Hasn't everyone been burned by this? And why is it a big deal? It's not like professional developers never curse or get frustrated.
It is worse when questionable things get present to end users and/or clients. In a UI demonstration of an accounting project, I had a button called "Do Me". It didn't go over so well. But somehow it came out that one of the underlying combo boxes was called "ViagraComboBox" because it outperformed... that didn't go so well. So now all my code is antiseptic, just because its not good to show "unprofessionalism" infront of the client.
The worst thing I've ever heard was a friend gave a demo of a pipeline monitoring application to a client. During the course of a demo, a pumping station turned red to show an alarm, followed by a small mushroom cloud animation... suffices to say the client walked out of the meeting. (But hey, he now works at Microsoft.)
Those kids might be able to BUY the toons, but they ain't got the skillz. All those level 70 uber toons in raiding guilds - how many of them are in the ranks of bored housewives or underemployed?
Most of our guild is working class poor (that appreciates that goals are much easier to attain in virtual life than real life...)
Anyone interested in trying to port this beast to Apple PPC/NuBUS hardware with me? I'd love to replace my last incarnations of MacOS seeing as OSX doesn't support older hardware and MkLinux was killed.:-)
Some of us have been waiting for true POSIX compliance for some time (woohoo shared memory mapped files!)
Though Sun gave pretty sweet deals for Solaris (think I got intel for $100), opening it up means a lot more people can be programming for it, specifically where it was weak (drivers).
There is no need for a mod chip - in fact - Apple has been known to introduce backdoors into its own install process. For example, I installed Rhapsody on a G3 upgraded 7600 by holding down the option key.
All in all, its software, and I'm sure Apple isn't going to spend a whole lot of time protecting this part of the install process because its cost prohibitive. That means someone, somewhere will come up with a software mod to the install/launch process if Apple does not provide a means for doing so.
When Microsoft first sent me their recruitment package in 1991, the first page touted the fact that Bill was a drop out. I asked when I was there about Microsoft's hiring policy, to be told that Microsoft had the highest number of Masters than any other company... that I should be priviledged to be considered just having my Bachelors.
When they tried again in 1998, this interesting currio had vanished from the promotional material.
But review and focus groups usually lead to something a client or user base actually wants. I believe very few software developers do this, especially on the small scale (cost/time prohibitive.)
Article is down, but just the/. caption brings up a pet peeve of mine.
A lot of software developers don't know the first thing about human factors and/or good design.
Is it because the industry is saturated by people without training in the field? The benefit of the dot com boom?
I don't think so. When I took compsci, human factors was an optional course. It was the only course that covered information theory, and looked at aesthetics and functionality as units of work. I loved it.
But so few people even with training know about good design. I work with a lot of "engineers" and they have attitude "This software is great because I wrote it."
So ego plays a big part! But this also illustrates bad development process. Anyone who doesn't put the UI through a review ringer and or get people to test, use, and suggest is asking for crapware.
And where does this TOLD YOU SO, READ MY ARTICLES, I'M RIGHT, HA HA attitude come from?
This wasn't the guy that made the unusable-by-the-masses keyboard was it?
John, if you are reading this, when you come down from being high on yourself, realize that OSX has been running on Intel since Rhapsody. Its not some major revelation gifted to you by God. Most of those "superiority complex" type Mac-heads your talking about knew this. If anything, some of them feel cheated about Steve yanking x86 support so as not to cut into the PPC arch hardware sales...!.
I was an avid Mac developer for many years. Many Mac developers believed the dogma Apple sold us. RISC as faster than CISC. Eventually RISC would out perform CISC by orders of magnitude, so keep buying PowerPC!
I'm sad that the reality was that this argument was not well founded. A lot of Mac users than made the transition from 68K to PPC believed that they had a window to the future. That window is now closed.
Apple only survived the transition to PPC because Metrowerks had a great compiler. So, Apple learned some things, like have a dev kit ready, but they didn't learn another lesson...
Customers have long memories. Developers have longer memories. And some times it doesn't take much of a change for either to throw up their hands. "What, another architecture change?"
I remember complaining when Rhapsody, that originally ran on Intel, had support yanked.
