For RICO to apply,the "protection" racket would have to involve some illegal act that they're going to do if you don't give them money. Like, if I'm the mob, you might take out "fire insurance" on your business so I don't burn it down. That's a protection racket.
However, if you do something illegal, it's not racketeering for me to grant you license to continue doing that (now formerly) illegal thing in exchange for money. The difference is that you put yourself in the squeeze by doing said illegal thing in the first place.
Obviously, the viability of that racket is contingent upon SCO being right, but they're effectively offering the "licenses" at dramatically reduced prices compared to any penalties - in other words, take your chances if you want, or act now and get a discount. So, assuming their IP claim has any merit at all (or if they genuinely think it does), what they're doing is *not* racketeering.
However, seeing as SCOX has distributed, and does distribute, linux, frightening people who don't pay up for a license with legal action, even though they've been granted a boatload of rights under the GPL already is barratry. Barratry is not legal. Nor is extortion, what this amounts to.
Also, the SCOX license is only for runtime use, which means that they are imposing restrictions on linux, in which case the GPL no longer applies; so if you license from SCOX, the GPL is invalidated - so you can't use the 99.9999% of linux NOT written by SCOX. So, SCOX is selling you the right to discontinue using linux without being sued, IF you license UnixWare. In other words, because linux may or may not be 'tainted' you must switch to UnixWare (or at least pay for it). That in itself amounts to a predatory business practice.
Not also that SCOX has hinted before that existing AIX users should relicense with SCOX, which is obvious claptrap -- only copies of AIX sold *after* SCOX terminated the license with IBM would be affected. (SCOX can't however terminate the GPL on their own IP they've released under the GPL.) SCOX is obviously threatening whoever they think they can get away with threatening; a fishing expedition. Again, if they pursue this course with AIX users, that's barratry aswell.
SCO will hold harmless commercial Linux customers that purchase a UnixWare license against any past copyright violations, and for any future use of Linux in a run-only, binary format. That's extortion...or some other form of legalese.
Again, who said they were? This is only a form of insurance for businesses whose linux plans are substaintial enough that they want protection from future litigation, and is not some new version of 'SCO Linux' that you now have to pay for. How hard is that to understand? Terribly, according to some of these posters.
In other words; a protection racket. Racketeering is illegal, you might know. As is barratry.
SCO has, and are, distributing linux, which means they have accepted the GPL, and so they cannot sue people for using linux, at least up until the version that they distribute, whatever code it may contain. So a "license" from them protects you from.. barratry!
Across the bridge from me is a theme park called MarineLand [marinelandcanada.com]. Their slogan is "Everyone loves MarineLand". I always said "How the hell do you know that? You can't possibly make a blanket statement like that and be telling the truth. How do you know if I (subset of "Everyone") love MarineLand if I've never been there?"
Marines have.. ways.. of making sure you're opinion is the correct one..
HDTV (High definition television) was invented in France under the name TVHD (i.e. télévision haute définition). Why didn't americans have to invent a new word when the french already had a perfectly good word for TVHD? Why?
Mostly to get back at the french calling NATO "OTAN", the UN "ONU", etc. etc. This bi-directional naming of organizations to keep the French happy is the reason why ISO does NOT mean "International Standards Organisation", but instead, nothing. Otherwise the French would spell it OSI, in stead of the standard spelling.
Because english has a right to choose whatever they want to for their own words. If they wanted to speak french, they'd go to France (or up north to Quebec).
Actually, AFAIK, there is only one language in the world with an official list of words, and official spelling rules, as well as the biggest dictionary ever (still a work in progress after more than a century); Dutch. The regulatory body, a joint Dutch/Belgian organization, is called "de taalunie" (the language union).
The french has just as many rights to define their language as the americans or anyone else.
Indeed, except for Dutch government orgs (and school kids) no one in the world is obliged by law to use particular words or spelling. Of course corporations and subcultures may impose certain restrictions, capitalizations and verbiage ("OMFG LOLOLOL STFU lamez0rrrr"), but that is exaclty their right;-)
BTW, émail is already a word in french. It means enamel.
