In Canada, your choice is to support the Phone monopoly, or the Cable monopoly (depending on where you are it's Bell/Rogers or Telus/Shaw). Somehow we live with it.
You now have choice, but all you really gain is a single bill since you generally hate both companies. Both Rogers and Bell have moved into each others segments more or less (Rogers offering cell service through Cantel/Rogers wireless, Bell offering ExpressVu satelite. Rogers never got into landline phones other than with Unitel long distance, but I expect that we'll see their brand of VOIP soon).
What's interesting between Rogers and Bell is that they don't do anything really creative. Both have horrible customer service (to the point that I've called the CRTC for both), and marketing seems to be catching up to the other (Bell introduces caps, Rogers impliments caps. Rogers introduces a low-cost service, Bell does the same. Rogers makes a deal with Yahoo, Bell joins up with MSN. Bell owns/named a stadium in Montreal, Rogers bought the Skydome and turned it into another generic corporate-branded facility which I refuse to refer to by its new name)
Cell phones have slightly more "choice". You get to choose between two phone monopolies (Bell and Telus ended their non-compete when Telus bought Clearnet), and two "brands" of the cable company (Rogers wireless bought the last independant, Fido). But, we don't have number portibility here yet so all 4 carriers find some way to screw you. Virgin mobile has just launched recently though, so we'll see what they do.
If you send me mail and I don't get it I don't see how it harms you at all.
My invoices go out through email. Recently, my ISP was listed in an RBL (you'll love this story), so invoices to one client were rejected simply because of the RBL listing. Because I couldn't send invoices, I can't get paid. (I did resolve it, and I have other options like mailing invoices, but that takes time I don't have)
So, why was I on the RBL in the first place? Turns out another customer on the ISP was reporting spam back to the RBL. It looks like they flagged every received header - including the final delivery (my ISP's mail server!). If you're going to run an RBL, you should at least have a concept of how mail works.
1. complexity: This one is our fault as developers. Look at the number of menu options in a Microsoft program. How many features get used? How many people look at all those options and give up? It's like the joke about Microsoft building a car with 8 key slots depending on how much power you actually want.
I'm picking on microsoft because their apps tend to be much more complicated than they should be, imho, but they're not the only ones. The other day I was attempting to install a Plone module and install.txt was something like "1. Create a QuickInstaller tool. 2. Run it". I had no idea how to create one, and nowhere did it say that I needed to be using Plone *2*. (OpenBSD's packages are horribly out of date). It took me a few hours to figure that out and do all the necessary upgrades. It might be obvious to the developer and people familiar with plone, but not for the rest of us!
I may not know how a car engine works, but I can understand basics (no oil = seized engine = expensive). I turn it on, I make it go using the round thing in front of me and 2/3 things at my feet. You might need to tell me a few things (the first time I started a TDI for example - wait for the glow plugs) I don't need to know much more than that. We're trying to have users maintain their own cars - not just make it go but understand all those pieces under the hood, especially when the car has had parts replaced/added from 20 different third party companies, all of which ignore the others.
Why should a user need to know how to fight spyware and secure their internet connection in order to type a document?
Why do I use a Mac? It's not that I'm not comfortable with Windows, but the user experience is much more like driving - turn it on and go. Windows is like a car stuck in the mud with a dead battery, bad tires and no gas. Your average user can replace the gas, but won't know to jumpstart, replace the tires, and actually get out of the mud! (insert UnixAir joke here about each person bringing a piece of the plane to the runway)
2. Attitude This one is up to users. "I don't want to learn, It's too hard, etc".
But, we're also responsible too. How many people actually like their IT department? Some of the worst ones are fairly incompetent, say no to just about anything, prevent you from reaching anyone who can actually help/make decisions and blame the user for all problems. Generally, it seems that the farther away IT is from the user (in structure - think head/remote office), the worse they are.
Something interesting I've noticed is that Mac users going to windows get frustrated when it becomes more complicated to do the same task (I'm guilty of this). Windows users who resist going to Mac do so because they had such a hard time learning the "computer" in the first place. When they finally do switch, they wonder why it took so long.
I loved the windows dialog which went along the lines of...
