You don't need a new hard disk any more than you'd need a new DVD ROM drive, as it comes with one that works just fine.
You don't need a keyboard and mouse either, unless it's not clear to you what people are using it for (they are using it for servers and media centres, not desktop replacements...). Just boot from a bootable CD, and ssh into it to install your free operating system of choice.
You don't need a modchip to install Linux either (I'm not sure where you got the weird idea that that's the only way to install Linux).
So, it's just 150 USD (with the far more useful IR remote - that's usable in Linux - that you can get bundled instead of a game as apart of a regular combo deal). Oh and of course you'd need to get your own one of these if you decided to build your own PC (thus adding more to the 'build your own cost').
Added to the low price, it's very convenient because it's prebuilt and quite reliable. Sure you *can* build a better system for only a fraction more, but you still have to put the system together, which is more hassle than the 'slight speed bonus' is worth for me (as I value my time).
Analogy:
It's like at the cinema - I can get 'large popcorn' and 'large coke' instead of 'small popcorn' and 'small coke' for only 5.25 instead of 4.75 but I don't have any use for the enourmous large size, I never eat all the popcorn and I drink all the coke I'll end up having to take a leak half way through the film, so although it's a 'better deal' in principle, the added 'value' is worthless to me, in fact it's more of a hassle because I can't hold them both in one hand meaning I have to hold the cinema ticket in my mouth so the usher can check it. There simply is no real value in the larger size for most people, given the circumstance.
I built my gaming system myself and put quite a bit of a cash into it (SATA RAID 0, a 256 MB DX9 card, P4 3.2 Ghz, 2 GB RAM, 802.116g, Gigabit Ethernet, etc), even took the time replace the lousy vendor heatsync on the GPU and replace it with a half decent custom ThermalTake one, because I value my gaming time (and want it to be both as enjoyable and reliable as possible) but I don't want to spend time putting some crappy 'media centre' box together when I know an X-Box will do the job just as well and work without faffing. That it's cheaper is a bonus.
And is *is* cheaper - if you actually try and build a system in the same form factor and noise level as an X-Box you'll come in waay over budget. Granted you'll have a more powerful system, but people don't have use for the extra power in a media center system.
A PC system built on a budget of almost equal to an X-Box will end up looking crappier AND bulkier than an X-Box Midi Tower case. It's going to be a hell of a lot more physically intrusive and a lot nosier than an X-Box's system. Even a CPU fan on a cheap AMD system will be louder than the the X-Box system, which is remarkably quiet - something that's important to people in a living-room-centered device like a media centre.
If your going to build a Media Centre PC I say either buy an X-Box and save some cash and get a very reasonable system great for the job, or spend some money (around 900 USD/UKP) and get a decent system with a proper case - LCD display, very low profile form factor, 'silent' CPU and PSU fan, CD/DVD writer, dual TV tuner, SATA, 802.11g, etc.
I fail to see the point in building a cheap system that's builkier, noiser, slightly more powerful, but with otherwise the same functionality for *more money* when you can (a) do it cheaper and with more style or (b) do it more expensively but significantly better. There are some people for who building their own system makes more sense (e.g. if they want to be able to extend it's future use beyond a media center and can't afford more than one system), but there quite a number of people who don't have that requirement for their dedicated media center system and for them an X-Box is really good cost saving (and time and hassle saving) alternative.
On another note, did it say that it allows you to switch between the hard drives?
Oh I read that but didn't really take it in. Your right that is lame and practially useless. It seems quite expensive for what it is too (especially if - as it seems - you can only use one disk at a time).
I'm not trying to be negative about it but it doesn't really seem there is much that's interesting about this kit.
"is a complete kit that will allow you convert your Xbox(TM) into a mini rack mount server"
In what way does it allow you to convert one into a 'mini rack mount server'?
There is no rack mounting kit with this that I can see, nor does the mod do anything that would aid in rack mounting an X-Box as far as I can see (I had assumed some kind of side bracket to effectively make it wider, or possibly to allow two to a rack).
Am I missing some element of the kit here, or is it just poor phrasing on their part?
Those are not for Fast ATA (which has a transfer rate of 16.6 MBps) but for *hot-swappable* SATA disks (which support transfer rates of 150 MBps - 600 MBps) and in USD prices.
They are for systems with dual Gigabit ethernet interfaces, you could have fiber channel interfaces for the cost of adding the PCI cards if you wanted (say for attaching to an existing storage system), but using multiple gigabit eithernet interfaces will give you the same throughput at the end of the day at a fraction of the cost for equipment (though it depends what your doing - either way even if you add a couple of Fiber cards your saving an enormous about over a system from a vendor like EMC).
Personally, I consider NetApp to be expensive, but arguably worth it depending on cirumstance. I consider EMC to be really expensive and not worth it (and I've thought that about them for years). I put vendors like Hitachi (which we've been using for ages) in the same boat as EMC.
We've been using Hitachi equipment here, but after a number of failures and escallating costs (for associated software too, like Veritas licensing, Sun Servers to run Veritas on, etc) we have started switching to Debian Linux (2.6 Kernel) based IDE solution after pointing just how much it can save us (and for the same cost, how much more reliable a system we can build). I won't deny it's a hard sell and you've really got to be familer with the hardware and Linux (and have a culture in the company that adapts to new ways of doing things, I find that's the hardest part to crack).
As for the tape prices, you can get them at that price from Google at that price (though it varies from day to day).:-)
| Most people have a wide variety of demanding things going on | in their life (children, work) and only barely grasp how to use | their computer.
I would say this is a baseless assertion.
Not only do I think that's a very bizarre statement to make you apparently go on to contradict yourself later by bemoaning the tolerance in society for those who are less computer literate.
there will always be a place for easy, simple, intuitive tools that can cater to the occasional computer user. However, an enormous percentage of the workforce use their computers as a primary tool. For them, it's more productive for to have efficient tools in whose use they are properly trained.
And you know what's even more productive? Software that's been designed by someone who understands the things it's users will want to do and makes them so easy to do it's users don't need training.
Having an intuitive, easy/simple to use interface does not mean the software is only able to be simple in it's functionality.
Anyone who writes software that does complex things should be able to hide the underlying complexity from the end user and make the task easy to do. That's kind of the point of productivity software in my eyes (and also something that separates good software developers from mere code monkeys).
While we're carelessly slinging UI philosophy around
You might sling it around- I take designing good user interfaces for my software quite seriously.
, let me mention that context menus seem very much in line with the philosophy of "direct manipulation". When the user wants to know "what can I do with this object?" they can right-click and find out.
My preferred action is to provide access to the same options via a hierarchical menu selection from a main menu menu-item as well, though common options on an object (e.g. edit, delete) may naturally be present in the tool bar as well (in which case the context menu would contain a mixture of relevent items as it should - it's there to assist users, not a pemise to build an application design around).
I don't see any problem any problem with having operations on items available via a hierarchical menu that comes from a main menu menu-item (as I find that's usually the first place users who don't think to right-click look - they wander through the menus, that's why it's a good idea to put things there).
I've observed users doing this, they almost always look through the menu options first. Few right click because context clicking is so haphazardly supported, so it simply doesn't always occur to people to immedaitely right click on something. I suggest watching users in action on this one. They have never failed to wander through the main menubar options when I've observed them trying to perform actions on an object. The main menu is ever present and immediately visible, this is why it so often occurs to users to check it first.
You can easily have very many options availble easily this way (especially if you group options into sensible windows), you'll note this is exactly what most common complex applications do.
Another - under used - idea I favour for this is NeXT/Apple's 'Inspector' idea, where a floating context sensitive window appears giving access to all the properties for the object you are operating on (Omnigraffle being a good example of this). Then all you need to do is devote a single icon on the toolbar to launching the Inspector pane (or even launch it when the user clicks/double clicks the object - if appropriate).
If you can't think of anywhere EXCEPT a context sensitive menu to put something, it seems clear to me you haven't really thought about the design at all.
I'd just like to add that this is totally spurious:
(Experiments prove that people can use text toolbar buttons better... if you can come up with the right text.)
That's not true (and of course you could quite easily argue "if you came up wiith the right icons it would be easier"). It depends entirely on context. In a mail application a distinct icon of a trash can is a lot easy to pick out (and a lot easier to click on) than a text label on an identikit rectangular button.
Sometimes both text and icon are appropriate (I prefer this option in my mail client for example), some times just an icon is needed (e.g. in a web browser, due to the typically simple and easily understood nature of the operations of the buttons [Back, Forward, Home, Stop, Refresh]).
I think you're point II is stupid. Aside from grandma, most computer users I know use computers all the time
That's most people you know that's quite distinct from the same thing as most people. Most people have a wide variety of demanding things going on in their life (children, work) and only barely grasp how to use their computer. Most people have trouble doing 'fairly simple' things like installing an operating system (because they find it daunting), even upgrading drivers in Microsoft Windows is a confusing process for most people.
Computer literacy will increase somewhat, but not infinately. Most people simply don't care about their computer. If something is too difficult to do, they don't do it. They have what they consider to be "real lives" to get on with and "time at the computer" does not factor in to that. They precieve computers explicitly as tools for things like email, buying things on ebay and 'helping with homework'.
A software developer writing applications for end users should have empathy for others and be able to grasp the 'Begginers Mind'. Without empathy for others, you'll just end up designing software that's horrible to use (and many people won't want to use it) because you won't be able to understand what it's like as user using the software for the first time.
People have more far more important things to do with their life than learn how to use badly designed software. You need to really understand that before you can write software most people will find easy and enjoyable to use.
The same actually applies to good code - it should be self documenting and clear in function as far as reasonably possible. I find the people who can't be bothered to design good interfaces are often the same people who can't be bothered to write good code (it's often poorly trapped, sparsely documented with many areas that are ambigous in function).
There is another school of thought that says: Design for the upper tier not the Lowest Common Denominator.
Here is another school of thought (this happens the one applied in Mac OS X, and also in classic):
Design for people who *don't* know how to use a computer AND for those who do, at the same time. That is not exactly a huge relevation...
Mac OS follows this principle - Macintosh computers do not come with one button mice but why the operating system inherently supports context sensitive menus for multi button mice, throughout Apple's own applications too (this is true of classic Mac OS, not just Mac OS X).
Many Apple power users and developers like multibutton mice and context menus too, that's why they just plug them in and use them with Applications like the Finder, Mail and Safari. OS X even supports additional buttons like scrollwheels and backwords & forward buttons too. Just plug an appropriately equipped mouse in and they work with no need for additional drivers.
In my experience people who design software that they claim is aimed at 'advanced' users typically design software than even 'advanced' users bawk at, but they use the caveat to cover up their own lack of ability, and because they can't be bothered to find an intuative way to handle something non trivial they give up or don't even try and just do what's easiest for them (at the expense of the user base).
If a developer can't design a reasonably intuative interface then they are not up to the job. Making software easy to use is hard - especially with non trival software. It's not uncommon for people who write software for a living not to be able to design software that's very usable and some of those people fail to grasp the effort required and choose to belittle the effort of those who can and do develop powerful yet easy to use tools (to mask their own lack of ability).