Now we find out that Hey, we never killed x86 support, we just took it away from you so as not to cut into our hardware sales. And now, Hey, hardware isn't all that!
well at one point 10% of the population was gay, controlled 90% of the wealth, or used macs, so from this we can conclude that all gay rich people use macs.
apple has no foot hold in any market anymore, so the statistics and reasoning here is just plain wrong.
the reality is about 2% of the north american computer users have a mac.
I have a mac, but i'm not gay or rich. I also have 5 PCs, of which 1 runs linux, so... I heard all linux users support open source and are therefore communists.
The point was about easy of finding stuff... I can run a shell on OSX and ifconfig too. Telling a not-so-savy computer user to use a shell is asking for a panic attack.
Seeing as I still know swarms of talented developers in the 30-40 year range looking for work, I find this article kind of offensive.
So dot com filled the industry with 6 week tech school grads. Just looking at all the managers above me in the oil company I'm in... one in twenty has a comp-sci degree. The rest are all accountants, geologists, political scientists, and engineers. So, arguably, not one of them has training in computer science or software engineering.
The article really should say a lack of cheap labour trained with the latest buzzology. A couple years back I went in as a high priced consultant to fix an huge project that was handed over to 'students'...
Arguably there is a fine line between detection, removal, and prevention. Will the antivirus software be integrated with WindowsUpdate such that a security patch is applied? This means your now paying for WindowsUpdate. Or perhaps you are getting some premium update service...
Bill has said a few times he wants to "control the medium" and figure out how users can get charged for anything transactional. Seems like he found a candidate.
Everyone that thinks they have a trademark whether it is registered or not believes that suing Apple is a good idea.
Apple has a tendency to entertain the lawsuits, so every corporate lawyer thinks its a great make-work type project.
Marketing types agree, because its free advertising.
Even individuals, like Carl "Butthead Astronomer" Sagan love to sue Apple over the use of internal project code names, because suing Apple is both fun and profitable.
Apple should have learned by now that using any word in the english language can result in a lawsuit, just like George Lucas has learned he can be sued by any writer thinking they own the notion of a hairy cute alien.
Maybe Apple should start using H4xx0r for its project naming. Tiger could be T1gg3r, but then they'd probably be sued by Disney (who, btw, totally screwed the estate of Milne out of millions.)
When I was at school, they had Apple//e. There was a ton of educational software. It took a long time for the move to Windows, but it happened, and eventually the educational software caught up.
So now most schools around here are Windows, and though a lot of stuff is net based, there is still a lot of educational software that is and will continue to be Windows only.
No software means its of little value as an educational tool. Eduware companies aren't going to flock to linux, and no school has resources to produce OpenSource educational software.
The IT cost of linux is worse than windows. When I was fighting to keep Macs in schools, the administration came down to hard numbers: for every Mac expert they'd need to support the school they could hire a swarm of Windows experts. Supply and demand. The same will go for linux.
Linux is not a desktop OS. It never will be. Any time you need to recompile the kernal to add support for VPN, AFS, or whatever the new device driver is... you have a support nightmare. And yeah, I'm talking about the modular kernels...
"I can't read from my floppy." "Did you mount it?" "No I put it in the drive but nothing happens." "Check your fstab and mountab see if its there." "What?"
As I remember my stacks of Fangoria and all those movies that made me ROFL with an R rating.
I'd like to say Way to go George? When I can get the director's R cut? I want to see Anakin lay down some serious smack producing a bounty of twitching gibs - Sidius burn goodie-goodie two-shoes to smoking yet recognizable lumps.
I was soooo bent out of shape when Paul Verhoven cut out the excessive gore from Total Recall to get a PG-13 and he still got an R rating.
Remember, gibs are good. And my kids love gibs too.
I went to the indies until the day they closed. That's when I started amazon shopping. I found out two of the indies closed by going down to browse to see letters on the door explaining why they were outta business.
Most people still prefer a relationship with the vendor. If there was an independant shop about, I'd most likely go there. There is no convenience for me in shopping amazon because - i still get to wait for it to come - im not hope when it arrives so i get to wander to the local post office for pick up
Slashdot Mirror
I think all software should get localized.
Here OK would be "Right on b'y, eh!"
But he is a raving lunatic! And yes, I knew him. He has no tact, maturity, or other qualities besides being a talented hacker.
I believe he is lead on Studio.NET, but you didn't hear it from me.
I think this is my favorite function name.
Hasn't everyone been burned by this? And why is it a big deal? It's not like professional developers never curse or get frustrated.
