I think AIDS, and antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria, and other deadly diseases will take care of the over-population thing. Well, that and war. Never mind all the constant ethnic cleansing (aka 'genocide') that seems to be going on every other year.
The human population is a self-balancing system too, you know. Just like the earth's environment. It will find new equalibriums. As it gets more crowded, there will be more disease and war. Food and supply lines will falter, and there will be massive die-offs from starvation. And it will continue until the population falls back to a more sustainable rate, at which point it will start to grow again. Mainly because human being seem to be completely incapable of managing their own reproduction (and consumption)...
I once heard an interesting solution for how to bury tons of carbon dioxide into the ocean...
The mid-ocean is rather iron-poor and thus doesn't have a lot of plankton and other life that consumes CO2. For whatever reason (I forget the details), it was hypothesized that a huge flotilla of ships broadcasting fine iron powder over large swaths of ocean would cause a plankton bloom that would soak up enormous amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere, then die and sink to the bottom, taking the CO2 with it.
Of course, there are other environmental concerns about doing such a thing, but it was an interesting idea... (did I read it in Discover magazine, or was it Scientific American?)
Well, you see, the problem with nuclear waste is that it remains highly toxic and highly radioactive for tens or hundreds of thousands of years. Kinda hard to safely dispose of something like that for that long without causing enormous problems, don't you think? (not to mention the economics of it) (not to mention Chernyobl) (not to mention the expense of building enough new plants) (not to mention Three Mile Island) (not to mention that accidents DO happen)
I'm damn upset he doesn't want to run. I mean, the very fact he's not falling all over himself to be president tells me that he's the perfect man for the job:-)
A vote for Bush is a vote for The Religious Right. That is enough reason to not vote for him.
That he steadfastly believes that gay people are second-class citizens without any civil rights is another reason to vote against him. (not to mention his hypocracy for supporting Dick Cheney's daughter, who is an open lesbian, but castigating homosexuals in general... idiot)
That he doesn't have a clue, can't form a coherent english sentence, and would be an utter embarassment in any foreign policy negotiations is another reason to not vote for him.
That he seems to be a 'more money for the rich, screw the poor' candidate like Reagan before him, is another reason to vote against him.
That he'd run the risk of stimulating the economy out of control by giving out an immediate tax cut, thus causing interest rates to rise, and not paying down the debt... rather than saving the tax cut for when the economy needed it during the next down-turn, and in the mean-time paying down the debt (and thus reducing the size of the budget by reducing the required interest payments)... he's basically so fiscally irresponsible that there is yet ANOTHER reason to vote against him.
And when it comes to environmentalism? He lets the industry write the laws (talk about getting in bed with special interests) and then makes it optional to adhere to them... leading to Texas as the single most toxic filthy dirty state in the nation. Yet another reason to not vote for Bush.
And fairness? He's jailed thousands and thousands of casual drug users... when he was one himself. He ruins the lives of people for THEIR 'youthful indescressions', while he gets to be rich and run the country. His hypocracy is another reason to vote against him.
His salavating support of the death-penalty... not that I'm against it, but his cavalier use of and reference to, his insistance that no innocent people ever get the chair, his laughing at and mocking of people on death row, and his heading the largest death machine in the nation... another reason to vote against him.
And let's not get into individual rights... he'll champion a corporation over an individual every single time.
And seriously, is Bush (and the religious right) the one you want appointing up to FIVE new Supreme Court Justices? That clueless moron? Gah. A really STRONG reason to vote against Bush.
I vote for the lesser of two evils. I vote for Gore.
Okay, so while everyone is battling it out ("Global warming is BS" v.s. "Global warming is Real") and making arguments over whether humans really could destroy the ecosystem or not, I have some news for all of ya...
It's the economy, stupid.
