The article assumes that, whatever is causing the current doldrums, will clear up by "the holidays".
It seems to me that these mythical "holidays", with the expense of buying a PS3 or Wii or 360, will merely exacerbate the problem. Not only are consumers not buying Madden 2016 or OMG Total Warfighters VII *now* on current-gen hardware, they are likely to be even less inclined having forked out $600 on which to see Teh New Shiny.
Also, if the XBOX 360 is riding a wave of indifference already, it must be extremely worrying to MS about what will happen when they square off against Wii and a newly-confident Nintendo.
Novell can wave as many marketing strategies at me as it wants; Unfortunately, this is business, and all that matters are those cold, crisp dollars.
The only place Novell is making any money at all is in its vain defence against the Windows Server encroachment. Okay, so it's not just AD that's killing NDS; There's also Exchange killing Groupwise, SUS killing ZenWorks, and Everything killing Netware. It remains to be seen if they can make money on anything else, Linux included.
...a fair wodge of Novell's money comes from selling Windows software......I only see them lowering sales of software for Windows...
These two statements are not incompatible. The fact that Novell is suffering a death of a thousand cuts at the hands of Active Directory doesn't make it any less true that Novell makes not insignificant sums from an albeit-dwindling Windowsish installed base.
I predict that six episodes in, we'll be marching on the Lucas Ranch and Jar Jar Hater Re-education Centre, waving burning sticks demanding this atrocity be pulled from our screens for the sake of humanity, trying to fight our way through legions of brainwashed Lucasites dressed in Ewok suits brainwashed and tooled up with chainsaws disguised as Light Sabres to protect The Bearded One from the angry marching Hordes.
As George Lucas climbs into his reproduction ATAT and shouts out the order to charge, "Yousa People Gonna Die! Dangah Ewoks" will be the last words YOU'LL EVER HEAR.
Steve Ballmer's going to fucking kill Goog^H^H^H^HiPod^H^H^H^HPSP^H^H^HDS^H^HTHE WHOLE WORLD!!!
Re:So, what options does this release remove?
on
Gnome 2.14 Review
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Hum.
Usability. Clearly it means something different to you than it does to me. Usable software is not software that requires drilling through hundreds of contradictory, confused or utterly irrelevant options before one can get anything done.
And note, here, I'm not pointing an accusing finger at KDE here; the problems with KControl are well known and have been dealt with.
The point I'm trying to make is that we here utter so much gibberish about usability because we're not users, we're computer experts. We're used to thinking like computers.
You don't really appreciate what usability really is until you observe somebody who isn't a propellerhead, struggling over your code, confused and baffled by your lovingly hand-crafted user interface, in all its customizable glory.
Usability isn't about too many or two few options, it's about several things.
1) Do What I mean, having sure I have the capability to express what I mean.
2) Know your target audience. No software can be all things to all people, and it is foolish to try. Pick sensible defaults for your target audience. Provide user interfaces to allow that audience to configure that which they might reasonably be expected to need to change.
3) Don't add complexity for the sake of Geek Machismo.
4) Don't remove useful functionality for the sake of keeping it simple. As simple as possible and no simpler
5) Have a consistent set of guidelines for your user interface, in pursuance of the needs of your target audience.
6) Challenge your assumptions; WATCH THEM. See what your target audience doesn't understand that you thought was obvious. Fix it.
7) Don't sneer at KDE or GNOME or Ion because they have different target audiences, different philosophies. Praise them when they are consistent with their goals, guidelines and audience, politely suggest improvements or proffer patches where they fall short.
Have KDE got it entirely right? No, but they're getting there.
Have GNOME got it entirely right? No, but they're getting there.
I guess what I'm saying is, usability doesn't mean what you think it does. Not all software is targetted at geeks, not all people think like geeks.
And frankly, we should thank the Lord Xenu that this is the case.
Re:So, what options does this release remove?
on
Gnome 2.14 Review
·
· Score: 1
I think to troll in such a way is to wilfully miss that which we all know to be true, to miss the point of the removal of XScreensaver.
XScreensaver was, and always will remain, a nasty hack that plays badly with the Session Manager, plays badly with power management, plays badly with screen locking, and features one of the most confused and irrelevant user interfaces ever committed to screens.
