Personally I view "betas" like this as version 1 release. Companies (MS in this case) just call it a beta so they don't have to support it or deal with bad publicity of releasing a buggy product.
IMO if you release it to the public, its Version 1.0. "Public beta" is an oxymoron. Either its ready for release, or its not.
it just is usually more usable, better integrated, more reputable, and cheaper
I don't know that I agree with all of that. I'd just say its often cheaper, always more accessible, and usually good enough (historically happens ~ version 3).
I agree with your assessment. They were much more carefull this time.
What I thought was interesting was that the more conservative networks would call states for Bush sooner than the more liberal ones, and the more liberal stations would call a state for Kerry before the more conservative ones. I found the whole thing rather entertaining. Wish there was a way to go state-by-state, network-by-network and tabulate who called a state for whom when.
Sorry if I misread your post. I guess I wasn't in humor mode.
WRT your second point, I agree. As I said, its still something to be concerned about. Its something that should seriously be discussed. Unfortunately inflammatory articles like the one in the Guardian focus the discussion on questions like "is it a violation of the treaty" instead of the real question which you bring up. Yes we can do it. Yes its legal. But should we do it?
Is it OK to have any weapons in space? Is it OK as long as they're designed to protect other assets also in space (primarily defensive)? Is it Ok if its a laser weapon capable of knocking down rockets in fligh in the earth's atmospheret? Is it OK if it can hit targets on the ground?
Many shades of gray being lost in a black and white world.
Please control the knee-jerk tendencies and actually think about the information you're being fed. I know the Guardian article hints at all the stuff you want to believe, but that doesn't mean its right.
First, the treaty bans WMDs in space (see Article IV of the linked treaty). Not "weapons" that would temporarily or even permanently disable another satellite (is an EMP or jamming device considered a weapon?). I understand it is still something to be concerned about.
Second, the US isn't the only country that has the ability to knock down satellites today using ground and/or air based weaponry. Its also not the only country that understands the strategic importance of being able to do this.
Isn't it ironic that we don't hear anything about the plans of other countries in the Guardian? IMO the article is a basket of FUD, fed to a world all too willing to eat it up without really thinking about it. As far as the strategic importance of space and the plans of the US, it contains nothing that hasn't been known since the Reagan years, on through the Clinton years and into today.
Maybe I'm missing it, but it seems like more and more albums are just a collection of random songs -not a group of songs that were made to go together.
OTOH, I wonder how many here are old enough to remember buying music before the LP? The music industry seems to have forgotten that they used to sell just singles in the form of the '45. Yes, it had a "B" side, but everyone understood you were basically buying singles. Now the music industry in a tizzy because people only want to buy singles and they couldn't possibly survive if people only bought singles.
Just wait, in another 10 years the album will be back in style.
Clicking the 'X' doesnt actually close the application. This annoyed me to start with, but ive slowly gotton used to it.
LOL. Quitting the app just because I closed a window is one of the things that annoys me the most about Windows. If I'm done working with one document in Word, I have to be sure to open up the next one before I close the first or I have to wait for Word to start up again.
What's radical is that it does all the above, plus some. The way I rememver Jobs introducing it is something like this.
You have a program called iTunes that creates a database of your music so you can search for a song by any one of a number of tags, including genre, play time, title, author, etc plus any of the keywords the user adds and how they rated it.
You have another program called iPhoto that does the same for image files because iPhoto understands the internal tags in a jpg (or other image) file.
You have another program called Finder that indexes based on file data. It knows what size the mp3 is, but not how long the song is -which iTunes does know.
You have all this separate programs for dealing with different kinds of files because they all contain different kinds of metadata and internal tags.
Spotlight puts all these kinds of searches in one place, and allows you to combine them. So with the appropriate plug-in filter, it can search any file type and take advantage of any internal tags in the file to speed up the search. Its much faster and more accurate than searching based on the entire contents of the file.
So Spotlight combines metadata it generates itself (file content), with basic file metadata (file size, creation date...) and file type specific metadata (image dimensions or song duration).
Then, IIRC, you can save your search and the results will be updated in real time as files are added or deleted.
Konfabulator basically returns to MacOS X the functionality of the old MacOS 9-and-under Desk Accessories.
No, IMO Desk Accessories are gone. They're all small applications now. Dashboard isn't about another calculator/clock/stock ticker or anything like that. Its about providing a new way to write applications for the Mac. Its about making it easy for would-be developers to use tools they're already familiar with to write an application for the Mac (if you can do a web page, you can write a Mac program).
Widgets and Desk Accessories are dead! Long live small, easy to write applications.
Which opens another can-O-worms -misleading investors.
If SCO "publishes" misleading information on their web site, and people make investments based on that information, seems they could be in for another round of lawsuits aimed at them.