The ecosystem is remarkably resilient, this is true. But it really doesn't take much pushing for whole swaths of land to become much harsher to survive in (and conversely, large swaths of previously uninhabitable land to become much more friendly). Think about raising the temperature a few degrees... Texas, Arazona, New Mexico, and Nevada dry up. Without water to support people, crops, and live-stock, economies collapse, and people are on the move. Meanwhile, large areas of Canada become bread-baskets for the world:-)
That's all find and dandy within our borders. We can take the influx of people from one area and deal. But try taking it across borders, and you end up with a situation we call 'war'.
Man doesn't even have to really be the root cause. What if the normal variablility of the sun and the earth cause major global climactic change. It's not like we have no evidence of this in the past... we have PLENTY. Think of the economic impact. Maybe humans would survive, but our current society/civilization most porbably wouldn't/couldn't. It's pretty darn fragile.
And forget 1000 years. Think about 100 years, when there's not much oil left to speak of. Will we have any real fuel sources available to us to take up the slack? Solar, wind, and hydro power simply don't have the predictability, availablity, or energy density to take over for oil. Nuclear? Fusion? There's certainly no real plans for the former, and the current results aren't looking good for the latter...
A major economic collapse, and the widespread war, famine, and disease that will result, are huge threats to humankind. Global climate change will only add to these problems. With all the short-sighted, short-term thinking and planning going on, we'll be lucky to have any real civilization in a thousand year's time.
All you SUV drivers can go back to whining about how supply and demand has jacked up your fuel expenses
Consider: if the climate changes drastically, our sources of food will die off and/or migrate. Our water sources (and simultaneously some of our transportation sources) could dry up completely.
It honestly looks like our oil reserves won't last out the century... certainly not at today's pumping rates. That alone will cause major anguish, trials, and tribulations... wars, famines, economic collapse, etc.
Now take away foods that used to grow well that can't because of global climate changes that dry up the American mid-west into a desert, and that eliminate sources for drinking water all along the central and south west.
Sure, some humans will survive somewhere... but in what capacity? A few tribes up in Canada?
Jabba is a 'major character' but doesn't have tons of screen time. Thus subtitles.
Yoda is a 'major character' but does have a lot of screen time. Thus the *unique* english dialect.
The Trade Federationalists could easily have been given a new language instead of that offensive Charlie-Chan crap.
Jar Jar could have been made to speak a unique english dialect without sounding and acting like he was some pickaninny slave bowing and scraping before his 'massas'.
Actually, I CAN describe *some* CGI shots as beautiful. The scene where they arrive on Coruscant (sp?) is breath-taking... it literally made me feel vertigo. But in general, I agree with you.
"Hey, we just discovered a giant asteroid is heading towards us. We have two weeks to set up a mission. Thankfully we have a new prototype model of Shuttle that can fly to the moon and back... what's more, we just HAPPEN to have TWO of them! So lets' get some totally out of shape civilians and put them on board, and launch them BOTH AT ONCE, even though neither of them have flown before!! Oh, and that Mir station? Didn't know it was a near-earth-orbit fuel station, didja?
Gads, I could go on and on. The worst freaking movie of all time in terms of plot, consistency, believablity, feasability, suspension-of-disbeliefability, acting, dialog... gads.
And to think that load of crap was the number one Box Office movie of that year... UGH!
No... they should have given him a UNIQUE (non-earth-related) dialect.
That was the big problem with Episode I in general: To much of THIS world/universe in THAT universe.
Thinka about it... all the characters in the first three movies speak English (either Gods English, or "American"), or they speak in a UNIQUE dialect ("Yoda") so that it sounds like it's a second langauge, or they speak a totally alien language (Gredo, Jabba the Hut, etc).
So why did so many characters in Episode One speak this pidgen english? (Jar Jar speaking pidgen Jamacan english; trade federationists speaking bad b-movie charlie-chan pidgen chinese english, etc). That REALLY distracted from teh movie, and just showed creative LAZINESS.
The second movie was a great 'middle chapter', but wasn't self-contained. It's still my favorite though... only NARROWLY edging out the original.
The third one was a retred, with stupid ewoks... but it had it's moments, and it closed the trilogy nicely enough.