Regarding your analogy, any home appliance (microwave, TV, DVD player, stereo, radio, cooker, washing machine, or powertool (physical safety precautions aside)) that you need to read a manual to use is badly designed. None of these sorts of things do anything especially complex that some manufacturers have not been able to design very elegant versions that are perfectly intuative (thus proving it's possible and clearly focusing the fault on those manufacturers who design unintuative goods).
I got a price quote on my Desk for $25,000 a Terrabyte from EMC, and that is at the 25% discount we get as a large customer. And those ARE ATA drives.
I think that's an awful quote, even if it included an annual service contract, but I can totally belive someone like EMC would charge that. Some vendors, like NetApp and EMC have been overcharging significantly for some time because many of the people who purchase from them never think to look elsewhere to see what more dynamic companies are offering (just as some companies by low/mid range Sun Enterprise servers when Linux or BSD HP systems could do the job faster AND cheaper).
Some of the resistance is due to risk aversion, which has it's place, but larger business are often highly risk averse, much more so than is good for them.
Some vendors like NetApp are starting to get smart though. They are allowing you to use 3rd party disk arrays with their controller hardware (though Linux is starting to bite into that market too, and has already taken up much of the lowend 2TB and smaller market).
Now if you don't want hot spares, then the prices go down.
I included hot spares (allowing for RAID 5) in my quote above, even with them it's more than 20,000 USD cheaper than the EMC quote you have. Even if you included multiple Gigbit interfaces and dual PSU's in each chassis it would still be well under 2,500 USD a TB. I know experienced companies (10+ years in the SAN business, here in London at least) that would offer 24/7 on site support (for however many TB you have) for ~20K USD a year.
Management software. Thats more than Linux.
As I said directory / file system hashing to do what these guys want is utterly trivial. I build a system to do this in a day (for legitimate purposes, based on multiple mountpoints failed over by Veritas, but to allow directories structures to appear 'unified' to servers that had the shares mounted).
Thats more than Linux. In fact only the very latest releases of Linux will address more than 1TB of data
Actually that's not true, for several years it's supported twice that (the 2.4 limit allows LVM's up to 2 TB), I know first hand because I was using Linux with 2TB NetApp shares around 4 years ago. The latest kernel (2.6) supports a lot more than that.
Last time I looked (been about 3 yrs) a good robot tape library was at least 500K PLUS Tapes. Cheaper than a SAN for sure!
As I said, 30 USD for 200/300 GB tapes. Brand new stand alone readers (though not robots) for these tapes start at a modest 1,500 USD.
After all someone will just upload a new copy if the disk crashes. But if you are RAIDed and you lose a drive it can be rebuilt, it just takes time.
As I've even accounted for RAID in my pricing though (and it's still a good 20,000 a TB cheaper than EMC).
I can see what real benifit you could possibly be getting paying ~25,000 USD per TB compared to ~5,000 USD per TB system.
Even if you went absoultey all out and had two seperate mirrored arrays (two totally seperate chassis, each with seperate power supplies, one system on DC on AC, multiple Gigabit interfaces on each host, dedicated interfaces and heartbeats to effectively HA-cluster each share) you'd come in under 10,000 USD per (usable!) TB even if you paid above the odds to ensure better quality of service from a prefered vendor.
Phone to PDA is pretty common, Bluetooth GPS systems are starting to emerge. How long for Bluetooth storage, I wonder?
Bluetooth storage units are already avalible from Ericsson (for at least 2 and I think 3 years now). I've seen prices ~99 USD. I'm not sure what the capacity is though. They are about the size of a larger pager.
I don't think there is any need for a Bluetooth 2 - after all if you upped the bandwith I would have thought it would cause grater power drain which would defeat the purpose of it. I think it would be more appropriate to just build a device with 802.11 and zero conf support if it needs greater range. It's a shame that there isn't a single discovery protocol for all types of devices (both 802.11/Bluetooth) though.:-(
(i.)Knowing how to design good GUI software and interfaces (both physical and graphical) means knowing what to leave out.
Software ought not to require users to use context sensitive menus to perfom an operation - if it does so then it is badly implimented because most users will simply not figure this out (and if and when they do, it won't be until after a significant of time wasted searching for the way to do it).
Context sensitive menus should assist 'power users' in accessing things or performing operations more quickly, but should never be the only way to perform a given operation. I would further say that developers ought to be striving as much as possible to remove the need for right clicking from their interfaces.
These tennets hold true even when an application is targeted at what are preceived as 'advanced' users. Sooner or later someone not as advanced as you think is going to end up using the software (or alternatively someone just having a bad day) and they are going to run in to problems because they can't find the way to perform the operation because they didn't realise they had to (or even could) right click to perform this operation.
(ii.)People who don't know that context menu's are avalible are the exact same people who are better off with a one button mouse in the first place.
The 'average joe' still replies to instructions of "click that icon" with "With what mouse button?" Most people are casual users of computers at best, and they are still daunted by having two butttons. The situation could be possibly be improved by having graphical (and possibly textual) representations of the behaviour on the mouse buttons themselves but that is not common.
When they are ready for added complexity it is there, just like the Unix command prompt is there for those who want it, but it's completely hidden from the majority of users.
(iii.) Dispite being a unix software developer I have come to prefer the design of Apple's own mouse over my 5 button scroll wheel mouse when using Mac OS X.
The primary reason being that I don't have to hold down a specific area of the mouse, just push down on it generally (the physical level of pressure required is adjustable). I have found this much better for my hand/wrist postioning (meaning I spend less time with my fingers crawled up in a ball).
I also find that on Mac OS (this applies to both classic too) software is generally designed in such as way as to be completely usable without the need to right click, largely thanks to things like more comprehensive drag and drop support.
It's not without sacrifices, I like scroll wheels for example, but when using OS X I don't find the lack of scroll wheel nearly as much of a problem as I do when using Gnome or Microsoft Windows, largely due to three factors relating to scrolling:
1). Window scrollbar indicators are always proportional (with a 'sensible' minimum size).
2). When I click on a scroll bar the visible area of the window jumps to exactly where I have clicked instantly (not just generally scrolls 'up' or 'down' a page).
3). Both Scoll Up AND Scoll Down arrows at the top AND bottom of each scollbar.
These of course are toggleable through the Preferences panel but I find with them I no longer miss having a scroll wheel enough to give up my 'no button' (push-to-click) Apple branded Bluetooth mouse when using OS X. Though it is something of a close call (mostly I miss having back/forward buttons and scroll wheels are still very useful with FPS games).
While I think it's clear they have seriously rounded up the amount of storage space here (and I'm sure not accounted for the fact that each of these users is sharing largely the same set of files I'm sure) your price estimate was way over by a huge margin.
They are not going to have SCSI drives when they can have hot pluggable SATA so cheaply (it's under 200 USD per 250 GB, even at off the shelf prices).
You'd need 200 USD investment on every 2 TB - i.e. every 8 hard disks - for a chassis, motherboard (etc) and a cheap PCI card for additional SATA slots (they come in at under 25 USD each for 2 SATA ports, and of course there will already be some on the motherboard). So, assuming 8 disks per server (2 SATA ports on the motherboard, 4 on the cheapo SATA card - or 2 cheap SATA cards with 2 ports each) that's 2000 USD for 2 TB of storage (leaving 1750 GB 'accessible' with RAID 5).
The software - Linux - is free of course. I'm not sure why you would suggest they would want to buy software to assist them in this. Nothing they were doing isn't trivial with multiple mount points and directory hashing. This is just fairly off the cuff pricing too, I wouldn't be surprised if you could shave quite a bit off this.
You *still* have cracking performance too (as it's SATA with 8 MB cache on each disk and given that even cheap motherboards these days seem to ship with crazy stuff like dual gig-e network interfaces).
As for back ups (beyond 'mere' RAID 5, which for a bunch of warez I think most people would regard as 'sufficent' on it's own), why, what's the point? They are trading illegal files, they can just download the files they are missing from someone else if two disks in array decided to die at the same time. It's not like there arn't going to be mirrors of it (that's kind of the point here).
Of course an even cheaper option is what many Warez sites used to do (but I don't think they do any more, given the low price of SATA disks) - is simply to use tape.
You just told the system what you wanted (by something as simple trying to download it) and it would then trigger a script to either fetch it for you (if it was a multichanger) or page the admin to say "Please insert tape #142", where upon it would then either allow you to mount it right away or copy it to a temporary location on an HD for you to download and eject the tape. I know about this because mac software sites (legit ones too;) used to do this on Hotline (with everything from Zip drives & SyQuest volumes to CD's and DAT drives). They would either use plain text files in a 'Requests' folder or have them popup as alert messages with AppleScript.
The current HP Ultrium range seem perfect for this. They work out at 30 USD each for 200 GB (compressed)), or around 150 USD per TB, and they are a toally respectable 54 gig a hour transfer time (still faster than your download speed is likely to be;-).
I agree that Three in the UK is retarded (especially when the likes of Three Australia offer services like GPRS surfing, unrestricted).
Hutchinson 3D have stuffed the entire company full of morons and luddites. There is a shortage of talented people in the industry, apparently Hutchinson don't have any of them, instead they have recent graduates with no real clue about the industry, slick marketing weasels and flight by night smooth talking consultants who've managed to con the slick marketing boi's in to hiring them. I am quite confident they are doomed in the UK, and will be eaten alive by the competition.
I wrote to Three asking why:
a) They don't allow you to use to the build in Email client (which supports POP and IMAP) with any other server than theirs (which makes your 400+ UKP phone useless for email, even my 35 UKP Ericsson on Vodafone can do IMAP and POP over GPRS and has been doing this for the last 2 years).
[Answer: They have no clue about what their customers want or what's important to them, or apparently what the competition provide.]
b) Why they don't have a service in place to allow you to use the build in Opera web browser - or a Buetooth connection via a laptop/PDA to surf the web and/or access the full Internet when Vodafone have been doing this for at least a couple of years now (which GPRS, and a respectable service too, even though it fubars when you try and maintain a connection going through a zone). With Three in the UK you can ONLY access THEIR website. Gosh that's useful!
[Answer: Same reason as above.]
I also wouldn't mind them explaining, in their own words:
c) Why they have deliberately enabled the protection on the phone to prevent users from installing third party software. Given it's a PDA hybrid running Sybian and there are hundreds of apps available (and merrily used by other Symbian based phone users, like those on Vodaphone).
[Answer: They want you to ONLY buy their software so they can rake in 'phat lewt'. Problem is that consists entirely of a small number of utterly piss poor games, zero productivity software. Worse, every game needs to authenticate on the network meaning it doesn't work 8 out of 10 times (and 0/10 on the tube, where most people play games on their phone anyway). And I'm central bloody London - Zones 1 & 2. If anywhere in the country has service it should be here, but no it's crap and 'falls back' to other non 3G networks about 80%+ of the time.]
d) Why although my phone (with the big fancy GPS letters on the back) supports global positioning for finding local services within a few yards (pretty much a core feature of the service they tout), why then is it only able to guess my position within a few miles (not much use when you are looking for 'somewhere to eat/a bank/tube station near my location'?)
