It's not my argument that's flawed, it's your limited understanding of what the word Monoply means. Look it up. We'll wait.
I'm fully aware of what monopoly means, though Monoply doesn't seem to be at all relevant to this conversation. Furthermore, you have failed to suggest any part of the definition of monopoly that I have misunderstood.
I'm not saying anything more or less, "Apple computer has a monoploy on producing computers that can run the Macintosh OS."
Agreed, but this is a pointless statement. Microsoft have a monopoly on Windows. Apple computers are an Apple product, just as Windows is a Microsoft product. Thus, it is nonsensical to say that Apple has a monopoly on producing computers that can run the Macintosh OS because it effectively boils down to saying that Apple has a monopoly on Apple products. Thus, it is still a misuse of the term monopoly because you are essentially using a nonsensical statement to introduce a word with heavy negative connotations into the argument, effectively setting up a straw man.
That's what I get for trying to extend an annology. Nice job ripping it to shreds. My point was the software, and that's what I was reaching for (obviously without success) with the garage, gas and wheel.
No, your whole argument is flawed, not just the analogy you're using. There are some things about every product area where different products are incompatible. Fords and VWs use different tyres, parts etc, coke comes in a different bottle to Mountain Dew - it's called product differentiation. Where I work we develop an HTML editing component, we aren't a monopoly but we are not compatible with our competitors API. You either invest in one or the other, and go with it.
The same thing applies with Mac vs PC, they are both in the same product category and compete with each other, but they are incompatible. You pick one and go with it - if you decide to change you have to deal with the incompatibilities.
If Apple were a monopoly then you would never hear about them competing with anyone, because in a monopoly you don't have (noteworthy) competition. In this case though, Apple competes with Dell in the education arena, Microsoft in the OS arena and the combination of Microsoft and $PC_MAKER in the computer arena. Heck, they just launched a series of ads which highlight why Mac is better than Microsoft. If Apple has a monopoly, why are they so keen on competing with Microsoft?
Finally, note that Microsoft has a monopoly because of their size and market dominance, so while there is some competition from Apple and Linux it is deemed insignificant under US law. Apple obviously does not have a large market share (5% is not large) and so don't have a monopoly.
M$, for better or worse, made it popular on the desktop.
Erm, again, no they didn't. It was extremely popular when Apple produced it. MS jumped on the band wagon in order to keep up with consumer demand. Same with USB, wireless networking, video editing, the internet etc, etc. Biggest does not mean industry leader.
The FILE menu, and the Min/Max/Close buttons. Everything else derives from those. They provide a common location for common operations, across applications.
You do realise that's almost a direct quote from the Apple Human Interface Guidelines right? That's not something MS did, that's something Apple did, and continues to do much better than MS. With this in mind the rest of your article falls over as well.
The test is really simple actually. Take a page out of a novel, textbook or similar - it should have very few symbols other than normal punctuation . Then set an egg timer for 5 minutes. Type as much of the page as you can in five minutes, if you reach the bottom go back to the top and keep typing, don't stop to turn the page. When the five minutes is up, count up the total number of characters you typed, divide by five to get the number of words and divide by five again to get your words per minute.
Now, go through and find the number of mistakes you made and divide it by the number of words you typed (note that's words not characters, anymore than 2 mistakes in one words count as just 2 mistakes). If your accuracy is anything less than 98% you fail the test and the speed should be ignored.
Most people tend to find that typing fast is simple but typing fast and accurately is actually very difficult. BTW, you do get to use the delete key these days but it slows you down dramatically so try to avoid it.
I also do the "advanced hunt and peck", and my wrists never bother me.. maybe touch typing should be banned.. I type faster than everyone I know who does the touch type method.
Do you type faster or do your hands move faster? Seriously, how many words per minute can you type? I know a lot of very good hunt and peckers and they don't come anywhere near close to any reasonable touch-typist. The difference is of course far greater when typing out written text becuase hunt and peckers have to switch between read and type modes all the time.
I would agree however that touch typing does increase your susceptibility to RSI purely because you do the same kind of movements all the time, but also because poor posture and seating arrangements affect you more with touch typing (it's much harder to adjust the actions to a keyboard that's to high for example). That's why the first thing you are taught in a good typing class is good posture and to take regular breaks. Unfortunatly, most people are well-trained touch typists.
A better choice would be to use OpenLDAP, as Mac OS X is designed to pull directory service info from an LDAP data source. Windows systems can also pull from a LDAP, as can Linux and *BSD and Solaris and so on.
