Then fire those programmers and hire some engineers. Too many people claim to be able to write software, but very few know why their software works, and even fewer can articulate the rationale behind its operation.
There's a well known 80/20 rule in software development, " 20% of the people do 100% of the work. The other 80%? Try to avoid them!"
The responsibility to properly support Netscape has been abdicated by AOL. This means there is really only one browser. Which means Microsoft has succeeded in achieveing their goal of dictating the terms for internet use through domination of hte browser market, coupled with IE specific extensions provided by their development tools and servers.
As for Netscape, it is now officially a joke, in bad taste, poorly told. While just crippled by lack of support and idiotic "features" on most platforms, it is a bug-ridden crash-prone waste of disk space under Linux. Anyone saying otherwise either doesn't use it, or is a self-deluded simpleton. Is there any chance a component architecture, open source browser with support for current plug-ins and Java2 can be produced for use on linux?
And please, spare me the "XML will solve everything" idiocy.
We really know so little about the physics of biology, and even less about dinosaurs. While this is an interesting theory, I don't think it's any kind of proof.
How do they explain giraffes?
Close but no cigar.
The original credit for reverse engineering the PC BIOS goes to Phoenix.
But it's good to know that people are still herd animals and prefer to believe advertisements over history. Makes it easier for the DNC and RNC to control you;)
This is the same sort of foolishness one hears from Mac bigots and programmers who have never touched anything but the Mac API, so much so that the article could be considered trolling, if I thought the author knew better.
Indeed, I would state flatly that the MacOS has never been a complete operating system, as it is entirely dependent on the presence of the Finder, which is the Macintosh shell. In a correct and complete operating system, a single shell should not be a critical part of the execution of the operating system.
As for OS X, big deal. Apple bought Next, took BSD, slapped a different kernel under it, and an inelegant and inconsistent interface on top of it. Yes, the interface is inconsistent. Look at an application type entity in the file browser and look at the listing for the app and tell me they aren't completely different. A recipe for disaster for Macintosh users, as one of the chief reasons for the simplicity of the Mac over other OSes is that users could easily relate files to their functions.
Apple should have bought Be, it's exactly what they needed. It is single-user based, as the Mac would like to be. It has access to most important tools. And it doesn't introduce what is certain to be the confusion caused by the implicit demands of a Unix system. As the average Mac fanatic cannot bear to admit that they're wrong, they will learn an exciting, modern interface, the command line!
As for Aqua, I don't understand how any one who has used the BeOS or OS/2 could consider the Aqua interface anything but an inelegant, indulgent, wasteful bit of eye candy. The dock is of dubious usefulness, especially if you handle many tasks simultaneously, the single window button (I undersand it has been removed) is a poorly written joke in bad taste, and the inert Apple icon is more annoying than a banner ad.
If people are honest with themselves, the Macintosh OS X, as currently constituted, is inferior to other currently available products in every area of computational utility. If you want to run a server, go with one of the tested, tried and true flavors of BSD or Linux. If you want productivity tools use Windows or Linux. If you want to play the latest games, Windows is the only way to go. If you're a developer it's really hard to beat MSDev or the traditional dev tools available on Linux. And if you want a truly elegant and functional GUI give BeOS a try. And if you want to run a Macintosh application, like Final Cut, then stick to OS9.
BTW, I think I'm allowed to criticize Mac fans, as I have owned a Mac since the Macintosh SE and have even worked at the mothership several times. I don't hate the MAcintosh, it's just another tool to be used. What I do dislike is people who twist the facts to suit their own personal biases, or worse still, people who speak on subjects of which they clearly have little understanding.
Go back to school Mr. Every.
>Dare I say it? There are *conservatives* amoungst you! Conservatives who are server side Java programmers! Who use linux! And who read slashdot!
Who don't know how to spell! I don't expect perfect spelling, and typos are a natural and frequent occurence, but any one who writes aboout politics and spells it "P-O-L-O-T-I-C-S" deserves to be ridiculed in the cruelest and most inhuman manner possible.
Go back to the paddock where it's safe, foolish ewe.