[Answer: They have not configured their network appropriately so although the technology is basically there to support this, in the UK they don't have an implementation which carries the field that holds this information in the packet data. Money well spent then. Piss up and brewery spring to mind.]
I have twice emailed them asking them about (a) and (b) and when they planned to do something about them. Both replies I got indicated they had ABSOLUTELY NO CLUE that it was possible to connect to the internet via a GRPS phone with Bluetooth and a laptop. They didn't have the first clue about GPRS, or Bluetooth and were entirely confused that I might want to use the two together.
I've also three times spoken to them on the phone, on every occasion they displayed only a rudimentary grasp of English and little understanding of phone terminology and as such they were totally unable to help me on every occasion. I don't mind call centres being outsourced at all, but they damn well ought to well speak the language of the country who's people they are supporting or it's a total waste of bloody time. Apparently, they don't care about customer service at Three.
No that's not what Zope is, it does not function in the manner I described at all.
I am amazed at the number of people who think it's likely I haven't heard of Zope or Wiki's and that they have the solution to this problem that provides someting thats actually equipvolent to the alternative paradigm I've put forth.
The current 'Content Management' systems are merely kludges in response to the glaring limiations in the current implimentation of web technology. It doesn't mean they are a bad thing, it's just that it's a bad thing that we even need to rely on them and to spend so much of our time developing them.
The entire point is the technology should be vastly better in the first place, rendering them irrelevent.
I agree, it's a bit of a shame we are in this stage, but yes I think it can work (and is is the Real World solution to the current issue). I think Wiki type page management is part of the solution (in the way that most blog services work, or that Apple's iPhoto creates and uploads web albums for you).
I am actually working on my own solution to some of this, by building a generic "tracking tool" that is super flexible but allows people to sort and manage data in any way they want, creating applications very quickly. It's very early work and aimed at intermediate users (e.g. "easy enough for your boss to use", "probably a bit too confusing for your mum") but I'm prepared to spend quite a bit of time on it.
The idea being things like an order tracking system, a bug tracker, a project tracker, a call logger, a knowledge base all have many common elements and there is no reason you should be able to leverage a re-usable core to make an application like this completely within a web based interface (which could allow you to define field types and what type of widgets they are - e.g. date fields or dropdown menus). If you can make them interoperate you can start to build a really powerful system very quickly and have it manage the information in the way you want.
You can see a really early version here to get a grasp of the type of functionality and ease of use I'm trying to foster. There is a long, long way to go though (note - much of that is borked, as I develop it on my laptop).
To give you an idea on how flexible it is, from a user perspective the following code is used to generate the view on the front page:
The program elegently handles 'invalid' database field names (so if you typo, it won't just die on the user). Again to make it as easy as possible to use. There is another XML file (that's even simpler) to control the tabs on the top.
The idea is I just create a set of core features (and widgets) that are useable to the widest possible audience and users built exactly what they need. I'll be sticking easy to use web based interfaces in an admin area to generate those XML files (so even that will be hidden, but will still be there underneath for the convenience of 'power users').
It's no HyperCard of course, but I've rationaled that I just don't have the reasources to create a system like that (though I th
You're describing the design goals for Java or the X Window System. However, that's not for what hypertext was meant. The World Wide Web is about transferring documents - not programs.
*sigh*
Do you know the relevant history behind the development of the WWW? Do you know why web browsers show a little hand with a finger pointing out when you hover over a link even today? It's because of the software the web was modelled after. Hugely influential and revolutionary software by Bill Atkison. Software for creating little 'page' (card) based 'applications'. That was where the initial inspiration came from.
Like many others I'm sure I was creating networked, linkable and editable wiki style 'sites' with it before the WWW, the only major difference was it was with proprietary software. TBL saw HC and was inspired by it. I think it entirely possible he wouldn't have bothered with creating HTML had HC not been proprietary.
Today, web applications are all around us. They are revolutionising the way we live. They are a big deal. The only reason TBL's implementation is not is good at allowing people to create web applications as Bill Atkison's inspirational software is that TBL didn't know how (or have the resources/inclination) to implement many of the relevant features, and they missed the boat on having a half decent scripting language so Netscape assumed dominance with the god awful JavaScript to fill a niche, by then it was too late, we were stuck with a Turkey.
People are spending vast amounts of time and money building web apps. Huge financial resources are put into it each year by corporations building web apps for customers, online stores, B2B and users build web apps just for fun. So much futile effort and man power could be better spent if we just had a decent implementation of a standard for that, but we don't so expensive investment in working around this gaping whole in the current technology is the norm. It's really quite insane, especially when you've experienced a highly equivalent way of doing the same thing that's so much better.
The WWW is not about simply 'sharing documents' (do not listen to your inner hobgoblin who tells you otherwise), it's about sharing information - the exchange of information - and that's a two way process, and for that, you need an interface that facilitates that.
Oh and don't worry - I know how Internet standards bodies like the W3C typically work and I think it's surely painfully obvious to those who still don't get it that its a poor way to make standards. I know many will disagree, but to them I point out the result of the current system - we live in a world of half baked web and network standards the implementations of which are rarely actually compatible.
The sad testiment is that today, proprietary reverse engineered solutions are usually better at providing interoperability that competing platforms are at implementing identically functioning standards based systems!
It's a shameful mess for a technically competent society to be in.
As the bunny icon used to say '"Subvert the dominant paradigm!"
The WWW has alas been crippled by a lack of vision since the W3C's inception. It's too bad there are not more Bill Atkinson's to go round.
CSS was well designed. It has a few problems, most of which will be solved in CSS3 (image borders, some numbered list stuff) but it is a good spec.
I'm quite aware they are theoretically (and in some browsers, actually - for varying amounts of 'actually') possible in CSS, but they were not part of CSS from the get go and they are such fundementally obvious things to have they should have been part of the specification from very early on.
The reality is that it works for fewer than 10% of users.
This could all have been avoided if it hadn't taken them so long to get around to even start grokking the importance of such features that we still don't have a full implimentation of them, instead we have a myriad of features that are (IMO) very nice and very clever (and even more complext to impliment), but that not nearly as useful for most people.
Instead of such functionality that we can rely on in all modern browsers, have a load of things like XSL Transformations (XSLT) which are very neat and by and large work in both MSIE and Gecko, but I think of them as largely wasted effort at this stage (given the more important things I think they should have done). Things like XSLT are useful largely to the sort of people who - like me - are quite happy and able to write Perl/Python or PHP CGI's to render the output in a flexible format in any case. They are great to have, but of comparibly little importance compared to having a more acessible medium for all.
Of course it's fair to say that the current situation could also have been avoided by people not using Internet Explorer (I know I do my part as far as that goes), or by Microsoft more standards compliant software or by the anti-trust settlement actually forcing them to be more standards compliant. All that is true, but I don't think that lets the W3C off the hook for not setting - and strongly and unambiguously advocating - the right set of priorities.
Ever go to 'File -> Edit Page' in the Mozilla suite? Ever notice the 'publish' button? It does exactly what you described.
Aaahhh but it doesn't do exactly what I describe. Certainly not even nearly closely enough to be easy to use for *most people*.
It doesn't 'just work' by clicking edit, authing and pressing save. That's how simple it needs to be to even remotely useful for most people, and that's how - IMO - good technology should be implimented.
When MOST people try using the Edit functionality in Mozilla (or it's predecesors) they find it doesn't work because things like their FTP upload path is wrong, and they have no idea what on earth that is so they give up, or try 'web upload' thinking that will work, but that's not enabled on their server, only the client doesn't know that so it just errors, confusing them further).
It's just not nearly as easy to use as it should be (speaking as someone who tries very hard to make my own software as acessible and 'smart' as possible).
I've been watching people try to use that feature since it appeared in Netscape 3.0 Gold 8+ years ago, it was the same thing and had exactly the same problem then, it was far to cumbersome and too often resulted in ambgious errors for normal users, rendering it largely worthless.
Also, you can use the z-index property to get the layering you want. It all works in Mozilla. Your perspective sounds like that of someone who has only used Internet Explorer
Ah *bingo*. Very obviously by the comments in my post I'm not (seeing as how I indicate I use a KHTML based browser), but I am someone who understands that something that only works in Gekco and/or KHTML is not really much use to the vast majority (~90%+) of people.
I feel the W3C does have responsiblity here for the reasons I stated - they should have come out with a clear and strong message about key features right from the get go, but (IMO) they failed to prioriotize or even manage to appear focused on the core issues so their message was clouded and apathy and confusion over a myriad of standards set in fast.
Unluckily, the W3C has made a complete mess of web standards. To the point that there are so many barely used, misunderstood, unclear, ambigious, and depreciated standards that figuring anything out at all is an accomplishment of some scale.
I agree, they have totally cocked it up IMO.
They have gone from TBL's origional HyperCard inspired idea for the WWW (which he admits didn't live up to his vision of an easy to edit & publish system) to promoting an overly complicated XML driven inteface which acts as a high barrier to entry.
Certainly, in 1995 it was a lot easier to learn how create a web page. You can still use the same HTML of course, but few places teach that - they all want to try and teach new users about CSS, XHTML, DHTML, JavaScript and other buzzwords which only serve to overwhelm people.
While that's fine for some people (like me), gone is the notion of a simple to grasp mark up language and editing system. I think that's why blogs are so popular - people can use a third party service that effectively creates their own website for them and allows them to update it easily and the whole process is just so simple (unlike with the the hundreds of naff, user-hostile applications that *claim* to make web design easy).
A very easy to use but powerful scripting language (something not unlike HyperTalk itself springs to mind), the ability to easily use other native interface widgets - like tabs and menus -, as well as some basic drawing tools (line, rectangle, circle and a basic fill tool spring to mind) together with an easy publishing system should have been the goals for HTML & HTTP IMO.
They seem to have no ability to focus clearly on the most important issues and then communicate those thoughts unambigously. Instead they create multiple broken 'transitional' implimentations which confuse people and lead to apathy as far as compliance goes.
IMO we should have a system where - say you are browsing your web site and you spot a spelling mistake on it at http://www.i-like-kibble.org/about.html you should just be able to click an edit button in your browser, be asked to supply a username and password and then have it open webdav://www.i-like-kibble.org/about.html either in a built in editor or it should ask you to select an editor (such as notepad, gedit or even MS Word). When the page is 'saved' in the editor, the changes should be uploaded to the site automatically by the browser. If they had been even remotely competant and argued for this from day one (and hacked up a couple of functional implimentations) we could all have that functionality today.
Instead we have an overcomplicated system focused squarely at technical users that is seeing little 'real world' use, because the vast majority of people just find using systems like Tables with a little CSS far easier and more practicle to manage.
