming attractions. Instead, when the screen lit up, we were in
Rei observed:
Selling more convertible stock means more dilution. Selling bonds means that they want to hang onto their share in the company, and feel that paying interest after the plant is online is worth the benefit of not having to dilute.
Exactly so.
Junk bond status begins at BBB- rating. That doesn't mean they aren't a good investment. It merely means that they carriy greater risk than do "investment grade" bonds. What type of risk that consists of, and the degree of risk involved varies from bond issue to bond issue. Wikipedia's article on high-yield debt is fairly well-written, and it does a good job of explaining the basics. I recommend it to people who feel tempted to throw the term "junk bond" around without actually understanding what that actually means.
Elon haters are legion. Many of them are "car guys" who bet their reputations - and in some cases their shirts - that Tesla would fail before it ever sold a car. They resent Musk because he proved them wrong. Others are Washington beltway bandits who fear the disruptive effects of SpaceX's success on the defense industry gravy train, because it's their oxen that stand to be gored by it ...
phorm observed:
This seems to be a big issue with overseas sellers - I point to China because they're the most common - and shipping. My $5-20 item may come with free shipping, but when it arrives and is broken or turns out to be a fake piece of crap, the return cost may end up being more than the value of the item (especially if I want it tracked and within a reasonable time period).
I buy quite a bit of stuff from Chinese sellers on eBay - mostly cables and adapters, because "American" versions of those things are pretty much all manufactered there, anyway. Occasionally an item I purchase is defective, or unsuited for my purpose. (Most recently, it was a $5 cloth dust cover for an 88-key digital workstation.) I've never had any trouble obtaining a refund, and the sellers have never demanded I physically return the items.
The language barrier is sometimes an issue, of course, but patience and persistence are key virtues for such interactions ...
green1 expostulated
yes, and you know why we, as consumers, won't touch e-bay? precisely because it's a haven for these exact sellers who don't care about their customers.
If you won't stand behind your product, e-bay is the perfect place to sell, as the buyers there expect that level (or lack of) support.
If you DO stand behind your product, than continue to sell on Amazon, this change won't affect you.
You are 100% incorrect.
I buy a great many things from eBay. (In fact, last week I bought my 350th item.) While I have had bad experiences with some sellers, including recently, eBay has always responded to my complaints, and every dispute I've filed has been resolved in my favor. Moreover, some months ago, eBay contacted me via email to inform me that a seller from whom I'd just purchased a Jeggs screwdriver set had been hacked, and the listing I'd bought was bogus. I was advised to request a refund, which I did. Paypal sent me email telling me I had received my refund less than an hour later.
Beyond outright hacking, I've won disputes that were more subtle. For instance, I bought a Behringer USB500 microphone preamp from a New York seller, then discovered that I could get the same unit from Musician's Friend for a better price, plus 8% back in loyalty points. So, less than an hour after I bought the item, I requested the sale be cancelled. That cancellation request was made at 1:00 am EDT, long before the seller could have generated a shipping label. When I received notice at 10:31 am that I couldn't cancel the sale, because the item had been shipped, I immediately contacted eBay customer service to complain. They referred my complaint to their risk management team (who deal with rogue sellers), and urged me to file a request for a refund with Paypal. I did that, and Paypal's rep instructed me to refuse delivery of the item, and wait for the USPS to report it as having been returned to the sender. I did as they suggested, and three days later I got email telling me I'd received a full refund.
Oh, and because the idiot seller had refused to cancel the order, I was able to leave strongly negative feedback about the transaction - so she only screwed herself. I was merely somewhat inconvenienced.
Now this may seem to support your centention that eBay is a hive of bad-faith sellers, but my own experience has been that exactly the opposite is true. Yes, there are some bad eggs, but by paying attention to their ratings, and buying only from sellers that have sold at least 100 items, I've had bad experiences with fewer than half-a-dozen purchases, in more than 350 transactions thus far - and, again, all of those problems have been resolved in my favor.
For the record, I have no relationship with eBay other than as a customer. I own none of their stock, I have no friends or relatives that work for them, and I have never been an eBay seller. I just buy stuff from them because it's usually significantly cheaper than buying the same stuff from Amazon. My relationship with Musician's Friend is exactly the same: I'm a highly-satisfied customer, who buys stuff from them because they offer competitive pricing, loyalty points via their Backstage Pass program (which is free to join), and outstanding customer service. That's it. That's all ...
mtmra70 sneered
It's the government for you. I remember seeing an audio/video tech job posted on the USA Jobs website. It was nothing special, similar to an IT job and only paid around $55k at the time (not many years ago). However, they wanted the person to have a PhD!
It's not just the government, friend. I recall an ad in the SF Chronicle back in 1996 seeking a webmaster for a corporate site. Among the requirements was 7 years experience in HTML coding - which I found pretty amusing, given that Sir Tim created the very first web browser ever in 1989.