>I don't see how you interpret that any other way?
Easy, just belong to one or the other major party and any such nuisance as facts or quotes suddenly become open to even the most assinine interpretations.
I don't think browsing the web is any more harmful than watching tv or reading a book. What is harmful is the startling notion that Americans have developed that children should have all the rights and privileges of adults.
What are we doing when we as parents by expensive equipment and then give it to children to play with unsupervised? I don't just mean computers, but all of the big ticket items that used to be clearly for adults only; automobiles, stock portfolios, telephones, you get the idea. How many sixteen year old children do you know that not only have access to these things, but also have these things for their own personal use. To me, this is the source of insanity. It's like unlocking the safety on a primed fire arm and handing it to a chimp. Here ChimChim, go nuts.
Children have no place using, much less owning, such things without training and supervision. If you as the parent don't have time to provide that supervision, then hire someone who can provide the proper guidance for the desired tool. If you can't do that, then educate yourself so you can educate your child. If this is still not feasible, then too bad. Do without. It will probably help reduce your irresponsible amount of debt.
the Simpsons did. They started the trend of recording a tv show in the studio instead of performing it live. Of course, a live performance of the Simpsons might put a terrible strain on the animators' wrists.
Every time I see a mention of "games" I get excited and think it's an article about games. No such luck. It almost always turns out to be an article about COMPUTER games, which are mainly of the "twitch and bitch" variety.
I want to see some discussion of games like board games, card games, classic games of strategy and tactics like chess, or go. Games for which the rules can be learned in a short amount of time and mastery requires effort. Compare this to most computer games, which have extremely steep initial learning curves that devolve into one uninteresting template for play for everyone. Which takes more skill, to win at Quake against a variety of opponents or to win at Go against a variety of opponents? Which game really offers greater variety, more possibilities of play?
Of course, those games don't interest the public any more. They're not splashy enough, with too little noise and a lack of das blinken-lights that users so love. The games require thought, an unthinkable proposition in the current era. Much easier to click madly and then winge about how the lag killed us, or the machine wasn't accepting our commands, or missing key strokes.
Heresy, I know.
Re:Katz writes about things without having 2 clues
on
Selfish Society
·
· Score: 1
> The problem is that, of course, everyone is not smart and dedicated. This isn't my problem. You're wrong. This is exactly your problem. And my problem. And the problem of virtually everyone on the planet. Because most humans don't want to believe that their problems are due to their own deficiencies, but the fault of some other entity. Those lousy geeks, for example. Yeah, they're what's wrong with the world. As for the quote, "It tolerates an alarming amount of hostility and abuse, both of which make any political communications -- at least those in public -- nearly impossible", is the author talking about Usenet or political campaign commercials? I can distinctly remember the quality of discourse and the signal to noise ratio in almost all online forums being much higher before the general public was invited onto the net. This was years before AOL, when a CompuServe account was still considered a service for mainly business use. Remember the change when AOL started providing IP access? Sure you do. The main problem with online interaction is that the engineers of the world created an open, anarchic system under the belief that ONLY PEOPLE LIKE THEMSELVES WOULD USE THE SERVICE. Yeah, I mean to emphasize that point. We all build things with the view that most people are more like us than they are unlike us. When you have a bunch of disciplined, smart, capable, well educated, well meaning people create a system they will create a system that assumes everyone will be well behaved, with infrequent and insignificant variances. The problem is that the system is no longer used almost exclusively by the builders and people like them. Anyone can access the system now. Indeed, as evidenced by the ads off commercial ISPs and reactions of the populace, these people don't value the connection the same as we do ("Internet access should be free") nor are they constrained by the same set of ethics. So the question is, how do we help these people get smart and become dedicated to something worthwhile, especially when most of them will do anything they can to avoid the hard work of self-education?
> I'm going to take your question as sincere, because I used to wonder that same thing before I got a Mac. It is sincere. I am just always surprised by the emotional reaction of people to corporations.