And what really annoys me? CSS wasn't even that well designed. It's got huge gaping holes in functionality. You should be able to align anything by top left, top right, bottom left and bottom right of an object (such as a div) both as an absolute and a percentage. You should also be able to specify on what layer within that said container the object you are positioning should be drawn. Of course that doesn't work in any recent browser, because the developers have been too busy trying to impliment the mixed messages coming out of the W3C, and ensuring backwards compliance, along with supporting 'real world' hacks due to the dominance of IE.
Bit of rant - probably too long and ranty for most people to want to read - but I'm just annoyed that something as influencial as the WWW wasn't better steered by the W3C.
Of course I'm also annoyed at MS for how little they have done in this area (and how much they could have done given their dominance). Full kudos to the Mozilla contributers for giving them some competiton though. Even Windows users deseve features like tabs and autofill[1] *hugs Safari* (even though it's filthy KHTML;).
[1] Though the first time I saw AutoFill was in Internet Explorer for Mac OS Classic.
I played the first two/three levels with the audio turned down quite a bit (it's been late by the time I've gotten home). Loud enough to hear weapon fire, but that was about it.
I got home early and played it with the audio up loud on 5.1 surround.
Holy crap is it an order of magnitude scarier with it turned up properly.
"flashlight separate from weapons" is part of the gameplay. Live with it.
That doesn't make for good gameplay though IMO, not when it's too dark to see virtually all the time (it's not as if the levels look bad and they need to cover them up).
If it wasn't from ID software I'm sure the vast majority of people would be slamming the developers such a great game then cocking it up by coupling extreme darkness with a weapon seperate from flash light system. I don't see any reason to go lightly on them just because we all respect them very much as talented developers. It seems they made quite a big mistake that would have been very easily rectified. It seems like they just tinkered too much with a perfectly good gameplay premise.
Personally I'd recommend using the Duct Tape mod (hopefully a better version is in the works, I'm sure it is from someone). After all, it just seems obvious that you'd strap your light to your gun or helmet (even if it was with a bit of cloth from a gunned down zombie).
I think the idea of having a flashlight was great in principle, they should have done something more sensible like mount it on your helmet though. It would have been a much better idea to simply limit the battery life on it to restrict the use. I feel (the like previous user, and many others) there are just too many instances where I have no idea if what I'm shooting at is dead or not, and that's not a lot of fun IMO.
I think the darkness/flashlight system they went with was a very big mistake and will be the most controversial thing people remember about Doom 3. From talking to co-workers it seems to be something that's sadly sullied the game. Fantastic artwork, engine design, modeling, animation and good level design are important parts of a triple A title, but they are not the only elements and I *hate* to be critical about it, but really seems like gameplay was forgotten. I hope ID bring in a 'gameplay tzar' for their next title and don't let take a back seat next time.
Just as good user interface design is the last thing on so many developers minds in other software, gameplay seems to be the thing that's most likely to not get the attention it deserves when it comes to games.
While I think the odd dark level would have been a nice variation, I much prefer the style of D3DM4 as a 'typical' Doom level. I really like it. It's well lit, with tight areas and wide areas with multiple levels. It's not too samey and yet it's still easy to take a wrong turn and get lost. I'd far rather the game had more levels of that nature.
TBH, I'm actually looking forward to playing the Knee Deep in the Dead levels again with the new engine (the engine seems to cope okay with some wide open spaces, hopefully it can cope with at least some of the origional level designs). I think that they will be more fun to play than the levels Doom 3 ships with (especially coupled with the new weapons system - which I am a fan of - and the new monsters (which I am a fan of, the 'jumping' ability of IMP's aside - I mean who's idea was that? Bad for gamplay, no over-tweaking! Naughty dev!).
You cannot name any of your relatives that we killed while stopping RUSSIANS attacking your country ! Most Finns can. That makes the diffrence.
No, ours tend to have died fighting German Nazi's rather than Russians.
Pray tell, when are you expecting the Russians to attack again, and do you think you'd actually be able to stop them, seeing as if they did they'd attack via air like any other modern army, after first wiping out Finland's own air defence system using surface to surface missiles launched from well within the Russian border in all likely hood.
The nature of combat between modern forces today is quite different from that in the first and second world wars, men with machine guns don't help defend against arial bombardment (something they could do with impunity until either the country surrendered or till all the strategic areas were secured with only light resistance, easily defeated by armed columns).
I'd rather serve and fight than flee to some country that uses "pound" to measure anything!
We don't use 'pounds' as a unit of mesurement. We are a member of the EU and use the same weights and measures as every other EU member state.
Your lack of knowledge of knowledge of basic EU legislation is ironic for someone who goes by the nickname 'Mr Europe'.
I've already amply stated the problems with Finnish national service (it's sexist (applies only to men), bigoted (does not apply to *some* religious groups, but does apply to others), undemocratic (the majority of those eligible for it vote against it and the total against it make up over 20% of population) and barbaric (it's the only nation in the EU that has political prisoners, we recognised conscientious objectors in the 1600's yet Finland is alone in the EU in not grasping the concept).
It doesn't even make economic sense because it *costs* Finland millions of Euros and gives them virtually no strategic military benefit. France, Spain, Holland and others have all given it up because they have realised this. Mark my words, Finland will too, even if your a little slow.
>Finns, the government are there to serve you, not the other way around.
Just as JFK said!
Then you beleive you are there to serve your government...
What a sad existence to live in such complete subservience.
I'd rather live to serve myself and my fellow man than to a bunch of bureaucrats, but each to his own.
I would point out that even that doesn't 'keep people honest' (though I wish it did) Germany had conscription, but it didn't stop them starting two World Wars in Europe. But then why should we expect it to - volunteer soldiers have the same level of ethics too, they are normal people just like you and me. There are countless wars started by countries with conscription forces (most countries with conscription are generally dictatorships or less than 'modern democracies' too).
And it's way off topic, but as much as I dislike lying weasels for heads of state (like Bush and Blair) I see nothing wrong with pushing 'ideological interests' and bringing them to brutal dictatorships responsible for the deaths of over 2 million people (against which, casualties in the conflict in Iraq are incomparable). I'd give my life tomorrow to turn Iran into a state with an elected, secular system of government, or to kick Kim Chong-il out of North Korea and re-unite it with the South.
I have no interest in bringing 'Christianity' to Muslim states (I'm an Atheist, the lot of them can get stuffed IMO) but secularism, freedom (including the freedom not to fight) and a semblance of democracy I want to bring to the world, yes. That doesn't mean i think all countries should have the same laws or values, if some nations want to outlaw tobacco or alcohol that's fine with me. If they want to instigate life sentences for drug trafficking, or alternatively legalise drugs, that's fine with me too. If they want to treat women as property and stone people to death that's not fine with me, and your too right I want to impose that ethical code.
I don't think the Finnish system of national service, under-which they would have locked Gandhi up as a criminal, is remotely acceptable. Britain recognised conscientious objectors in the 1600's, for Finland not to recognise such a right in the 21st century is barbaric. It is the only EU-member state with prisoners of conscience (people imprisoned for political views), and there some pretty dubious recent applicants to the EU, but still none of them have prisoners of conscience.
I think they should reform, or be kicked out of the EU for still having prisoners of conscience, I'm sure it will all end in a Human Rights case and they will change, just like France, Spain, Holland and others have ended national service in the last 10 years (almost half a decade after we ended it in the UK). It's simply inevible as people add up the cost of it, let alone address the human rights issues. Did you know it costs Finland over 2 Million Euro each year to keep these people in Jail too? Even if you don't give a damn about human rights, if you can do the maths you can see it doesn't make sense.
Oh and did I mention that Jehova's Witnesses are curiously exempt from having to do national service in Finland? They have a powerful lobby group you see.
Of course, the president has the legal power to excuse all prisoners of conscience from their 6 and 1/2 months of jail time, but she's personally chooses not to. But then, as a women she's never had to do it because they don't conscript women.
The system stinks and is rotten to the core. It's quite indefensible.
With the 1960s antiwar movement in the United States, conscripts dieing for ideological and political reasons related to foreign policy became unpalatable to the American public.
Wrong. People dieing for what they regard as wrong reasons (and in a futile conflict) is unpalatable to the American public, they (like me, and I am not an American) will still strongly support military action for ideological and political reasons if it seems justified. Just like the Americans did in Bosnia, where they stepped in and stopped mass genocide, on another continent thousands of miles away (where there was certainly no 'oil' to 'steal').
The population of Finland is 5 million - certainly not enough to sustain any kind of professional army.
That's not true though, not even remotely. There are certainly smaller countries that have professional armies and no conscription!
Luxembourg has a 100% professional army with a population of what, a mere ~500,000? Size is most definitely *not* the issue. It's just some some countries are more liberal and others are more authoritarian (Singapore being a prime example of one that's notoriously very authoritarian - certainly by Western standards).
Your assertion also ignores the more important fact is that professional independent military advice from think tanks the world over is that conscription armies are in reality useless at the task of armed defence. They are useful for labour for civil projects (building bridges, in national emergencies such as floods - things professional soldiers dislike doing too much of), but they are *not* an effective fighting force. When countries make assessments about the armed forces of other countries, 'conscripts' are not included in the core figure, but rather as an aside (this has actually been happening for hundreds of years, the core failings of conscripted forces have always been there).
The reasoning is that modern soldiers must be experienced technical personnel and tacticians and you can't teach that unless someone *really* want's to learn it and they are willing to put the many months and effort in - it's really very difficult job and it takes longer to learn than most periods of national service even last. Conscripts in modern armies are bemoaned by most senior military personnel who'd much rather have dedicated professionals in their army, because they want competent focused people, not just kids who have been forced into it.
Also see the argument about why it actually *costs* more money to keep a conscripted Western army than it does to run a professional one (because of the expense of good equipment, facilities, wages and lost revenue though not being able to tax income of otherwise high earners).
Quick example:
I pay more than 20k UKP each year in tax. If I was a conscript on a typical conscript wage, I would be on around 20K a year.
If I was to work for 12 months for the state, that would make the state 40K a year worse off (plus the overhead of running conscription, plus the lost money that is not being pumped into the economy through my previously high salary, which is a not insignificant amount).
If they were to hire a professional it would cost them around 35K a year. Even without the aforementioned overheads that's cheaper. And that's why countries have stopped doing it recently. It costs money in the long run.
But in exchange for what you want, you repay the country for what has been given to you - many local students say that university education in the United States, etc is too simple.
I would agree that good university education in the states must be paid for (and that state education there is not much cop). That has nothing to do with forcing men to do national service however. You get a good education system through high state funding, derived from high GDP and high taxation. What did you think taxes are for?
Countries like France, the UK, Canada all have very nice standards of living, good heath care, good education systems, very relaxed environments and are comparably very liberal places to live. It's pure and simple illiberalism (and incompetant statesmanship!) to have conscription during peace time.
But hey, if you think authoritarian systems of government make for a nicer global environment, feel free to vote your right to choose what to do with your life away and put that decision into the hands of a state bureaucrat! Personally I'd rather we had more accountability in government and more democracy and keep the ability to choose how I spend that time.