Frankly it had to go. What GNOME Screensaver has instead? A list of modules, pick one or random, a time-out slider, and that's it.
That's it because that's all it needs. Ask Mac OS X. Ask Windows. Just don't ask XScreensaver.
According to the "American Heritage Dictionary", but not according to the Oxford English Dictionary. Tsk.
Frankly, I speak English, and this half-arsed corporatisation of American colloquia needs to stop. It's not attractive, and it makes British ears very unhappy.
Somebody needs to read the Economist Style Guide. It's not just a good idea, it's the law.
Gah! "Gifting"? Wtf? Gift is a fucking NOUN. What's wrong with "Apple gives MacBooks to top WebKit contributors"?
It seems that the disease of corporate-speak has infected even the minds of Slashdot contributors who (a) should know better and (b) probably think they're immune.
I mean, it worked out so well for Sony. They'd be mad not to go for it.
1. Release desirable, powerful handheld games console. 2. Subsidize it up the bottom. 3. Fail to release any games other than pointless ports of console games I already own. 4. ??? 5. FAIL TO PROFIT!!!
By the way, the '???' there was caused by my playing a spot of Mario Kart DS. I really should focus more when bleating at Slashdot.
Slashdot Mirror
The article assumes that, whatever is causing the current doldrums, will clear up by "the holidays".
It seems to me that these mythical "holidays", with the expense of buying a PS3 or Wii or 360, will merely exacerbate the problem. Not only are consumers not buying Madden 2016 or OMG Total Warfighters VII *now* on current-gen hardware, they are likely to be even less inclined having forked out $600 on which to see Teh New Shiny.
Also, if the XBOX 360 is riding a wave of indifference already, it must be extremely worrying to MS about what will happen when they square off against Wii and a newly-confident Nintendo.
It is... *sniffs delicately*... brown?
I remember hearing about how there were fox fur breeders somewhere (like in Russia).
Surely, in Russia, Fox Fur breeds... oh wait, never mind.
AND name NOT LIKE '%katamari%'
0 rows returned.
Novell can wave as many marketing strategies at me as it wants; Unfortunately, this is business, and all that matters are those cold, crisp dollars.
The only place Novell is making any money at all is in its vain defence against the Windows Server encroachment. Okay, so it's not just AD that's killing NDS; There's also Exchange killing Groupwise, SUS killing ZenWorks, and Everything killing Netware. It remains to be seen if they can make money on anything else, Linux included.
...a fair wodge of Novell's money comes from selling Windows software... ...I only see them lowering sales of software for Windows...
These two statements are not incompatible. The fact that Novell is suffering a death of a thousand cuts at the hands of Active Directory doesn't make it any less true that Novell makes not insignificant sums from an albeit-dwindling Windowsish installed base.
Since a fair wodge of Novell's money comes from selling Windows software, I comfortably predict that this won't happen any time soon.
When Intel's Merom/Conroe Core Duos start hitting Macs with Intel VT support, expect Leopard's BootCamp to grow a hypervisor.
Being able to run MacOS X and Windows, at native speeds, will rock my Jesus.
No more apologising for a Mac's inability to play games. W00t.
I want to bring back the OMG Ponies!!! skin. It roxxored.
We can't all get what we want.
It's not offtopic, foolish moderator man. Perhaps you are unaware of what Astroturfing is?
This is a blatant bit of contentless Astroturfing.
It's spelt A S T R O T U R F.
I predict that six episodes in, we'll be marching on the Lucas Ranch and Jar Jar Hater Re-education Centre, waving burning sticks demanding this atrocity be pulled from our screens for the sake of humanity, trying to fight our way through legions of brainwashed Lucasites dressed in Ewok suits brainwashed and tooled up with chainsaws disguised as Light Sabres to protect The Bearded One from the angry marching Hordes.
As George Lucas climbs into his reproduction ATAT and shouts out the order to charge, "Yousa People Gonna Die! Dangah Ewoks" will be the last words YOU'LL EVER HEAR.
This will come to pass.
Funny... That's exactly what I was going to say.
Now I can dust off my Chief Chirpa dolls. W00t.
Meh.