> The short answer is "Because their products are really, really good." I don't think it's giving away anything to people who know my login that I've worked at and for Apple several times. We all laugh when we hear blanket statements like that, and then reminisce about the GeoPod, PowerTalk, and the Performas. Happy days, happy days. And honestly, Microsoft actually has some very good things about their products too. My point is, we should not embrace corporations as an emotional choice. This is irrational thinking fostered by the beneficiaries of the corporate entities in advertising campaigns. We should consider corporations for what they actually are, a legal contrivance used to facilitate undertakings with some degree of risk. As for your anecdotal arguments, I believe that every task undertaken by some free human must have something cool about it, or the person would not have spent the effort. It's our job to find out what's cool about it so we understand what the other guy is talking about. I like AppleScript too. I just wish that there were as rich a vein of scriptable apps and shells on the Mac as there is for VBScript on Windows. Or that I didn't have to resort to MPW every time I want to emulate a linux shell script. But those things don't dissuade me from enjoying BBEdit. They just remind me that I'm lucky some indiviual out there is the driving force behind my favorite text editor, and if he ever sells BareBones to some big entity and leaves, I will have to readjust my expectations until I know how I like the work of the new owners. Not the company, but the people who run the company.
>It's little details like determining how to cater to new users that saved Apple's ass. You're kidding, of course. If you honestly believe that, explain the puck. Go ahead. We're waiting.
As for the one button argument, might I raise the existence of the "Contextual Menu API". Swear to God, that's what they named it, "ContextUAL Menus" (my emphasis added). It requires an Option click OR a Right click from a multi-button mouse. Yup, it's from Apple. Yup, it's in the MacOS. Yup, it's been around since System8 (Yeah, I know, but let's face it SystemN vs. MacOS N. The first is the cool tech way of saying it, the second is the big corporate think way. You choose your favorite.) So there's a part of the Macintosh OS that cries out for the second button. There's no wheel. There's no option for a wheel.Yeah, I know, Apple traditionally doesn't support the wheel in their mice. And International Buggy Whip doesn't usually include an automatic transmission in their buggy whips. Way to go, fellow Luddites. The button and shell is one big block of Lucite. And so far, I have heard at least a dozen people complain that this perspiration-inducing configuration makes the mouse way too slippery. I even read about one guy who pasted a piece of terry cloth over the mouse so that it wouldn't be so slippery. Of course, I know that true Mac fans are superhuman specimens that don't need to perspire. Score one for the Mac elite. The cable is too short for many folks. The cable is too short. I mean, THE FREAKING CABLE IS TOO SHORT. Good thing accounting is there to save 2 cents per unit, otherwise someone might actually enjoy using the product. For a company that prides itself on their user interface savvy, making a cable too short for comfortable use would be as stupid as, say, hypothetically, making a perfectly round mouse too small for most adults' hands and then shipping it with even their high-end products. I know, it's a silly example, nobody would ever do anything that dumb. Price is a problem. The new Apple mouse is more expensive than an equivalent mouse from another large company that has been out for many months. So, if only you were willing to wait, and give up some features, you could buy a similar optical mouse for a higher price. Umm, yeah. And the most important and most highly praised feature of all; at least it ain't the ridiculous hockey puck that all the G3 and iMac owners were stuck with. Wow. Great. Thanks a lot Apple. So are all you Apple fanatics (And could some one please explain to me how otherwise rational people can have such feelings for a corporation? Microsofties, you can provide an answer to this one as easily as any Apple fanatic.) willing to admit that Apple is capable of and has actually shipped bad product in the past?
Funny, the draw of "free" software and other incentives is exactly how Microsoft established themselves as the defacto standard for OS, word processing, and spreadsheet software. They paid for reviews, and offered "other incentives" to corporate customers and system integrators. (Lest any one think "kickback" is implied by the above, of course it is not, that would be slanderous!) This sounds an awful lot like the disingenuous "grass-roots" FUD campaign Microsoft has been running the past few years, xcept applied to Linux instead of the Justice Department.
Slashdot Mirror
Then fire those programmers and hire some engineers. Too many people claim to be able to write software, but very few know why their software works, and even fewer can articulate the rationale behind its operation.
