There was a cost at some point to develop the app. There's a good chance that redeveloping for modern tech would make huge strides in productivity and security.
Exactly. In other words, it's the Social Contract.
Some believe they are born with freedom, which means freedom to do whatever they goddamn well please and everyone else be damned. There are places for them, but they're called communes.
Agreed on the value of a laptop that lets you accomplish the work that you need to do on a mobile basis. I regularly get work done in weekly status meetings that go over their allotted time, just because I bring my laptop into the room.
I donâ(TM)t agree on it being a MacBook. As someone who uses a 2015 MacBook Pro as a daily driver, I can say that my windows PC at home is much more stable. I donâ(TM)t have to restart it just to get apps to run properly or stop my mouse from treating left clicks as tight clicks. Stability left the OS long ago, and I canâ(TM)t help but feel guilty for asking my employer to spend $2500 on a machine that actually makes me less productive.
If Iâ(TM)m allowed another laptop, Iâ(TM)ll definitely be asking for an MSI or Dell. The time is past where my apps were Mac-only.
Sincerely, disgruntled Apple user
Enough of this FUD. Telemetry is a modern method for reporting back to developers what the fuck went wrong when your app crashed, not to ping Uncle Sam when you post about overthrowing the government on the Fourth International forums. The future is data analytics, and your operating system is hardly the main candidate for tracking your behavior. Want to remain untraceable? Go read a newspaper.
If the original Edge didn't sway people from using Internet Explorer, this new Chromium-powered version isn't going to do any better. You have two camps of Windows web users:
1. Users who open up Edge or IE to download Chrome
2. Windows 7 or 8 users who don't know what a browser is but know that blue "e" on the desktop gets them to their email
Microsoft switching rendering engines doesn't affect those in camp #2, so until there's a concerted effort to get everyone off of IE11, we're going to be stuck writing flexbox fallbacks for our CSS grids.
That would be nice, but Microsoft switching browser code doesn't magically make IE11 and his older siblings go away. God, I wish it had. Edge was a great step toward standards compliance; any CSS I write for Firefox renders perfectly in Chrome, Safari, and Edge. Edge is even up there with supporting CSS grid. But we still have dinosaurs that use Windows 7 and 8 and don't know how to download and run a new browser. That "e" with the swoosh on their desktop stands for "eeenternet" so they can log into Yahoo Mail and send their family FWDs about Russian models being better immigrants than Mexican welfare babies.
As a web designer, I'm ambivalent about this. Maybe Microsoft can contribute something worthwhile to the Chromium project.
Fuck you, Utah is amazing. Try being the only state with a half dozen national parks within driving distance of each other. Grand Canyon, Cedar Breaks, Zion, Bryce Canyon, you can get to all of these while staying in southern Kanab.
Self transport (Automobile/Motorcycle) equates to freedom in the US; go where you want when you want.
This, more than anything.
The advent of cheap automobiles in the 50s (and ads by those automobiles to get out and see the country) really spurred car use. You could pack the family in the Buick, drive out to the Grand Canyon, picnic in the park, see the lights of Las Vegas, then head home and do it again next Summer. It appealed to the Manifest a Destiny lineage of white America. The All-American Road Trip. Hell, I felt it until I finally took a road trip on Route 66 a couple of years ago to see the SouthWest. There is something special about heading out on your own to see the natural wonders of our country.
I have better things to do with my life during the week than stopping to shop multiple times during the week after a full day of work.
It is much more convenient to spend 1-2 hours tops on weekend to go and shop and buy all I need for the week and weekend....I also like to buy in bulk at Costco and Sam's....and it would be a PITA to carry that stuff on a bus and to/from the bus stop.
This is where cultural differences lie. Most definitely in part caused by the different development of our transit systems.
I lived in a Rome for a semester and it took a little while to get used to the idea of using transit everywhere and grabbing groceries on the way home, rather than stocking up once. It’s simply a different way of life. I didn’t find it offensive; on the contrary! It was quite refreshing.
There, you had three different small grocery stores within walking distance of your building. Food was much fresher, and tasted better in home cooking. You were exposed to more people as a result of needing to interact more often with your environment.
America has a much more independent culture. Here, it’s possible to live alone in a house you bought, walk through the yard you maintain to your car that you bought and drive by yourself, arrive at the office after listening to your own curated Spotify playlist, sit at your desk, put some headphones on, and code away for the rest of the day, even eschewing personal meetings in lieu of Slack. Then, at the end of the day, you do it all over again. Maybe you stop at the grocery store along the way home, plug in some headphones so you can listen to a podcast instead of the overhead music, use the self-checkout, and head home to play a single player video game.