(3 lines of text)
To DEBUG press OK
To continue press cancel
1. If you have to explain what the buttons do, your UI design has failed. The text should support the button actions, not replace it. 2. Make the default choice obvious. I can't tell you how many times Visual Studio fired up when I hit the wrong choice. 3. "To continue press cancel" - wtf? This isn't the exact text, but it was something to that effect.
Illegal operation was another one. I can't tell you how many times I had to explain that one.
For comparison, MacOS X's dialog is something like "(Foo) has unexpectedly quit. [Ok]".
I thought APC had a system which put racks back to back, sealed the backs and then cooled the exhaust air. The idea being that you're not cooling the entire room, just the hot air where it's being generated.
My personal domain (ie: about 4 people actually know about it) is routinely nailed by spammers. All three addresses (Registrar, Admin, Tech) receive spam for "Broadcast your website to 2 million addresses!"
SpamAssassin gets it all now, but it got to the point where I was changing all three addresses monthly.
Given that my domain is so small, either spammers grab whois in bulk, or use an alphanumeric attack to find new domains.
Not quite. Officially, 10.3 doesn't support Beige G3's. But I'm running it using XPostFacto. Compared to 10.2 it doesn't seem like anything has been dropped - my ADB keyboard and old serial ports still work, the floppy doesn't (but it's never been supported by X)
All G3 machines will run 10.2 at a minimum. With the exception of the beige G3's, everything else runs 10.3. Some early machines however will need a ram and processor bump.
I quickly looked at that article. If I understand it, the author's complaint is that the finder windows are no longer tied to folders? Each time a folder is opened, it should open a new window in exactly the same place as you last left it, and now under OS X that window can be anywhere?
No offense to the author but what is he smoking and where do I get some?
A computer's interface is not a physical object. I expect a light switch to stay in the same place, not a computer interface. Why should I be tied down to the one folder/one window concept? And, I've also had electrical boxes relocated. The first few times it was a pain, but nothing you can't get used to. (and in once case, we had to run a lot of extensions due to an incompetent electrician at Lo-ball Contracting Co.)
It comes down to efficiency. How many times do you really need to see the parent windows? I often open folders nested several levels deep (ie: home > Documents > Work > Clients > folder). I leave the nested windows open. I don't care where I *was*, I care where I *am*. The parents are simply organization so that I don't have 90 folders around on my desktop. I almost never need to leave the old window open. If I need to go back, I can either open the parent, use the path button in the toolbar or switch to column view.
I use the Finder's sidebar. The folders I commonly access are at the bottom of a chain (like Clients above). The sidebar tells the finder to display the contents in the current window. I don't expect the sidebar to move the window to match where I last left it.
The filesystem is always compared to a file cabinet. Go to a room, open a drawer, find a folder, take out a file, then put it all back. That's fine with a physical object. I never need to put a computer file "back", so I don't need to be closing 18 levels of windows (the janitor complaint).
The folder-opens-in-the-same-place concept also fails for those of us with notebooks. I don't need a window to open on my external monitor when it's not there (some poorly written apps actually do this). My external monitor is my primary display when it's active - what do I do when I'm not at my desk?
Another UI concept that breaks is that re-opening an open folder does one of two things: 1. It does nothing because the window is open. I get no feedback other than a window shifting focus. If my screen is cluttered with multiple windows already open, I won't see it. 2. It moves the window to get my attention. But, this breaks his "leave the folder where I left it" idea.
If you really want to keep the parent around, try column view. And if the finder still bugs you that much, click the little clear "turn off brushed metal" button and it will act like the old one. I really fail to see the problem here.
His complaint about file paths? Am I correct that he thinks they never existed under classic? I'd love to know what he called a chain of folders enclosing each other. If that isn't a path, then I don't know what is. I can't believe this guy is serious.
FWIW, my mom (not a technical person- that's why she has a Mac!) has no problem using the new finder. I've yet to hear anyone complain about the way the folder acts.
Re:reluctance of corporate America
on
Hacking Mac OS X
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
The problem is that Apple's already tried that with the clones. All the clones did was steal Apple's sales, rather than expand the market. Apple needs to expand, but clones currently aren't the way to do it. The current strategy is working much better and making things possible that we wouldn't see otherwise (Mac mini, for example) - we don't need 5 copies of the same model Mac. Apple is making people want their products, and that drives sales.