There's a well known 80/20 rule in software development, " 20% of the people do 100% of the work. The other 80%? Try to avoid them!"
The responsibility to properly support Netscape has been abdicated by AOL. This means there is really only one browser. Which means Microsoft has succeeded in achieveing their goal of dictating the terms for internet use through domination of hte browser market, coupled with IE specific extensions provided by their development tools and servers.
As for Netscape, it is now officially a joke, in bad taste, poorly told. While just crippled by lack of support and idiotic "features" on most platforms, it is a bug-ridden crash-prone waste of disk space under Linux. Anyone saying otherwise either doesn't use it, or is a self-deluded simpleton. Is there any chance a component architecture, open source browser with support for current plug-ins and Java2 can be produced for use on linux?
And please, spare me the "XML will solve everything" idiocy.
We really know so little about the physics of biology, and even less about dinosaurs. While this is an interesting theory, I don't think it's any kind of proof.
How do they explain giraffes?
>>not simply flexing big muscles (the government is supposed to have laws against that) ;)
BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!
Damn your funny
Close but no cigar. ;)
The original credit for reverse engineering the PC BIOS goes to Phoenix.
But it's good to know that people are still herd animals and prefer to believe advertisements over history. Makes it easier for the DNC and RNC to control you
Clearly the previous respondent cannot tell a stack crawl from a core dump.
In fact, any stories not directly related to Aqua or Mach on OS X should be posted as BSD.
Credit where credit is due. You listening Apple?
Clearly the man is deluded.
This is the same sort of foolishness one hears from Mac bigots and programmers who have never touched anything but the Mac API, so much so that the article could be considered trolling, if I thought the author knew better.
Indeed, I would state flatly that the MacOS has never been a complete operating system, as it is entirely dependent on the presence of the Finder, which is the Macintosh shell. In a correct and complete operating system, a single shell should not be a critical part of the execution of the operating system.
As for OS X, big deal. Apple bought Next, took BSD, slapped a different kernel under it, and an inelegant and inconsistent interface on top of it. Yes, the interface is inconsistent. Look at an application type entity in the file browser and look at the listing for the app and tell me they aren't completely different. A recipe for disaster for Macintosh users, as one of the chief reasons for the simplicity of the Mac over other OSes is that users could easily relate files to their functions.
Apple should have bought Be, it's exactly what they needed. It is single-user based, as the Mac would like to be. It has access to most important tools. And it doesn't introduce what is certain to be the confusion caused by the implicit demands of a Unix system. As the average Mac fanatic cannot bear to admit that they're wrong, they will learn an exciting, modern interface, the command line!
As for Aqua, I don't understand how any one who has used the BeOS or OS/2 could consider the Aqua interface anything but an inelegant, indulgent, wasteful bit of eye candy. The dock is of dubious usefulness, especially if you handle many tasks simultaneously, the single window button (I undersand it has been removed) is a poorly written joke in bad taste, and the inert Apple icon is more annoying than a banner ad.
If people are honest with themselves, the Macintosh OS X, as currently constituted, is inferior to other currently available products in every area of computational utility. If you want to run a server, go with one of the tested, tried and true flavors of BSD or Linux. If you want productivity tools use Windows or Linux. If you want to play the latest games, Windows is the only way to go. If you're a developer it's really hard to beat MSDev or the traditional dev tools available on Linux. And if you want a truly elegant and functional GUI give BeOS a try. And if you want to run a Macintosh application, like Final Cut, then stick to OS9.
BTW, I think I'm allowed to criticize Mac fans, as I have owned a Mac since the Macintosh SE and have even worked at the mothership several times. I don't hate the MAcintosh, it's just another tool to be used. What I do dislike is people who twist the facts to suit their own personal biases, or worse still, people who speak on subjects of which they clearly have little understanding.
Go back to school Mr. Every.
>Dare I say it? There are *conservatives* amoungst you! Conservatives who are server side Java programmers! Who use linux! And who read slashdot!
Who don't know how to spell! I don't expect perfect spelling, and typos are a natural and frequent occurence, but any one who writes aboout politics and spells it "P-O-L-O-T-I-C-S" deserves to be ridiculed in the cruelest and most inhuman manner possible.
