Strongly agree, actually. I can't ever seem to get fewer than 50 tabs in my browsers, so, must keep alternate browsers installed, to be usable while gaming. However I would say that, most days, Alt-Tab is preferable to things I already know (such as my current workload's constituents) wasting screen space. Everything should be optional in everything, otherwise someone who is right, is going to get screwed.
I'm just saying that if the Start button could optionally make the whole taskbar fade into view without too much shuffle, as an option alongside "Auto Hide" and "Always On Top" that tiny change would virtually obsolesce Metro and Gnome 3. Iterative improvements have barely been tried, instead they just keep hiring an art team for a weekend and calling that "revolutionary UI reimagining."
Question assumes that since we don't want Gnome 3 or Windows 8, we must be opposed to change. {Sarcasm tone=thick}Yup, that's Linux users all day. Totally. {/Sarcasm} No, Gnome 3 and Windows 8 just got it wrong and shoved it down our throats.
I think the only real difference over time, re: your question, is this: once upon a time, it was a race to test the waters with ideas and alternatives, a race to refine a range of UX choices. Most of them imitated something else, a few didn't. Most of those alternatives are still popular. In fact, XFCE is (I believe) still gaining popularity. It's too soon to declare hegemony.
I wonder constantly why "always on top", "auto-hide", and "click to hide" are our three main options for dealing with taskbars. With the possible exception of the clock and recent notifications, everything but the guts of the apps you are currently actively using, are a huge waste of screen space when they aren't being used. Just because Gnome 3 and Win 8 happen to agree with me on that point, doesn't make them any good.
It's also telling that Windows 8 is all but being recalled. Microsoft didn't ask users what they wanted, changed everything, and claimed it was based on what users wanted. Gnome 3 and Windows 8 both did this. Both can burn in obscurity for that single crime alone.
You don't unilaterally change the lives of hundreds of millions of productive people, and expect good results. A nextgen UI paradigm may need to wait for nextgen I/O devices, but it might instead just try iterative feedback instead of testing our gag reflex.
...all those stories about the death of the PC were not just bullshit, but harmful bullshit.
Step 1: Create the illusion of digital scarcity Step 2: Market to rich non-geeks who expect a cell phone's obsolescence timeline Step 3: Pretend "ooOooooh, well now THESE chips are `SPENSIVE."
Software makers will be milking more and more speed out of quad-core CPUs for the next 15+ years anyway. The industry did this to themselves by squabbling over IP and taking a slash-and-burn approach to manufacturing quality. We (well, you, not me) helped by mindlessly repeating "zomg the PC is dead" for the past several years.
"...anachronism of the now defunct 90s PC era, a pre-web program written at a time when NT Server terrorized the data center landscape with the confidence of a T-Rex born to yuppie dinosaur parents who fully bought into the illusion of their son's utter uniqueness because the big-mouthed, tiny-armed monster infant could mimic the gestures of The Itsy-Bitsy Pterodactyl."
Behold, the rantings of a crazy person.
Also, lol, someone at Yahoo thinks they're relevant. It's not cute anymore.
"anachronism of the now defunct 90s PC era" should be Yahoo's new slogan. Projecting much?
I don't attribute much of that progress to any particular entity. Things were coming along great, and then the volunteer base grew. Some of that came because of Ubuntu, some because of Android, heck, some because of MacOS, or because of GIMP being ported to Windows, or because of offices full of OpenOffice (or StarOffice)...
The wide presence and marketing success of your Ubuntus is all well and good, when it's good. Once the company uses its product for evil, the PR success turns into a retroactive Bad Thing. I don't know who contributed the firmwares for how many wifi adaptors, under the auspices of which payroll (if any) - but, I know I haven't heard about Wine or Codeweavers, or the Kernel team, or any other consumer-Linux-focused companies, selling my desktop computing details to Amazon, being vindictive and bullish in interproject relations, etc.
