If Microsoft did everything that was their job, or even a majority of the things that were their job, none of this crap would be necessary. As they see it, Microsoft's "job" is to maintain their monopoly, if you can actually get some usable software out of that, consider yourself lucky, they certainly couldn't care less.
I sure have and it's very annoying. But of course, ruining the theater-going experience is certainly part of Hollywood's current business model, which is one of the reasons I rarely go to the movies any more. Netflix is the main reason though.
I see. So I should believe an anonymous rude person on the Internet as opposed to my own eyes. You have an odd idea of what constitutes mental illness.
Increasingly we (certainly I) expect a salesperson to demonstrate the in-depth product knowledge
I gave up expecting salespeople to demonstrate an in-depth product knowledge 20 years ago, when I was buying a stereo and found the salespeople seldom knew as much as you could read on the price tag/product labels. Even with so simple a question as "Do you carry such-and-such?", I seldom expect to get a decent answer, and the last time I bought something at Circuit City, that's exactly what happened. They actually opened a new store here just a few months ago, and I was surprised at how sparsely it was filled (tons of empty floor space). I asked if they had any drive enclosures and the guy said no, but I looked anyway. Sure enough, there were some, and I pointed them out to the employee, who was surprised. Given how small the computer peripherals section was, it shouldn't have been too hard to know what was there. Basically, I almost never bother to ask. Unless I need something immediately, ordering on-line is always better.
Windows Explorer (yes I *do* want to delete files off *my own desktop*)
Have you actually *used* Vista? This doesn't happen.
Gee, that's funny. I *have* used Vista and it did it for me. It would pop up multiple times if I so much as renamed an icon on the desktop. Thanks, Microsoft. You saved the world from a botnet attack because I wanted to rename something on my desktop.
Microsoft has gone past the incompetence part for me, I think malice is the only explanation for them now.
If it works, I'll happily change my tune, but I've had 20 years experience as a Windows user and about 15 years developing for DOS and Windows. I'll believe it when I see it. Microsoft is all about lock in, though. Even though Flash doesn't always work well under Linux, there is ostensible support for it.
As much as I dislike MS, I'll give them credit when they do something well. I just find much less to give them credit for than in the past. As soon as their monopoly is broken, the technology scene will be much better off. I'm not saying they need to die (although the company deserves to die), but just that when there's real competition and choice based on merit instead of marketshare, we will all win. Microsoft doesn't innovate, and almost never has (yes, I know about Microsoft Research, but does anything they do translate into shipping product?), and because they exercise unreasonable control over the market, they hold everything back. Microsoft products have many of the same problems they had 10 years ago, and we are complaining about many of the same things as we did back then. There's been some progress, but nowhere near what it should have been.
Ultimately, there's no good reason I as a Linux user shouldn't be able to stream Netflix movies. Microsoft certainly doesn't want me to, and Netflix is looking for a solution that works well enough, as long as Microsoft's foot is on Linux's neck, there's little reason for companies like Netflix to it. But if Linux could compete based on merit, things would be a lot different, and Microsoft products would probably also be a lot better, because they'd have to _compete_ instead of control.
I've always thought patent reform won't happen until some company DOES hold a significant chunk of the economy hostage. I'm actually surprised it hasn't happened yet given the wild abandon with which the USPTO hands out patents for things that are obvious to even a technical newbie.
I am a little surprised it's Microsoft that's trying to do it, patents was one of the few things they haven't used to bully people (they've threatened it a lot). I guess the more desperate they get, the more sleazy tactics they'll stoop to... and they're only about 2 steps from hiring hitmen as it is.
Project Gutenberg is already a very good example of what you're looking for, having the advantage of already existing and having thousands upon thousands of works available. It also has the advantage of having an army of volunteers keying in, scanning and proofreading public domain texts.
The Internet Archive is another example, which also hosts video and audio archives, as well as the Wayback Machine and who knows what else.
While neither of these is the all-encompassing resource you might be imaging, they are both well-established extremely good resources.
For the Google-enabled, many, many other resources for public-domain and otherwise free material can easily be located as well. You'll never run out of good reading material without having to pay anything but Internet access charges.