Go back to the paddock where it's safe, foolish ewe.
>I don't see how you interpret that any other way?
Easy, just belong to one or the other major party and any such nuisance as facts or quotes suddenly become open to even the most assinine interpretations.
I don't think browsing the web is any more harmful than watching tv or reading a book. What is harmful is the startling notion that Americans have developed that children should have all the rights and privileges of adults.
What are we doing when we as parents by expensive equipment and then give it to children to play with unsupervised? I don't just mean computers, but all of the big ticket items that used to be clearly for adults only; automobiles, stock portfolios, telephones, you get the idea. How many sixteen year old children do you know that not only have access to these things, but also have these things for their own personal use. To me, this is the source of insanity. It's like unlocking the safety on a primed fire arm and handing it to a chimp. Here ChimChim, go nuts.
Children have no place using, much less owning, such things without training and supervision. If you as the parent don't have time to provide that supervision, then hire someone who can provide the proper guidance for the desired tool. If you can't do that, then educate yourself so you can educate your child. If this is still not feasible, then too bad. Do without. It will probably help reduce your irresponsible amount of debt.
the Simpsons did. They started the trend of recording a tv show in the studio instead of performing it live. Of course, a live performance of the Simpsons might put a terrible strain on the animators' wrists.
In fact, they are nowhere near their original schedule.
Guess Malone is right, Macolytes have long term memory loss.
Every time I see a mention of "games" I get excited and think it's an article about games. No such luck. It almost always turns out to be an article about COMPUTER games, which are mainly of the "twitch and bitch" variety.
I want to see some discussion of games like board games, card games, classic games of strategy and tactics like chess, or go. Games for which the rules can be learned in a short amount of time and mastery requires effort. Compare this to most computer games, which have extremely steep initial learning curves that devolve into one uninteresting template for play for everyone. Which takes more skill, to win at Quake against a variety of opponents or to win at Go against a variety of opponents? Which game really offers greater variety, more possibilities of play?
Of course, those games don't interest the public any more. They're not splashy enough, with too little noise and a lack of das blinken-lights that users so love. The games require thought, an unthinkable proposition in the current era. Much easier to click madly and then winge about how the lag killed us, or the machine wasn't accepting our commands, or missing key strokes.
Heresy, I know.
> The problem is that, of course, everyone is not smart and dedicated. This isn't my problem.
You're wrong. This is exactly your problem. And my problem. And the problem of virtually everyone on the planet.
Because most humans don't want to believe that their problems are due to their own deficiencies, but the fault of some other entity. Those lousy geeks, for example. Yeah, they're what's wrong with the world.
As for the quote, "It tolerates an alarming amount of hostility and abuse, both of which make any political communications -- at least those in public -- nearly impossible", is the author talking about Usenet or political campaign commercials?
I can distinctly remember the quality of discourse and the signal to noise ratio in almost all online forums being much higher before the general public was invited onto the net. This was years before AOL, when a CompuServe account was still considered a service for mainly business use. Remember the change when AOL started providing IP access? Sure you do.
The main problem with online interaction is that the engineers of the world created an open, anarchic system under the belief that ONLY PEOPLE LIKE THEMSELVES WOULD USE THE SERVICE. Yeah, I mean to emphasize that point. We all build things with the view that most people are more like us than they are unlike us. When you have a bunch of disciplined, smart, capable, well educated, well meaning people create a system they will create a system that assumes everyone will be well behaved, with infrequent and insignificant variances. The problem is that the system is no longer used almost exclusively by the builders and people like them. Anyone can access the system now. Indeed, as evidenced by the ads off commercial ISPs and reactions of the populace, these people don't value the connection the same as we do ("Internet access should be free") nor are they constrained by the same set of ethics.
So the question is, how do we help these people get smart and become dedicated to something worthwhile, especially when most of them will do anything they can to avoid the hard work of self-education?
> I'm going to take your question as sincere, because I used to wonder that same thing before I got a Mac.