Now what about when there's a laptop in the mix? It would be simple to flag specific files as "current" and have them copy over the laptop regularly (use rsync and do an update just before leaving), but what about user accounts? How easy is it to have the laptop use a remote NetInfo or LDAP server when available but use a local one when on the road or plugged into a remote network? Obviously the local one would have to sync to the real one regularly as well.
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MP3 quality is a far cry from CD quality, afterall.
Well, not really. On a good quality sound system, MP3 is a far cry from CD quality - on an average sound system to average people, it's pretty much the same. I suspect that a very large majority of people would fail blind tests judging between MP3s and CDs playing on their own sound system. Heck, most people would fail when played on a top quality sound system - they listen to Britney Spears for goodness sake!:)
The figures that I had heard was that solar cells took about 25 years to achieve payback in costs, so I suppose the question is how many hidden costs there are, and what the average lifetime of the solar cell is.
There are no real extra hidden costs and the warranty on all parts is for 20-25 years. Hence, solar panels do not pay off unless they are subsidized in some way.
Elemental Power in Australia is putting solar panels throughout schools as a educational move and it just pays off because of a Government subsidy and is justified in the business sense by the goodwill and PR it generates. That's about the only way you'll see solar panels in schools at the moment.
Naturally though, the costs are dropping slowly and efficiency is gaining. The most cost effective panels at the moment are about 2% efficient and the top of the line is about 8% efficient.
So hardware will slow it's advance...good. Maybe more attention will be paid to software efficiency. A couple of years of progress on the software-speed side will be ORGASMICALLY great when a new hardware technology comes into play.
A lot of people are saying that stopping/slowing hardware advances would improve software - it won't. The proof is in the gaming area - they optimise it as far as possible while still making the game profitable and they need the latest hardware all the time.
The reality is that software has aquired a whole heap of extra features that we take for granted and they take up space. There is no reason to want highly optimised code because it limits what is financially viable to develop. Optimisation is hard, takes time and costs a heck of a lot of money, there would be a lot less software out there if it had to be fully optimised to be usable.
In short, just because you think you're "l33t" by optimising your code so it runs on a 286, you're just wasting your time because computers are fast enough to not need that. Look at the amount of processor cycles donated to projects like Seti@Home - there is no need to optimise code, so stop whinging.
Slowing the hardware improvement cycle will just slow/stop the innovations in software. The first place it will hit is scientific areas, then the gaming arena and it will hit the average user because the cool high-end stuff just won't trickle down to them (like video editing has recently done).
Have your finance people taken into account that the majority of the employees know Microsoft products fairly well and would have to be retrained for such a migration.
Microsoft licences are an ongoing expense that is continually growing. Training is a once off cost. Even if it takes 5 years for the savings to pay off the training, a business is expected to continue indefinitely, hence the move will be worthwhile. Long term view of things is difficult for companies but not impossible.
If some black-hat hackers were stealthily distributing CDs designed to exploit the CD standards to make mechanisms fail, you'd probably say these guys were crooks. But if Sony does the exact same thing, it's the PC manufacturer's fault? Besides, Apple didn't design a one of their CD mechanisms, they are all third-party, and PC drives can be damaged too.
And guess who makes a lot of those CD drives? That's right, it's Sony.... Not sure what's in the new systems, but my B&W G3 came with a Sony CD Rom, my TiBook has a Matshita drive though.
Yeah, while we're at it, let's outlaw web browsers as file managers all together. We should pull them from MacOSX,
Mac OS X does *not* have an integrated browser at all. IE is just a normal application on OS X and can be uninstalled by dragging it to the trash. If you look around you'll see there's a huge amount of competition in the browser market. Mozilla, IE, Chimera, Opera, OmniWeb and a few others are all being used by significant numbers of people.
18 is an extremely common age around the world for these kinds of things and for a good reason. It's not that noone is mature enough to deal with them at 15, in fact perhaps even the majority of people are mature enough at 15, but the law is to protect everyone. Thus, it becomes a trade off between the percentage of people who are left unprotected and the limiting effect it has. It is generally agreed that at 18yrs an acceptable percentage of children are mature enough to make these kinds of decisions.
In some cases though (for example driving) both the required amount of maturity and the acceptable percentage may change. As it turns out you don't need to be incredibly mature to drive a car because people are pretty quick to learn that car accidents are worth avoiding. (Hooligans will be hooligans and many/most of them are not new to driving). So the driving age is lower in America (and Australia where it's 17).