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You don't need a new hard disk any more than you'd need a new DVD ROM drive, as it comes with one that works just fine.
You don't need a keyboard and mouse either, unless it's not clear to you what people are using it for (they are using it for servers and media centres, not desktop replacements...). Just boot from a bootable CD, and ssh into it to install your free operating system of choice.
You don't need a modchip to install Linux either (I'm not sure where you got the weird idea that that's the only way to install Linux).
So, it's just 150 USD (with the far more useful IR remote - that's usable in Linux - that you can get bundled instead of a game as apart of a regular combo deal). Oh and of course you'd need to get your own one of these if you decided to build your own PC (thus adding more to the 'build your own cost').
Added to the low price, it's very convenient because it's prebuilt and quite reliable. Sure you *can* build a better system for only a fraction more, but you still have to put the system together, which is more hassle than the 'slight speed bonus' is worth for me (as I value my time).
Analogy:
It's like at the cinema - I can get 'large popcorn' and 'large coke' instead of 'small popcorn' and 'small coke' for only 5.25 instead of 4.75 but I don't have any use for the enourmous large size, I never eat all the popcorn and I drink all the coke I'll end up having to take a leak half way through the film, so although it's a 'better deal' in principle, the added 'value' is worthless to me, in fact it's more of a hassle because I can't hold them both in one hand meaning I have to hold the cinema ticket in my mouth so the usher can check it. There simply is no real value in the larger size for most people, given the circumstance.
I built my gaming system myself and put quite a bit of a cash into it (SATA RAID 0, a 256 MB DX9 card, P4 3.2 Ghz, 2 GB RAM, 802.116g, Gigabit Ethernet, etc), even took the time replace the lousy vendor heatsync on the GPU and replace it with a half decent custom ThermalTake one, because I value my gaming time (and want it to be both as enjoyable and reliable as possible) but I don't want to spend time putting some crappy 'media centre' box together when I know an X-Box will do the job just as well and work without faffing. That it's cheaper is a bonus.
And is *is* cheaper - if you actually try and build a system in the same form factor and noise level as an X-Box you'll come in waay over budget. Granted you'll have a more powerful system, but people don't have use for the extra power in a media center system.
A PC system built on a budget of almost equal to an X-Box will end up looking crappier AND bulkier than an X-Box Midi Tower case. It's going to be a hell of a lot more physically intrusive and a lot nosier than an X-Box's system. Even a CPU fan on a cheap AMD system will be louder than the the X-Box system, which is remarkably quiet - something that's important to people in a living-room-centered device like a media centre.
If your going to build a Media Centre PC I say either buy an X-Box and save some cash and get a very reasonable system great for the job, or spend some money (around 900 USD/UKP) and get a decent system with a proper case - LCD display, very low profile form factor, 'silent' CPU and PSU fan, CD/DVD writer, dual TV tuner, SATA, 802.11g, etc.
I fail to see the point in building a cheap system that's builkier, noiser, slightly more powerful, but with otherwise the same functionality for *more money* when you can (a) do it cheaper and with more style or (b) do it more expensively but significantly better. There are some people for who building their own system makes more sense (e.g. if they want to be able to extend it's future use beyond a media center and can't afford more than one system), but there quite a number of people who don't have that requirement for their dedicated media center system and for them an X-Box is really good cost saving (and time and hassle saving) alternative.
On another note, did it say that it allows you to switch between the hard drives?
Oh I read that but didn't really take it in. Your right that is lame and practially useless. It seems quite expensive for what it is too (especially if - as it seems - you can only use one disk at a time).
I'm not trying to be negative about it but it doesn't really seem there is much that's interesting about this kit.
"is a complete kit that will allow you convert your Xbox(TM) into a mini rack mount server"
In what way does it allow you to convert one into a 'mini rack mount server'?
There is no rack mounting kit with this that I can see, nor does the mod do anything that would aid in rack mounting an X-Box as far as I can see (I had assumed some kind of side bracket to effectively make it wider, or possibly to allow two to a rack).
Am I missing some element of the kit here, or is it just poor phrasing on their part?
Those are not for Fast ATA (which has a transfer rate of 16.6 MBps) but for *hot-swappable* SATA disks (which support transfer rates of 150 MBps - 600 MBps) and in USD prices.
:-)
They are for systems with dual Gigabit ethernet interfaces, you could have fiber channel interfaces for the cost of adding the PCI cards if you wanted (say for attaching to an existing storage system), but using multiple gigabit eithernet interfaces will give you the same throughput at the end of the day at a fraction of the cost for equipment (though it depends what your doing - either way even if you add a couple of Fiber cards your saving an enormous about over a system from a vendor like EMC).
Personally, I consider NetApp to be expensive, but arguably worth it depending on cirumstance. I consider EMC to be really expensive and not worth it (and I've thought that about them for years). I put vendors like Hitachi (which we've been using for ages) in the same boat as EMC.
We've been using Hitachi equipment here, but after a number of failures and escallating costs (for associated software too, like Veritas licensing, Sun Servers to run Veritas on, etc) we have started switching to Debian Linux (2.6 Kernel) based IDE solution after pointing just how much it can save us (and for the same cost, how much more reliable a system we can build). I won't deny it's a hard sell and you've really got to be familer with the hardware and Linux (and have a culture in the company that adapts to new ways of doing things, I find that's the hardest part to crack).
As for the tape prices, you can get them at that price from Google at that price (though it varies from day to day).
| Most people have a wide variety of demanding things going on
| in their life (children, work) and only barely grasp how to use
| their computer.
I would say this is a baseless assertion.
Not only do I think that's a very bizarre statement to make you apparently go on to contradict yourself later by bemoaning the tolerance in society for those who are less computer literate.
there will always be a place for easy, simple, intuitive tools that can cater to the occasional computer user. However, an enormous percentage of the workforce use their computers as a primary tool. For them, it's more productive for to have efficient tools in whose use they are properly trained.
And you know what's even more productive? Software that's been designed by someone who understands the things it's users will want to do and makes them so easy to do it's users don't need training.
Having an intuitive, easy/simple to use interface does not mean the software is only able to be simple in it's functionality.
Anyone who writes software that does complex things should be able to hide the underlying complexity from the end user and make the task easy to do. That's kind of the point of productivity software in my eyes (and also something that separates good software developers from mere code monkeys).
While we're carelessly slinging UI philosophy around
You might sling it around- I take designing good user interfaces for my software quite seriously.
, let me mention that context menus seem very much in line with the philosophy of "direct manipulation". When the user wants to know "what can I do with this object?" they can right-click and find out.
My preferred action is to provide access to the same options via a hierarchical menu selection from a main menu menu-item as well, though common options on an object (e.g. edit, delete) may naturally be present in the tool bar as well (in which case the context menu would contain a mixture of relevent items as it should - it's there to assist users, not a pemise to build an application design around).
I don't see any problem any problem with having operations on items available via a hierarchical menu that comes from a main menu menu-item (as I find that's usually the first place users who don't think to right-click look - they wander through the menus, that's why it's a good idea to put things there).
I've observed users doing this, they almost always look through the menu options first. Few right click because context clicking is so haphazardly supported, so it simply doesn't always occur to people to immedaitely right click on something. I suggest watching users in action on this one. They have never failed to wander through the main menubar options when I've observed them trying to perform actions on an object. The main menu is ever present and immediately visible, this is why it so often occurs to users to check it first.
You can easily have very many options availble easily this way (especially if you group options into sensible windows), you'll note this is exactly what most common complex applications do.
Another - under used - idea I favour for this is NeXT/Apple's 'Inspector' idea, where a floating context sensitive window appears giving access to all the properties for the object you are operating on (Omnigraffle being a good example of this). Then all you need to do is devote a single icon on the toolbar to launching the Inspector pane (or even launch it when the user clicks/double clicks the object - if appropriate).
If you can't think of anywhere EXCEPT a context sensitive menu to put something, it seems clear to me you haven't really thought about the design at all.
I'd just like to add that this is totally spurious:
(Experiments prove that people can use text toolbar buttons better... if you can come up with the right text.)
That's not true (and of course you could quite easily argue "if you came up wiith the right icons it would be easier"). It depends entirely on context. In a mail application a distinct icon of a trash can is a lot easy to pick out (and a lot easier to click on) than a text label on an identikit rectangular button.
Sometimes both text and icon are appropriate (I prefer this option in my mail client for example), some times just an icon is needed (e.g. in a web browser, due to the typically simple and easily understood nature of the operations of the buttons [Back, Forward, Home, Stop, Refresh]).
I think you're point II is stupid. Aside from grandma, most computer users I know use computers all the time
That's most people you know that's quite distinct from the same thing as most people. Most people have a wide variety of demanding things going on in their life (children, work) and only barely grasp how to use their computer. Most people have trouble doing 'fairly simple' things like installing an operating system (because they find it daunting), even upgrading drivers in Microsoft Windows is a confusing process for most people.
Computer literacy will increase somewhat, but not infinately. Most people simply don't care about their computer. If something is too difficult to do, they don't do it. They have what they consider to be "real lives" to get on with and "time at the computer" does not factor in to that. They precieve computers explicitly as tools for things like email, buying things on ebay and 'helping with homework'.
A software developer writing applications for end users should have empathy for others and be able to grasp the 'Begginers Mind'. Without empathy for others, you'll just end up designing software that's horrible to use (and many people won't want to use it) because you won't be able to understand what it's like as user using the software for the first time.
People have more far more important things to do with their life than learn how to use badly designed software. You need to really understand that before you can write software most people will find easy and enjoyable to use.
The same actually applies to good code - it should be self documenting and clear in function as far as reasonably possible. I find the people who can't be bothered to design good interfaces are often the same people who can't be bothered to write good code (it's often poorly trapped, sparsely documented with many areas that are ambigous in function).
There is another school of thought that says: Design for the upper tier not the Lowest Common Denominator.
Here is another school of thought (this happens the one applied in Mac OS X, and also in classic):
Design for people who *don't* know how to use a computer AND for those who do, at the same time. That is not exactly a huge relevation...
Mac OS follows this principle - Macintosh computers do not come with one button mice but why the operating system inherently supports context sensitive menus for multi button mice, throughout Apple's own applications too (this is true of classic Mac OS, not just Mac OS X).
Many Apple power users and developers like multibutton mice and context menus too, that's why they just plug them in and use them with Applications like the Finder, Mail and Safari. OS X even supports additional buttons like scrollwheels and backwords & forward buttons too. Just plug an appropriately equipped mouse in and they work with no need for additional drivers.
In my experience people who design software that they claim is aimed at 'advanced' users typically design software than even 'advanced' users bawk at, but they use the caveat to cover up their own lack of ability, and because they can't be bothered to find an intuative way to handle something non trivial they give up or don't even try and just do what's easiest for them (at the expense of the user base).
If a developer can't design a reasonably intuative interface then they are not up to the job. Making software easy to use is hard - especially with non trival software. It's not uncommon for people who write software for a living not to be able to design software that's very usable and some of those people fail to grasp the effort required and choose to belittle the effort of those who can and do develop powerful yet easy to use tools (to mask their own lack of ability).