It is sincere. I am just always surprised by the emotional reaction of people to corporations.
> The short answer is "Because their products are really, really good."
I don't think it's giving away anything to people who know my login that I've worked at and for Apple several times. We all laugh when we hear blanket statements like that, and then reminisce about the GeoPod, PowerTalk, and the Performas. Happy days, happy days.
And honestly, Microsoft actually has some very good things about their products too.
My point is, we should not embrace corporations as an emotional choice. This is irrational thinking fostered by the beneficiaries of the corporate entities in advertising campaigns. We should consider corporations for what they actually are, a legal contrivance used to facilitate undertakings with some degree of risk.
As for your anecdotal arguments, I believe that every task undertaken by some free human must have something cool about it, or the person would not have spent the effort. It's our job to find out what's cool about it so we understand what the other guy is talking about. I like AppleScript too. I just wish that there were as rich a vein of scriptable apps and shells on the Mac as there is for VBScript on Windows. Or that I didn't have to resort to MPW every time I want to emulate a linux shell script. But those things don't dissuade me from enjoying BBEdit. They just remind me that I'm lucky some indiviual out there is the driving force behind my favorite text editor, and if he ever sells BareBones to some big entity and leaves, I will have to readjust my expectations until I know how I like the work of the new owners. Not the company, but the people who run the company.
>It's little details like determining how to cater to new users that saved Apple's ass. You're kidding, of course. If you honestly believe that, explain the puck. Go ahead. We're waiting.
As for the one button argument, might I raise the existence of the "Contextual Menu API". Swear to God, that's what they named it, "ContextUAL Menus" (my emphasis added). It requires an Option click OR a Right click from a multi-button mouse. Yup, it's from Apple. Yup, it's in the MacOS. Yup, it's been around since System8 (Yeah, I know, but let's face it SystemN vs. MacOS N. The first is the cool tech way of saying it, the second is the big corporate think way. You choose your favorite.) So there's a part of the Macintosh OS that cries out for the second button. There's no wheel. There's no option for a wheel.Yeah, I know, Apple traditionally doesn't support the wheel in their mice. And International Buggy Whip doesn't usually include an automatic transmission in their buggy whips. Way to go, fellow Luddites. The button and shell is one big block of Lucite. And so far, I have heard at least a dozen people complain that this perspiration-inducing configuration makes the mouse way too slippery. I even read about one guy who pasted a piece of terry cloth over the mouse so that it wouldn't be so slippery. Of course, I know that true Mac fans are superhuman specimens that don't need to perspire. Score one for the Mac elite. The cable is too short for many folks. The cable is too short. I mean, THE FREAKING CABLE IS TOO SHORT. Good thing accounting is there to save 2 cents per unit, otherwise someone might actually enjoy using the product. For a company that prides itself on their user interface savvy, making a cable too short for comfortable use would be as stupid as, say, hypothetically, making a perfectly round mouse too small for most adults' hands and then shipping it with even their high-end products. I know, it's a silly example, nobody would ever do anything that dumb. Price is a problem. The new Apple mouse is more expensive than an equivalent mouse from another large company that has been out for many months. So, if only you were willing to wait, and give up some features, you could buy a similar optical mouse for a higher price. Umm, yeah. And the most important and most highly praised feature of all; at least it ain't the ridiculous hockey puck that all the G3 and iMac owners were stuck with. Wow. Great. Thanks a lot Apple. So are all you Apple fanatics (And could some one please explain to me how otherwise rational people can have such feelings for a corporation? Microsofties, you can provide an answer to this one as easily as any Apple fanatic.) willing to admit that Apple is capable of and has actually shipped bad product in the past?
Funny, the draw of "free" software and other incentives is exactly how Microsoft established themselves as the defacto standard for OS, word processing, and spreadsheet software. They paid for reviews, and offered "other incentives" to corporate customers and system integrators. (Lest any one think "kickback" is implied by the above, of course it is not, that would be slanderous!) This sounds an awful lot like the disingenuous "grass-roots" FUD campaign Microsoft has been running the past few years, xcept applied to Linux instead of the Justice Department.