With alcohol, I would agree that 21 is too late as it tends to become too limiting, thus actually increasing the problems again (rebellious attitudes etc). However, such speculation is probably best left to trained experts rather than my simple musings. I'll just stick to interpreting the statistics.:)
In fact, all types of crime (violent and non-violent) continue to go down and so does teen drug use and suicide.
You must be a city slicker...:) I don't know about crime rates and drug use, but teen suicide is on the increase big time. Particularly so in rural areas of Australia. You're right that the media sensationalises things but that doesn't mean that nothing is changing. Go look at the figures and perhaps even go live in the real world where these problems exist before you claim there's nothing wrong.
These cameras, at least as operated in San Diego, are a scam.
Correct, the problem here is the way they are implemented - by a corporation - not the cameras themselves. All of the complaints in the article relate to specific areas and methods of implementing the cameras, not the idea of using cameras. In Australia the camera's work extremely well and don't suffer from any of these problems.
It'd just be so much cheaper (for bad drivers) to get rid of the cameras though wouldn't it? Fact is, there is no reason to go through a red light - fullstop. If the yellow isn't long enough get into the habit of slowing down as you approach green lights so that it is long enough and don't try to rush through the yellow. It's all simple defensive driving techniques.
So you'd rather have a fine-based deterrent system rather than an engineering solution to the problem?
Exactly how do you engineer a solution to stop people going through red lights? Have a big wall jump up when it goes red? Traffic lights were an engineering solution to controlling intersections in the first place. Red light cameras are an engineering problem of not being able to have someone constantly monitor whether or not people obey the road rules.
Nifty features are useful once you take the time to get used to them but they are annoying if you don't want to take the time to use them just to send an email or something simple.
Simple things should be simple. It doesn't matter what nifty things you add, keep the simple things simple. Colours should be configured to soothe your eyes by default (graphic artists have been doing this with their work for a long time - or not doing it if that better suits the purpose, but it is possible). You don't need to make software difficult to incorporate more complex features.
You should be able to configure the number of virtual desktops you have by dynamically creating them as they are requested. Virtual desktops shouldn't get in the way of new users who don't want them though.
Why can't programers apply a technical solution to this problem? Let the user configure the UI! It's not that difficult. If the user wants to use Ctrl-J for "Delete The Character To The Left Of The Cursor", let them! What's the problem? If they want "Page Layout" under the Bozo menu, let them put it there. What's the harm in giving us the option?
Because then the user would have to learn and take the time to configure the program before it is of any use to them. A couple of quick changes doesn't hurt but having to reconfigure the entire UI is just ludicrous. You should design a good UI from the beginning so it doesn't need to be changed. You don't assemble the dash board of every car you use before you drive it, why should you with software either?
Natural language is also based on common human traits
Nope, natural language evolved over centuries and many exceptionally varied cultures - at no point was it based upon scientific research into what was best/easiest for people (just look at the mess we call English for proof). Foreign languages are difficult because you have to learn them and language is a very difficult thing to learn (far more so than computing). That is also why people disagree about which interface is better - because they are more used to the one they like. This however does not mean that the one they like is actually more efficient/better for them but rather that they should spend some time learning the better interface.
Basically any time people disagree about which interface is better (other than in very superficial matters), one of them is wrong.
Even the above post seems to assume that UI decisions should be based on some sort of a democracy where everyone gets a voice
In what way does "let experts in the area choose it" suggest that non-experts get a say? The entire point was that you need experts making UI decisions so that they get it right....
Otherwise your point is correct, you need to do some research into the area of UI design before you can reliably create good UIs.
the generally snobby 'RTFM, dumbass' attitude that is ingrained in many OSS programmers.
Every time you hear someone tell a user to 'RTFM', note the question down as an area of your app that you think is good but probably needs to have a UI redesign. The more the question is asked the more it needs a UI redesign.
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I'm fully aware of what monopoly means, though Monoply doesn't seem to be at all relevant to this conversation. Furthermore, you have failed to suggest any part of the definition of monopoly that I have misunderstood.
I'm not saying anything more or less, "Apple computer has a monoploy on producing computers that can run the Macintosh OS."
Agreed, but this is a pointless statement. Microsoft have a monopoly on Windows. Apple computers are an Apple product, just as Windows is a Microsoft product. Thus, it is nonsensical to say that Apple has a monopoly on producing computers that can run the Macintosh OS because it effectively boils down to saying that Apple has a monopoly on Apple products. Thus, it is still a misuse of the term monopoly because you are essentially using a nonsensical statement to introduce a word with heavy negative connotations into the argument, effectively setting up a straw man.