Which only points out the folly of coining a new word! "email" is in spellcheckers already, even though the accent may be a bit off;-)
... but Unix/Java programmers aren't. Wanting to write the code for free, too?
Seems to me swordfish is going to be coding it anyway. I'm sure he can figure out how costly it is to retrain him to program Unix/Java.
Having said that, colleges/universities are churning out Java programmers at an alarming rate. And seeing how unemployment is only rising (lots of experienced people on the market) newcomers are really, really cheap! (They're used to living like.. well.. like students!)
Also, is programming for this new-fangled.Net thingy really that much easier than programming for "Unix/Java"? Or is that a delusion caused by smoking crack? Surely coding for platforms that have been around for years upon years is a no-brainer moreso than programming for, from the way swordfish describes it, a hideously unstable inefficient platform?
Now, I agree that finding reasonably adept administrators for windows is much easier, and cheaper, than finding ace Unix admins. But that doesn't say anything about coders.
If swordfish is doing a feasibility study on this, for Pete's sake, suggest an alternative with less Microsoft in it! Any reason why that server should be.Net if all it spews out are more or less standard webservices messages?
they also question the compulsory licensing approach recently being promoted by the EFF. They get into some of the practical details about compulsory licensing that no one else seems to be talking about like technical feasibility, incentives to cheat, monitoring for compliance, efficiency of collection and distribution of funds, privacy, fair use, feasibility of legal enforcement...
As if these problems magically do not exist with voluntary licensing. I'm quite sure the EFF never claimed a compulsory licensing scheme would be perfect. It's a least bad kind of thing.
the Washington Democrat politician sponsoring the bill suggested that "..any injunction would only be preliminary and that.. the case [will] go to trial."
What is the likelihood that the final verdict overturns a preliminary injunction? Are there statistics on this?
If I had to guess I'd say they're slim. Already the judge has determined that the 'balance of hardships' tips in favor of the plaintiffs, in other words, even if the state had the right to prohibit the games, the judge thinks prohibition hurts society more than it helps.
What format are ringtones stored in that they can represent tones beyond the range of human hearing?
Usually MIDI, or a proprietary format. I'm having lots of fun downloading and playing MIDI files on my SonyEricsson T310 phone. It supports up to 32 channels, and doesn't sound all that crap, actually. I wonder how long it will take for musicians to hijack mobiles and use them as fully fledged MIDI synthesizers. For that "sounds of the naughties" feeling!
Anyone know the MIDI chip in the SE T310? The trumpets and bells sound very clear (the other instruments are sometimes a bit muddy). Sounds better than the windows XP MIDI mapper anyway;-)
Those other guys who ship straight from the U.S to the U.K must be getting suckered all the time! Oh wait, CC fraud is about the same in the U.K as it is in the U.S. The rate of fraud might be about the same, but have you tried looking at the legal burden of arresting someone overseas in a foreign sovereign nation vs. arresting someone a few states away?
How often do you call the cops when a domestic US credit card has been abused? Do you think you'll recover any of the damages? Are civil proceedings worth it, even within the US?
No major credit card company will validate a credit card from one country to the next. Hence, if I live in Canada, and want to purchase a product from a company in the UK, Visa (or Mastercard, Discover, American Express, etc) won't do a check on my credit card for the company in the UK to ensure that I'm the cardholder, that my address & postal code match, etc.
This is not true. I've been refused transactions where my billing address wasn't copied verbatim from the card's invoice. I'm in The Netherlands, the retailer (godaddy) is in the US. I think the same thing happened with yahoo shopping, but I forget. This is not to say all cards will be validated internationally, but I suspect your card is just issued by some sort of stone-age backward Canadian bank;-)
In each instance the cards and billing info were from overseas. None yet from within the US. I'm guessing that credit card fraud is a little more common in other coutries.