The exception, of course, being Google, which made "all the world's information" its core product since early days. There is a difference in the level of expectations for a cloud-slaved device like a mobile, vs a desktop OS, and there's definitely a difference in expectations letting Google cloud your control, vs installing a Linux OS yourself.
So, every time I see Shuttleworth jock his way through the ecosystem, because he can after hitting a position where millions of Linux users are too Steve-Jobs-fandom'd about a purple logo to care where anything came from or means, gets me on my rantbox, yes. One need only look at Oracle's attempted actions over the past few years, or the feeble way Red Hat can't seem to decide whose side they're on sometimes, to see what people with corporate personalities like Shuttleworth are good for in this space.
And, yeah, when I see Ubuntu users make arguments thanking some greedy, dishonest corporation for decades of hard work from the FOSS community, I get mouthy about that, too.
Linux would be a registered property owned by IBM or Microsoft as of 1998 if it weren't for harsh criticism and willingness to verbally slap over the central principles that protect its status. Some douchebag like Shuttleworth could commit a crime against his users, and then Congress will go and conflate all Linux users as "victims" of this heinous breach of privacy (or whatever hypothetical) - and we'd have both him, and his uncaring, ignorant users to thank for the loss of the free software movement.
Ignorance and blithe brain-branded "I have it so whoever gave it to me is right" bullshit are about the only thing free software has to fear. I like to game, but it's not as important as protecting the existence and reputation of the stack.
Anger flame depowering. Apologies to all for any insulting tones, but insert Picard, "the line must be drawn here," here.
This is the kind of comment that earns Ubuntu so much of its scorn.
"Don't be such fucking ingrates," says a fan of the harmful ingrate upstart. As if Ubuntu would exist without the community it's constantly insulting, and now worse.
Just because you needed a lollypop drenched in chocolate before you would check out Linux, doesn't mean Ubuntu did jack shit for the (doing perfectly well before and after Ubuntu arrived, thanks!) global FOSS community.
Ubuntu polluted the user base with twits who think like Microsoft users. If anything, that's the biggest detriment we've ever seen. You people think you're natives and that anybody cares about the tripe you spout. You know nothing about how little Ubuntu did beyond marketing. You know nothing about how rabidly the majority of the community railed against so many of their Microsoft-like decisions. You don't know where it's all going, and you don't care.
You are a dreg with a mile of maggot-infested linen literally hanging out of your ass who is tracking shit on the carpet and knocking things over in our house, and you're calling us fucking ingrates while you do it.
I would say stop using Linux, but you can't now, because it's everywhere - thanks to Google, not Ubuntu.
You are on the wrong team and you are taking swings at people. Expect messages like yours to be responded-to as if you deserve the worst words have to offer.
Ubuntu is an enemy of the open source movement, and has been for several years.
Slashdot Mirror
Strongly agree, actually. I can't ever seem to get fewer than 50 tabs in my browsers, so, must keep alternate browsers installed, to be usable while gaming. However I would say that, most days, Alt-Tab is preferable to things I already know (such as my current workload's constituents) wasting screen space. Everything should be optional in everything, otherwise someone who is right, is going to get screwed.
I'm just saying that if the Start button could optionally make the whole taskbar fade into view without too much shuffle, as an option alongside "Auto Hide" and "Always On Top" that tiny change would virtually obsolesce Metro and Gnome 3. Iterative improvements have barely been tried, instead they just keep hiring an art team for a weekend and calling that "revolutionary UI reimagining."
Question assumes that since we don't want Gnome 3 or Windows 8, we must be opposed to change. {Sarcasm tone=thick}Yup, that's Linux users all day. Totally. {/Sarcasm} No, Gnome 3 and Windows 8 just got it wrong and shoved it down our throats.