Regarding your analogy, any home appliance (microwave, TV, DVD player, stereo, radio, cooker, washing machine, or powertool (physical safety precautions aside)) that you need to read a manual to use is badly designed. None of these sorts of things do anything especially complex that some manufacturers have not been able to design very elegant versions that are perfectly intuative (thus proving it's possible and clearly focusing the fault on those manufacturers who design unintuative goods).
I got a price quote on my Desk for $25,000 a Terrabyte from EMC, and that is at the 25% discount we get as a large customer. And those ARE ATA drives.
I think that's an awful quote, even if it included an annual service contract, but I can totally belive someone like EMC would charge that. Some vendors, like NetApp and EMC have been overcharging significantly for some time because many of the people who purchase from them never think to look elsewhere to see what more dynamic companies are offering (just as some companies by low/mid range Sun Enterprise servers when Linux or BSD HP systems could do the job faster AND cheaper).
Some of the resistance is due to risk aversion, which has it's place, but larger business are often highly risk averse, much more so than is good for them.
Some vendors like NetApp are starting to get smart though. They are allowing you to use 3rd party disk arrays with their controller hardware (though Linux is starting to bite into that market too, and has already taken up much of the lowend 2TB and smaller market).
Now if you don't want hot spares, then the prices go down.
I included hot spares (allowing for RAID 5) in my quote above, even with them it's more than 20,000 USD cheaper than the EMC quote you have. Even if you included multiple Gigbit interfaces and dual PSU's in each chassis it would still be well under 2,500 USD a TB. I know experienced companies (10+ years in the SAN business, here in London at least) that would offer 24/7 on site support (for however many TB you have) for ~20K USD a year.
Management software. Thats more than Linux.
As I said directory / file system hashing to do what these guys want is utterly trivial. I build a system to do this in a day (for legitimate purposes, based on multiple mountpoints failed over by Veritas, but to allow directories structures to appear 'unified' to servers that had the shares mounted).
Thats more than Linux. In fact only the very latest releases of Linux will address more than 1TB of data
Actually that's not true, for several years it's supported twice that (the 2.4 limit allows LVM's up to 2 TB), I know first hand because I was using Linux with 2TB NetApp shares around 4 years ago. The latest kernel (2.6) supports a lot more than that.
Last time I looked (been about 3 yrs) a good robot tape library was at least 500K PLUS Tapes. Cheaper than a SAN for sure!
As I said, 30 USD for 200/300 GB tapes. Brand new stand alone readers (though not robots) for these tapes start at a modest 1,500 USD.
After all someone will just upload a new copy if the disk crashes. But if you are RAIDed and you lose a drive it can be rebuilt, it just takes time.
As I've even accounted for RAID in my pricing though (and it's still a good 20,000 a TB cheaper than EMC).
I can see what real benifit you could possibly be getting paying ~25,000 USD per TB compared to ~5,000 USD per TB system.
Even if you went absoultey all out and had two seperate mirrored arrays (two totally seperate chassis, each with seperate power supplies, one system on DC on AC, multiple Gigabit interfaces on each host, dedicated interfaces and heartbeats to effectively HA-cluster each share) you'd come in under 10,000 USD per (usable!) TB even if you paid above the odds to ensure better quality of service from a prefered vendor.
Phone to PDA is pretty common, Bluetooth GPS systems are starting to emerge. How long for Bluetooth storage, I wonder?
:-(
Bluetooth storage units are already avalible from Ericsson (for at least 2 and I think 3 years now). I've seen prices ~99 USD. I'm not sure what the capacity is though. They are about the size of a larger pager.
I don't think there is any need for a Bluetooth 2 - after all if you upped the bandwith I would have thought it would cause grater power drain which would defeat the purpose of it. I think it would be more appropriate to just build a device with 802.11 and zero conf support if it needs greater range. It's a shame that there isn't a single discovery protocol for all types of devices (both 802.11/Bluetooth) though.
(At least there isn't as far as I am aware).
There are several relevent points:
(i.)Knowing how to design good GUI software and interfaces (both physical and graphical) means knowing what to leave out.
Software ought not to require users to use context sensitive menus to perfom an operation - if it does so then it is badly implimented because most users will simply not figure this out (and if and when they do, it won't be until after a significant of time wasted searching for the way to do it).
Context sensitive menus should assist 'power users' in accessing things or performing operations more quickly, but should never be the only way to perform a given operation. I would further say that developers ought to be striving as much as possible to remove the need for right clicking from their interfaces.
These tennets hold true even when an application is targeted at what are preceived as 'advanced' users. Sooner or later someone not as advanced as you think is going to end up using the software (or alternatively someone just having a bad day) and they are going to run in to problems because they can't find the way to perform the operation because they didn't realise they had to (or even could) right click to perform this operation.
(ii.)People who don't know that context menu's are avalible are the exact same people who are better off with a one button mouse in the first place.
The 'average joe' still replies to instructions of "click that icon" with "With what mouse button?" Most people are casual users of computers at best, and they are still daunted by having two butttons. The situation could be possibly be improved by having graphical (and possibly textual) representations of the behaviour on the mouse buttons themselves but that is not common.
When they are ready for added complexity it is there, just like the Unix command prompt is there for those who want it, but it's completely hidden from the majority of users.
(iii.) Dispite being a unix software developer I have come to prefer the design of Apple's own mouse over my 5 button scroll wheel mouse when using Mac OS X.
The primary reason being that I don't have to hold down a specific area of the mouse, just push down on it generally (the physical level of pressure required is adjustable). I have found this much better for my hand/wrist postioning (meaning I spend less time with my fingers crawled up in a ball).
I also find that on Mac OS (this applies to both classic too) software is generally designed in such as way as to be completely usable without the need to right click, largely thanks to things like more comprehensive drag and drop support.
It's not without sacrifices, I like scroll wheels for example, but when using OS X I don't find the lack of scroll wheel nearly as much of a problem as I do when using Gnome or Microsoft Windows, largely due to three factors relating to scrolling:
1). Window scrollbar indicators are always proportional (with a 'sensible' minimum size).
2). When I click on a scroll bar the visible area of the window jumps to exactly where I have clicked instantly (not just generally scrolls 'up' or 'down' a page).
3). Both Scoll Up AND Scoll Down arrows at the top AND bottom of each scollbar.
These of course are toggleable through the Preferences panel but I find with them I no longer miss having a scroll wheel enough to give up my 'no button' (push-to-click) Apple branded Bluetooth mouse when using OS X. Though it is something of a close call (mostly I miss having back/forward buttons and scroll wheels are still very useful with FPS games).
While I think it's clear they have seriously rounded up the amount of storage space here (and I'm sure not accounted for the fact that each of these users is sharing largely the same set of files I'm sure) your price estimate was way over by a huge margin.
;) used to do this on Hotline (with everything from Zip drives & SyQuest volumes to CD's and DAT drives). They would either use plain text files in a 'Requests' folder or have them popup as alert messages with AppleScript.
;-).
They are not going to have SCSI drives when they can have hot pluggable SATA so cheaply (it's under 200 USD per 250 GB, even at off the shelf prices).
You'd need 200 USD investment on every 2 TB - i.e. every 8 hard disks - for a chassis, motherboard (etc) and a cheap PCI card for additional SATA slots (they come in at under 25 USD each for 2 SATA ports, and of course there will already be some on the motherboard). So, assuming 8 disks per server (2 SATA ports on the motherboard, 4 on the cheapo SATA card - or 2 cheap SATA cards with 2 ports each) that's 2000 USD for 2 TB of storage (leaving 1750 GB 'accessible' with RAID 5).
The software - Linux - is free of course. I'm not sure why you would suggest they would want to buy software to assist them in this. Nothing they were doing isn't trivial with multiple mount points and directory hashing. This is just fairly off the cuff pricing too, I wouldn't be surprised if you could shave quite a bit off this.
You *still* have cracking performance too (as it's SATA with 8 MB cache on each disk and given that even cheap motherboards these days seem to ship with crazy stuff like dual gig-e network interfaces).
As for back ups (beyond 'mere' RAID 5, which for a bunch of warez I think most people would regard as 'sufficent' on it's own), why, what's the point? They are trading illegal files, they can just download the files they are missing from someone else if two disks in array decided to die at the same time. It's not like there arn't going to be mirrors of it (that's kind of the point here).
Of course an even cheaper option is what many Warez sites used to do (but I don't think they do any more, given the low price of SATA disks) - is simply to use tape.
You just told the system what you wanted (by something as simple trying to download it) and it would then trigger a script to either fetch it for you (if it was a multichanger) or page the admin to say "Please insert tape #142", where upon it would then either allow you to mount it right away or copy it to a temporary location on an HD for you to download and eject the tape. I know about this because mac software sites (legit ones too
The current HP Ultrium range seem perfect for this. They work out at 30 USD each for 200 GB (compressed)), or around 150 USD per TB, and they are a toally respectable 54 gig a hour transfer time (still faster than your download speed is likely to be
I agree that Three in the UK is retarded (especially when the likes of Three Australia offer services like GPRS surfing, unrestricted).
Hutchinson 3D have stuffed the entire company full of morons and luddites. There is a shortage of talented people in the industry, apparently Hutchinson don't have any of them, instead they have recent graduates with no real clue about the industry, slick marketing weasels and flight by night smooth talking consultants who've managed to con the slick marketing boi's in to hiring them. I am quite confident they are doomed in the UK, and will be eaten alive by the competition.
I wrote to Three asking why:
a) They don't allow you to use to the build in Email client (which supports POP and IMAP) with any other server than theirs (which makes your 400+ UKP phone useless for email, even my 35 UKP Ericsson on Vodafone can do IMAP and POP over GPRS and has been doing this for the last 2 years).
[Answer: They have no clue about what their customers want or what's important to them, or apparently what the competition provide.]
b) Why they don't have a service in place to allow you to use the build in Opera web browser - or a Buetooth connection via a laptop/PDA to surf the web and/or access the full Internet when Vodafone have been doing this for at least a couple of years now (which GPRS, and a respectable service too, even though it fubars when you try and maintain a connection going through a zone). With Three in the UK you can ONLY access THEIR website. Gosh that's useful!
[Answer: Same reason as above.]
I also wouldn't mind them explaining, in their own words:
c) Why they have deliberately enabled the protection on the phone to prevent users from installing third party software. Given it's a PDA hybrid running Sybian and there are hundreds of apps available (and merrily used by other Symbian based phone users, like those on Vodaphone).
[Answer: They want you to ONLY buy their software so they can rake in 'phat lewt'. Problem is that consists entirely of a small number of utterly piss poor games, zero productivity software. Worse, every game needs to authenticate on the network meaning it doesn't work 8 out of 10 times (and 0/10 on the tube, where most people play games on their phone anyway). And I'm central bloody London - Zones 1 & 2. If anywhere in the country has service it should be here, but no it's crap and 'falls back' to other non 3G networks about 80%+ of the time.]
d) Why although my phone (with the big fancy GPS letters on the back) supports global positioning for finding local services within a few yards (pretty much a core feature of the service they tout), why then is it only able to guess my position within a few miles (not much use when you are looking for 'somewhere to eat/a bank/tube station near my location'?)
