or that governments could use the data to track their citizens as they go about their personal business
Huh? How would adding RFID tags to passports allow my government to track me any more than they do currently? I only have my passport with me when I travel internationally.
Indeed. Remote desktop connection makes gives me access to my machine from anywhere in the company. Particularly useful when helping someone out and I need to refer to something on my machine (and I no longer have to go find a VNC client to run as everyone else has XP and the remote desktop client installed).
But If I want to learn how to write phrases understandable by users or what colors to use that still allow color-blind people to use my software or how to best name categories for efficient navigation, I can do nothing but listen to people's opinions in the matter. Where is the open source community's pool of facts and knowledge covering usability issues?
Bulls***.
There are numerous books and resources on usability. For example:
This is a still photo of the Stanford University campus. Just imagine what is possible if it were live video.
Um, wouldn't a live video in the background be distracting? If I want to watch a video, I'll do it in a media player.
What if your CD or movie database became a 3D jukebox, where titles were joined with images to make finding what you want easier than ever? CDs spin in 3D space to bring the title you want to see to the front.
How exactly is it going to be easier to find a specific CD out of the 300 odd I own by this mechanism?
You can tack a note to yourself right on the Web page you're viewing so that ideas and thoughts don't get lost in a myriad of yellow stickies on your screen but are stored where they most useful.
So I need to flip the webpage to remember if I had a note. What if I forget the URL of the webpage I made a note on?
Install the text/plain extension for FireFox. This lets you select a plain text URL, right click on it, and open it in the current window or a new browser/tab.
* Email client: Microsoft notes that OpenOffice lacks an email client. This, however, would take us to Mozilla, which is a standalone web browser with more features than Internet Explorer (such as tabbed browsing), and is much more secure than Microsoft Outlook as a default.
Huh? Talking about the browser features of Mozilla doesn't make for a valid comparision against Outlook. Nonetheless, Mozilla's email client is just that - an email client. It doesn't support calendaring, meeting requests, notes, tasks etc. out of the box. Outlook 2003 does support some more secure features like not showing images in HTML email from untrusted senders to prevent web-bugs in spam from phoning home.
* Collaboration: Microsoft makes it a point to discuss that collaboration is required. Yet OpenOffice runs on all major operating systems, and Microsoft Office does not. This certainly becomes an issue of collaboration.
Sure, you can share OpenOffice documents between users (using your Mozilla email client), but collaboration goes further than that. Office 2003 allows saving documents to shared workspaces for team collaboration. Word 2003 offers functionality for document authoring by a team and comparing and merging documents. I'm criticising the article author, not OpenOffice here - if you are just creating letters, faxes, agendas, minutes etc. I would fully recommend OpenOffice. But once you want to do more enterprise level tasks like collaborative authoring, Office certainly does look more and more appealing. However if you are collaborating in a situation outside the enterprise where operating systems cannot be dictated upon users, OpenOffice will be likely to appeal more because of its cross platform support. Neither suite has a clear advantage here - which one is better will depend on your requirements and goals.
The change would make it legal for someone who owns a legitimately obtained CD to make
one copy for their own private use.
So under the proposed changes, it would still be illegal for me to have more than one digital copy of a CD I own i.e. one on a work computer and one on a home computer (correct me if I am wrong - IANAL)
As a software developer I spend a lot of time in front of a computer at both home and work. I like to listen to music when I am using computers. Under the current law (which is what you support, given that you are totally opposed to the move), I can only legally play copyrighted music from CDs in CD-ROM drives on my computers (and don't even get me started on copy-controlled CDs). During the course of a workday, this means interrupting my workflow up to 10 times to switch CDs. Of course, if I decide I'm sick of a CD before it is finished it means another switch. Clearly switching CDs quickly gets annoying. It also proves very annoying to transport CDs I want to listen to between work and home each day.
In fact (as I am sure you are aware), Sony itself currently sells Minidisc recorders which currently allow music to be copied illegally under the current law. Given your position, I hope you are overseeing the removal of these useless recorders (as it is illegal for people to use them to copy music) from sale in New Zealand.