I think the only real difference over time, re: your question, is this: once upon a time, it was a race to test the waters with ideas and alternatives, a race to refine a range of UX choices. Most of them imitated something else, a few didn't. Most of those alternatives are still popular. In fact, XFCE is (I believe) still gaining popularity. It's too soon to declare hegemony.
I wonder constantly why "always on top", "auto-hide", and "click to hide" are our three main options for dealing with taskbars. With the possible exception of the clock and recent notifications, everything but the guts of the apps you are currently actively using, are a huge waste of screen space when they aren't being used. Just because Gnome 3 and Win 8 happen to agree with me on that point, doesn't make them any good.
It's also telling that Windows 8 is all but being recalled. Microsoft didn't ask users what they wanted, changed everything, and claimed it was based on what users wanted. Gnome 3 and Windows 8 both did this. Both can burn in obscurity for that single crime alone.
You don't unilaterally change the lives of hundreds of millions of productive people, and expect good results. A nextgen UI paradigm may need to wait for nextgen I/O devices, but it might instead just try iterative feedback instead of testing our gag reflex.
You are the reason for my new sig.
+1 parent informative. IMO.
...all those stories about the death of the PC were not just bullshit, but harmful bullshit.
Step 1: Create the illusion of digital scarcity
Step 2: Market to rich non-geeks who expect a cell phone's obsolescence timeline
Step 3: Pretend "ooOooooh, well now THESE chips are `SPENSIVE."
Software makers will be milking more and more speed out of quad-core CPUs for the next 15+ years anyway. The industry did this to themselves by squabbling over IP and taking a slash-and-burn approach to manufacturing quality. We (well, you, not me) helped by mindlessly repeating "zomg the PC is dead" for the past several years.
And if it's possible that there's a criminal negligence case against your boss, pursue it proactively. Throw the whole company under the bus.
It's either the company, or the users.
...breeds bullshit stories.
Yet another one, Slashdot. Yet another pile of bullshit posing as news to inflame us and get people commenting.
Someone needs to do number crunching on how much grant/tax/loan money is wasted on thumb-up-the-ass research like this every year.
I sincerely want to see anyone whose job is paid for with tax dollars, and who approves/does a report like this, fired and publicly shamed.
The fucking zombies are the people who can't stop thinking about fucking zombies.
...needs a special World Generation Seed in commemoration of this story ;)
"...anachronism of the now defunct 90s PC era, a pre-web program written at a time when NT Server terrorized the data center landscape with the confidence of a T-Rex born to yuppie dinosaur parents who fully bought into the illusion of their son's utter uniqueness because the big-mouthed, tiny-armed monster infant could mimic the gestures of The Itsy-Bitsy Pterodactyl."
Behold, the rantings of a crazy person.
Also, lol, someone at Yahoo thinks they're relevant. It's not cute anymore.
"anachronism of the now defunct 90s PC era" should be Yahoo's new slogan. Projecting much?
As a recovering MMO addict, my answer to this:
> What else would you recommend looking at?
The outdoors, and members of your preferred sex. And maybe that hobby you could have turned into a career if you'd spent any time on it.
Yknow, you guys don't have to post these things as ACs. Show some stomp, put it in your dang sig :)
Entitlement at its finest.
How dare they put hard work, money, legal processes, and their own liability on the line in hopes of PAYMENT?!?
It's as if the whole human race needed food and shelter and charged MONEY for those things!
But hey, it's another chance to point out that I don't know why timothy still has this job.
The good news is, the more they repeat the crime, the worse it looks in court.
Well, we can certainly hope that BP is going to pay for this.
Did Timothy cover Unknown Lamer's shift, using Unknown Lamer's account?
Speaking on behalf of U.S. citizens, other countries are not our responsibility.
Yeah, lots of people like Top 40 and Hollywood.
Searched for "nothing to hide."
Replied to you.
I think this is the most hilarious story ever. "Waaaaah, no faiiiiiiiiiir!"
Must...avoid... spending mod points... to ensure... Trek... wins... flame war!