You can literally carry the contents of a small library on your computer wherever you go and have instant access to it.
Well I certainly agree with your idea of making electronic book readers available to people who would make good use of them, but cannot afford them. I just don't think it's possible to create a system that would accomplish them with having
1.) 99.9% of the readers not used or grossly underused 2.) devices being sold, etc, just like you described 3.) devices being used for material that is, shall we say, less than educational
While education in this country is a big problem, and is poorly run in many places, the demand for improvement is often lowest in the places that need it the most. My kids have pretty good public schools where we live in the Commonwealth of Virginia (Loudoun County, being relatively affluent compared to the rest of the state), but we have tons of books at home. My wife and I read all the time, and our kids are constantly encouraged to read, even if it's indirect, and most of them are voracious readers, with one being rather less than voracious, but still enjoying it. My experience with children is that you expose them to a lot things, reading, TV (there are interesting and useful things on TV, and many things that are worthwhile even if they aren't explicitly educational), creative projects, etc. Exposing them to these things generates interest. Once one child has a strong interest in something, she often encourages, or inspires her siblings to a strong interest as well.
It's more of that kind of attitude among parents that will improve things far more than handing out a bunch of overly expensive underly useful electronic books.
p.s. I'd consider a Kindle, but the platform is way too closed for my interests. It can't even display PDFs, which is possibly the single most useful feature possible for such a device.
What I don't understand is that Firefox _used_ to change the address bar text area background color to pale yellow to indicate a secure site and it stopped doing that some time ago. I always thought that was a great feature and much more obvious than that tiny little icon on the status bar, which can be lost in the noise next to the Greasemonkey icon and the NoScript icon, etc.
Truer words were never spoken, but it's a sad indictment of businesses these days.
I've worked for startups, small companies, mid-sized companies and one very large one, and while I was generally treated well, that describes the order of how well I was treated and the respect I had for management, from best to worst. After spending 15 months at AOL a few years ago (in between layoffs, as it were), I finally concluded that we, as a society, have finally and completely lost the ability to manage.
It was a growing thing that I'd observed for more than a decade, but after seeing Dilbert come alive at that place and others as well, I can understand why so many companies and especially our government are in the messes they are in.
I do have to say, though, that my immediate supervisor at AOL and almost every other place I've worked at were top-notch, stand-up people, but the numbers of butt-kissers, numbskulls, backstabbers and all around nincompoops above them reached new highs in the annals of asshattery.
Re:That's one way KDE/GNOME should emulate Windows
on
A Real Bill Gates Rant
·
· Score: 1
Generally never. I haven't done any GUI in about 4 years, but I always had a very good reputation with users and enjoyed working with them. I also tried very hard to see things from their point of view, which I think helped me create GUIs that facilitated productivity and were reasonably easy to understand. The biggest problem Microsoft has with trying to make things simple is that usually succeed, but only for an extremely narrow domain of problems, and the moment you try to do something outside of that domain, you are immediately deep in the woods.
My problems with using software is that I generally think differently (that's grammatically correct, Apple), and tend to do all the "wrong" things. I recall coming up with the clever idea back in the Windows 3 days of using subst (or whatever it was) to associate w:\ with c:\WINDOWS to help shorten my path. You wouldn't believe all the kinds of havok that wrought for no good reason.
i wonder if anyone in the Government has considered granting subsidies to the impoverished so they can purchase e-book readers or simple computers for the main purpose of obtaining the status of an informed and educated citizenry.
Because most of the people who can afford, and do have, this technology aren't informed or educated. What makes you think the poor will make any better use of it?
Slashdot Mirror
Can't you just buy your music on TPB instead? ;-)
But where do you put in your credit card number?
If you have effectively free and infinite energy, practically any other resource problem can be solved with today's technology.
If Microsoft did everything that was their job, or even a majority of the things that were their job, none of this crap would be necessary. As they see it, Microsoft's "job" is to maintain their monopoly, if you can actually get some usable software out of that, consider yourself lucky, they certainly couldn't care less.
I sure have and it's very annoying. But of course, ruining the theater-going experience is certainly part of Hollywood's current business model, which is one of the reasons I rarely go to the movies any more. Netflix is the main reason though.