If they become larger, then yes clones should be brought back. In the past, Apple always stuck to the high end and spun off the low end consumer stuff. Now that Apple's turned into a consumer company, it's hard to say what they would do. (IIRC, it's still technically possible to make one, but nobody is willing to pay the license fees). And it's anyone's guess at how well it would work. How many people are buying Hpods over Apple?
Much of what Apple does well is directly related to controlling the hardware and software. Look how long USB was around for, and how popular it was before 1998. Apple introduces the iMac and bang.
A quote I heard recently was along the lines of...
Capturing the image is only half of the job. Photoshop & other tools restore the image to the way it was, not the way it was captured.
An example - my first gen digital camera always messed up the contrast. If I wanted the image to not look washed out, I had to adjust it. The flash never worked properly so I had to tweak the levels. My current camera (a Minolta Dimage A1) does much better, but I occasionally still tweak color saturation, etc.
A picture is never an exact version of the original. There are far too many changes possible - not just Photoshop, but camera modes, in-camera effects, even basic things like focus and shutter speed (even auto focus can be thrown off and focus on the wrong part of the image)
just send a chain letter with an executable for mac.. that amounts to what is some of windows viruses nowadays anyways
Am I the only one who would like to see a return to the old days of viruses? The ones which would scramble files, wipe your partition table, etc, rather than our current ones which only spread spyware and spam?
Too many users these days think of viruses as just an "inconvenience" when the computer "runs a little slower", and don't do anything to stop it. I've reported hosts with viruses to ISP's, only to see that exact same IP send the same virus a few weeks later.
You can hack uxtheme.dll to allow a choice of themes, but it's really not that easy for the average user. Of course, MS is happy to sell replacement themes, or at least, that was the idea.
Reminds me of the joke from the Win95 days. With upgrades: Why is Microsoft releasing Longhorn? Because people are starting to become productive under XP.
I had an i60 for about 18 months. Where do I begin?
- Stupid power connector. I had to wiggle the plug just right on my desktop charger to get it to work. My car charger actually corroded and one pin broke off (I love Ontario road salt!)
- Weird SMS issues. If the memory was full I couldn't do much and I stopped receiving v-mail notifications. SInce my company loved to send excessive amounts of email, which forwarded over SMS to the phone, I could wake up in the morning and need to spend 30 minutes receiving and clearing SMS in order to use the phone. Leading in to...
- The phone actually reset multiple times. Most of the time it was when I tried to clear SMS - not good when trying to clear about 100 messages a day. Occasionally it would reset at other times, including when I tried to ANSWER incoming calls! How hard is it to test basic phone functionality like ANSWERING, and not tripping the watchdog?
What did my carrier do? They sent it back to Mot for repairs. The first time, they upgraded the firmware which not only didn't fix what I sent it in for, it made it worse. Also, I lost the ability to speakerphone (Mot goofed and enabled it, when they really wanted you to buy an i90 instead. My company was too cheap to do so. So, they disabled something that ALREADY was enabled at their first oportunity). Back for round 2. This time they reduced it but it still reset often enough. I gave up.
Since Mot is the only provider of iDen phones, you're stuck with their craptacular phones. Compare the feature set to any other phone out there. Mot has no reason to actually give you a phone you would actually want.
Motorola no longer makes CPUs. The semiconductor group has been spun off into Freescale (any my usual joke about now needing to actually do something)
Mot really has nothing new to offer Apple. In fact, they've screwed Apple so many times with CPU development I'm suprized Apple still even talks to them.
Preview doesn't always work with some PDF features. I've added a background image then compressed the PDF in Acrobat. Preview stopped displaying all images. PDF's with embedded links also fail to work in Preview.
However, since Acrobat 6 runs like a bloated pig I only use it when preview won't work.
Slashdot Mirror
In Canada, your choice is to support the Phone monopoly, or the Cable monopoly (depending on where you are it's Bell/Rogers or Telus/Shaw). Somehow we live with it.
You now have choice, but all you really gain is a single bill since you generally hate both companies. Both Rogers and Bell have moved into each others segments more or less (Rogers offering cell service through Cantel/Rogers wireless, Bell offering ExpressVu satelite. Rogers never got into landline phones other than with Unitel long distance, but I expect that we'll see their brand of VOIP soon).
