All is not lost, coz John worked (as all professional persons do) to a set of standards known to all, which in the event of his demise
Good point, but all you manage to prove is the value of standards -- it could be argued that Windows and Office are also standards -- de facto if not de jure. (In point of fact, the reason most non-technical folk is because they believe Office is `the standard'.)
If you live in the US, you may be using another de facto standard that you are not even aware of -- the Qualcomm-patent-ridden CDMA arch for cellphones. Does that dilute the utility of the CDMA standard? (Similar arguments for the European/Asian GSM, also patent-encumbered.) I think the lesson here is clear -- the public regards a publicly available standard as valuable, but considers a patent-encumbered (or proprietary) standard as better than having a half-assed free standard.
Today the only (semi-usable) free standard that you can offer (for, say, Document Creation) is OpenOffice/AbiWord/Gnumeric, which compares poorly to Microsoft Office (or even Wordperfect office). The only free standard for a graphical desktop you can offer is X, which is great for networked users but compares poorly with the Win32 GDI and Apple's Aqua for home users.
On the positive side, on the OS kernel front, you can offer two kernels -- Linux and *BSD, both of which compare very well indeed with commercial offerings (midrange between Solaris and Windows NT).
So can it be a coincidence that Linux and BSD have seen significant uptake as a server OS, while uptake as a desktop OS is abysmal? I don't think so.
Sally, has time to write the user doc for the recipe program (she helped design too) Jimmy was hacking up on his FreeOS box and feels quite justified in using the GeForce driver "that guy in India" wrote.
ROFL. You were only kidding, right? If you were serious -- man, you need to get out more.
So why the fuck does John have to use Free Software just because the cancer research folk do?
And why in God's name does Sally have to use Free Software just because her son's orthodontist was careless with patient data? Answer the user scenario and don't shift the situation. How does Free Software benefit Sally directly? (Sally is not a 733t h4X0r, in fact, she frequently thinks of her monitor as the "computer" -- so don't go off on a tangent with weird hippie bullshit.)
We don't all have to be programmers to benefit from freedoms. Yada Yada.
You're talking about your Freedom? How come you don't consider Joe User's freedom to enjoy his spare time, to be free from crappy software that does what he needs?
I'm telling you, I use apache, I use vim (even on Windows); I use lots of stuff from Debian, and I use primarily because they are good tools. They serve some of my needs well. But to work effectively, I need a lot of other stuff (like Office -- no, I've evaluated OpenOffice and it isn't adequate for me); and most of this stuff is only available on Windows or the Mac.
If you really want Sally or John to consider free platforms, get out and code! Write some apps that have the quality and finesse of Mozilla, Nautilus and Evolution (no, the Gimp doesn't count), work towards improving OpenOffice. But 'til then, please don't give Linux advocacy a bad name with your crap-ass arguments.
> The Net community has traditionally managed to > crack and hack anything that requires paying for
Despite which, companies like Corbis and Getty Images do make money selling photographs on the web. But they usually don't go after folk who use their copyrighted JPEGs/PNGs as wallpaper.
I think the key here is: do you see your customers as thieves (which is essentially what the RIAA does), or do you see them as reasonable human beings?
ICQ has a _crap_ interface (though the new ICQ 2001 is better) -- but it's very good at SMSing (or texting) folk around the world -- a service Mirabilis provides to ICQ users for free. This alone makes ICQ worth it, if lots of your friends have cellphones.
The illustration for "Use a Single Menubar" has Internet Exploder for Mac on the desktop, showing two menubars in its own window, a set of tabs at the left, and displaying an Apple page with two more levels of menu bars.
The set of tabs on the left are a standard IE feature called "explorer bars", like Moz's sidebar.
There is no menubar on that IE window, there's a Mosaic-style toolbar and a bar full of links, like Moz's or Opera 6's personal toolbar.
Re:Installation not so hard -- and not so importan
on
Libranet 2.7 Released
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· Score: 1
XP as well. But that's only the partitioning and file copy phase. The first time the installer reboots the machine, you're in vanilla VGA16 mode, then next time, you're in with full display capabilities. All in hands off mode after the first few questions.
Good point. And have a look at the tri-layer security policy for.NET apps loadable from a web page -- user level, machine level *and then* enterprise level cascading security controls.
What would be closer to the truth is: MS products were designed for a far less malicious age, where viruses came through floppies, and social engineering hacks were almost unheard of.
Most folk here forget that many internet protocols were designed in exactly the same way (telnet, ftp, etc). If Windows was used as a server OS 20 years back, it would be different today.