No, it's just more convient to use credit cards to fraudulanty purchase things internationally, as the party who gets stuck with the bill (the retailer) won't come after you with big pointy sticks. In foreign parts, you'll find fraud with US-owned credit cards is more prevalent than with domestic cards.
In fact, credit card fraud is nigh on non-existant in most countries, as very, very few transactions are made using credit cards (as opposed to cash, direct debit, or more secure means of electronic funds transfer). Most Europeans that have a credit card only use it to purchase stuff online (usually from amazon and the like) or to use when they're on holiday. The latter is usually for "just in case" purposes, and for renting a car, which is more conveniently done by credit card.
For some reason most Europeans regard credit cards as expensive, yet another opportunity to rack up debts, and too insecure. This is even disregarding the fact that it's hardly accepted in bricks-and-mortar shops.
Wouldn't supplying substantial amounts of power through network cable (lets say cat5) make enough EMI to scramble the data going through the other pairs?
Gee, I suppose those boys at the IEEE haven't paid any attention to that. How embarrassing. Those electrical engineers, always chasing the girls, playing in rock-bands, and entering in surfing contests! This kinda thing was bound to happen...
No, not at all. This is exactly what he's talking about. "Linguistic concision" means both brevity and expressing exactly the shading and meaning that he wants to express.
How about "To be concise"? No need to mention "linguistic" at all.
Quoting yourself to prove a point about writing style is the mark of being a twit anyway.
They complied with the GPL...they weren't required to do anything else, nor should a commercial enterpise be expected to do more if it doesn't aid their business.
Although, perhaps it would aid their business. It's not like they're in the business of selling hardware at a loss only to make up for it in software sales like the console makers.. Software from third parties only adds to the value of their bricks, and you can bet your ass that their warranty excludes any hacking of the things anyway, so there are no extra support costs asociated to allowing others to hack the thing.
Drivers etc. don't even have to be supplied in source code to bake a ROM; object code will do. So competitors won't get to see any more of their secret sauce then they get to see now.
But I know, some of you, especially young americans, don't understand this...;) Or am I wrong? Then prove it -- show, how enlightened are you...:) (But, please, don't flame!..)
You are utterly wrong! I'm not American, I'm Dutch;-)
Suprasphere encrypts all socket communication using a dynamically generated Diffie-Hellman key exchange. This is much better than SSL because it does not require using a CA so you can set it all up without any administrative overhead
Superduper great!
What in the world gave you the impression that SSL doesn't use DH? (SSL 3.0 and TLS explicitely support DH). A CA isn't there just to generate keys you know, that's the reason it's called a certificate authority, not a key authority. Certificates are there so you can rest assured that you're using the proper key, and that there is no Meet-In-The-Middle attack going on.
Even self-signed certs do this pretty darn well, you just have to write down the fingerprint, no 'administrative overhead' (by which I presume you mean getting a cert from a third party) required.
Furthermore, all authentication uses a zero-knowledge proof so that a password is never sent over the wire.
You know, 'certificates' (AKA asymmetric crypto, such as RSA or DSA/DH) are pretty darn good at doing exactly that. And guess what, SSL does a great job at this, they're called client certificates. You can even play around with free ones from verisign.
You know what? SSH does all of these things as well! As does any modern VPN! And most of them, unlike the proprietary product you're advertising as an anonymous coward, are actually peer reviewed, use algorithms and protocols that are public and are time tested. (Obviously the list of 'most modern VPNs' excludes some particularly crappy proprietary technologies, such as early Microsoft VPN offerings for example. Weird isn't it how suckage and proprietariness seem so.. well.. linked?)
So take your buzzwords and productpimping elsewhere. Lacking any evidence to the contrary I call snakeoil!
Bearing in mind that desktops are cheaper, and that you can upgrade them more easily using off the shelf components, this doesn't mean that all of a sudden the world+dog are switching to laptops, especially not first time computer buyers looking for a family pc.