What's interesting between Rogers and Bell is that they don't do anything really creative. Both have horrible customer service (to the point that I've called the CRTC for both), and marketing seems to be catching up to the other (Bell introduces caps, Rogers impliments caps. Rogers introduces a low-cost service, Bell does the same. Rogers makes a deal with Yahoo, Bell joins up with MSN. Bell owns/named a stadium in Montreal, Rogers bought the Skydome and turned it into another generic corporate-branded facility which I refuse to refer to by its new name)
Cell phones have slightly more "choice". You get to choose between two phone monopolies (Bell and Telus ended their non-compete when Telus bought Clearnet), and two "brands" of the cable company (Rogers wireless bought the last independant, Fido). But, we don't have number portibility here yet so all 4 carriers find some way to screw you. Virgin mobile has just launched recently though, so we'll see what they do.
I thought Ireland was one of the main tech centers in Europe
(their version of Silicon Valley). Maybe that's it?
If you send me mail and I don't get it I don't see how it harms you at all.
My invoices go out through email. Recently, my ISP was listed in an RBL (you'll love this story), so invoices to one client were rejected simply because of the RBL listing. Because I couldn't send invoices, I can't get paid. (I did resolve it, and I have other options like mailing invoices, but that takes time I don't have)
So, why was I on the RBL in the first place? Turns out another customer on the ISP was reporting spam back to the RBL. It looks like they flagged every received header - including the final delivery (my ISP's mail server!). If you're going to run an RBL, you should at least have a concept of how mail works.
I won't do anything unless Clippy tells me to. :)
I think it comes down to two things:
1. complexity: This one is our fault as developers. Look at the number of menu options in a Microsoft program. How many features get used? How many people look at all those options and give up? It's like the joke about Microsoft building a car with 8 key slots depending on how much power you actually want.
I'm picking on microsoft because their apps tend to be much more complicated than they should be, imho, but they're not the only ones. The other day I was attempting to install a Plone module and install.txt was something like "1. Create a QuickInstaller tool. 2. Run it". I had no idea how to create one, and nowhere did it say that I needed to be using Plone *2*. (OpenBSD's packages are horribly out of date). It took me a few hours to figure that out and do all the necessary upgrades. It might be obvious to the developer and people familiar with plone, but not for the rest of us!
I may not know how a car engine works, but I can understand basics (no oil = seized engine = expensive). I turn it on, I make it go using the round thing in front of me and 2/3 things at my feet. You might need to tell me a few things (the first time I started a TDI for example - wait for the glow plugs) I don't need to know much more than that. We're trying to have users maintain their own cars - not just make it go but understand all those pieces under the hood, especially when the car has had parts replaced/added from 20 different third party companies, all of which ignore the others.
Why should a user need to know how to fight spyware and secure their internet connection in order to type a document?
Why do I use a Mac? It's not that I'm not comfortable with Windows, but the user experience is much more like driving - turn it on and go. Windows is like a car stuck in the mud with a dead battery, bad tires and no gas. Your average user can replace the gas, but won't know to jumpstart, replace the tires, and actually get out of the mud! (insert UnixAir joke here about each person bringing a piece of the plane to the runway)
2. Attitude
This one is up to users. "I don't want to learn, It's too hard, etc".
But, we're also responsible too. How many people actually like their IT department? Some of the worst ones are fairly incompetent, say no to just about anything, prevent you from reaching anyone who can actually help/make decisions and blame the user for all problems. Generally, it seems that the farther away IT is from the user (in structure - think head/remote office), the worse they are.
Something interesting I've noticed is that Mac users going to windows get frustrated when it becomes more complicated to do the same task (I'm guilty of this). Windows users who resist going to Mac do so because they had such a hard time learning the "computer" in the first place. When they finally do switch, they wonder why it took so long.
I loved the windows dialog which went along the lines of...
(3 lines of text)
To DEBUG press OK
To continue press cancel
1. If you have to explain what the buttons do, your UI design has failed. The text should support the button actions, not replace it.
2. Make the default choice obvious. I can't tell you how many times Visual Studio fired up when I hit the wrong choice.
3. "To continue press cancel" - wtf? This isn't the exact text, but it was something to that effect.
Illegal operation was another one. I can't tell you how many times I had to explain that one.
For comparison, MacOS X's dialog is something like "(Foo) has unexpectedly quit. [Ok]".