No, your whole argument is flawed, not just the analogy you're using. There are some things about every product area where different products are incompatible. Fords and VWs use different tyres, parts etc, coke comes in a different bottle to Mountain Dew - it's called product differentiation. Where I work we develop an HTML editing component, we aren't a monopoly but we are not compatible with our competitors API. You either invest in one or the other, and go with it.
The same thing applies with Mac vs PC, they are both in the same product category and compete with each other, but they are incompatible. You pick one and go with it - if you decide to change you have to deal with the incompatibilities.
If Apple were a monopoly then you would never hear about them competing with anyone, because in a monopoly you don't have (noteworthy) competition. In this case though, Apple competes with Dell in the education arena, Microsoft in the OS arena and the combination of Microsoft and $PC_MAKER in the computer arena. Heck, they just launched a series of ads which highlight why Mac is better than Microsoft. If Apple has a monopoly, why are they so keen on competing with Microsoft?
Finally, note that Microsoft has a monopoly because of their size and market dominance, so while there is some competition from Apple and Linux it is deemed insignificant under US law. Apple obviously does not have a large market share (5% is not large) and so don't have a monopoly.
Erm, again, no they didn't. It was extremely popular when Apple produced it. MS jumped on the band wagon in order to keep up with consumer demand. Same with USB, wireless networking, video editing, the internet etc, etc. Biggest does not mean industry leader.
You do realise that's almost a direct quote from the Apple Human Interface Guidelines right? That's not something MS did, that's something Apple did, and continues to do much better than MS. With this in mind the rest of your article falls over as well.
Now, go through and find the number of mistakes you made and divide it by the number of words you typed (note that's words not characters, anymore than 2 mistakes in one words count as just 2 mistakes). If your accuracy is anything less than 98% you fail the test and the speed should be ignored.
Most people tend to find that typing fast is simple but typing fast and accurately is actually very difficult. BTW, you do get to use the delete key these days but it slows you down dramatically so try to avoid it.
Do you type faster or do your hands move faster? Seriously, how many words per minute can you type? I know a lot of very good hunt and peckers and they don't come anywhere near close to any reasonable touch-typist. The difference is of course far greater when typing out written text becuase hunt and peckers have to switch between read and type modes all the time.
I would agree however that touch typing does increase your susceptibility to RSI purely because you do the same kind of movements all the time, but also because poor posture and seating arrangements affect you more with touch typing (it's much harder to adjust the actions to a keyboard that's to high for example). That's why the first thing you are taught in a good typing class is good posture and to take regular breaks. Unfortunatly, most people are well-trained touch typists.
Now what about when there's a laptop in the mix? It would be simple to flag specific files as "current" and have them copy over the laptop regularly (use rsync and do an update just before leaving), but what about user accounts? How easy is it to have the laptop use a remote NetInfo or LDAP server when available but use a local one when on the road or plugged into a remote network? Obviously the local one would have to sync to the real one regularly as well.
Well, not really. On a good quality sound system, MP3 is a far cry from CD quality - on an average sound system to average people, it's pretty much the same. I suspect that a very large majority of people would fail blind tests judging between MP3s and CDs playing on their own sound system. Heck, most people would fail when played on a top quality sound system - they listen to Britney Spears for goodness sake! :)
There are no real extra hidden costs and the warranty on all parts is for 20-25 years. Hence, solar panels do not pay off unless they are subsidized in some way.
Elemental Power in Australia is putting solar panels throughout schools as a educational move and it just pays off because of a Government subsidy and is justified in the business sense by the goodwill and PR it generates. That's about the only way you'll see solar panels in schools at the moment.
Naturally though, the costs are dropping slowly and efficiency is gaining. The most cost effective panels at the moment are about 2% efficient and the top of the line is about 8% efficient.
A lot of people are saying that stopping/slowing hardware advances would improve software - it won't. The proof is in the gaming area - they optimise it as far as possible while still making the game profitable and they need the latest hardware all the time.
The reality is that software has aquired a whole heap of extra features that we take for granted and they take up space. There is no reason to want highly optimised code because it limits what is financially viable to develop. Optimisation is hard, takes time and costs a heck of a lot of money, there would be a lot less software out there if it had to be fully optimised to be usable.
In short, just because you think you're "l33t" by optimising your code so it runs on a 286, you're just wasting your time because computers are fast enough to not need that. Look at the amount of processor cycles donated to projects like Seti@Home - there is no need to optimise code, so stop whinging.
Slowing the hardware improvement cycle will just slow/stop the innovations in software. The first place it will hit is scientific areas, then the gaming arena and it will hit the average user because the cool high-end stuff just won't trickle down to them (like video editing has recently done).