That's why the iPod's dead.
No... wait. That can't be right.
He's done it before, and he'll do it again.
Steve Ballmer's going to fucking kill Goog^H^H^H^HiPod^H^H^H^HPSP^H^H^HDS^H^HTHE WHOLE WORLD!!!
Hum.
Usability. Clearly it means something different to you than it does to me. Usable software is not software that requires drilling through hundreds of contradictory, confused or utterly irrelevant options before one can get anything done.
And note, here, I'm not pointing an accusing finger at KDE here; the problems with KControl are well known and have been dealt with.
The point I'm trying to make is that we here utter so much gibberish about usability because we're not users, we're computer experts. We're used to thinking like computers.
You don't really appreciate what usability really is until you observe somebody who isn't a propellerhead, struggling over your code, confused and baffled by your lovingly hand-crafted user interface, in all its customizable glory.
Usability isn't about too many or two few options, it's about several things.
1) Do What I mean, having sure I have the capability to express what I mean.
2) Know your target audience. No software can be all things to all people, and it is foolish to try. Pick sensible defaults for your target audience. Provide user interfaces to allow that audience to configure that which they might reasonably be expected to need to change.
3) Don't add complexity for the sake of Geek Machismo.
4) Don't remove useful functionality for the sake of keeping it simple. As simple as possible and no simpler
5) Have a consistent set of guidelines for your user interface, in pursuance of the needs of your target audience.
6) Challenge your assumptions; WATCH THEM. See what your target audience doesn't understand that you thought was obvious. Fix it.
7) Don't sneer at KDE or GNOME or Ion because they have different target audiences, different philosophies. Praise them when they are consistent with their goals, guidelines and audience, politely suggest improvements or proffer patches where they fall short.
Have KDE got it entirely right? No, but they're getting there.
Have GNOME got it entirely right? No, but they're getting there.
I guess what I'm saying is, usability doesn't mean what you think it does. Not all software is targetted at geeks, not all people think like geeks.
And frankly, we should thank the Lord Xenu that this is the case.
I think to troll in such a way is to wilfully miss that which we all know to be true, to miss the point of the removal of XScreensaver.
XScreensaver was, and always will remain, a nasty hack that plays badly with the Session Manager, plays badly with power management, plays badly with screen locking, and features one of the most confused and irrelevant user interfaces ever committed to screens.
Frankly it had to go. What GNOME Screensaver has instead? A list of modules, pick one or random, a time-out slider, and that's it.
That's it because that's all it needs. Ask Mac OS X. Ask Windows. Just don't ask XScreensaver.
Pah.
You can prove anything with facts. I don't like it. No sir, I don't like it.
According to the "American Heritage Dictionary", but not according to the Oxford English Dictionary. Tsk.
Frankly, I speak English, and this half-arsed corporatisation of American colloquia needs to stop. It's not attractive, and it makes British ears very unhappy.
Somebody needs to read the Economist Style Guide. It's not just a good idea, it's the law.
Off-topic, I know. So mod me. But...
Gah! "Gifting"? Wtf? Gift is a fucking NOUN. What's wrong with "Apple gives MacBooks to top WebKit contributors"?
It seems that the disease of corporate-speak has infected even the minds of Slashdot contributors who (a) should know better and (b) probably think they're immune.
Action this at once.
Heh. I call that irony.
Still, Mario Kart with wireless internet play rocks my world, boyo.
No Gigabit wireless. Larger than an an iPod Pico. Lame.
I mean, it worked out so well for Sony. They'd be mad not to go for it.
1. Release desirable, powerful handheld games console.
2. Subsidize it up the bottom.
3. Fail to release any games other than pointless ports of console games I already own.
4. ???
5. FAIL TO PROFIT!!!
By the way, the '???' there was caused by my playing a spot of Mario Kart DS. I really should focus more when bleating at Slashdot.
I really didn't find it awkward to play Mario 64 DS.
DS + Thumbstrap = Analog Controller.
Did you not look inside your DS box and see the thumbstrap?
That sound you hear is that of a million DSes being dumped on eBay, followed by hasty Far Eastern importage of the Lite.
Ooh, it looks like the Nintendo DS and an iPod have had sex babies.
Nice.