The Esisode One debacle was just lame, with some amazing visuals. The book was a LITTLE better, but still... for the first movie to have worked well, it would have needed at least another half hour of story and exposition, eliminating Jar Jar (or at least minimizing him), eliminating the stupid 'pidgen english' dialects, and eliminating the stupid 'just because we can' CGI crap (the two headed pod-race announcer chief among them). And that shit about the planet's core... ugh.
I really tried to like it. I really TRIED. I saw it three times, I read the book... but on just about every level except for SOME amazing visuals, it really did fail. And now he has some major consistancy things to explain... and only two movies to do it in.
I'll probably like Episode II better than Episode I for two reasons: 1) my expectations are way way low after seeing Episode I, and 2) Lucas would have to be a MORON not to learn from all the criticism the first movie got (and deserved).
And 'Shorter names = longer to learn'. Look at the different demographics the original command-line-only UNIX was aimed at, compared to 'default-GUI for the masses' Win9x and NT-Pro.
The differing demographic shows that your idea of 'more efficient' is totally irrelavent to the vast majority of the users that Win9x/NT-Pro is for. In fact, for those users, it would be MUCH LESS efficient, because it would take so much more of their time to learn (and re-learn and re-learn) where things are and how to do things.
4NT totally rocks (gives you great scripting ability but with a DOS-flavor syntax for those that are use to the NT command line instead of more unix-like ones).
Of course, there are full bash, csh, tcsh, and ksh shells out there for you to use at your whim if that's what you're used to. Just like there are emacs and (shudder) vi editors for those that know them well.
So what if NT doesn't ship with these things? The target demographic doesn't have a clue what these things are in most cases. And they're readily available from third parties for reasonable prices...
You know, there's a very simple and quick registry tweak that enables tab-completion in the NT command line (and most other command lines like in the mks toolkit already do command completion). I have never experienced it to be 'unreliable' and am not sure what you're refering to there. So why are you complaining about carpel tunnel syndrome? Just to hear yourself whine?
And nobody else in the world gives a damn about 8.3 any more (in fact, everyone else in the world is glad to be rid of it), so why on earth should MS do anything to service that request? The demand level is mighty low... Maybe if you'd do as I did -- learn to selectively use the GUI where it makes sense. There really ARE things that are faster in the GUI from time to time;-)
Why not advance into the late 90's:-) It's either that or prove the saying that old dogs simply are incapable of learning new tricks...;-)
Yeah, but I personally LOATHE the one common menu for all apps at the top of the screen. I access my application's menus just fine thank you. Fact is, it doesn't slow me down very much at all, because I almost always have a right-click context menu available for more 'direct manipulation' without cumbersome key-mouse combinations. And talk about minimal mouse-travel!
In particular, I can't IMAINGE why MS hasn't taken the task-bar tip... or at LEAST made it an option (i.e. you must put your mouse down to one of the corners for the task bar to un-hide). That is probably one of the single biggest annoyances in the Windows UI.
The other one is the sub-menu item mentioned. I agree the apple way is superior than the 'wait half a second' hack.
But god forbid they should ever force all apps to have one common menu along the top the way the Mac does. Ugh. In maximized mode, that's great, and I think they should take advantage of it. But in over-lapped windowed mode... I want each app to have its own menu, and have that menu visually associated ONLY with its corresponding app. I'm sorry, but since I never NEED to 'throw' my mouse around, I never have any real problems with over-shooting (since I rarely use non-context menus anyway).
And dont' get me started on circular menus. Those are just stupid. They're a perfect example of how ivory-tower isolation can lead to stupid ideas. Sure, on paper, they're faster. But in real life, they just look stupid, ugly, and there's still an issue of the narrow end of the pie-slice (you have to move more than a few pixels, or else you still run the risk of slipping to a new pie-slice when you don't mean to, 'cause the pointy end is SMALL). And labling a pie-slice just looks sloppy no matter how you do it (and if you have to read text at angles, you're slowing things down). About the only place I'd agree they have value is in selecting color from a 'color wheel' or something like that, where what you're selecting isn't text labeled, but is more visual and abstract.