Microsoft licences are an ongoing expense that is continually growing. Training is a once off cost. Even if it takes 5 years for the savings to pay off the training, a business is expected to continue indefinitely, hence the move will be worthwhile. Long term view of things is difficult for companies but not impossible.
And guess who makes a lot of those CD drives? That's right, it's Sony.... Not sure what's in the new systems, but my B&W G3 came with a Sony CD Rom, my TiBook has a Matshita drive though.
I don't believe there was ever a plan to make a browser-type finder, but I could be wrong. I didn't follow the original Copeland project much.
Mac OS X does *not* have an integrated browser at all. IE is just a normal application on OS X and can be uninstalled by dragging it to the trash. If you look around you'll see there's a huge amount of competition in the browser market. Mozilla, IE, Chimera, Opera, OmniWeb and a few others are all being used by significant numbers of people.
Sheesh.
18 is an extremely common age around the world for these kinds of things and for a good reason. It's not that noone is mature enough to deal with them at 15, in fact perhaps even the majority of people are mature enough at 15, but the law is to protect everyone. Thus, it becomes a trade off between the percentage of people who are left unprotected and the limiting effect it has. It is generally agreed that at 18yrs an acceptable percentage of children are mature enough to make these kinds of decisions.
In some cases though (for example driving) both the required amount of maturity and the acceptable percentage may change. As it turns out you don't need to be incredibly mature to drive a car because people are pretty quick to learn that car accidents are worth avoiding. (Hooligans will be hooligans and many/most of them are not new to driving). So the driving age is lower in America (and Australia where it's 17).
With alcohol, I would agree that 21 is too late as it tends to become too limiting, thus actually increasing the problems again (rebellious attitudes etc). However, such speculation is probably best left to trained experts rather than my simple musings. I'll just stick to interpreting the statistics. :)
You must be a city slicker... :) I don't know about crime rates and drug use, but teen suicide is on the increase big time. Particularly so in rural areas of Australia. You're right that the media sensationalises things but that doesn't mean that nothing is changing. Go look at the figures and perhaps even go live in the real world where these problems exist before you claim there's nothing wrong.
That said, you are right.
Correct, the problem here is the way they are implemented - by a corporation - not the cameras themselves. All of the complaints in the article relate to specific areas and methods of implementing the cameras, not the idea of using cameras. In Australia the camera's work extremely well and don't suffer from any of these problems.
It'd just be so much cheaper (for bad drivers) to get rid of the cameras though wouldn't it? Fact is, there is no reason to go through a red light - fullstop. If the yellow isn't long enough get into the habit of slowing down as you approach green lights so that it is long enough and don't try to rush through the yellow. It's all simple defensive driving techniques.
Exactly how do you engineer a solution to stop people going through red lights? Have a big wall jump up when it goes red? Traffic lights were an engineering solution to controlling intersections in the first place. Red light cameras are an engineering problem of not being able to have someone constantly monitor whether or not people obey the road rules.
Simple things should be simple. It doesn't matter what nifty things you add, keep the simple things simple. Colours should be configured to soothe your eyes by default (graphic artists have been doing this with their work for a long time - or not doing it if that better suits the purpose, but it is possible). You don't need to make software difficult to incorporate more complex features.
You should be able to configure the number of virtual desktops you have by dynamically creating them as they are requested. Virtual desktops shouldn't get in the way of new users who don't want them though.
Because then the user would have to learn and take the time to configure the program before it is of any use to them. A couple of quick changes doesn't hurt but having to reconfigure the entire UI is just ludicrous. You should design a good UI from the beginning so it doesn't need to be changed. You don't assemble the dash board of every car you use before you drive it, why should you with software either?
Nope, natural language evolved over centuries and many exceptionally varied cultures - at no point was it based upon scientific research into what was best/easiest for people (just look at the mess we call English for proof). Foreign languages are difficult because you have to learn them and language is a very difficult thing to learn (far more so than computing). That is also why people disagree about which interface is better - because they are more used to the one they like. This however does not mean that the one they like is actually more efficient/better for them but rather that they should spend some time learning the better interface.
Basically any time people disagree about which interface is better (other than in very superficial matters), one of them is wrong.
In what way does "let experts in the area choose it" suggest that non-experts get a say? The entire point was that you need experts making UI decisions so that they get it right....
Otherwise your point is correct, you need to do some research into the area of UI design before you can reliably create good UIs.
Every time you hear someone tell a user to 'RTFM', note the question down as an area of your app that you think is good but probably needs to have a UI redesign. The more the question is asked the more it needs a UI redesign.