It is worse when questionable things get present to end users and/or clients. In a UI demonstration of an accounting project, I had a button called "Do Me". It didn't go over so well. But somehow it came out that one of the underlying combo boxes was called "ViagraComboBox" because it outperformed... that didn't go so well. So now all my code is antiseptic, just because its not good to show "unprofessionalism" infront of the client.
The worst thing I've ever heard was a friend gave a demo of a pipeline monitoring application to a client. During the course of a demo, a pumping station turned red to show an alarm, followed by a small mushroom cloud animation... suffices to say the client walked out of the meeting. (But hey, he now works at Microsoft.)
Those kids might be able to BUY the toons, but they ain't got the skillz. All those level 70 uber toons in raiding guilds - how many of them are in the ranks of bored housewives or underemployed?
Most of our guild is working class poor (that appreciates that goals are much easier to attain in virtual life than real life...)
Anyone interested in trying to port this beast to Apple PPC/NuBUS hardware with me? I'd love to replace my last incarnations of MacOS seeing as OSX doesn't support older hardware and MkLinux was killed. :-)
This is a very good thing.
Some of us have been waiting for true POSIX compliance for some time (woohoo shared memory mapped files!)
Though Sun gave pretty sweet deals for Solaris (think I got intel for $100), opening it up means a lot more people can be programming for it, specifically where it was weak (drivers).
There is no need for a mod chip - in fact - Apple has been known to introduce backdoors into its own install process. For example, I installed Rhapsody on a G3 upgraded 7600 by holding down the option key.
All in all, its software, and I'm sure Apple isn't going to spend a whole lot of time protecting this part of the install process because its cost prohibitive. That means someone, somewhere will come up with a software mod to the install/launch process if Apple does not provide a means for doing so.
When Microsoft first sent me their recruitment package in 1991, the first page touted the fact that Bill was a drop out. I asked when I was there about Microsoft's hiring policy, to be told that Microsoft had the highest number of Masters than any other company... that I should be priviledged to be considered just having my Bachelors.
When they tried again in 1998, this interesting currio had vanished from the promotional material.
You are right on!
This is SuperPaint reincarnated...
Aldus shouldn't have killed it.
But review and focus groups usually lead to something a client or user base actually wants. I believe very few software developers do this, especially on the small scale (cost/time prohibitive.)
Article is down, but just the /. caption brings up a pet peeve of mine.
.02
A lot of software developers don't know the first thing about human factors and/or good design.
Is it because the industry is saturated by people without training in the field? The benefit of the dot com boom?
I don't think so. When I took compsci, human factors was an optional course. It was the only course that covered information theory, and looked at aesthetics and functionality as units of work. I loved it.
But so few people even with training know about good design. I work with a lot of "engineers" and they have attitude "This software is great because I wrote it."
So ego plays a big part! But this also illustrates bad development process. Anyone who doesn't put the UI through a review ringer and or get people to test, use, and suggest is asking for crapware.
My
And where does this TOLD YOU SO, READ MY ARTICLES, I'M RIGHT, HA HA attitude come from?
..!.
This wasn't the guy that made the unusable-by-the-masses keyboard was it?
John, if you are reading this, when you come down from being high on yourself, realize that OSX has been running on Intel since Rhapsody. Its not some major revelation gifted to you by God. Most of those "superiority complex" type Mac-heads your talking about knew this. If anything, some of them feel cheated about Steve yanking x86 support so as not to cut into the PPC arch hardware sales.
I was an avid Mac developer for many years. Many Mac developers believed the dogma Apple sold us. RISC as faster than CISC. Eventually RISC would out perform CISC by orders of magnitude, so keep buying PowerPC!
I'm sad that the reality was that this argument was not well founded. A lot of Mac users than made the transition from 68K to PPC believed that they had a window to the future. That window is now closed.
Apple only survived the transition to PPC because Metrowerks had a great compiler. So, Apple learned some things, like have a dev kit ready, but they didn't learn another lesson...
Customers have long memories. Developers have longer memories. And some times it doesn't take much of a change for either to throw up their hands. "What, another architecture change?"
I remember complaining when Rhapsody, that originally ran on Intel, had support yanked.
Now we find out that Hey, we never killed x86 support, we just took it away from you so as not to cut into our hardware sales. And now, Hey, hardware isn't all that!