Re:link to article, a quote, and my response
on
Mr Anti-Google
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I must disagree with the ideal expressed here as Mr. Brandt's. If I was searching for material on the Web about Donald Rumsfeld, I would rarely search for information critical of him *first*.
Google does show critical information at or near the top: search for DMCA. Scientology (and see link 3).
If MS is smart the next app they will included in Exchange is a proper multi-author versioning system similar to their current version system (SourceSafe??).
Exchange is slowly moving to using SQL Server as a data store. SQL Server is moving towards providing a filesystem view into its data, with versioning. Sounds like they are aware that it'd be appreciated.
Incidentally, for multi-author document management, have a look at Domino.Doc from Lotus; apparently it does this pretty well already.
I also find it funny that the denizens of this site post violent diatribes concerning Microsoft's stifling monoculture and lack of innovation, but when faced with something a little different rip on how it "doesn't follow standards"!
Oh please. Standards in UI are a Good Thing for the vast majority of computer users.
Notes' internals (data store, object model, etc) are well done (better IMO than Exchange), but the Notes client UI sucks. Not because of the tabbed workspace or the fat double-click buttons, but because:
1) You can never figure out when to double-click and when to click.
2) "Smarticons" in Notes are *dumb* icons. Even when there's *nothing* to copy, the copy toolbar button will be visible (and will say "can't execute the specified command"). You'd think the Notes developers could've looked at Lotus SmartSuite, that got it right. (Don't tell me they need a Interface design standards document to figure this one one out -- it's common sense!)
3) Replying to internet mail is *hard* unless you reprogram your mail template. Ever received a reply from a Notes user? Noticed the mangled text? (to be fair, Outlook/Exchange is as bad)
4) Horizontal scrolling is insane (c'mon, do I really need to use View|Show|Horizontal Scroll Bar to scroll horizontally?)
5) No equivalent of Outlook's digital dashboard or my.yahoo.com's MyYahoo -- i.e., a personalized portal page (yes, I know you can "customize" the welcome screen -- but it's horribly watered down compared to Digital Dashboard or MyYahoo.
Note that I haven't criticized them for having their own look and feel. L&F is a superficial issue (witness the success of Winamp 2.x), UI design goes a bit deeper than that.
The problem is: Notes is a hugely sophisticated unstructured database/CMS, but 90% of its users treat it like a PIM. And as a PIM, it sucks.
And yes, I use Notes/Domino for email every day, and am familiar with with programming it as well.
Lotus Notes design may not be winning any awards Actually it has won several:-)
As a designer you have FULL CONTROL to modify the UI however you like This is like the (probably apochryphal) Henry Ford saying: "you can have your car any color, as long as it's black". In Notes, I am stuck with whatever UI controls Notes gives me (and most of them are cheesy). With Outlook, I can create new UI controls and integrate them using well specified interfaces.
And yes, I have used Lookout Express on a R6 prerelease version, and you know what, while it's a huge leap for Notes, for a person coming from an Outlook/Evolution background, it has "cheap knockoff" written all over it.
Excellent point. A lot of the people here are CS/EE folk, who would much rather use Linux. Funnily enough, many (though not all, in case anyone is ready with a counterexample) of their brethren in the arts and humanities department would be happy enough using Windows. I imagine these people would be very happy that IU has this deal in place.
Seriously, is upliftment a real word? I always thought it to be one of those pseudo-words that were popular in some parts of the world -- if you look closely at the Google results, you'll find quite a number of the 33k results to be from pages written by Asians/Africans. I wouldn't be surprised if upliftment was popular in `local' english (for some values of local) but it's hardly a standard word. On the other hand, the OED has over the past few years been very inclusive in its approach to including words from across the globe (jihad from arabic(?), thali from hindi, and so on) so who knows, somebody could have included upliftment as well.
Encarta can't locate ``upliftment'' (though I know it's hardly the final answer); but then neither does the online cambridge dictionary or dict.org or dictionary.com (which searches through quite a few dictionaries). My old dogeared copy of Oxford Concise also doesn't have the word.
I don't have a subscription to the OED Online, so I can't go to the ultimate authority:-), but please, if you can give me a citation, I'd be very glad (contact info here).
> INDIA has had 3000 years, and yet can't seem to do anything
This country was a loose confederation of states for most of those 3000 years, and most had no joint standing army. One invasion after another -- Aryan, Hun, Moslem, British, not to mention the (more than the?) usual quota of internal intrigue (a la europe) raped India quite enough. Think about that, you prick, before passing snap judgements on 1.1 billion people.