Ahh... ahhhhh... aaaaaahhhhh... plusoneyou! Hehe
I don't attribute much of that progress to any particular entity. Things were coming along great, and then the volunteer base grew. Some of that came because of Ubuntu, some because of Android, heck, some because of MacOS, or because of GIMP being ported to Windows, or because of offices full of OpenOffice (or StarOffice)...
The wide presence and marketing success of your Ubuntus is all well and good, when it's good. Once the company uses its product for evil, the PR success turns into a retroactive Bad Thing. I don't know who contributed the firmwares for how many wifi adaptors, under the auspices of which payroll (if any) - but, I know I haven't heard about Wine or Codeweavers, or the Kernel team, or any other consumer-Linux-focused companies, selling my desktop computing details to Amazon, being vindictive and bullish in interproject relations, etc.
The exception, of course, being Google, which made "all the world's information" its core product since early days. There is a difference in the level of expectations for a cloud-slaved device like a mobile, vs a desktop OS, and there's definitely a difference in expectations letting Google cloud your control, vs installing a Linux OS yourself.
So, every time I see Shuttleworth jock his way through the ecosystem, because he can after hitting a position where millions of Linux users are too Steve-Jobs-fandom'd about a purple logo to care where anything came from or means, gets me on my rantbox, yes. One need only look at Oracle's attempted actions over the past few years, or the feeble way Red Hat can't seem to decide whose side they're on sometimes, to see what people with corporate personalities like Shuttleworth are good for in this space.
And, yeah, when I see Ubuntu users make arguments thanking some greedy, dishonest corporation for decades of hard work from the FOSS community, I get mouthy about that, too.
Linux would be a registered property owned by IBM or Microsoft as of 1998 if it weren't for harsh criticism and willingness to verbally slap over the central principles that protect its status. Some douchebag like Shuttleworth could commit a crime against his users, and then Congress will go and conflate all Linux users as "victims" of this heinous breach of privacy (or whatever hypothetical) - and we'd have both him, and his uncaring, ignorant users to thank for the loss of the free software movement.
Ignorance and blithe brain-branded "I have it so whoever gave it to me is right" bullshit are about the only thing free software has to fear. I like to game, but it's not as important as protecting the existence and reputation of the stack.
Anger flame depowering. Apologies to all for any insulting tones, but insert Picard, "the line must be drawn here," here.
It seems like a very good time to bring heightened awareness to my sig. Consider this story to be a pre-toldjaso.
Seriously, where?
This is the kind of comment that earns Ubuntu so much of its scorn.
"Don't be such fucking ingrates," says a fan of the harmful ingrate upstart. As if Ubuntu would exist without the community it's constantly insulting, and now worse.
Just because you needed a lollypop drenched in chocolate before you would check out Linux, doesn't mean Ubuntu did jack shit for the (doing perfectly well before and after Ubuntu arrived, thanks!) global FOSS community.
Ubuntu polluted the user base with twits who think like Microsoft users. If anything, that's the biggest detriment we've ever seen. You people think you're natives and that anybody cares about the tripe you spout. You know nothing about how little Ubuntu did beyond marketing. You know nothing about how rabidly the majority of the community railed against so many of their Microsoft-like decisions. You don't know where it's all going, and you don't care.
You are a dreg with a mile of maggot-infested linen literally hanging out of your ass who is tracking shit on the carpet and knocking things over in our house, and you're calling us fucking ingrates while you do it.
I would say stop using Linux, but you can't now, because it's everywhere - thanks to Google, not Ubuntu.
You are on the wrong team and you are taking swings at people. Expect messages like yours to be responded-to as if you deserve the worst words have to offer.
Ubuntu is an enemy of the open source movement, and has been for several years.
Methinks you should reply to yourself so that people can put more mod points here.
+Infinity parent.
...and other whatnow?
Headsets and cameras. Software since nineteen-ninety-why does Timothy still have a job?