Personally, I think MS would do as well to focus on consistency in the UI (ever try to find certain info or settings? Is it in THIS control panel or that one? On this tabbed dialog or that one? Why doesn't my System Properties list how fast my CPU is? Why are some network settings under "Internet" and others under "Network"... why are some UI settings under "Display" and others under "Internet"?!?). I think a better organization of information and functionality would make things infinitely. But aparently MS is stepping backwards on this one, as there are several things (Dial Up Networking configuration) that were much easier to find and change in NT4 than in Win2K.
But damn, I wish they'd make that 'only activate hidden taskbar when mouse is thrown to a corner' option available....!
The evolution of the Windows GUI has improved a few minor aspects, but the main effect is to create a totally incoherent, inconsistant, and much LESS user-friendly interface. Sigh. Blame the Internet Explorer group.
No, silly. 256x256 icons. And as screen resolutions ramp up, they won't seem so big... I mean, I already operate with a 1280x1024 screen every day... as that resolution goes up towards 300dpi, I'm going to WANT freaking 256x256 icons!
Yeah, but even at the movies, I can see the flickering (especially in large mostly white shots) and it bugs the hell out of me.
I keep waiting for the movie industry to adopt "Showscan" -- the 3x higher frame-rate projection of movies (preferably also using 72mm film). Now THAT would be worth paying 8 bucks to see!
Yeah, but I hate those systems. I have one. Every winter, when the furnace kicks on, the water in teh shower turns cold (since the heat is all 'stolen' for heating the air). I've lived in two places, and they've BOTH suffered from that problem. There is nothing worse than being in the wonderful hot shower, hearing the furnace kick on, and realizing you have about 30 seconds to rinse all the soap off or you're going to freeze to death...
Well, I doubt 'disregard of social norms' really lead to the AIDS pandemic. . . after all, the vast majority of cases worldwide are spread heterosexually in Africa where social norms are essentially polygamy. Not to mention via medical treatment where strict sanitation measures aren't followed. If it hadn't been a homosexual (or group of them) that had brought AIDS into this country, it could have spread predominantly among heterosexuals here, just as it does in many other countries in the world. AIDS does not have a 'sexual orientation'. Be careful about being too ethnocentric, dude.
And 'social norms' are fluid anyway. They vary with time, and with place. There is no 'absolute' in this regard, by any stretch of the imagination. So I wouldn't go around feeling too superior or rigid in these matters.
And to top it all off, I'm not sure I appreciate the subtle comparison of gay people with 'alcoholics', 'drug adicts', 'kiddie porn pedders', etc. Aside from being insulting, it's wildly inaccurate. If you're going to make associations, try things like 'left-handed people', or some other group that is arbitrarily yet innocuously different form 'the norm'. Don't assume the stereotypes are all there is (remember, the vast vast majority of pedophiles are heterosexual, as are the vast majority of transvestites).
Sorry if I seem a bit sensitive, but given the amount of sh!t I have to put up with on a daily basis, I do what I can to educate people to not be so ignorant of what their words and actions can have on people.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, it's just as bad to say 'human' in that case.
:-)
You won't be satisfied until it's "huperson", I'm sure...
Oops, that word has 'son' in it... ugh. Make that 'Huperoffspring'
There! NOW are you satisfied? Are you finished raping the English language to cure whatever petty PC paranoia you've got going?
Mankind will not survive this trechery
- Spryguy
I think AIDS, and antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria, and other deadly diseases will take care of the over-population thing. Well, that and war. Never mind all the constant ethnic cleansing (aka 'genocide') that seems to be going on every other year.
The human population is a self-balancing system too, you know. Just like the earth's environment. It will find new equalibriums. As it gets more crowded, there will be more disease and war. Food and supply lines will falter, and there will be massive die-offs from starvation. And it will continue until the population falls back to a more sustainable rate, at which point it will start to grow again. Mainly because human being seem to be completely incapable of managing their own reproduction (and consumption)...