> We are talking about countries and societies that absolutely REFUSE to take the steps neccessary to increase living standards.
How do _you_ know? Go and check out how the GDP has risen over the past 15 years. Check out the cost of living too, while you're about it. Check out how basic health services, telecom, transport have improved. Can we do better? Sure! We have crappy leaders, imho, and our education system could use a thorough cleanup. But are we _not trying at all_? No, you pampered little snot. We are _trying_, and it may take longer than your lifetime or mine, but I think we'll get there, with help or without.
Amn't qualified to comment on *how* much X work, but anything that encourages development of alternatives to X is a good thing IMO. Linux _needs_ stuff like directfb etc to catch on if it has to make headway with the Joe User.
I think you're letting your anti-ms sentiment cloud your judgement of whats best for your employer/client. If they see a 'need to be compatible', who are you to decide that a half-assed office (for business users -- for personal use OO.o is pretty good) suite like OpenOffice is what they need? (If they need to save money, SmartSuite from Lotus is pretty good, around half the price of an Office License)
Incidentally, XP under Microsoft Open Licensing (MOLP) and other corporate programs is pretty tolerable. You get non-activation copies etc.
Basically, I'm not trying to be a MS shill here... all I'm saying is: don't let your hatred for something blind you to what is good for your business/clients. If Apple is cost-effective, get Apples. If Linux is, get Linux.
> And if this crap isn't hard enough now, just > wait until Palladium rolls in
Well, last I checked, Palladium was based on TCPA, which _could_ (at least according to current spec drafts) be switched off.
Palladium is vapor. And until it solidifies, your criticism of it is merely steam on vapor:)
Ah, actually there a plugin for Outlook _Express_ available now. GPGOE. Outlook will take some time -- and hacking on the office dev kit -- I guess. But yes, I get what you mean about "dont work well", but I can tell you it's getting better fast! And if you can, do give WinPT a try. You may be surprised.
GnuPG _does_ work on Windows: http://ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/binary/gnupg-w32-1.0.6 -2.zip
But it's not graphical. For that, I've been using WinPT for some time. It's a pretty good replacement for PGPtray, not as pretty though. And it imported all my PGP 6.x/Win Keys fine too. Download with all dependencies here
Slashdot Mirror
All is not lost, coz John worked (as all professional persons do) to a set of standards known to all, which in the event of his demise
Good point, but all you manage to prove is the value of standards -- it could be argued that Windows and Office are also standards -- de facto if not de jure. (In point of fact, the reason most non-technical folk is because they believe Office is `the standard'.)
If you live in the US, you may be using another de facto standard that you are not even aware of -- the Qualcomm-patent-ridden CDMA arch for cellphones. Does that dilute the utility of the CDMA standard? (Similar arguments for the European/Asian GSM, also patent-encumbered.) I think the lesson here is clear -- the public regards a publicly available standard as valuable, but considers a patent-encumbered (or proprietary) standard as better than having a half-assed free standard.
Today the only (semi-usable) free standard that you can offer (for, say, Document Creation) is OpenOffice/AbiWord/Gnumeric, which compares poorly to Microsoft Office (or even Wordperfect office). The only free standard for a graphical desktop you can offer is X, which is great for networked users but compares poorly with the Win32 GDI and Apple's Aqua for home users.
On the positive side, on the OS kernel front, you can offer two kernels -- Linux and *BSD, both of which compare very well indeed with commercial offerings (midrange between Solaris and Windows NT).
So can it be a coincidence that Linux and BSD have seen significant uptake as a server OS, while uptake as a desktop OS is abysmal? I don't think so.
Sally, has time to write the user doc for the recipe program (she helped design too) Jimmy was hacking up on his FreeOS box and feels quite justified in using the GeForce driver "that guy in India" wrote.
ROFL. You were only kidding, right? If you were serious -- man, you need to get out more.
And why in God's name does Sally have to use Free Software just because her son's orthodontist was careless with patient data? Answer the user scenario and don't shift the situation. How does Free Software benefit Sally directly? (Sally is not a 733t h4X0r, in fact, she frequently thinks of her monitor as the "computer" -- so don't go off on a tangent with weird hippie bullshit.)
You're talking about your Freedom? How come you don't consider Joe User's freedom to enjoy his spare time, to be free from crappy software that does what he needs?