I see. So I should believe an anonymous rude person on the Internet as opposed to my own eyes. You have an odd idea of what constitutes mental illness.
Increasingly we (certainly I) expect a salesperson to demonstrate the in-depth product knowledge
I gave up expecting salespeople to demonstrate an in-depth product knowledge 20 years ago, when I was buying a stereo and found the salespeople seldom knew as much as you could read on the price tag/product labels. Even with so simple a question as "Do you carry such-and-such?", I seldom expect to get a decent answer, and the last time I bought something at Circuit City, that's exactly what happened. They actually opened a new store here just a few months ago, and I was surprised at how sparsely it was filled (tons of empty floor space). I asked if they had any drive enclosures and the guy said no, but I looked anyway. Sure enough, there were some, and I pointed them out to the employee, who was surprised. Given how small the computer peripherals section was, it shouldn't have been too hard to know what was there. Basically, I almost never bother to ask. Unless I need something immediately, ordering on-line is always better.
Wait... you can install software that isn't from Microsoft? Is that even legal?
Windows Explorer (yes I *do* want to delete files off *my own desktop*)
Have you actually *used* Vista? This doesn't happen.
Gee, that's funny. I *have* used Vista and it did it for me. It would pop up multiple times if I so much as renamed an icon on the desktop.
Thanks, Microsoft. You saved the world from a botnet attack because I wanted to rename something on my desktop.
Microsoft has gone past the incompetence part for me, I think malice is the only explanation for them now.
So why do copyrights deserve more incentives than patents again?
Because that right was bought from Congress. This is the U.S.A., you must be new here.
"no one should be arrested for bestiality," he asserted.
Wait a minute, didn't he just admit his uncle, Jack Off, was a horse?!
If it works, I'll happily change my tune, but I've had 20 years experience as a Windows user and about 15 years developing for DOS and Windows. I'll believe it when I see it. Microsoft is all about lock in, though. Even though Flash doesn't always work well under Linux, there is ostensible support for it.
As much as I dislike MS, I'll give them credit when they do something well. I just find much less to give them credit for than in the past. As soon as their monopoly is broken, the technology scene will be much better off. I'm not saying they need to die (although the company deserves to die), but just that when there's real competition and choice based on merit instead of marketshare, we will all win. Microsoft doesn't innovate, and almost never has (yes, I know about Microsoft Research, but does anything they do translate into shipping product?), and because they exercise unreasonable control over the market, they hold everything back. Microsoft products have many of the same problems they had 10 years ago, and we are complaining about many of the same things as we did back then. There's been some progress, but nowhere near what it should have been.
Ultimately, there's no good reason I as a Linux user shouldn't be able to stream Netflix movies. Microsoft certainly doesn't want me to, and Netflix is looking for a solution that works well enough, as long as Microsoft's foot is on Linux's neck, there's little reason for companies like Netflix to it. But if Linux could compete based on merit, things would be a lot different, and Microsoft products would probably also be a lot better, because they'd have to _compete_ instead of control.
Now if your market has decreased and you either don't think it will return or have a low training cost, then fire the excess.
Ha ha! At first I read that as "fire the execs"...
I've always thought patent reform won't happen until some company DOES hold a significant chunk of the economy hostage. I'm actually surprised it hasn't happened yet given the wild abandon with which the USPTO hands out patents for things that are obvious to even a technical newbie.
I am a little surprised it's Microsoft that's trying to do it, patents was one of the few things they haven't used to bully people (they've threatened it a lot). I guess the more desperate they get, the more sleazy tactics they'll stoop to... and they're only about 2 steps from hiring hitmen as it is.
Here NF is offering a viewer that will work _without_ IE or Windows and people are complaining?
They are still requiring Microsoft software. Linux users need not apply.
I have a hard time believing there are those who were duped into downloading software that ended up hosing their system.
Well, you're a lucky person never to have dealt with Microsoft then.
Project Gutenberg is already a very good example of what you're looking for, having the advantage of already existing and having thousands upon thousands of works available. It also has the advantage of having an army of volunteers keying in, scanning and proofreading public domain texts.