- Spryguy
I once heard an interesting solution for how to bury tons of carbon dioxide into the ocean...
The mid-ocean is rather iron-poor and thus doesn't have a lot of plankton and other life that consumes CO2. For whatever reason (I forget the details), it was hypothesized that a huge flotilla of ships broadcasting fine iron powder over large swaths of ocean would cause a plankton bloom that would soak up enormous amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere, then die and sink to the bottom, taking the CO2 with it.
Of course, there are other environmental concerns about doing such a thing, but it was an interesting idea... (did I read it in Discover magazine, or was it Scientific American?)
- Spryguy
Well, you see, the problem with nuclear waste is that it remains highly toxic and highly radioactive for tens or hundreds of thousands of years. Kinda hard to safely dispose of something like that for that long without causing enormous problems, don't you think? (not to mention the economics of it) (not to mention Chernyobl) (not to mention the expense of building enough new plants) (not to mention Three Mile Island) (not to mention that accidents DO happen)
- Spryguy
I'd vote for Jesse Ventura in a heart-beat.
:-)
I'm damn upset he doesn't want to run. I mean, the very fact he's not falling all over himself to be president tells me that he's the perfect man for the job
- Spryguy
A vote for Bush is a vote for The Religious Right. That is enough reason to not vote for him.
That he steadfastly believes that gay people are second-class citizens without any civil rights is another reason to vote against him. (not to mention his hypocracy for supporting Dick Cheney's daughter, who is an open lesbian, but castigating homosexuals in general... idiot)
That he doesn't have a clue, can't form a coherent english sentence, and would be an utter embarassment in any foreign policy negotiations is another reason to not vote for him.
That he seems to be a 'more money for the rich, screw the poor' candidate like Reagan before him, is another reason to vote against him.
That he'd run the risk of stimulating the economy out of control by giving out an immediate tax cut, thus causing interest rates to rise, and not paying down the debt... rather than saving the tax cut for when the economy needed it during the next down-turn, and in the mean-time paying down the debt (and thus reducing the size of the budget by reducing the required interest payments)... he's basically so fiscally irresponsible that there is yet ANOTHER reason to vote against him.
And when it comes to environmentalism? He lets the industry write the laws (talk about getting in bed with special interests) and then makes it optional to adhere to them... leading to Texas as the single most toxic filthy dirty state in the nation. Yet another reason to not vote for Bush.
And fairness? He's jailed thousands and thousands of casual drug users... when he was one himself. He ruins the lives of people for THEIR 'youthful indescressions', while he gets to be rich and run the country. His hypocracy is another reason to vote against him.
His salavating support of the death-penalty... not that I'm against it, but his cavalier use of and reference to, his insistance that no innocent people ever get the chair, his laughing at and mocking of people on death row, and his heading the largest death machine in the nation... another reason to vote against him.
And let's not get into individual rights... he'll champion a corporation over an individual every single time.
And seriously, is Bush (and the religious right) the one you want appointing up to FIVE new Supreme Court Justices? That clueless moron? Gah. A really STRONG reason to vote against Bush.
I vote for the lesser of two evils. I vote for Gore.
- Spryguy
Okay, so while everyone is battling it out ("Global warming is BS" v.s. "Global warming is Real") and making arguments over whether humans really could destroy the ecosystem or not, I have some news for all of ya...
:-)
It's the economy, stupid.
The ecosystem is remarkably resilient, this is true. But it really doesn't take much pushing for whole swaths of land to become much harsher to survive in (and conversely, large swaths of previously uninhabitable land to become much more friendly). Think about raising the temperature a few degrees... Texas, Arazona, New Mexico, and Nevada dry up. Without water to support people, crops, and live-stock, economies collapse, and people are on the move. Meanwhile, large areas of Canada become bread-baskets for the world
That's all find and dandy within our borders. We can take the influx of people from one area and deal. But try taking it across borders, and you end up with a situation we call 'war'.