I'm telling you, I use apache, I use vim (even on Windows); I use lots of stuff from Debian, and I use primarily because they are good tools. They serve some of my needs well. But to work effectively, I need a lot of other stuff (like Office -- no, I've evaluated OpenOffice and it isn't adequate for me); and most of this stuff is only available on Windows or the Mac.
If you really want Sally or John to consider free platforms, get out and code! Write some apps that have the quality and finesse of Mozilla, Nautilus and Evolution (no, the Gimp doesn't count), work towards improving OpenOffice. But 'til then, please don't give Linux advocacy a bad name with your crap-ass arguments.
> The Net community has traditionally managed to
> crack and hack anything that requires paying for
Despite which, companies like Corbis and Getty Images do make money selling photographs on the web. But they usually don't go after folk who use their copyrighted JPEGs/PNGs as wallpaper.
I think the key here is: do you see your customers as thieves (which is essentially what the RIAA does), or do you see them as reasonable human beings?
> weren't Windows 2000 and XP referred to
> internally as NT 5.0 and NT 5.1, respectively?
It is. Win2k retail is NT 5.00.2195. XP retail (from memory) is 5.1.2600. Type "ver" at a (NT/2k/XP) console to verify this.
> though the new ICQ 2001 is better
oops, i meant, the new minimalistic ICQ Lite is better - by a hair.
ICQ has a _crap_ interface (though the new ICQ 2001 is better) -- but it's very good at SMSing (or texting) folk around the world -- a service Mirabilis provides to ICQ users for free. This alone makes ICQ worth it, if lots of your friends have cellphones.
supporting blind users is a good idea. After all, google is blind.
... you can also look at Mark Pilgrim's Dive Into Accessibility, which I've found quite helpful.
The set of tabs on the left are a standard IE feature called "explorer bars", like Moz's sidebar.
There is no menubar on that IE window, there's a Mosaic-style toolbar and a bar full of links, like Moz's or Opera 6's personal toolbar.
XP as well. But that's only the partitioning and file copy phase. The first time the installer reboots the machine, you're in vanilla VGA16 mode, then next time, you're in with full display capabilities. All in hands off mode after the first few questions.
Good point. And have a look at the tri-layer security policy for .NET apps loadable from a web page -- user level, machine level *and then* enterprise level cascading security controls.
What would be closer to the truth is: MS products were designed for a far less malicious age, where viruses came through floppies, and social engineering hacks were almost unheard of.
Most folk here forget that many internet protocols were designed in exactly the same way (telnet, ftp, etc). If Windows was used as a server OS 20 years back, it would be different today.
Exchange is slowly moving to using SQL Server as a data store. SQL Server is moving towards providing a filesystem view into its data, with versioning. Sounds like they are aware that it'd be appreciated.
Incidentally, for multi-author document management, have a look at Domino.Doc from Lotus; apparently it does this pretty well already.
Oh please. Standards in UI are a Good Thing for the vast majority of computer users.
Notes' internals (data store, object model, etc) are well done (better IMO than Exchange), but the Notes client UI sucks. Not because of the tabbed workspace or the fat double-click buttons, but because:
1) You can never figure out when to double-click and when to click.
2) "Smarticons" in Notes are *dumb* icons. Even when there's *nothing* to copy, the copy toolbar button will be visible (and will say "can't execute the specified command"). You'd think the Notes developers could've looked at Lotus SmartSuite, that got it right. (Don't tell me they need a Interface design standards document to figure this one one out -- it's common sense!)
3) Replying to internet mail is *hard* unless you reprogram your mail template. Ever received a reply from a Notes user? Noticed the mangled text? (to be fair, Outlook/Exchange is as bad)
4) Horizontal scrolling is insane (c'mon, do I really need to use View|Show|Horizontal Scroll Bar to scroll horizontally?)
5) No equivalent of Outlook's digital dashboard or my.yahoo.com's MyYahoo -- i.e., a personalized portal page (yes, I know you can "customize" the welcome screen -- but it's horribly watered down compared to Digital Dashboard or MyYahoo.
Note that I haven't criticized them for having their own look and feel. L&F is a superficial issue (witness the success of Winamp 2.x), UI design goes a bit deeper than that.
The problem is: Notes is a hugely sophisticated unstructured database/CMS, but 90% of its users treat it like a PIM. And as a PIM, it sucks.
And yes, I use Notes/Domino for email every day, and am familiar with with programming it as well.
Lotus Notes design may not be winning any awards :-)
Actually it has won several
As a designer you have FULL CONTROL to modify the UI however you like
This is like the (probably apochryphal) Henry Ford saying: "you can have your car any color, as long as it's black". In Notes, I am stuck with whatever UI controls Notes gives me (and most of them are cheesy). With Outlook, I can create new UI controls and integrate them using well specified interfaces.