It think it's likely nowadays that we may see the engine manufacturers subject the engine/nacelle combination to the type of destructive event caused by the impact of Man-Portable Air Defense (MANPAD) surface-to-air missile. They want to make sure the engine/nacelle combination will still maintain reasonable structural integrity even after impact from the warhead of a MANPAD missile so an airliner that has been attacked by a terrorist with a MANPAD missile can still fly on the remaining operating engine(s) and make a safe emergency landing.
Great, so now we can't even use our MANPAD missiles (second amendment baby!) to shoot terrorist-hijacked airplanes out of the air in self-defense! Damn aircraft manufacturers, siding with the terrorists!;-)
Just the one that I can think of - use-based dynamic menus. Perhaps someone can point me to earlier cases of this, but I still like it and still find them useful.
There appears to be a religious objection to them in the Linux world, I suspect primarily because the idea came from Microsoft. OK - so some people hate them, meaning that the feature should be configurable. Despite that, I'd like to see dynamic menus start making their way outside of the Windows world.
It's not so much religious as practical. Think about it. Everytime you stop using a feature for w hile it disappears. Not once, not twice, all the time. Use it or lose it. If you start using a feature, the menu-option reappears.
This means your menu items are never in the same place! You quickly lose all efficiency, especially for menu-items that don't have icons in front of them. You can never sit down at some one else's workstation and expect things to be in the same place. I can't tell my mom she should use the third option from the top (which comes in handy sometimes when she's using a Dutch version of Office, whereas I'm using an English version and the translations are farfetched at best).
Also it changes the way pull down menus have worked for years, with the sole exception of most-recently used files (only at the bottom of the File pull down menu). Talk about breaking the user's mental model of your app!
GUI gurus know this. They tell you, if an option is not available, disable it (gray it out) so the relative position remains the same. This somehow applies to context menus, but not to pull down menus?
I'm all for simple vs. advanced pull down menus, but self-adjusting.. Puh-lease. Not to mention my startmenu is at the same time not alphabetized, as well as unpredictably axing applications all the time. I used it yesterday, now it's gone, but the app I used last a few months ago is still there.. Yikes.
I don't know if self-mutilating pull down menus are a True Microsoft Innovation (R) but yes, they are annoying. There are plenty of better GUI enhancements that could be supported..
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For RICO to apply,the "protection" racket would have to involve some illegal act that they're going to do if you don't give them money. Like, if I'm the mob, you might take out "fire insurance" on your business so I don't burn it down. That's a protection racket.
However, if you do something illegal, it's not racketeering for me to grant you license to continue doing that (now formerly) illegal thing in exchange for money. The difference is that you put yourself in the squeeze by doing said illegal thing in the first place.
Obviously, the viability of that racket is contingent upon SCO being right, but they're effectively offering the "licenses" at dramatically reduced prices compared to any penalties - in other words, take your chances if you want, or act now and get a discount. So, assuming their IP claim has any merit at all (or if they genuinely think it does), what they're doing is *not* racketeering.
However, seeing as SCOX has distributed, and does distribute, linux, frightening people who don't pay up for a license with legal action, even though they've been granted a boatload of rights under the GPL already is barratry. Barratry is not legal. Nor is extortion, what this amounts to.
Also, the SCOX license is only for runtime use, which means that they are imposing restrictions on linux, in which case the GPL no longer applies; so if you license from SCOX, the GPL is invalidated - so you can't use the 99.9999% of linux NOT written by SCOX. So, SCOX is selling you the right to discontinue using linux without being sued, IF you license UnixWare. In other words, because linux may or may not be 'tainted' you must switch to UnixWare (or at least pay for it). That in itself amounts to a predatory business practice.
Not also that SCOX has hinted before that existing AIX users should relicense with SCOX, which is obvious claptrap -- only copies of AIX sold *after* SCOX terminated the license with IBM would be affected. (SCOX can't however terminate the GPL on their own IP they've released under the GPL.) SCOX is obviously threatening whoever they think they can get away with threatening; a fishing expedition. Again, if they pursue this course with AIX users, that's barratry aswell.