Man doesn't even have to really be the root cause. What if the normal variablility of the sun and the earth cause major global climactic change. It's not like we have no evidence of this in the past... we have PLENTY. Think of the economic impact. Maybe humans would survive, but our current society/civilization most porbably wouldn't/couldn't. It's pretty darn fragile.
And forget 1000 years. Think about 100 years, when there's not much oil left to speak of. Will we have any real fuel sources available to us to take up the slack? Solar, wind, and hydro power simply don't have the predictability, availablity, or energy density to take over for oil. Nuclear? Fusion? There's certainly no real plans for the former, and the current results aren't looking good for the latter...
A major economic collapse, and the widespread war, famine, and disease that will result, are huge threats to humankind. Global climate change will only add to these problems. With all the short-sighted, short-term thinking and planning going on, we'll be lucky to have any real civilization in a thousand year's time.
All you SUV drivers can go back to whining about how supply and demand has jacked up your fuel expenses
- Spryguy
The real question is 'how many will survive'...
Consider: if the climate changes drastically, our sources of food will die off and/or migrate. Our water sources (and simultaneously some of our transportation sources) could dry up completely.
It honestly looks like our oil reserves won't last out the century... certainly not at today's pumping rates. That alone will cause major anguish, trials, and tribulations... wars, famines, economic collapse, etc.
Now take away foods that used to grow well that can't because of global climate changes that dry up the American mid-west into a desert, and that eliminate sources for drinking water all along the central and south west.
Sure, some humans will survive somewhere... but in what capacity? A few tribes up in Canada?
No sir. It does not look good for the human race.
- Spryguy
I think you missed my point...
Jabba is a 'major character' but doesn't have tons of screen time. Thus subtitles.
Yoda is a 'major character' but does have a lot of screen time. Thus the *unique* english dialect.
The Trade Federationalists could easily have been given a new language instead of that offensive Charlie-Chan crap.
Jar Jar could have been made to speak a unique english dialect without sounding and acting like he was some pickaninny slave bowing and scraping before his 'massas'.
- Spryguy
Alas, I've tried that, but he just didn't seem to fit in my life in that regard.
Then you didn't use enough lube. Oh, and you have to *relax*...
- Spryguy
Actually, I CAN describe *some* CGI shots as beautiful. The scene where they arrive on Coruscant (sp?) is breath-taking... it literally made me feel vertigo. But in general, I agree with you.
- Spryguy
Mod that post up!! (ROFL!! ;-)
- Spryguy
No... it was ARMAGEDDON.
What a hideously bad movie.
"Hey, we just discovered a giant asteroid is heading towards us. We have two weeks to set up a mission. Thankfully we have a new prototype model of Shuttle that can fly to the moon and back... what's more, we just HAPPEN to have TWO of them! So lets' get some totally out of shape civilians and put them on board, and launch them BOTH AT ONCE, even though neither of them have flown before!! Oh, and that Mir station? Didn't know it was a near-earth-orbit fuel station, didja?
Gads, I could go on and on. The worst freaking movie of all time in terms of plot, consistency, believablity, feasability, suspension-of-disbeliefability, acting, dialog... gads.
And to think that load of crap was the number one Box Office movie of that year... UGH!
- Spryguy
No... they should have given him a UNIQUE (non-earth-related) dialect.
That was the big problem with Episode I in general: To much of THIS world/universe in THAT universe.
Thinka about it... all the characters in the first three movies speak English (either Gods English, or "American"), or they speak in a UNIQUE dialect ("Yoda") so that it sounds like it's a second langauge, or they speak a totally alien language (Gredo, Jabba the Hut, etc).
So why did so many characters in Episode One speak this pidgen english? (Jar Jar speaking pidgen Jamacan english; trade federationists speaking bad b-movie charlie-chan pidgen chinese english, etc). That REALLY distracted from teh movie, and just showed creative LAZINESS.