The problem is that HR people rarely have the slightest clue as to the actual skill set required for any given technical position, so they just pile on the qualifications without the slightest regard for their relevance, or for the real-world evolution of technology. (Note that actual tech firms operate differently, of course - but I'm talking here about plain vanilla, old-school businesses. You know: the kind that regard computers as glorified typewriters and/or adding machines.)
Octorian pointed out:
Actually, the original CNBC article is at fault here. It opens as stupid and sensational, without actually attempting to accurately describe the position until the 3rd frigging paragraph.
So, in other words, business as usual for cable news "journalism" ... ?
AutodidactLiberal scoffed:
Gates had "Vision"? Yeah, steal the LIZA interface, steal the DOS (from MPM-86), Steal the Basic Interpreter (from the Dartmouth), "Embrace, and expand" every standard to make them proprietary (Engulf and Devour), use Permatemp labor until caught..... if that is "vision" in Capitalism, I'll take better trains every single day
All of what you say is true. But:
a. He had the vision to retain the rights to BASIC, rather than selling it outright to IBM,
b. He had the vision to retain the right to sell unbranded versions of DOS to other vendors than IBM,
c. He had the vision to realize that, despite the fact that OS/2's technology was inherently superior to Windows 3.x's, reneging on his OS/2 partnership with IBM would allow Microsoft to dominate the desktop windowing interface market, and
d. He had the vision to push beyond the complacency that nearly destroyed post-Jobs Apple and replace the 16-bit Windows 95 shell with the 32-bit (and later 64-bit) Windows 2000 and subsequently WIndows XP.
There are plenty of other examples of him seeing what an absurd nonentity such as Ballmer was completely oblivious to, but I think I've made my point sufficiently clear.
True vision can be employed for good or ill, but it's foolish to refuse to acknowledge it exists, regardless of the purpose it's put to.
Kjella opined:
Meh, for every person who achieves something there's ten people who want to slap them down and find their faults and their weaknesses and belittle whatever they do. Everything from jocks bullying nerds to the people who have to hate on Jobs, Ballmer, Ellison, Zuckerberg, Jimbo Wales, Musk etc. almost out of principle.
I fail to see how either Ballmer or Ellison belongs in the company of the other individuals you list. Ballmer is an MBA candidate who never displayed the slightest trace of vision, invention, or originality (unlike Gates, who, love him or hate him, built a career and a company that achieved market dominance based on his having all three). For proof of his profound unfitness as an executive, you need look only as far as his slavish insistence on the stacked ranking model for employee reviews. Ellison had one good idea - a multiuser relational database for businesses - and an ethos of profound ruthlessness and exploitation with regard to his customers that's based on his bullshit interpretation of bushido. Neither one is what I'd call a positive role model.
The other guys, though, are genuine visionaries, IMnsHO ...
Posting to undo accidental down moderation.
Parent SHOULD have been moderated +1 Funny ...
Hey, Scentcone:
Asking for help from (and offering help to) like-minded people isn't even remotely the same as being forced on pain of imprisonment to do the same thing, after, of course, also being forced to pay for a huge body of for-profit middle-men and their supporting infrastructure that do exactly nothing towards the actual expense (say, funding a surgery) being met.
FTFY
bestweasel noted:
E.U. member states agreed [last month] on an ambitious new open-access (OA) target. All scientific papers should be freely available by 2020, the Competitiveness Council - a gathering of ministers of science, innovation, trade, and industry - concluded after a 2-day meeting in Brussels.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news...
Unfortunately, that was just the Competitiveness Council's resolution. To put actual teeth into it as an EU policy will require action by the European Parlaiment.
In the meantime, there's the Unpaywall extension for Firefox and Chrome. If there's a non-paywalled version of a journal article available on the Web, it'll find it for you. (And it pays to check back, because free versions often become available sometime after the initial publication of a journal article.)
Obfuscant explained:
The WSJ link IS just a teaser, though. To read the whole article, you have to subscribe ...
That's what "paywall" means. And it wasn't a complaint, it was a statement of fact.
I wasn't disagreeing with you, I was merely providing detail for everyone here who did not rtf - which is basically everyone here, as you know.
Also, there is no conflict between complaining and stating a fact. It is entirely possible to do both. As you know ...
Obfuscant complained:
And both links are garbage click bait for WSJ (paywalled) and Fortune (nearly blank page.)
You have to enable scripts from fortune.com to see the article. I just have NoScript enable them temporarily, then close the window and revoke the authorization when I'm done reading.
The WSJ link IS just a teaser, though. To read the whole article, you have to subscribe ...
Mod parent +1 Funny!
Use a VPN, damnit.
I'm on Project Fi, which includes automagic VPN protection on other than trusted WiFi networks. I'm also a belt-suspenders-and-staples kind of a guy, so I have VPNUnlimited's Android client installed on my Nexus 6, as well.
Because fuck a whole bunch of Jeff Bezos, anyway.
(And, yes, I'm well aware of the irony of the above sentiment, given my .sig. My mind is a hobgoblin-free zone.)
I've NEVER said this about an AC post before, but MOD PARENT +1 INFORMATIVE!