Whether this way of life is any better or worse than the one I described in Rome is dependent upon your values. Objectively, the American way of life is more taxing on natural resources; resource usage is delineated among individuals rather than shared. I’d argue that the insulation of individuals also contributes to our current political and economic climate, where it’s easy to ignore those you disagree with, or go without seeing the plights of the less fortunate.
After having spent time in a Europe, my value system places the European model above the American one. I couldn’t believe the waste I witnessed upon returning. The idea of 3+ empty seats in all the cars I saw coming down the road wasn’t just wasteful, it was downright selfish.
It’s not easy to suggest this due to the cost, but I think if you have the means, it’s worthwhile to spend a couple weeks vacation in one of these places to see the difference. Exposure to other ideas is how we grow as people, and might help you decide if your values are really where you want them.
Adobe is too well established to have any "end" in immediate sight. For most creatives (visual designers, UX/UI people, videographers, photo editors), it is the default option, and they will acquire whatever hardware necessary to get things working. They are not the average Slashdot nerd who can grok the command line.
The thing is, this type of software is difficult to develop. If it weren't, Open-Source options like Inkscape and GIMP would actually be viable alternatives. They aren't. This isn't like comparing Windows and Linux, this is like comparing a full set of oil paints and canvas with drawing in the sand with a stick.
Also, the idea that they aren't innovating is a relative judgment, at best. If you've kept track with their updates, they've been doing a lot of live sessions with artists and designers to demonstrate what's possible using their products. I tend to agree with Adobe: the limit really isn't the software, it's my creativity, and knowing exactly what's possible with the tools I already have. I use Adobe CC at work, and I feel like I barely scratch the surface of what's possible with Photoshop. They have been adding new features, too--"content-aware fill" takes what used to be a 30 minute job and makes it happen in less than a second. They have a handle on what their users want.
All that said, I have been switching to Affinity's products in my home life. $70/month is not a cost I want to bear, and I'm fully supportive of Affinity's $50 one-off costs. I haven't played with them too much and I'm sure they don't match Adobe, but if they can get 80% done of what Creative Cloud can do, then I think they'll continue to grow in the market. Which would be exciting to see--we haven't had much competition in this arena since the late 90s.
I don't think many are claiming JavaScript is a good languageâ"its just what we have to work with on the web. Thankfully there are higher-level languages like Typescript that can transpile, but until browsers are fully on board with a different solution, we're stuck with JS.
Your web app may very well be "functional" but that doesn't equate with "usable." Go ahead and make your apps without a web designer, see how well you compete against those that give a damn about their users.
The project that you said you were doing right now is mostly using web languages, except for Java, which is compiled. I'm just curious how that fits into your development workflow. Purely out of interest; I'm a web designer, but I like to ask my programming team members how they handle their projects.:)
Instapaper used to the the shit several years ago, but server mismanagement destroyed the reliability of article syncing and ruined confidence in the product. Plus, it went from a paid app to free, which made nerds nervous about monetization. I switched to Pocket after that, which has some pleasant integration with Firefox.
That said, I’m fairly certain I read more Instapaper articles than Pocket. The interface was much cleaner, which helped focus on reading. Mozilla treats Pocket like a product rather than a service, designed to pull you in with suggested reading.
The way they install updates as if they are entitled to controlling you is unacceptable.
Most non-technical users have proven themselves incapable of maintaining their own systems, so automatic updates are a response to the "Windows gets viruses" schtick. Granted, they could do it better, but I haven't hard a problem telling my machine "put off these updates until later" and my game doesn't get interrupted.
I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you’re referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX. Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called “Linux”, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project. There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine’s resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called “Linux” distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.
Google still has it, so it doesn't make any difference to me which mega corporation has it. Besides, I've said this before on this forum but I'm just not that worried about my privacy. I'm lower working class (I'd be doing better but my family has a lot of health problems and being American it's constantly crushing me financially). Privacy is mostly an upper middle class concern. In my income bracket I'm more worried about having basic needs met.
That may be your rationalization, but if it doesn't take much work for me to make my information private, then fuck em, I'll do it. I'm not handing out free data to businesses that haven't earned it.
That said, I've probably gotten way more worth out of using Gmail than Google has gotten out of me. It's something you gotta weigh for yourself.
Slashdot Mirror
There was a cost at some point to develop the app. There's a good chance that redeveloping for modern tech would make huge strides in productivity and security.
Cheap-ass CEOs give me migraines.
Exactly. In other words, it's the Social Contract.
Some believe they are born with freedom, which means freedom to do whatever they goddamn well please and everyone else be damned. There are places for them, but they're called communes.
Shut the fuck up, Jerry!