- Spryguy
Episode II: The Rise of Mass Merchandizing
Episode III: The Cross-Marketing Wars
- Spryguy
Well, the FIRST movie had a good plot.
The second movie was a great 'middle chapter', but wasn't self-contained. It's still my favorite though... only NARROWLY edging out the original.
The third one was a retred, with stupid ewoks... but it had it's moments, and it closed the trilogy nicely enough.
The Esisode One debacle was just lame, with some amazing visuals. The book was a LITTLE better, but still... for the first movie to have worked well, it would have needed at least another half hour of story and exposition, eliminating Jar Jar (or at least minimizing him), eliminating the stupid 'pidgen english' dialects, and eliminating the stupid 'just because we can' CGI crap (the two headed pod-race announcer chief among them). And that shit about the planet's core... ugh.
I really tried to like it. I really TRIED. I saw it three times, I read the book... but on just about every level except for SOME amazing visuals, it really did fail. And now he has some major consistancy things to explain... and only two movies to do it in.
I'll probably like Episode II better than Episode I for two reasons: 1) my expectations are way way low after seeing Episode I, and 2) Lucas would have to be a MORON not to learn from all the criticism the first movie got (and deserved).
- Spryguy
Shorter names = more efficient.
And 'Shorter names = longer to learn'. Look at the different demographics the original command-line-only UNIX was aimed at, compared to 'default-GUI for the masses' Win9x and NT-Pro.
The differing demographic shows that your idea of 'more efficient' is totally irrelavent to the vast majority of the users that Win9x/NT-Pro is for. In fact, for those users, it would be MUCH LESS efficient, because it would take so much more of their time to learn (and re-learn and re-learn) where things are and how to do things.
- Spryguy
4NT totally rocks (gives you great scripting ability but with a DOS-flavor syntax for those that are use to the NT command line instead of more unix-like ones).
Of course, there are full bash, csh, tcsh, and ksh shells out there for you to use at your whim if that's what you're used to. Just like there are emacs and (shudder) vi editors for those that know them well.
So what if NT doesn't ship with these things? The target demographic doesn't have a clue what these things are in most cases. And they're readily available from third parties for reasonable prices...
- Spryguy
You know, there's a very simple and quick registry tweak that enables tab-completion in the NT command line (and most other command lines like in the mks toolkit already do command completion). I have never experienced it to be 'unreliable' and am not sure what you're refering to there. So why are you complaining about carpel tunnel syndrome? Just to hear yourself whine?
;-)
:-) It's either that or prove the saying that old dogs simply are incapable of learning new tricks... ;-)
And nobody else in the world gives a damn about 8.3 any more (in fact, everyone else in the world is glad to be rid of it), so why on earth should MS do anything to service that request? The demand level is mighty low... Maybe if you'd do as I did -- learn to selectively use the GUI where it makes sense. There really ARE things that are faster in the GUI from time to time
Why not advance into the late 90's
- Spryguy
Yeah, but I personally LOATHE the one common menu for all apps at the top of the screen. I access my application's menus just fine thank you. Fact is, it doesn't slow me down very much at all, because I almost always have a right-click context menu available for more 'direct manipulation' without cumbersome key-mouse combinations. And talk about minimal mouse-travel!
In particular, I can't IMAINGE why MS hasn't taken the task-bar tip... or at LEAST made it an option (i.e. you must put your mouse down to one of the corners for the task bar to un-hide). That is probably one of the single biggest annoyances in the Windows UI.
The other one is the sub-menu item mentioned. I agree the apple way is superior than the 'wait half a second' hack.
But god forbid they should ever force all apps to have one common menu along the top the way the Mac does. Ugh. In maximized mode, that's great, and I think they should take advantage of it. But in over-lapped windowed mode... I want each app to have its own menu, and have that menu visually associated ONLY with its corresponding app. I'm sorry, but since I never NEED to 'throw' my mouse around, I never have any real problems with over-shooting (since I rarely use non-context menus anyway).