However, if the law changes to allow fair personal use, my life suddenly becomes easier because I can make a copy of my music in a digital format which makes it much easier to transport and switch between listening to different music.
Your viewpoint is analagous to saying no-one should be able to drive cars because some people speed and cause accidents in which people die. However, in real life, people are allowed to drive cars. Why? Because cars make our lives easier. The speeding problem is dealt with through driver education, and dealing punishment to those who do speed as a discouragement to them and others. Similarly the music sharing problem is dealt with by consumer education, and dealing punishment to those who do share music as a discouragement to them and others.
Without education and punishment, the current law would be effectively 'powerless' to discourage people from sharing copyrighted music. Under the proposed changes, it still will be illegal to share copyrighted music. Provided there is still continued education and punishment, I can't see any reason why the proposed law change will result in increased music sharing activity.
By opposing the move, you are only denying otherwise law abiding consumers the opportunity to use technology to make their lives easier.
Heh, what about a fridge? Fridges 'save' your food, i.e. keeping it fresh and from going off. I don't see fridges getting replaced by any funky new cooling device in the near to mid future
Personally, I'm waiting for Bungie's Pimps at Sea:
Lace up your platform shoes and pick up your diamond-studded whoop-ass cane - here comes a rival pimp bent on hijacking your hoes! Welcome to the world of Pimps At Sea, where you can hoist the jolliest of rogers and set sail for a different kind of booty.
Many other sites simply return a HTTP header (I forget which one) which basically says "nothing has changed since the last time you were here", rather than sending the entire RSS down each time.
But you are forgetting newsreaders typically do a refresh every hour or so. In an hour the Slashdot feed would always almost certainly have a new story and need to fully redownloaded, by and large negating the use of If-Modified-Since and ETag headers.
Thats not to say they shouldn't be used if they don't already - it would at least help with those who refreshed it chronically...
This seems very much like the beginning of RSS spam.
How can you have RSS spam? RSS is opt-in (i.e. you choose what you want to subscribe to), so the advertising in not unsolicited. If you want to opt out, you simply unsubscribe from the feed.
Mezzoblue has a post that pretty much answers this question perfectly. Dave Shea outlines which pre-installed and downloadable browsers your website should be supporting.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a equivalent (free) tool for Internet Explorer called Fiddler. In addition to viewing HTTP traffic it has a framework for programatically 'fiddling' with requests and responses.
Ethereal will let you view HTTP traffic regardless of which browser you are using, however it takes a bit of getting used to.
Nonetheless, if you're using Firefox, LiveHTTPHeaders is definitely the way to go.
Each codename appears to a place located to the east of the previous suburb:
Three Kings --> Royal Oak --> One Tree Hill --> Greenlane --> Mission Bay --> Whangamata
(from the Firefox Roadmap)
Huh? How would adding RFID tags to passports allow my government to track me any more than they do currently? I only have my passport with me when I travel internationally.
Indeed. Remote desktop connection makes gives me access to my machine from anywhere in the company. Particularly useful when helping someone out and I need to refer to something on my machine (and I no longer have to go find a VNC client to run as everyone else has XP and the remote desktop client installed).
From the article:
Bulls***.
There are numerous books and resources on usability. For example:
Um, the object element is part of the HTML 4.01 specification.
The subject says it all.
Install the text/plain extension for FireFox. This lets you select a plain text URL, right click on it, and open it in the current window or a new browser/tab.
There is a connection. Ben Goodger, the lead developer on the project is from Auckland (http://www.bengoodger.com/about/ben.shtml).
If you look at the Firefox roadmap, the 0.71, 0.8, 0.9, and 1.0b milestones all have codenames that are Auckland suburbs.
Have a look at Multiple IE's in Windows for running multiple versions of IE side by side in Windows.
Dude, there is going to be a "Never install software from ..." option. See this post from an IE developer's weblog.
Huh? Talking about the browser features of Mozilla doesn't make for a valid comparision against Outlook. Nonetheless, Mozilla's email client is just that - an email client. It doesn't support calendaring, meeting requests, notes, tasks etc. out of the box. Outlook 2003 does support some more secure features like not showing images in HTML email from untrusted senders to prevent web-bugs in spam from phoning home.