Agreed on the value of a laptop that lets you accomplish the work that you need to do on a mobile basis. I regularly get work done in weekly status meetings that go over their allotted time, just because I bring my laptop into the room. I donâ(TM)t agree on it being a MacBook. As someone who uses a 2015 MacBook Pro as a daily driver, I can say that my windows PC at home is much more stable. I donâ(TM)t have to restart it just to get apps to run properly or stop my mouse from treating left clicks as tight clicks. Stability left the OS long ago, and I canâ(TM)t help but feel guilty for asking my employer to spend $2500 on a machine that actually makes me less productive. If Iâ(TM)m allowed another laptop, Iâ(TM)ll definitely be asking for an MSI or Dell. The time is past where my apps were Mac-only. Sincerely, disgruntled Apple user
Wrong. You've just defined communism, not socialism. The economy can take many forms under socialism.
Funny, my cash is always warm, because it sticks in my pocket.
Enough of this FUD. Telemetry is a modern method for reporting back to developers what the fuck went wrong when your app crashed, not to ping Uncle Sam when you post about overthrowing the government on the Fourth International forums. The future is data analytics, and your operating system is hardly the main candidate for tracking your behavior. Want to remain untraceable? Go read a newspaper.
If the original Edge didn't sway people from using Internet Explorer, this new Chromium-powered version isn't going to do any better. You have two camps of Windows web users:
Microsoft switching rendering engines doesn't affect those in camp #2, so until there's a concerted effort to get everyone off of IE11, we're going to be stuck writing flexbox fallbacks for our CSS grids.
That would be nice, but Microsoft switching browser code doesn't magically make IE11 and his older siblings go away. God, I wish it had. Edge was a great step toward standards compliance; any CSS I write for Firefox renders perfectly in Chrome, Safari, and Edge. Edge is even up there with supporting CSS grid. But we still have dinosaurs that use Windows 7 and 8 and don't know how to download and run a new browser. That "e" with the swoosh on their desktop stands for "eeenternet" so they can log into Yahoo Mail and send their family FWDs about Russian models being better immigrants than Mexican welfare babies.
As a web designer, I'm ambivalent about this. Maybe Microsoft can contribute something worthwhile to the Chromium project.
My decision tree when deciding to use a product or service starts with:
Not the other way around. More often than not, the walled garden provides a much better experience.
Second: the web is an open platform, and with the progress of JavaScript applications, the walled garden mentality has the potential to become moot.
Now they can just watch for the “not secure” text that appears there instead, without any of the mental gymnastics.
Fuck you, Utah is amazing. Try being the only state with a half dozen national parks within driving distance of each other. Grand Canyon, Cedar Breaks, Zion, Bryce Canyon, you can get to all of these while staying in southern Kanab.
Self transport (Automobile/Motorcycle) equates to freedom in the US; go where you want when you want.
This, more than anything.
The advent of cheap automobiles in the 50s (and ads by those automobiles to get out and see the country) really spurred car use. You could pack the family in the Buick, drive out to the Grand Canyon, picnic in the park, see the lights of Las Vegas, then head home and do it again next Summer. It appealed to the Manifest a Destiny lineage of white America. The All-American Road Trip. Hell, I felt it until I finally took a road trip on Route 66 a couple of years ago to see the SouthWest. There is something special about heading out on your own to see the natural wonders of our country.
I have better things to do with my life during the week than stopping to shop multiple times during the week after a full day of work. It is much more convenient to spend 1-2 hours tops on weekend to go and shop and buy all I need for the week and weekend....I also like to buy in bulk at Costco and Sam's....and it would be a PITA to carry that stuff on a bus and to/from the bus stop.
This is where cultural differences lie. Most definitely in part caused by the different development of our transit systems.
I lived in a Rome for a semester and it took a little while to get used to the idea of using transit everywhere and grabbing groceries on the way home, rather than stocking up once. It’s simply a different way of life. I didn’t find it offensive; on the contrary! It was quite refreshing.
There, you had three different small grocery stores within walking distance of your building. Food was much fresher, and tasted better in home cooking. You were exposed to more people as a result of needing to interact more often with your environment.
America has a much more independent culture. Here, it’s possible to live alone in a house you bought, walk through the yard you maintain to your car that you bought and drive by yourself, arrive at the office after listening to your own curated Spotify playlist, sit at your desk, put some headphones on, and code away for the rest of the day, even eschewing personal meetings in lieu of Slack. Then, at the end of the day, you do it all over again. Maybe you stop at the grocery store along the way home, plug in some headphones so you can listen to a podcast instead of the overhead music, use the self-checkout, and head home to play a single player video game.