SCO will hold harmless commercial Linux customers that purchase a UnixWare license against any past copyright violations, and for any future use of Linux in a run-only, binary format.
That's extortion...or some other form of legalese.
Racketeering.
Again, who said they were? This is only a form of insurance for businesses whose linux plans are substaintial enough that they want protection from future litigation, and is not some new version of 'SCO Linux' that you now have to pay for. How hard is that to understand? Terribly, according to some of these posters.
In other words; a protection racket. Racketeering is illegal, you might know. As is barratry.
SCO has, and are, distributing linux, which means they have accepted the GPL, and so they cannot sue people for using linux, at least up until the version that they distribute, whatever code it may contain. So a "license" from them protects you from.. barratry!
I call RICO.
The only good spammer is a dead spammer. Are we talking zombies here?
Across the bridge from me is a theme park called MarineLand [marinelandcanada.com]. Their slogan is "Everyone loves MarineLand". I always said "How the hell do you know that? You can't possibly make a blanket statement like that and be telling the truth. How do you know if I (subset of "Everyone") love MarineLand if I've never been there?"
Marines have.. ways.. of making sure you're opinion is the correct one..
Semper Fi!
HDTV (High definition television) was invented in France under the name TVHD (i.e. télévision haute définition). Why didn't americans have to invent a new word when the french already had a perfectly good word for TVHD? Why?
Mostly to get back at the french calling NATO "OTAN", the UN "ONU", etc. etc. This bi-directional naming of organizations to keep the French happy is the reason why ISO does NOT mean "International Standards Organisation", but instead, nothing. Otherwise the French would spell it OSI, in stead of the standard spelling.
Because english has a right to choose whatever they want to for their own words. If they wanted to speak french, they'd go to France (or up north to Quebec).
Actually, AFAIK, there is only one language in the world with an official list of words, and official spelling rules, as well as the biggest dictionary ever (still a work in progress after more than a century); Dutch. The regulatory body, a joint Dutch/Belgian organization, is called "de taalunie" (the language union).
The french has just as many rights to define their language as the americans or anyone else.
Indeed, except for Dutch government orgs (and school kids) no one in the world is obliged by law to use particular words or spelling. Of course corporations and subcultures may impose certain restrictions, capitalizations and verbiage ("OMFG LOLOLOL STFU lamez0rrrr"), but that is exaclty their right
BTW, émail is already a word in french. It means enamel.
Which only points out the folly of coining a new word! "email" is in spellcheckers already, even though the accent may be a bit off
Seems to me swordfish is going to be coding it anyway. I'm sure he can figure out how costly it is to retrain him to program Unix/Java.
Having said that, colleges/universities are churning out Java programmers at an alarming rate. And seeing how unemployment is only rising (lots of experienced people on the market) newcomers are really, really cheap! (They're used to living like.. well.. like students!)
Also, is programming for this new-fangled
Now, I agree that finding reasonably adept administrators for windows is much easier, and cheaper, than finding ace Unix admins. But that doesn't say anything about coders.
If swordfish is doing a feasibility study on this, for Pete's sake, suggest an alternative with less Microsoft in it! Any reason why that server should be
People who say "cheers" mean "cigarette" when they say "fag".
What is the likelihood that the final verdict overturns a preliminary injunction? Are there statistics on this?
If I had to guess I'd say they're slim. Already the judge has determined that the 'balance of hardships' tips in favor of the plaintiffs, in other words, even if the state had the right to prohibit the games, the judge thinks prohibition hurts society more than it helps.
Think about the children!
What format are ringtones stored in that they can represent tones beyond the range of human hearing?
Usually MIDI, or a proprietary format. I'm having lots of fun downloading and playing MIDI files on my SonyEricsson T310 phone. It supports up to 32 channels, and doesn't sound all that crap, actually. I wonder how long it will take for musicians to hijack mobiles and use them as fully fledged MIDI synthesizers. For that "sounds of the naughties" feeling!
