Wow, such a well thought out and reasoned argument. I especially like your empirical facts. Yes, that's sarcasm.
I recall a presentation made by Microsoft that suggested that almost twice as many new features were added to Word and Excel between Word 97 and Word 2007. The large number of new features was one of the reasons that Microsoft chose to abandon standard menus, as standard menus just didn't scale.
This isn't quite the presentation I remember, but it has some good statistics on slides 27 and 28.
Word 97 had 200 Menu items, and office 2003 had almost 300 (not sure how many items 2007 and 2010 have, but likely a lot more). While also adding almost 20 Task Panes and nearly almost 20 toolbars. That's toolbars, not buttons on the toolbars.
So, sorry.. No, Word 2010 does not have 99% of the features that Word 97 had. Not even close.
It's fine to write lean and high performant code in a small application with a single developer. Once you have teams of people working on something, then you have to worry about something called "Maintainability". According to various studies, 80% of a piece of softwares total lifetime cost is maintenance and support costs. Nobody wants that to be come 90 or 95 or even 99% because people wrote code that others coudn't understand very easily.
Standardized frameworks, patterns, and components improve codes maintainability, often times at the cost of decreased performance. The idea is that hardware gets faster over time anyways, so you can write more features in less time with lower support costs.
I'm not trying to call you a liar, but I find your claim of 95/98 hardware very hard to believe. I don't know of a single Windows 95 machine that could support more than 64MB of memory, most were 32MB max. And 98 computers were not much better. I don't think you can even install Ubuntu on a 32 or 64MB machine. And, even if you did, X11 typically needs that much memory alone to function.
If you're not using a GUI at all, then the point is rather moot.
Except, of course, when the software with the vulnerability is already running as root or SYSTEM. Perhaps the flaw is even in the kernel (which happens from time to time).
Seriously, the execute bit argument is stupid. If someone sends a user an attachment of lady gaga nude, they're going to set the damn execute bit to view it. And malware can be malware even if it runs as the user (it can still send tons of spam and be used as part of a zombie network to DDoS people, it can still rape your address book and mail itself to everyone).
Yes, and I learned so much about city planning from Sim City. I should put that on my resume and become apply for a civil engineering job.
Come off it. You can't just look at a piece of metal and know what it's tensile strength is, how much load it can withstand, or how load over time will affect it. You have to know the composition of the metal, and all the varying factors that affect it to calculate those things.
That's how software evolves and becomes stable. At some point, people have to start USING it, and by using it, you shake out the bugs and the product becomes stronger overall. In particular, this is how a lot of Linux software becomes mature. Think back to when PulseAudio was released. Many people had the same arguments.
Software only becomes mature through use by more than just the developers and a handful of beta testers.
More than likely, Motorola, HTC, and Samsung already have patent cross licensing with Microsoft. B&N does not have the years of previous experience that might have lead to such deals.
B&N seems to be trying to claim that enforcing ones patents is an anti-trust violation, but patents are government sanctioned monopolies so that's a ridiculous argument. They seem to be throwing everything at the wall and hoping something sticks.
"I didn't do this, your honor, and if I did I wasn't in my right mind, and if i was I was probably drunk and if I wasn't I was under duress and if I wasn't then nobody saw me do it, and if they did you can't prove it, and if you can I will yell, and if you ignore me or sanction me I will cry."
Outlook has always done this, even before the ribbon. When you're in calendar mode, the old outlook toolbar removed the new message icon.
If you really want a new message, you can click "New Items" and from the dropdown choose "Email Message". In the old outlook you had to do File->New->Email Message.
This really has nothing to do with the Ribbon, but how Outlook was and still is designed. Arguably, the "New Email Message" function in calendar mode is easier than it was in the old outlook.
While that's true of CPU components, it's not true of things like Power Supplies which expend a great deal of heat. Older computers drew a lot of electricity as well. 1992 hardware was likely a 486 of some sort, possibly clock doubled or tripled (which ran a bit hotter as well).
I frequently use the same function repeatedly, insert tables for instance. Or insert graph. I seldom find myself clicking on a different tab and only using one function on that tab.
Yes, you have to go to that tab first, but then it stays on that tab, unlike a menu which will close if you happen to move your mouse to the wrong position.
I'm still not following you about the top left. Ribbon buttons start from the top left as well and move right. What's your point?
You do know that you can see the shortcut menus in the ribbon just by pressing alt, right?
Can you give an example of this behavior in Outlook? Most of the time when the ribbon changes, its because the context has changed, and the buttons that were there previously don't make any sense. Like having a "Forward" button in task view.
It's hard to believe that the hardware kept working for 19 years, particularly the hard drives, but just as surprising the power supply (which tends to suck in so much dust and lint that they eventually die from overheating). The cooling fans also tend to give up the ghost after about 5 years as well.