Does microsoft not do any kind of UI testing?
I thought APC had a system which put racks back to back, sealed the backs and then cooled the exhaust air. The idea being that you're not cooling the entire room, just the hot air where it's being generated.
Of course, I can't find the link now.
Doom3 is a classic application. Start classic in 10.3.8.
My personal domain (ie: about 4 people actually know about it) is routinely nailed by spammers. All three addresses (Registrar, Admin, Tech) receive spam for "Broadcast your website to 2 million addresses!"
SpamAssassin gets it all now, but it got to the point where I was changing all three addresses monthly.
Given that my domain is so small, either spammers grab whois in bulk, or use an alphanumeric attack to find new domains.
Not quite. Officially, 10.3 doesn't support Beige G3's. But I'm running it using XPostFacto. Compared to 10.2 it doesn't seem like anything has been dropped - my ADB keyboard and old serial ports still work, the floppy doesn't (but it's never been supported by X)
All G3 machines will run 10.2 at a minimum. With the exception of the beige G3's, everything else runs 10.3. Some early machines however will need a ram and processor bump.
I'm now using a Powerbook for the same reason. We bought new G4's at work a few months before, and they were so much faster than my G3.
I quickly looked at that article. If I understand it, the author's complaint is that the finder windows are no longer tied to folders? Each time a folder is opened, it should open a new window in exactly the same place as you last left it, and now under OS X that window can be anywhere?
No offense to the author but what is he smoking and where do I get some?
A computer's interface is not a physical object. I expect a light switch to stay in the same place, not a computer interface. Why should I be tied down to the one folder/one window concept?
And, I've also had electrical boxes relocated. The first few times it was a pain, but nothing you can't get used to. (and in once case, we had to run a lot of extensions due to an incompetent electrician at Lo-ball Contracting Co.)
It comes down to efficiency. How many times do you really need to see the parent windows? I often open folders nested several levels deep (ie: home > Documents > Work > Clients > folder). I leave the nested windows open. I don't care where I *was*, I care where I *am*. The parents are simply organization so that I don't have 90 folders around on my desktop. I almost never need to leave the old window open. If I need to go back, I can either open the parent, use the path button in the toolbar or switch to column view.
I use the Finder's sidebar. The folders I commonly access are at the bottom of a chain (like Clients above). The sidebar tells the finder to display the contents in the current window. I don't expect the sidebar to move the window to match where I last left it.
The filesystem is always compared to a file cabinet. Go to a room, open a drawer, find a folder, take out a file, then put it all back. That's fine with a physical object. I never need to put a computer file "back", so I don't need to be closing 18 levels of windows (the janitor complaint).
The folder-opens-in-the-same-place concept also fails for those of us with notebooks. I don't need a window to open on my external monitor when it's not there (some poorly written apps actually do this). My external monitor is my primary display when it's active - what do I do when I'm not at my desk?
Another UI concept that breaks is that re-opening an open folder does one of two things:
1. It does nothing because the window is open. I get no feedback other than a window shifting focus. If my screen is cluttered with multiple windows already open, I won't see it.
2. It moves the window to get my attention. But, this breaks his "leave the folder where I left it" idea.
If you really want to keep the parent around, try column view. And if the finder still bugs you that much, click the little clear "turn off brushed metal" button and it will act like the old one. I really fail to see the problem here.
His complaint about file paths? Am I correct that he thinks they never existed under classic? I'd love to know what he called a chain of folders enclosing each other. If that isn't a path, then I don't know what is. I can't believe this guy is serious.
FWIW, my mom (not a technical person- that's why she has a Mac!) has no problem using the new finder. I've yet to hear anyone complain about the way the folder acts.
The problem is that Apple's already tried that with the clones. All the clones did was steal Apple's sales, rather than expand the market. Apple needs to expand, but clones currently aren't the way to do it. The current strategy is working much better and making things possible that we wouldn't see otherwise (Mac mini, for example) - we don't need 5 copies of the same model Mac. Apple is making people want their products, and that drives sales.
If they become larger, then yes clones should be brought back. In the past, Apple always stuck to the high end and spun off the low end consumer stuff. Now that Apple's turned into a consumer company, it's hard to say what they would do. (IIRC, it's still technically possible to make one, but nobody is willing to pay the license fees). And it's anyone's guess at how well it would work. How many people are buying Hpods over Apple?