Sure, you can share OpenOffice documents between users (using your Mozilla email client), but collaboration goes further than that. Office 2003 allows saving documents to shared workspaces for team collaboration. Word 2003 offers functionality for document authoring by a team and comparing and merging documents. I'm criticising the article author, not OpenOffice here - if you are just creating letters, faxes, agendas, minutes etc. I would fully recommend OpenOffice. But once you want to do more enterprise level tasks like collaborative authoring, Office certainly does look more and more appealing. However if you are collaborating in a situation outside the enterprise where operating systems cannot be dictated upon users, OpenOffice will be likely to appeal more because of its cross platform support. Neither suite has a clear advantage here - which one is better will depend on your requirements and goals.
From the article:
So under the proposed changes, it would still be illegal for me to have more than one digital copy of a CD I own i.e. one on a work computer and one on a home computer (correct me if I am wrong - IANAL)
Hi Michael,
I have just read the article at http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,2852764a11,00. html. You say you are totally opposed to the move, because you believe it would "open the floodgates" to unrestricted piracy.
As a software developer I spend a lot of time in front of a computer at both home and work. I like to listen to music when I am using computers. Under the current law (which is what you support, given that you are totally opposed to the move), I can only legally play copyrighted music from CDs in CD-ROM drives on my computers (and don't even get me started on copy-controlled CDs). During the course of a workday, this means interrupting my workflow up to 10 times to switch CDs. Of course, if I decide I'm sick of a CD before it is finished it means another switch. Clearly switching CDs quickly gets annoying. It also proves very annoying to transport CDs I want to listen to between work and home each day.
In fact (as I am sure you are aware), Sony itself currently sells Minidisc recorders which currently allow music to be copied illegally under the current law. Given your position, I hope you are overseeing the removal of these useless recorders (as it is illegal for people to use them to copy music) from sale in New Zealand.
However, if the law changes to allow fair personal use, my life suddenly becomes easier because I can make a copy of my music in a digital format which makes it much easier to transport and switch between listening to different music.
Your viewpoint is analagous to saying no-one should be able to drive cars because some people speed and cause accidents in which people die. However, in real life, people are allowed to drive cars. Why? Because cars make our lives easier. The speeding problem is dealt with through driver education, and dealing punishment to those who do speed as a discouragement to them and others. Similarly the music sharing problem is dealt with by consumer education, and dealing punishment to those who do share music as a discouragement to them and others.
Without education and punishment, the current law would be effectively 'powerless' to discourage people from sharing copyrighted music. Under the proposed changes, it still will be illegal to share copyrighted music. Provided there is still continued education and punishment, I can't see any reason why the proposed law change will result in increased music sharing activity.
By opposing the move, you are only denying otherwise law abiding consumers the opportunity to use technology to make their lives easier.
Simon
Heh, what about a fridge? Fridges 'save' your food, i.e. keeping it fresh and from going off. I don't see fridges getting replaced by any funky new cooling device in the near to mid future
Personally, I'm waiting for Bungie's Pimps at Sea:
...and there is no single one feed that you can subscribe to that contains all of the sections stories.
But you are forgetting newsreaders typically do a refresh every hour or so. In an hour the Slashdot feed would always almost certainly have a new story and need to fully redownloaded, by and large negating the use of If-Modified-Since and ETag headers.
Thats not to say they shouldn't be used if they don't already - it would at least help with those who refreshed it chronically...
How can you have RSS spam? RSS is opt-in (i.e. you choose what you want to subscribe to), so the advertising in not unsolicited. If you want to opt out, you simply unsubscribe from the feed.
Mezzoblue has a post that pretty much answers this question perfectly. Dave Shea outlines which pre-installed and downloadable browsers your website should be supporting.
...why the hell do you need configurable icons for users in your DB admin tool?$#&*!
Now socks are not really that weird, however the quantity was somewhat. I receieved a total of 17 pairs of socks from my parents.