[Answer: They have not configured their network appropriately so although the technology is basically there to support this, in the UK they don't have an implementation which carries the field that holds this information in the packet data. Money well spent then. Piss up and brewery spring to mind.]
I have twice emailed them asking them about (a) and (b) and when they planned to do something about them. Both replies I got indicated they had ABSOLUTELY NO CLUE that it was possible to connect to the internet via a GRPS phone with Bluetooth and a laptop. They didn't have the first clue about GPRS, or Bluetooth and were entirely confused that I might want to use the two together.
I've also three times spoken to them on the phone, on every occasion they displayed only a rudimentary grasp of English and little understanding of phone terminology and as such they were totally unable to help me on every occasion. I don't mind call centres being outsourced at all, but they damn well ought to well speak the language of the country who's people they are supporting or it's a total waste of bloody time. Apparently, they don't care about customer service at Three.
Goo
PS: My aplogies for sounding hostile, grumpy or ungreatful. I'm honestly not and do appreciate people are being helpful.
No that's not what Zope is, it does not function in the manner I described at all.
I am amazed at the number of people who think it's likely I haven't heard of Zope or Wiki's and that they have the solution to this problem that provides someting thats actually equipvolent to the alternative paradigm I've put forth.
The current 'Content Management' systems are merely kludges in response to the glaring limiations in the current implimentation of web technology. It doesn't mean they are a bad thing, it's just that it's a bad thing that we even need to rely on them and to spend so much of our time developing them.
The entire point is the technology should be vastly better in the first place, rendering them irrelevent.
I am actually working on my own solution to some of this, by building a generic "tracking tool" that is super flexible but allows people to sort and manage data in any way they want, creating applications very quickly. It's very early work and aimed at intermediate users (e.g. "easy enough for your boss to use", "probably a bit too confusing for your mum") but I'm prepared to spend quite a bit of time on it.
The idea being things like an order tracking system, a bug tracker, a project tracker, a call logger, a knowledge base all have many common elements and there is no reason you should be able to leverage a re-usable core to make an application like this completely within a web based interface (which could allow you to define field types and what type of widgets they are - e.g. date fields or dropdown menus). If you can make them interoperate you can start to build a really powerful system very quickly and have it manage the information in the way you want.
You can see a really early version here to get a grasp of the type of functionality and ease of use I'm trying to foster. There is a long, long way to go though (note - much of that is borked, as I develop it on my laptop).
To give you an idea on how flexible it is, from a user perspective the following code is used to generate the view on the front page:
The program elegently handles 'invalid' database field names (so if you typo, it won't just die on the user). Again to make it as easy as possible to use. There is another XML file (that's even simpler) to control the tabs on the top.
The idea is I just create a set of core features (and widgets) that are useable to the widest possible audience and users built exactly what they need. I'll be sticking easy to use web based interfaces in an admin area to generate those XML files (so even that will be hidden, but will still be there underneath for the convenience of 'power users').
It's no HyperCard of course, but I've rationaled that I just don't have the reasources to create a system like that (though I th
You're describing the design goals for Java or the X Window System. However, that's not for what hypertext was meant. The World Wide Web is about transferring documents - not programs.
*sigh*
Do you know the relevant history behind the development of the WWW? Do you know why web browsers show a little hand with a finger pointing out when you hover over a link even today? It's because of the software the web was modelled after. Hugely influential and revolutionary software by Bill Atkison. Software for creating little 'page' (card) based 'applications'. That was where the initial inspiration came from.
Like many others I'm sure I was creating networked, linkable and editable wiki style 'sites' with it before the WWW, the only major difference was it was with proprietary software. TBL saw HC and was inspired by it. I think it entirely possible he wouldn't have bothered with creating HTML had HC not been proprietary.
Today, web applications are all around us. They are revolutionising the way we live. They are a big deal. The only reason TBL's implementation is not is good at allowing people to create web applications as Bill Atkison's inspirational software is that TBL didn't know how (or have the resources/inclination) to implement many of the relevant features, and they missed the boat on having a half decent scripting language so Netscape assumed dominance with the god awful JavaScript to fill a niche, by then it was too late, we were stuck with a Turkey.
People are spending vast amounts of time and money building web apps. Huge financial resources are put into it each year by corporations building web apps for customers, online stores, B2B and users build web apps just for fun. So much futile effort and man power could be better spent if we just had a decent implementation of a standard for that, but we don't so expensive investment in working around this gaping whole in the current technology is the norm. It's really quite insane, especially when you've experienced a highly equivalent way of doing the same thing that's so much better.
The WWW is not about simply 'sharing documents' (do not listen to your inner hobgoblin who tells you otherwise), it's about sharing information - the exchange of information - and that's a two way process, and for that, you need an interface that facilitates that.
Oh and don't worry - I know how Internet standards bodies like the W3C typically work and I think it's surely painfully obvious to those who still don't get it that its a poor way to make standards. I know many will disagree, but to them I point out the result of the current system - we live in a world of half baked web and network standards the implementations of which are rarely actually compatible.
The sad testiment is that today, proprietary reverse engineered solutions are usually better at providing interoperability that competing platforms are at implementing identically functioning standards based systems!
It's a shameful mess for a technically competent society to be in.
As the bunny icon used to say '"Subvert the dominant paradigm!"
The WWW has alas been crippled by a lack of vision since the W3C's inception. It's too bad there are not more Bill Atkinson's to go round.
CSS was well designed. It has a few problems, most of which will be solved in CSS3 (image borders, some numbered list stuff) but it is a good spec.
I'm quite aware they are theoretically (and in some browsers, actually - for varying amounts of 'actually') possible in CSS, but they were not part of CSS from the get go and they are such fundementally obvious things to have they should have been part of the specification from very early on.
The reality is that it works for fewer than 10% of users.
This could all have been avoided if it hadn't taken them so long to get around to even start grokking the importance of such features that we still don't have a full implimentation of them, instead we have a myriad of features that are (IMO) very nice and very clever (and even more complext to impliment), but that not nearly as useful for most people.
Instead of such functionality that we can rely on in all modern browsers, have a load of things like XSL Transformations (XSLT) which are very neat and by and large work in both MSIE and Gecko, but I think of them as largely wasted effort at this stage (given the more important things I think they should have done). Things like XSLT are useful largely to the sort of people who - like me - are quite happy and able to write Perl/Python or PHP CGI's to render the output in a flexible format in any case. They are great to have, but of comparibly little importance compared to having a more acessible medium for all.
Of course it's fair to say that the current situation could also have been avoided by people not using Internet Explorer (I know I do my part as far as that goes), or by Microsoft more standards compliant software or by the anti-trust settlement actually forcing them to be more standards compliant. All that is true, but I don't think that lets the W3C off the hook for not setting - and strongly and unambiguously advocating - the right set of priorities.
Ever go to 'File -> Edit Page' in the Mozilla suite? Ever notice the 'publish' button? It does exactly what you described.
Aaahhh but it doesn't do exactly what I describe. Certainly not even nearly closely enough to be easy to use for *most people*.
It doesn't 'just work' by clicking edit, authing and pressing save. That's how simple it needs to be to even remotely useful for most people, and that's how - IMO - good technology should be implimented.
When MOST people try using the Edit functionality in Mozilla (or it's predecesors) they find it doesn't work because things like their FTP upload path is wrong, and they have no idea what on earth that is so they give up, or try 'web upload' thinking that will work, but that's not enabled on their server, only the client doesn't know that so it just errors, confusing them further).
It's just not nearly as easy to use as it should be (speaking as someone who tries very hard to make my own software as acessible and 'smart' as possible).
I've been watching people try to use that feature since it appeared in Netscape 3.0 Gold 8+ years ago, it was the same thing and had exactly the same problem then, it was far to cumbersome and too often resulted in ambgious errors for normal users, rendering it largely worthless.
Also, you can use the z-index property to get the layering you want. It all works in Mozilla. Your perspective sounds like that of someone who has only used Internet Explorer
Ah *bingo*. Very obviously by the comments in my post I'm not (seeing as how I indicate I use a KHTML based browser), but I am someone who understands that something that only works in Gekco and/or KHTML is not really much use to the vast majority (~90%+) of people.
I feel the W3C does have responsiblity here for the reasons I stated - they should have come out with a clear and strong message about key features right from the get go, but (IMO) they failed to prioriotize or even manage to appear focused on the core issues so their message was clouded and apathy and confusion over a myriad of standards set in fast.
Unluckily, the W3C has made a complete mess of web standards. To the point that there are so many barely used, misunderstood, unclear, ambigious, and depreciated standards that figuring anything out at all is an accomplishment of some scale.
;).
I agree, they have totally cocked it up IMO.
They have gone from TBL's origional HyperCard inspired idea for the WWW (which he admits didn't live up to his vision of an easy to edit & publish system) to promoting an overly complicated XML driven inteface which acts as a high barrier to entry.
Certainly, in 1995 it was a lot easier to learn how create a web page. You can still use the same HTML of course, but few places teach that - they all want to try and teach new users about CSS, XHTML, DHTML, JavaScript and other buzzwords which only serve to overwhelm people.
While that's fine for some people (like me), gone is the notion of a simple to grasp mark up language and editing system. I think that's why blogs are so popular - people can use a third party service that effectively creates their own website for them and allows them to update it easily and the whole process is just so simple (unlike with the the hundreds of naff, user-hostile applications that *claim* to make web design easy).
A very easy to use but powerful scripting language (something not unlike HyperTalk itself springs to mind), the ability to easily use other native interface widgets - like tabs and menus -, as well as some basic drawing tools (line, rectangle, circle and a basic fill tool spring to mind) together with an easy publishing system should have been the goals for HTML & HTTP IMO.
They seem to have no ability to focus clearly on the most important issues and then communicate those thoughts unambigously. Instead they create multiple broken 'transitional' implimentations which confuse people and lead to apathy as far as compliance goes.
IMO we should have a system where - say you are browsing your web site and you spot a spelling mistake on it at http://www.i-like-kibble.org/about.html you should just be able to click an edit button in your browser, be asked to supply a username and password and then have it open webdav://www.i-like-kibble.org/about.html either in a built in editor or it should ask you to select an editor (such as notepad, gedit or even MS Word). When the page is 'saved' in the editor, the changes should be uploaded to the site automatically by the browser. If they had been even remotely competant and argued for this from day one (and hacked up a couple of functional implimentations) we could all have that functionality today.
Instead we have an overcomplicated system focused squarely at technical users that is seeing little 'real world' use, because the vast majority of people just find using systems like Tables with a little CSS far easier and more practicle to manage.