Much of what Apple does well is directly related to controlling the hardware and software. Look how long USB was around for, and how popular it was before 1998. Apple introduces the iMac and bang.
A quote I heard recently was along the lines of...
Capturing the image is only half of the job. Photoshop & other tools restore the image to the way it was, not the way it was captured.
An example - my first gen digital camera always messed up the contrast. If I wanted the image to not look washed out, I had to adjust it. The flash never worked properly so I had to tweak the levels. My current camera (a Minolta Dimage A1) does much better, but I occasionally still tweak color saturation, etc.
A picture is never an exact version of the original. There are far too many changes possible - not just Photoshop, but camera modes, in-camera effects, even basic things like focus and shutter speed (even auto focus can be thrown off and focus on the wrong part of the image)
"What's wrong Amy? Did you swallow your cell phone again?"
- Leela
just send a chain letter with an executable for mac.. that amounts to what is some of windows viruses nowadays anyways
Am I the only one who would like to see a return to the old days of viruses? The ones which would scramble files, wipe your partition table, etc, rather than our current ones which only spread spyware and spam?
Too many users these days think of viruses as just an "inconvenience" when the computer "runs a little slower", and don't do anything to stop it. I've reported hosts with viruses to ISP's, only to see that exact same IP send the same virus a few weeks later.
You can hack uxtheme.dll to allow a choice of themes, but it's really not that easy for the average user. Of course, MS is happy to sell replacement themes, or at least, that was the idea.
Reminds me of the joke from the Win95 days. With upgrades:
Why is Microsoft releasing Longhorn?
Because people are starting to become productive under XP.
I had an i60 for about 18 months. Where do I begin?
- Stupid power connector. I had to wiggle the plug just right on my desktop charger to get it to work. My car charger actually corroded and one pin broke off (I love Ontario road salt!)
- Weird SMS issues. If the memory was full I couldn't do much and I stopped receiving v-mail notifications. SInce my company loved to send excessive amounts of email, which forwarded over SMS to the phone, I could wake up in the morning and need to spend 30 minutes receiving and clearing SMS in order to use the phone. Leading in to...
- The phone actually reset multiple times. Most of the time it was when I tried to clear SMS - not good when trying to clear about 100 messages a day. Occasionally it would reset at other times, including when I tried to ANSWER incoming calls! How hard is it to test basic phone functionality like ANSWERING, and not tripping the watchdog?
What did my carrier do? They sent it back to Mot for repairs. The first time, they upgraded the firmware which not only didn't fix what I sent it in for, it made it worse. Also, I lost the ability to speakerphone (Mot goofed and enabled it, when they really wanted you to buy an i90 instead. My company was too cheap to do so. So, they disabled something that ALREADY was enabled at their first oportunity). Back for round 2. This time they reduced it but it still reset often enough. I gave up.
Since Mot is the only provider of iDen phones, you're stuck with their craptacular phones. Compare the feature set to any other phone out there. Mot has no reason to actually give you a phone you would actually want.
Motorola no longer makes CPUs. The semiconductor group has been spun off into Freescale (any my usual joke about now needing to actually do something)
Mot really has nothing new to offer Apple. In fact, they've screwed Apple so many times with CPU development I'm suprized Apple still even talks to them.
Not to mention that OS X pdf's are huge. The acrobat PDF driver always makes the file smaller.
Preview doesn't always work with some PDF features. I've added a background image then compressed the PDF in Acrobat. Preview stopped displaying all images. PDF's with embedded links also fail to work in Preview.
However, since Acrobat 6 runs like a bloated pig I only use it when preview won't work.
FWIW, bell has been running similar TV ads with over-protective parents.
My point about whatever Bell/Rogers does, the other also does becomes stronger every day.
Considering I use OpenBSD, I guess that means I won't be buying/using/recommending any Adaptec products.
As I understand it, Apple raised the licensing fees. Where would Mot be if Apple didn't raise capital, and didn't make it today?
(probably not much different from today where Apple has dropped them as a supplier, but my point is that each depended on the other)
You know how many charges I've disputed with my carrier over the last few months? I'm sure I'm now flagged in their database :)
And, if they still object, I remind them that I called their President to have my internet fixed.