Anyone know the MIDI chip in the SE T310? The trumpets and bells sound very clear (the other instruments are sometimes a bit muddy). Sounds better than the windows XP MIDI mapper anyway
Those other guys who ship straight from the U.S to the U.K must be getting suckered all the time! Oh wait, CC fraud is about the same in the U.K as it is in the U.S.
The rate of fraud might be about the same, but have you tried looking at the legal burden of arresting someone overseas in a foreign sovereign nation vs. arresting someone a few states away?
How often do you call the cops when a domestic US credit card has been abused? Do you think you'll recover any of the damages? Are civil proceedings worth it, even within the US?
No major credit card company will validate a credit card from one country to the next. Hence, if I live in Canada, and want to purchase a product from a company in the UK, Visa (or Mastercard, Discover, American Express, etc) won't do a check on my credit card for the company in the UK to ensure that I'm the cardholder, that my address & postal code match, etc.
;-)
This is not true. I've been refused transactions where my billing address wasn't copied verbatim from the card's invoice. I'm in The Netherlands, the retailer (godaddy) is in the US. I think the same thing happened with yahoo shopping, but I forget. This is not to say all cards will be validated internationally, but I suspect your card is just issued by some sort of stone-age backward Canadian bank
In each instance the cards and billing info were from overseas. None yet from within the US. I'm guessing that credit card fraud is a little more common in other coutries.
No, it's just more convient to use credit cards to fraudulanty purchase things internationally, as the party who gets stuck with the bill (the retailer) won't come after you with big pointy sticks. In foreign parts, you'll find fraud with US-owned credit cards is more prevalent than with domestic cards.
In fact, credit card fraud is nigh on non-existant in most countries, as very, very few transactions are made using credit cards (as opposed to cash, direct debit, or more secure means of electronic funds transfer). Most Europeans that have a credit card only use it to purchase stuff online (usually from amazon and the like) or to use when they're on holiday. The latter is usually for "just in case" purposes, and for renting a car, which is more conveniently done by credit card.
For some reason most Europeans regard credit cards as expensive, yet another opportunity to rack up debts, and too insecure. This is even disregarding the fact that it's hardly accepted in bricks-and-mortar shops.
Wouldn't supplying substantial amounts of power through network cable (lets say cat5) make enough EMI to scramble the data going through the other pairs?
Gee, I suppose those boys at the IEEE haven't paid any attention to that. How embarrassing. Those electrical engineers, always chasing the girls, playing in rock-bands, and entering in surfing contests! This kinda thing was bound to happen...
No, not at all. This is exactly what he's talking about. "Linguistic concision" means both brevity and expressing exactly the shading and meaning that he wants to express.
How about "To be concise"? No need to mention "linguistic" at all.
Quoting yourself to prove a point about writing style is the mark of being a twit anyway.
They complied with the GPL...they weren't required to do anything else, nor should a commercial enterpise be expected to do more if it doesn't aid their business.
Although, perhaps it would aid their business. It's not like they're in the business of selling hardware at a loss only to make up for it in software sales like the console makers.. Software from third parties only adds to the value of their bricks, and you can bet your ass that their warranty excludes any hacking of the things anyway, so there are no extra support costs asociated to allowing others to hack the thing.
Drivers etc. don't even have to be supplied in source code to bake a ROM; object code will do. So competitors won't get to see any more of their secret sauce then they get to see now.
But I know, some of you, especially young americans, don't understand this...
You are utterly wrong! I'm not American, I'm Dutch
Our country is worth visiting, but not because we have Internet on every damn spot! :)
It's the women, right?
Now everybody who uses a mac will switch over immediately!
Suprasphere encrypts all socket communication using a dynamically generated Diffie-Hellman key exchange. This is much better than SSL because it does not require using a CA so you can set it all up without any administrative overhead
Superduper great!