I'm more interested in how you backed up the server to USB when all of the computers were made before USB ports existed.
What if the functions you need to repeat aren't the most common? You're going to create a toolbar button for something you need to use 3 times in a row one time?
The menus under the ribbons are one level deep, not multiple submenus. And, the most common function is the default action. All this is easy for even the dextrously challenged.
I have no idea what you mean by "Menus tend to cluster at the top right". That doesn't even make sense. Menus are everywhere. Top left, top right, top middle, within menus, etc..
Menus are not scalable. Adding more functions, and each new release of Office does, means more menus. It's to the point that there are literally hundreds of commands in Office 2003 that don't even have menu items. You have to bind them to key combinations, or create new menus if you want to use them.
Hey, that makes sense.. except that you forgot several releases to make your argument hold water.
It was more like Win95->NT4->Win98->Win98SE->Windows 2000->WinME->XP->XPSP2->Vista->7
Of those, NT4 was pretty solid, as were both Windows 98's. WIndows 2000 was very solid, and WinME was only a stopgap (it was never planned to exist, but they had to release a newer OS to OEM's to support more recent hardware. They had originally planned for Win2000 to replace 98SE, but that didn't happen. XP SP2 was basically a complete overhaul of the OS, certainly a lot more of a change than 98SE was from 98. It was several years worth of work, and it pushed Vista back significantly because of the resources it took to get it out.
Windows 95 was also a pretty good release, compared to Windows 3.1 it replaced.
So basically, all you have is WinME and Vista as crappy OS releases (although NT 3.1 might count as well) out of 10 major OS releases..
Where did you get the idea that Windows can only read FAT and NTFS? I've been able to read CD's and DVD's for year, and they use filesystems like CDFS and UFS. I've been able to access network shares over SMB and CIFS.
Slashdot Mirror
The Dell Optiplex GX280 was introduced in 2004. So, no, they were not designed for Windows 95/98. They were designed for Windows XP SP2.
Wow, such a well thought out and reasoned argument. I especially like your empirical facts. Yes, that's sarcasm.
I recall a presentation made by Microsoft that suggested that almost twice as many new features were added to Word and Excel between Word 97 and Word 2007. The large number of new features was one of the reasons that Microsoft chose to abandon standard menus, as standard menus just didn't scale.
This isn't quite the presentation I remember, but it has some good statistics on slides 27 and 28.
http://www.90percentofeverything.com/2008/03/20/the-story-of-the-microsoft-office-ribbon-by-jensen-harris/
Word 97 had 200 Menu items, and office 2003 had almost 300 (not sure how many items 2007 and 2010 have, but likely a lot more). While also adding almost 20 Task Panes and nearly almost 20 toolbars. That's toolbars, not buttons on the toolbars.
So, sorry.. No, Word 2010 does not have 99% of the features that Word 97 had. Not even close.
It's fine to write lean and high performant code in a small application with a single developer. Once you have teams of people working on something, then you have to worry about something called "Maintainability". According to various studies, 80% of a piece of softwares total lifetime cost is maintenance and support costs. Nobody wants that to be come 90 or 95 or even 99% because people wrote code that others coudn't understand very easily.
Standardized frameworks, patterns, and components improve codes maintainability, often times at the cost of decreased performance. The idea is that hardware gets faster over time anyways, so you can write more features in less time with lower support costs.
I'm not trying to call you a liar, but I find your claim of 95/98 hardware very hard to believe. I don't know of a single Windows 95 machine that could support more than 64MB of memory, most were 32MB max. And 98 computers were not much better. I don't think you can even install Ubuntu on a 32 or 64MB machine. And, even if you did, X11 typically needs that much memory alone to function.
If you're not using a GUI at all, then the point is rather moot.
And people can configure software to run as root as well. Intentionally disabling your security system should not be a valid argument.
Except, of course, when the software with the vulnerability is already running as root or SYSTEM. Perhaps the flaw is even in the kernel (which happens from time to time).
Seriously, the execute bit argument is stupid. If someone sends a user an attachment of lady gaga nude, they're going to set the damn execute bit to view it. And malware can be malware even if it runs as the user (it can still send tons of spam and be used as part of a zombie network to DDoS people, it can still rape your address book and mail itself to everyone).
That is, until your dirty secret becomes illegal. Poker anyone?
Yes, and I learned so much about city planning from Sim City. I should put that on my resume and become apply for a civil engineering job.
Come off it. You can't just look at a piece of metal and know what it's tensile strength is, how much load it can withstand, or how load over time will affect it. You have to know the composition of the metal, and all the varying factors that affect it to calculate those things.