Nice how they use a single metric, cost of switching, Don't say much about cost post-switch that I see (though I skimmed pretty fast and didn't read any of the studies they link).
Under the security part, maybe they should have mentioned something about the extra cost the first time the next big Windows virus/trojan/worm hits the scene. Or the cost of simply keeping up with security and bug fixes.
Yeah, someone gave one of those to me. Saying "the sound via this method sucked" is a vast understatement. If you knew the music well enough, the bone fone would give you just enough hints to fill in the rest with your imagination. A better description might be to say it sounded like listening to the radio being played in the car next to you at the stoplight (with both of you having your windows up).
I understand your point, but consider this. How long would it take you to "fill in a form" using the vic-20 console vs. a web form?
My memory from those days is of line-by-line prompts with no way to correct errors other than going back to the beginning. My worst memories of the time are of inputting rows of data into a statistics program. If you made a mistake, you'd better catch it before you hit Enter, or you had to start over from row 1. Add to that no way to review the data until you're completely done entering it....
I'll take the relatively slow OS with the much better human interface (which I thought was what Raskin wanted).
Fair enough. But the problem in the human-centric tasks such as writing a letter (besides being harder to time with a person in the loop) is code bloat,
To a certain (OK large) extent that's true.
OTOH I wonder how much of the "simpler" interface was because we were willing to settle for what the application could do, not necessarily what we wanted to do.
The "simple" interface when used for writing a letter meant you used the font the printer had "installed", used plain text, used tabs to indent everything, blank lines for centering vertically and did the same complictated calculations for centering horizontally that were used on a typewriter (that's simple). Forget about spell checking!
Most people won't settle for that today.
People want to do complex things with their computers. While it makes it more difficult to create an interface that makes that complexity simple, it also makes it more important that it be done to the greatest degree possibnle.
Slashdot Mirror
Or is it?
Personally I view "betas" like this as version 1 release. Companies (MS in this case) just call it a beta so they don't have to support it or deal with bad publicity of releasing a buggy product.
IMO if you release it to the public, its Version 1.0. "Public beta" is an oxymoron. Either its ready for release, or its not.
IMO adding features like that is what the advanced search interface is supposed to help with.
it just is usually more usable, better integrated, more reputable, and cheaper
I don't know that I agree with all of that. I'd just say its often cheaper, always more accessible, and usually good enough (historically happens ~ version 3).
Actually, based on his previous post, no kids.
Either that or he's making enough his significant other can stay home with the kids.
...counting posed so many problems when done mechanically.
Funny how much things stay the same.
Although in this context the only "range" that matters is the range between Kerry and Bush, and where CNN falls in that range.
You know what's really ironic?
People put more faith in the exit polls being correct than the counting of the actual ballots.
I agree with your assessment. They were much more carefull this time.
What I thought was interesting was that the more conservative networks would call states for Bush sooner than the more liberal ones, and the more liberal stations would call a state for Kerry before the more conservative ones. I found the whole thing rather entertaining. Wish there was a way to go state-by-state, network-by-network and tabulate who called a state for whom when.
Sorry if I misread your post. I guess I wasn't in humor mode.
WRT your second point, I agree. As I said, its still something to be concerned about. Its something that should seriously be discussed. Unfortunately inflammatory articles like the one in the Guardian focus the discussion on questions like "is it a violation of the treaty" instead of the real question which you bring up. Yes we can do it. Yes its legal. But should we do it?
Is it OK to have any weapons in space? Is it OK as long as they're designed to protect other assets also in space (primarily defensive)? Is it Ok if its a laser weapon capable of knocking down rockets in fligh in the earth's atmospheret? Is it OK if it can hit targets on the ground?
Many shades of gray being lost in a black and white world.
Worthless junk?
Last I heard those $1000 hammers were still functioning perfectly.
Surprised that the Guardian printed an anti-US article full of speculation and innuendo and completely devoid of any facts?
Not at all.
Maybe his brother Jeb (the current governor of Florida). But last I heard he wasn't interested.
I agree to a large degree, but there's another side to it also.
For instance, the cost to blow up an entire city block without consideration to the safety of the bomber(s) is trivial.
The cost to blow up a single building while maintaining a high level of safety for the bomber(s) is extremely high.
So IF (that's a big, important if) the military is going to blow up a building, which option would you choose?
Just something to think about.
I should probably just leave this alone, but...
Please control the knee-jerk tendencies and actually think about the information you're being fed. I know the Guardian article hints at all the stuff you want to believe, but that doesn't mean its right.
First, the treaty bans WMDs in space (see Article IV of the linked treaty). Not "weapons" that would temporarily or even permanently disable another satellite (is an EMP or jamming device considered a weapon?). I understand it is still something to be concerned about.
Second, the US isn't the only country that has the ability to knock down satellites today using ground and/or air based weaponry. Its also not the only country that understands the strategic importance of being able to do this.