And dont' get me started on circular menus. Those are just stupid. They're a perfect example of how ivory-tower isolation can lead to stupid ideas. Sure, on paper, they're faster. But in real life, they just look stupid, ugly, and there's still an issue of the narrow end of the pie-slice (you have to move more than a few pixels, or else you still run the risk of slipping to a new pie-slice when you don't mean to, 'cause the pointy end is SMALL). And labling a pie-slice just looks sloppy no matter how you do it (and if you have to read text at angles, you're slowing things down). About the only place I'd agree they have value is in selecting color from a 'color wheel' or something like that, where what you're selecting isn't text labeled, but is more visual and abstract.
Personally, I think MS would do as well to focus on consistency in the UI (ever try to find certain info or settings? Is it in THIS control panel or that one? On this tabbed dialog or that one? Why doesn't my System Properties list how fast my CPU is? Why are some network settings under "Internet" and others under "Network"... why are some UI settings under "Display" and others under "Internet"?!?). I think a better organization of information and functionality would make things infinitely. But aparently MS is stepping backwards on this one, as there are several things (Dial Up Networking configuration) that were much easier to find and change in NT4 than in Win2K.
But damn, I wish they'd make that 'only activate hidden taskbar when mouse is thrown to a corner' option available....!
- Spryguy
I completely and totally agree.
The evolution of the Windows GUI has improved a few minor aspects, but the main effect is to create a totally incoherent, inconsistant, and much LESS user-friendly interface. Sigh. Blame the Internet Explorer group.
- Spryguy
What next: 300x300 icons ?
:-)
No, silly. 256x256 icons. And as screen resolutions ramp up, they won't seem so big... I mean, I already operate with a 1280x1024 screen every day... as that resolution goes up towards 300dpi, I'm going to WANT freaking 256x256 icons!
Don't be so stuck in the past!
- Spryguy
Yeah, but even at the movies, I can see the flickering (especially in large mostly white shots) and it bugs the hell out of me.
I keep waiting for the movie industry to adopt "Showscan" -- the 3x higher frame-rate projection of movies (preferably also using 72mm film). Now THAT would be worth paying 8 bucks to see!
- Spryguy
Yeah, but I hate those systems. I have one. Every winter, when the furnace kicks on, the water in teh shower turns cold (since the heat is all 'stolen' for heating the air). I've lived in two places, and they've BOTH suffered from that problem. There is nothing worse than being in the wonderful hot shower, hearing the furnace kick on, and realizing you have about 30 seconds to rinse all the soap off or you're going to freeze to death...
- Spryguy
Well, I doubt 'disregard of social norms' really lead to the AIDS pandemic. . . after all, the vast majority of cases worldwide are spread heterosexually in Africa where social norms are essentially polygamy. Not to mention via medical treatment where strict sanitation measures aren't followed. If it hadn't been a homosexual (or group of them) that had brought AIDS into this country, it could have spread predominantly among heterosexuals here, just as it does in many other countries in the world. AIDS does not have a 'sexual orientation'. Be careful about being too ethnocentric, dude.
And 'social norms' are fluid anyway. They vary with time, and with place. There is no 'absolute' in this regard, by any stretch of the imagination. So I wouldn't go around feeling too superior or rigid in these matters.
And to top it all off, I'm not sure I appreciate the subtle comparison of gay people with 'alcoholics', 'drug adicts', 'kiddie porn pedders', etc. Aside from being insulting, it's wildly inaccurate. If you're going to make associations, try things like 'left-handed people', or some other group that is arbitrarily yet innocuously different form 'the norm'. Don't assume the stereotypes are all there is (remember, the vast vast majority of pedophiles are heterosexual, as are the vast majority of transvestites).
Sorry if I seem a bit sensitive, but given the amount of sh!t I have to put up with on a daily basis, I do what I can to educate people to not be so ignorant of what their words and actions can have on people.
- Spryguy