That's how software evolves and becomes stable. At some point, people have to start USING it, and by using it, you shake out the bugs and the product becomes stronger overall. In particular, this is how a lot of Linux software becomes mature. Think back to when PulseAudio was released. Many people had the same arguments.
Software only becomes mature through use by more than just the developers and a handful of beta testers.
During the patent application. Do we know there was such an action carried out during hte pattent application process?
More than likely, Motorola, HTC, and Samsung already have patent cross licensing with Microsoft. B&N does not have the years of previous experience that might have lead to such deals.
B&N seems to be trying to claim that enforcing ones patents is an anti-trust violation, but patents are government sanctioned monopolies so that's a ridiculous argument. They seem to be throwing everything at the wall and hoping something sticks.
"I didn't do this, your honor, and if I did I wasn't in my right mind, and if i was I was probably drunk and if I wasn't I was under duress and if I wasn't then nobody saw me do it, and if they did you can't prove it, and if you can I will yell, and if you ignore me or sanction me I will cry."
What exactly does the european patent office have to do with a US patent suit?
Except that Microsoft has listed the explicit patents they claim that B&N is violating. There's no FUD there, there's no hand waving.
Outlook has always done this, even before the ribbon. When you're in calendar mode, the old outlook toolbar removed the new message icon.
If you really want a new message, you can click "New Items" and from the dropdown choose "Email Message". In the old outlook you had to do File->New->Email Message.
This really has nothing to do with the Ribbon, but how Outlook was and still is designed. Arguably, the "New Email Message" function in calendar mode is easier than it was in the old outlook.
Maybe. One quirk, you have to click the axis once first to 'select' the axis, then double click the selected axis.
While that's true of CPU components, it's not true of things like Power Supplies which expend a great deal of heat. Older computers drew a lot of electricity as well. 1992 hardware was likely a 486 of some sort, possibly clock doubled or tripled (which ran a bit hotter as well).
I frequently use the same function repeatedly, insert tables for instance. Or insert graph. I seldom find myself clicking on a different tab and only using one function on that tab.
Yes, you have to go to that tab first, but then it stays on that tab, unlike a menu which will close if you happen to move your mouse to the wrong position.
I'm still not following you about the top left. Ribbon buttons start from the top left as well and move right. What's your point?
You do know that you can see the shortcut menus in the ribbon just by pressing alt, right?
Being a bit too literal, are we? Print functionality is in the quick bar, or in the file tab.
Can you give an example of this behavior in Outlook? Most of the time when the ribbon changes, its because the context has changed, and the buttons that were there previously don't make any sense. Like having a "Forward" button in task view.
It's hard to believe that the hardware kept working for 19 years, particularly the hard drives, but just as surprising the power supply (which tends to suck in so much dust and lint that they eventually die from overheating). The cooling fans also tend to give up the ghost after about 5 years as well.
I'm more interested in how you backed up the server to USB when all of the computers were made before USB ports existed.
What if the functions you need to repeat aren't the most common? You're going to create a toolbar button for something you need to use 3 times in a row one time?
The menus under the ribbons are one level deep, not multiple submenus. And, the most common function is the default action. All this is easy for even the dextrously challenged.
I have no idea what you mean by "Menus tend to cluster at the top right". That doesn't even make sense. Menus are everywhere. Top left, top right, top middle, within menus, etc..
Menus are not scalable. Adding more functions, and each new release of Office does, means more menus. It's to the point that there are literally hundreds of commands in Office 2003 that don't even have menu items. You have to bind them to key combinations, or create new menus if you want to use them.
I feel the opposite. I've discovered more features in Office than I never knew existed since the Ribbon interface.
Actually, Windows does have native support for disk images, just not ISO's. It natively supports VHD images.
Hey, that makes sense.. except that you forgot several releases to make your argument hold water.
It was more like Win95->NT4->Win98->Win98SE->Windows 2000->WinME->XP->XPSP2->Vista->7
Of those, NT4 was pretty solid, as were both Windows 98's. WIndows 2000 was very solid, and WinME was only a stopgap (it was never planned to exist, but they had to release a newer OS to OEM's to support more recent hardware. They had originally planned for Win2000 to replace 98SE, but that didn't happen. XP SP2 was basically a complete overhaul of the OS, certainly a lot more of a change than 98SE was from 98. It was several years worth of work, and it pushed Vista back significantly because of the resources it took to get it out.
Windows 95 was also a pretty good release, compared to Windows 3.1 it replaced.
So basically, all you have is WinME and Vista as crappy OS releases (although NT 3.1 might count as well) out of 10 major OS releases..
Where did you get the idea that Windows can only read FAT and NTFS? I've been able to read CD's and DVD's for year, and they use filesystems like CDFS and UFS. I've been able to access network shares over SMB and CIFS.