Anyone else feel cheated?
well at one point 10% of the population was gay, controlled 90% of the wealth, or used macs, so from this we can conclude that all gay rich people use macs.
apple has no foot hold in any market anymore, so the statistics and reasoning here is just plain wrong.
the reality is about 2% of the north american computer users have a mac.
I have a mac, but i'm not gay or rich. I also have 5 PCs, of which 1 runs linux, so... I heard all linux users support open source and are therefore communists.
What? Comparing Apples and Oranges? Bjarne once said "Proof by analogy is Fraud." This is nothing like Star Wars. That is my opinion.
The point was about easy of finding stuff... I can run a shell on OSX and ifconfig too. Telling a not-so-savy computer user to use a shell is asking for a panic attack.
Seeing as I still know swarms of talented developers in the 30-40 year range looking for work, I find this article kind of offensive.
So dot com filled the industry with 6 week tech school grads. Just looking at all the managers above me in the oil company I'm in... one in twenty has a comp-sci degree. The rest are all accountants, geologists, political scientists, and engineers. So, arguably, not one of them has training in computer science or software engineering.
The article really should say a lack of cheap labour trained with the latest buzzology. A couple years back I went in as a high priced consultant to fix an huge project that was handed over to 'students'...
Its a crock.
I agree.
Arguably there is a fine line between detection, removal, and prevention. Will the antivirus software be integrated with WindowsUpdate such that a security patch is applied? This means your now paying for WindowsUpdate. Or perhaps you are getting some premium update service...
Bill has said a few times he wants to "control the medium" and figure out how users can get charged for anything transactional. Seems like he found a candidate.
Everyone that thinks they have a trademark whether it is registered or not believes that suing Apple is a good idea.
Apple has a tendency to entertain the lawsuits, so every corporate lawyer thinks its a great make-work type project.
Marketing types agree, because its free advertising.
Even individuals, like Carl "Butthead Astronomer" Sagan love to sue Apple over the use of internal project code names, because suing Apple is both fun and profitable.
Apple should have learned by now that using any word in the english language can result in a lawsuit, just like George Lucas has learned he can be sued by any writer thinking they own the notion of a hairy cute alien.
Maybe Apple should start using H4xx0r for its project naming. Tiger could be T1gg3r, but then they'd probably be sued by Disney (who, btw, totally screwed the estate of Milne out of millions.)
whoa you mean not a soul went to take a whizz? it must be the best movie ever!
My .02...
//e. There was a ton of educational software. It took a long time for the move to Windows, but it happened, and eventually the educational software caught up.
When I was at school, they had Apple
So now most schools around here are Windows, and though a lot of stuff is net based, there is still a lot of educational software that is and will continue to be Windows only.
No software means its of little value as an educational tool. Eduware companies aren't going to flock to linux, and no school has resources to produce OpenSource educational software.
The IT cost of linux is worse than windows. When I was fighting to keep Macs in schools, the administration came down to hard numbers: for every Mac expert they'd need to support the school they could hire a swarm of Windows experts. Supply and demand. The same will go for linux.
Linux is not a desktop OS. It never will be. Any time you need to recompile the kernal to add support for VPN, AFS, or whatever the new device driver is... you have a support nightmare. And yeah, I'm talking about the modular kernels...
"I can't read from my floppy." "Did you mount it?" "No I put it in the drive but nothing happens." "Check your fstab and mountab see if its there." "What?"
As I remember my stacks of Fangoria and all those movies that made me ROFL with an R rating.
I'd like to say Way to go George? When I can get the director's R cut? I want to see Anakin lay down some serious smack producing a bounty of twitching gibs - Sidius burn goodie-goodie two-shoes to smoking yet recognizable lumps.
I was soooo bent out of shape when Paul Verhoven cut out the excessive gore from Total Recall to get a PG-13 and he still got an R rating.
Remember, gibs are good. And my kids love gibs too.
I went to the indies until the day they closed. That's when I started amazon shopping. I found out two of the indies closed by going down to browse to see letters on the door explaining why they were outta business.
Most people still prefer a relationship with the vendor. If there was an independant shop about, I'd most likely go there. There is no convenience for me in shopping amazon because
- i still get to wait for it to come
- im not hope when it arrives so i get to wander to the local post office for pick up