Isn't it ironic that we don't hear anything about the plans of other countries in the Guardian? IMO the article is a basket of FUD, fed to a world all too willing to eat it up without really thinking about it. As far as the strategic importance of space and the plans of the US, it contains nothing that hasn't been known since the Reagan years, on through the Clinton years and into today.
That's true.
Maybe I'm missing it, but it seems like more and more albums are just a collection of random songs -not a group of songs that were made to go together.
OTOH, I wonder how many here are old enough to remember buying music before the LP? The music industry seems to have forgotten that they used to sell just singles in the form of the '45. Yes, it had a "B" side, but everyone understood you were basically buying singles. Now the music industry in a tizzy because people only want to buy singles and they couldn't possibly survive if people only bought singles.
Just wait, in another 10 years the album will be back in style.
Clicking the 'X' doesnt actually close the application. This annoyed me to start with, but ive slowly gotton used to it.
LOL. Quitting the app just because I closed a window is one of the things that annoys me the most about Windows. If I'm done working with one document in Word, I have to be sure to open up the next one before I close the first or I have to wait for Word to start up again.
What's radical is that it does all the above, plus some. The way I rememver Jobs introducing it is something like this.
You have a program called iTunes that creates a database of your music so you can search for a song by any one of a number of tags, including genre, play time, title, author, etc plus any of the keywords the user adds and how they rated it.
You have another program called iPhoto that does the same for image files because iPhoto understands the internal tags in a jpg (or other image) file.
You have another program called Finder that indexes based on file data. It knows what size the mp3 is, but not how long the song is -which iTunes does know.
You have all this separate programs for dealing with different kinds of files because they all contain different kinds of metadata and internal tags.
Spotlight puts all these kinds of searches in one place, and allows you to combine them. So with the appropriate plug-in filter, it can search any file type and take advantage of any internal tags in the file to speed up the search. Its much faster and more accurate than searching based on the entire contents of the file.
So Spotlight combines metadata it generates itself (file content), with basic file metadata (file size, creation date...) and file type specific metadata (image dimensions or song duration).
Then, IIRC, you can save your search and the results will be updated in real time as files are added or deleted.
Konfabulator basically returns to MacOS X the functionality of the old MacOS 9-and-under Desk Accessories.
No, IMO Desk Accessories are gone. They're all small applications now. Dashboard isn't about another calculator/clock/stock ticker or anything like that. Its about providing a new way to write applications for the Mac. Its about making it easy for would-be developers to use tools they're already familiar with to write an application for the Mac (if you can do a web page, you can write a Mac program).
Widgets and Desk Accessories are dead! Long live small, easy to write applications.
Which opens another can-O-worms -misleading investors.
...but I play one on the internet.
If SCO "publishes" misleading information on their web site, and people make investments based on that information, seems they could be in for another round of lawsuits aimed at them.
IANAL..
Could soon bring new meaning to the phrase "not worth the paper its printed on."
And legal isn't?
Let me answer that with a question. How much money have the lawyers pocketed?
Nice how they use a single metric, cost of switching, Don't say much about cost post-switch that I see (though I skimmed pretty fast and didn't read any of the studies they link).
Under the security part, maybe they should have mentioned something about the extra cost the first time the next big Windows virus/trojan/worm hits the scene. Or the cost of simply keeping up with security and bug fixes.
Its not what they say, its what they don't say.
Yeah, someone gave one of those to me. Saying "the sound via this method sucked" is a vast understatement. If you knew the music well enough, the bone fone would give you just enough hints to fill in the rest with your imagination. A better description might be to say it sounded like listening to the radio being played in the car next to you at the stoplight (with both of you having your windows up).
I understand your point, but consider this. How long would it take you to "fill in a form" using the vic-20 console vs. a web form?
My memory from those days is of line-by-line prompts with no way to correct errors other than going back to the beginning. My worst memories of the time are of inputting rows of data into a statistics program. If you made a mistake, you'd better catch it before you hit Enter, or you had to start over from row 1. Add to that no way to review the data until you're completely done entering it....
I'll take the relatively slow OS with the much better human interface (which I thought was what Raskin wanted).
Fair enough. But the problem in the human-centric tasks such as writing a letter (besides being harder to time with a person in the loop) is code bloat,
To a certain (OK large) extent that's true.
OTOH I wonder how much of the "simpler" interface was because we were willing to settle for what the application could do, not necessarily what we wanted to do.
The "simple" interface when used for writing a letter meant you used the font the printer had "installed", used plain text, used tabs to indent everything, blank lines for centering vertically and did the same complictated calculations for centering horizontally that were used on a typewriter (that's simple). Forget about spell checking!
Most people won't settle for that today.
People want to do complex things with their computers. While it makes it more difficult to create an interface that makes that complexity simple, it also makes it more important that it be done to the greatest degree possibnle.