What in the world gave you the impression that SSL doesn't use DH? (SSL 3.0 and TLS explicitely support DH). A CA isn't there just to generate keys you know, that's the reason it's called a certificate authority, not a key authority. Certificates are there so you can rest assured that you're using the proper key, and that there is no Meet-In-The-Middle attack going on.
Even self-signed certs do this pretty darn well, you just have to write down the fingerprint, no 'administrative overhead' (by which I presume you mean getting a cert from a third party) required.
Furthermore, all authentication uses a zero-knowledge proof so that a password is never sent over the wire.
You know, 'certificates' (AKA asymmetric crypto, such as RSA or DSA/DH) are pretty darn good at doing exactly that. And guess what, SSL does a great job at this, they're called client certificates. You can even play around with free ones from verisign.
You know what? SSH does all of these things as well! As does any modern VPN! And most of them, unlike the proprietary product you're advertising as an anonymous coward, are actually peer reviewed, use algorithms and protocols that are public and are time tested. (Obviously the list of 'most modern VPNs' excludes some particularly crappy proprietary technologies, such as early Microsoft VPN offerings for example. Weird isn't it how suckage and proprietariness seem so.. well.. linked?)
So take your buzzwords and productpimping elsewhere. Lacking any evidence to the contrary I call snakeoil!
Bearing in mind that desktops are cheaper, and that you can upgrade them more easily using off the shelf components, this doesn't mean that all of a sudden the world+dog are switching to laptops, especially not first time computer buyers looking for a family pc.
It think it's likely nowadays that we may see the engine manufacturers subject the engine/nacelle combination to the type of destructive event caused by the impact of Man-Portable Air Defense (MANPAD) surface-to-air missile. They want to make sure the engine/nacelle combination will still maintain reasonable structural integrity even after impact from the warhead of a MANPAD missile so an airliner that has been attacked by a terrorist with a MANPAD missile can still fly on the remaining operating engine(s) and make a safe emergency landing.
Great, so now we can't even use our MANPAD missiles (second amendment baby!) to shoot terrorist-hijacked airplanes out of the air in self-defense! Damn aircraft manufacturers, siding with the terrorists!
Just the one that I can think of - use-based dynamic menus. Perhaps someone can point me to earlier cases of this, but I still like it and still find them useful.
There appears to be a religious objection to them in the Linux world, I suspect primarily because the idea came from Microsoft. OK - so some people hate them, meaning that the feature should be configurable. Despite that, I'd like to see dynamic menus start making their way outside of the Windows world.
It's not so much religious as practical. Think about it. Everytime you stop using a feature for w hile it disappears. Not once, not twice, all the time. Use it or lose it. If you start using a feature, the menu-option reappears.
This means your menu items are never in the same place! You quickly lose all efficiency, especially for menu-items that don't have icons in front of them. You can never sit down at some one else's workstation and expect things to be in the same place. I can't tell my mom she should use the third option from the top (which comes in handy sometimes when she's using a Dutch version of Office, whereas I'm using an English version and the translations are farfetched at best).
Also it changes the way pull down menus have worked for years, with the sole exception of most-recently used files (only at the bottom of the File pull down menu). Talk about breaking the user's mental model of your app!
GUI gurus know this. They tell you, if an option is not available, disable it (gray it out) so the relative position remains the same. This somehow applies to context menus, but not to pull down menus?
I'm all for simple vs. advanced pull down menus, but self-adjusting.. Puh-lease. Not to mention my startmenu is at the same time not alphabetized, as well as unpredictably axing applications all the time. I used it yesterday, now it's gone, but the app I used last a few months ago is still there.. Yikes.
I don't know if self-mutilating pull down menus are a True Microsoft Innovation (R) but yes, they are annoying. There are plenty of better GUI enhancements that could be supported..
What are prime numbers useful for in daily life?
Searching 1976 to present...
Results of Search in 1976 to present db for:
"prime number": 1238 patents.