And yes, I have used Lookout Express on a R6 prerelease version, and you know what, while it's a huge leap for Notes, for a person coming from an Outlook/Evolution background, it has "cheap knockoff" written all over it.
Only one: Microsoft! :-)
Excellent point. A lot of the people here are CS/EE folk, who would much rather use Linux. Funnily enough, many (though not all, in case anyone is ready with a counterexample) of their brethren in the arts and humanities department would be happy enough using Windows. I imagine these people would be very happy that IU has this deal in place.
> You're American right ...? :-)
:-), but please, if you can give me a citation, I'd be very glad (contact info here).
No
Seriously, is upliftment a real word? I always thought it to be one of those pseudo-words that were popular in some parts of the world -- if you look closely at the Google results, you'll find quite a number of the 33k results to be from pages written by Asians/Africans. I wouldn't be surprised if upliftment was popular in `local' english (for some values of local) but it's hardly a standard word. On the other hand, the OED has over the past few years been very inclusive in its approach to including words from across the globe (jihad from arabic(?), thali from hindi, and so on) so who knows, somebody could have included upliftment as well.
Encarta can't locate ``upliftment'' (though I know it's hardly the final answer); but then neither does the online cambridge dictionary or dict.org or dictionary.com (which searches through quite a few dictionaries). My old dogeared copy of Oxford Concise also doesn't have the word.
I don't have a subscription to the OED Online, so I can't go to the ultimate authority
> INDIA has had 3000 years, and yet can't seem to do anything
This country was a loose confederation of states for most of those 3000 years, and most had no joint standing army. One invasion after another -- Aryan, Hun, Moslem, British, not to mention the (more than the?) usual quota of internal intrigue (a la europe) raped India quite enough. Think about that, you prick, before passing snap judgements on 1.1 billion people.
> We are talking about countries and societies that absolutely REFUSE to take the steps neccessary to increase living standards.
How do _you_ know? Go and check out how the GDP has risen over the past 15 years. Check out the cost of living too, while you're about it. Check out how basic health services, telecom, transport have improved. Can we do better? Sure! We have crappy leaders, imho, and our education system could use a thorough cleanup. But are we _not trying at all_? No, you pampered little snot. We are _trying_, and it may take longer than your lifetime or mine, but I think we'll get there, with help or without.
Sorry for splitting hairs
> that kills a ton of XFree86 work
Amn't qualified to comment on *how* much X work, but anything that encourages development of alternatives to X is a good thing IMO. Linux _needs_ stuff like directfb etc to catch on if it has to make headway with the Joe User.
I think you're letting your anti-ms sentiment cloud your judgement of whats best for your employer/client. If they see a 'need to be compatible', who are you to decide that a half-assed office (for business users -- for personal use OO.o is pretty good) suite like OpenOffice is what they need? (If they need to save money, SmartSuite from Lotus is pretty good, around half the price of an Office License)
:)
Incidentally, XP under Microsoft Open Licensing (MOLP) and other corporate programs is pretty tolerable. You get non-activation copies etc.
Basically, I'm not trying to be a MS shill here... all I'm saying is: don't let your hatred for something blind you to what is good for your business/clients. If Apple is cost-effective, get Apples. If Linux is, get Linux.
> And if this crap isn't hard enough now, just
> wait until Palladium rolls in
Well, last I checked, Palladium was based on TCPA, which _could_ (at least according to current spec drafts) be switched off.
Palladium is vapor. And until it solidifies, your criticism of it is merely steam on vapor
> "thats" is spelt "that's".
Unless you are one of the greatest writers that the English-speaking world has ever produced.
(yeah, offtopic, i know. so sue me.)
> Or from Outlook, FWIW
Ah, actually there a plugin for Outlook _Express_ available now. GPGOE. Outlook will take some time -- and hacking on the office dev kit -- I guess. But yes, I get what you mean about "dont work well", but I can tell you it's getting better fast! And if you can, do give WinPT a try. You may be surprised.
GnuPG (not GnuPGP) dont work in Windows
6 -2.zip
GnuPG _does_ work on Windows: http://ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/binary/gnupg-w32-1.0.
But it's not graphical. For that, I've been using WinPT for some time. It's a pretty good replacement for PGPtray, not as pretty though. And it imported all my PGP 6.x/Win Keys fine too. Download with all dependencies here