The Internet Archive is another example, which also hosts video and audio archives, as well as the Wayback Machine and who knows what else.
While neither of these is the all-encompassing resource you might be imaging, they are both well-established extremely good resources.
For the Google-enabled, many, many other resources for public-domain and otherwise free material can easily be located as well. You'll never run out of good reading material without having to pay anything but Internet access charges.
You can literally carry the contents of a small library on your computer wherever you go and have instant access to it.
Well I certainly agree with your idea of making electronic book readers available to people who would make good use of them, but cannot afford them. I just don't think it's possible to create a system that would accomplish them with having
1.) 99.9% of the readers not used or grossly underused
2.) devices being sold, etc, just like you described
3.) devices being used for material that is, shall we say, less than educational
While education in this country is a big problem, and is poorly run in many places, the demand for improvement is often lowest in the places that need it the most. My kids have pretty good public schools where we live in the Commonwealth of Virginia (Loudoun County, being relatively affluent compared to the rest of the state), but we have tons of books at home. My wife and I read all the time, and our kids are constantly encouraged to read, even if it's indirect, and most of them are voracious readers, with one being rather less than voracious, but still enjoying it. My experience with children is that you expose them to a lot things, reading, TV (there are interesting and useful things on TV, and many things that are worthwhile even if they aren't explicitly educational), creative projects, etc. Exposing them to these things generates interest. Once one child has a strong interest in something, she often encourages, or inspires her siblings to a strong interest as well.
It's more of that kind of attitude among parents that will improve things far more than handing out a bunch of overly expensive underly useful electronic books.
p.s. I'd consider a Kindle, but the platform is way too closed for my interests. It can't even display PDFs, which is possibly the single most useful feature possible for such a device.
What I don't understand is that Firefox _used_ to change the address bar text area background color to pale yellow to indicate a secure site and it stopped doing that some time ago. I always thought that was a great feature and much more obvious than that tiny little icon on the status bar, which can be lost in the noise next to the Greasemonkey icon and the NoScript icon, etc.
Truer words were never spoken, but it's a sad indictment of businesses these days.
I've worked for startups, small companies, mid-sized companies and one very large one, and while I was generally treated well, that describes the order of how well I was treated and the respect I had for management, from best to worst. After spending 15 months at AOL a few years ago (in between layoffs, as it were), I finally concluded that we, as a society, have finally and completely lost the ability to manage.
It was a growing thing that I'd observed for more than a decade, but after seeing Dilbert come alive at that place and others as well, I can understand why so many companies and especially our government are in the messes they are in.
I do have to say, though, that my immediate supervisor at AOL and almost every other place I've worked at were top-notch, stand-up people, but the numbers of butt-kissers, numbskulls, backstabbers and all around nincompoops above them reached new highs in the annals of asshattery.
Generally never. I haven't done any GUI in about 4 years, but I always had a very good reputation with users and enjoyed working with them. I also tried very hard to see things from their point of view, which I think helped me create GUIs that facilitated productivity and were reasonably easy to understand. The biggest problem Microsoft has with trying to make things simple is that usually succeed, but only for an extremely narrow domain of problems, and the moment you try to do something outside of that domain, you are immediately deep in the woods.
My problems with using software is that I generally think differently (that's grammatically correct, Apple), and tend to do all the "wrong" things. I recall coming up with the clever idea back in the Windows 3 days of using subst (or whatever it was) to associate w:\ with c:\WINDOWS to help shorten my path. You wouldn't believe all the kinds of havok that wrought for no good reason.
i wonder if anyone in the Government has considered granting subsidies to the impoverished so they can purchase e-book readers or simple computers for the main purpose of obtaining the status of an informed and educated citizenry.
Because most of the people who can afford, and do have, this technology aren't informed or educated. What makes you think the poor will make any better use of it?
I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought so, Wakko.
Do you think they somewhat are a monolithic entity
Well, they are 100,000 people who are actually willing to work for Microsoft...
Did you install Java to have it NOT work?
Based on my experiences with Java on Linux, I always assumed Sun thought that's what I was trying to do.
The synergies are part of the proactive paradigm.