And what really annoys me? CSS wasn't even that well designed. It's got huge gaping holes in functionality. You should be able to align anything by top left, top right, bottom left and bottom right of an object (such as a div) both as an absolute and a percentage. You should also be able to specify on what layer within that said container the object you are positioning should be drawn. Of course that doesn't work in any recent browser, because the developers have been too busy trying to impliment the mixed messages coming out of the W3C, and ensuring backwards compliance, along with supporting 'real world' hacks due to the dominance of IE.
Bit of rant - probably too long and ranty for most people to want to read - but I'm just annoyed that something as influencial as the WWW wasn't better steered by the W3C.
Of course I'm also annoyed at MS for how little they have done in this area (and how much they could have done given their dominance). Full kudos to the Mozilla contributers for giving them some competiton though. Even Windows users deseve features like tabs and autofill[1] *hugs Safari* (even though it's filthy KHTML
[1] Though the first time I saw AutoFill was in Internet Explorer for Mac OS Classic.
I played the first two/three levels with the audio turned down quite a bit (it's been late by the time I've gotten home). Loud enough to hear weapon fire, but that was about it.
I got home early and played it with the audio up loud on 5.1 surround.
Holy crap is it an order of magnitude scarier with it turned up properly.
<- 25 and also scared of a computer program.
"flashlight separate from weapons" is part of the gameplay. Live with it.
That doesn't make for good gameplay though IMO, not when it's too dark to see virtually all the time (it's not as if the levels look bad and they need to cover them up).
If it wasn't from ID software I'm sure the vast majority of people would be slamming the developers such a great game then cocking it up by coupling extreme darkness with a weapon seperate from flash light system. I don't see any reason to go lightly on them just because we all respect them very much as talented developers. It seems they made quite a big mistake that would have been very easily rectified. It seems like they just tinkered too much with a perfectly good gameplay premise.
Personally I'd recommend using the Duct Tape mod (hopefully a better version is in the works, I'm sure it is from someone). After all, it just seems obvious that you'd strap your light to your gun or helmet (even if it was with a bit of cloth from a gunned down zombie).
I think the idea of having a flashlight was great in principle, they should have done something more sensible like mount it on your helmet though. It would have been a much better idea to simply limit the battery life on it to restrict the use. I feel (the like previous user, and many others) there are just too many instances where I have no idea if what I'm shooting at is dead or not, and that's not a lot of fun IMO.
I think the darkness/flashlight system they went with was a very big mistake and will be the most controversial thing people remember about Doom 3. From talking to co-workers it seems to be something that's sadly sullied the game. Fantastic artwork, engine design, modeling, animation and good level design are important parts of a triple A title, but they are not the only elements and I *hate* to be critical about it, but really seems like gameplay was forgotten. I hope ID bring in a 'gameplay tzar' for their next title and don't let take a back seat next time.
Just as good user interface design is the last thing on so many developers minds in other software, gameplay seems to be the thing that's most likely to not get the attention it deserves when it comes to games.
While I think the odd dark level would have been a nice variation, I much prefer the style of D3DM4 as a 'typical' Doom level. I really like it. It's well lit, with tight areas and wide areas with multiple levels. It's not too samey and yet it's still easy to take a wrong turn and get lost. I'd far rather the game had more levels of that nature.
TBH, I'm actually looking forward to playing the Knee Deep in the Dead levels again with the new engine (the engine seems to cope okay with some wide open spaces, hopefully it can cope with at least some of the origional level designs). I think that they will be more fun to play than the levels Doom 3 ships with (especially coupled with the new weapons system - which I am a fan of - and the new monsters (which I am a fan of, the 'jumping' ability of IMP's aside - I mean who's idea was that? Bad for gamplay, no over-tweaking! Naughty dev!).
You cannot name any of your relatives that we killed while stopping RUSSIANS attacking your country ! Most Finns can. That makes the diffrence.
.
No, ours tend to have died fighting German Nazi's rather than Russians.
Pray tell, when are you expecting the Russians to attack again, and do you think you'd actually be able to stop them, seeing as if they did they'd attack via air like any other modern army, after first wiping out Finland's own air defence system using surface to surface missiles launched from well within the Russian border in all likely hood
The nature of combat between modern forces today is quite different from that in the first and second world wars, men with machine guns don't help defend against arial bombardment (something they could do with impunity until either the country surrendered or till all the strategic areas were secured with only light resistance, easily defeated by armed columns).
I'd rather serve and fight than flee to some country that uses "pound" to measure anything!
We don't use 'pounds' as a unit of mesurement. We are a member of the EU and use the same weights and measures as every other EU member state.
Your lack of knowledge of knowledge of basic EU legislation is ironic for someone who goes by the nickname 'Mr Europe'.
I've already amply stated the problems with Finnish national service (it's sexist (applies only to men), bigoted (does not apply to *some* religious groups, but does apply to others), undemocratic (the majority of those eligible for it vote against it and the total against it make up over 20% of population) and barbaric (it's the only nation in the EU that has political prisoners, we recognised conscientious objectors in the 1600's yet Finland is alone in the EU in not grasping the concept).
It doesn't even make economic sense because it *costs* Finland millions of Euros and gives them virtually no strategic military benefit. France, Spain, Holland and others have all given it up because they have realised this. Mark my words, Finland will too, even if your a little slow.
>Finns, the government are there to serve you, not the other way around.
Just as JFK said!
Then you beleive you are there to serve your government...
What a sad existence to live in such complete subservience.
I'd rather live to serve myself and my fellow man than to a bunch of bureaucrats, but each to his own.
I would point out that even that doesn't 'keep people honest' (though I wish it did) Germany had conscription, but it didn't stop them starting two World Wars in Europe. But then why should we expect it to - volunteer soldiers have the same level of ethics too, they are normal people just like you and me. There are countless wars started by countries with conscription forces (most countries with conscription are generally dictatorships or less than 'modern democracies' too).
And it's way off topic, but as much as I dislike lying weasels for heads of state (like Bush and Blair) I see nothing wrong with pushing 'ideological interests' and bringing them to brutal dictatorships responsible for the deaths of over 2 million people (against which, casualties in the conflict in Iraq are incomparable). I'd give my life tomorrow to turn Iran into a state with an elected, secular system of government, or to kick Kim Chong-il out of North Korea and re-unite it with the South.
I have no interest in bringing 'Christianity' to Muslim states (I'm an Atheist, the lot of them can get stuffed IMO) but secularism, freedom (including the freedom not to fight) and a semblance of democracy I want to bring to the world, yes. That doesn't mean i think all countries should have the same laws or values, if some nations want to outlaw tobacco or alcohol that's fine with me. If they want to instigate life sentences for drug trafficking, or alternatively legalise drugs, that's fine with me too. If they want to treat women as property and stone people to death that's not fine with me, and your too right I want to impose that ethical code.
I don't think the Finnish system of national service, under-which they would have locked Gandhi up as a criminal, is remotely acceptable. Britain recognised conscientious objectors in the 1600's, for Finland not to recognise such a right in the 21st century is barbaric. It is the only EU-member state with prisoners of conscience (people imprisoned for political views), and there some pretty dubious recent applicants to the EU, but still none of them have prisoners of conscience.
I think they should reform, or be kicked out of the EU for still having prisoners of conscience, I'm sure it will all end in a Human Rights case and they will change, just like France, Spain, Holland and others have ended national service in the last 10 years (almost half a decade after we ended it in the UK). It's simply inevible as people add up the cost of it, let alone address the human rights issues. Did you know it costs Finland over 2 Million Euro each year to keep these people in Jail too? Even if you don't give a damn about human rights, if you can do the maths you can see it doesn't make sense.
Oh and did I mention that Jehova's Witnesses are curiously exempt from having to do national service in Finland? They have a powerful lobby group you see.
Of course, the president has the legal power to excuse all prisoners of conscience from their 6 and 1/2 months of jail time, but she's personally chooses not to. But then, as a women she's never had to do it because they don't conscript women.
The system stinks and is rotten to the core. It's quite indefensible.
With the 1960s antiwar movement in the United States, conscripts dieing for ideological and political reasons related to foreign policy became unpalatable to the American public.
Wrong. People dieing for what they regard as wrong reasons (and in a futile conflict) is unpalatable to the American public, they (like me, and I am not an American) will still strongly support military action for ideological and political reasons if it seems justified. Just like the Americans did in Bosnia, where they stepped in and stopped mass genocide, on another continent thousands of miles away (where there was certainly no 'oil' to 'steal').
Don't you support that kind of action?
The population of Finland is 5 million - certainly not enough to sustain any kind of professional army.
That's not true though, not even remotely. There are certainly smaller countries that have professional armies and no conscription!
Luxembourg has a 100% professional army with a population of what, a mere ~500,000? Size is most definitely *not* the issue. It's just some some countries are more liberal and others are more authoritarian (Singapore being a prime example of one that's notoriously very authoritarian - certainly by Western standards).
Your assertion also ignores the more important fact is that professional independent military advice from think tanks the world over is that conscription armies are in reality useless at the task of armed defence. They are useful for labour for civil projects (building bridges, in national emergencies such as floods - things professional soldiers dislike doing too much of), but they are *not* an effective fighting force. When countries make assessments about the armed forces of other countries, 'conscripts' are not included in the core figure, but rather as an aside (this has actually been happening for hundreds of years, the core failings of conscripted forces have always been there).
The reasoning is that modern soldiers must be experienced technical personnel and tacticians and you can't teach that unless someone *really* want's to learn it and they are willing to put the many months and effort in - it's really very difficult job and it takes longer to learn than most periods of national service even last. Conscripts in modern armies are bemoaned by most senior military personnel who'd much rather have dedicated professionals in their army, because they want competent focused people, not just kids who have been forced into it.
Also see the argument about why it actually *costs* more money to keep a conscripted Western army than it does to run a professional one (because of the expense of good equipment, facilities, wages and lost revenue though not being able to tax income of otherwise high earners).
Quick example:
I pay more than 20k UKP each year in tax. If I was a conscript on a typical conscript wage, I would be on around 20K a year.
If I was to work for 12 months for the state, that would make the state 40K a year worse off (plus the overhead of running conscription, plus the lost money that is not being pumped into the economy through my previously high salary, which is a not insignificant amount).
If they were to hire a professional it would cost them around 35K a year. Even without the aforementioned overheads that's cheaper. And that's why countries have stopped doing it recently. It costs money in the long run.
But in exchange for what you want, you repay the country for what has been given to you - many local students say that university education in the United States, etc is too simple.
I would agree that good university education in the states must be paid for (and that state education there is not much cop). That has nothing to do with forcing men to do national service however. You get a good education system through high state funding, derived from high GDP and high taxation. What did you think taxes are for?
Countries like France, the UK, Canada all have very nice standards of living, good heath care, good education systems, very relaxed environments and are comparably very liberal places to live. It's pure and simple illiberalism (and incompetant statesmanship!) to have conscription during peace time.
But hey, if you think authoritarian systems of government make for a nicer global environment, feel free to vote your right to choose what to do with your life away and put that decision into the hands of a state bureaucrat! Personally I'd rather we had more accountability in government and more democracy and keep the ability to choose how I spend that time.