Whether this way of life is any better or worse than the one I described in Rome is dependent upon your values. Objectively, the American way of life is more taxing on natural resources; resource usage is delineated among individuals rather than shared. I’d argue that the insulation of individuals also contributes to our current political and economic climate, where it’s easy to ignore those you disagree with, or go without seeing the plights of the less fortunate.
After having spent time in a Europe, my value system places the European model above the American one. I couldn’t believe the waste I witnessed upon returning. The idea of 3+ empty seats in all the cars I saw coming down the road wasn’t just wasteful, it was downright selfish.
It’s not easy to suggest this due to the cost, but I think if you have the means, it’s worthwhile to spend a couple weeks vacation in one of these places to see the difference. Exposure to other ideas is how we grow as people, and might help you decide if your values are really where you want them.
(CW)MW out.
Adobe is too well established to have any "end" in immediate sight. For most creatives (visual designers, UX/UI people, videographers, photo editors), it is the default option, and they will acquire whatever hardware necessary to get things working. They are not the average Slashdot nerd who can grok the command line.
The thing is, this type of software is difficult to develop. If it weren't, Open-Source options like Inkscape and GIMP would actually be viable alternatives. They aren't. This isn't like comparing Windows and Linux, this is like comparing a full set of oil paints and canvas with drawing in the sand with a stick.
Also, the idea that they aren't innovating is a relative judgment, at best. If you've kept track with their updates, they've been doing a lot of live sessions with artists and designers to demonstrate what's possible using their products. I tend to agree with Adobe: the limit really isn't the software, it's my creativity, and knowing exactly what's possible with the tools I already have. I use Adobe CC at work, and I feel like I barely scratch the surface of what's possible with Photoshop. They have been adding new features, too--"content-aware fill" takes what used to be a 30 minute job and makes it happen in less than a second. They have a handle on what their users want.
All that said, I have been switching to Affinity's products in my home life. $70/month is not a cost I want to bear, and I'm fully supportive of Affinity's $50 one-off costs. I haven't played with them too much and I'm sure they don't match Adobe, but if they can get 80% done of what Creative Cloud can do, then I think they'll continue to grow in the market. Which would be exciting to see--we haven't had much competition in this arena since the late 90s.
CW(MW) out.
I don't think many are claiming JavaScript is a good languageâ"its just what we have to work with on the web. Thankfully there are higher-level languages like Typescript that can transpile, but until browsers are fully on board with a different solution, we're stuck with JS.
Your web app may very well be "functional" but that doesn't equate with "usable." Go ahead and make your apps without a web designer, see how well you compete against those that give a damn about their users.
The project that you said you were doing right now is mostly using web languages, except for Java, which is compiled. I'm just curious how that fits into your development workflow. Purely out of interest; I'm a web designer, but I like to ask my programming team members how they handle their projects. :)
Just curious, but where does the Java part come in?
Instapaper used to the the shit several years ago, but server mismanagement destroyed the reliability of article syncing and ruined confidence in the product. Plus, it went from a paid app to free, which made nerds nervous about monetization. I switched to Pocket after that, which has some pleasant integration with Firefox.
That said, I’m fairly certain I read more Instapaper articles than Pocket. The interface was much cleaner, which helped focus on reading. Mozilla treats Pocket like a product rather than a service, designed to pull you in with suggested reading.
I may have to try Instapaper again.
The snipping tool is a big flaming piece of shit.
I'll take it over "print screen."
The way they install updates as if they are entitled to controlling you is unacceptable.
Most non-technical users have proven themselves incapable of maintaining their own systems, so automatic updates are a response to the "Windows gets viruses" schtick. Granted, they could do it better, but I haven't hard a problem telling my machine "put off these updates until later" and my game doesn't get interrupted.
I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you’re referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX. Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called “Linux”, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project. There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine’s resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called “Linux” distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.
God forbid anyone type in a verbose URL or use a different search engine. I get around the internet just fine without using Google services.
That said, yes, securing your connection to websites is a great idea. Sometimes giant corporations actually do have good intentions.
Google still has it, so it doesn't make any difference to me which mega corporation has it. Besides, I've said this before on this forum but I'm just not that worried about my privacy. I'm lower working class (I'd be doing better but my family has a lot of health problems and being American it's constantly crushing me financially). Privacy is mostly an upper middle class concern. In my income bracket I'm more worried about having basic needs met.
That may be your rationalization, but if it doesn't take much work for me to make my information private, then fuck em, I'll do it. I'm not handing out free data to businesses that haven't earned it.
That said, I've probably gotten way more worth out of using Gmail than Google has gotten out of me. It's something you gotta weigh for yourself.
I guess it's going to take capitalism or some crazy kingtype somewhere to change the human culture in order to keep the planet Earth livable.
What do you think brought us to this point?