Or how about patenting a process where you make a stupid patent on an already existing idea (or a similar idea) and sue everyone who uses such an idea to make money.
Then you could turn around and sue anyone who sues someone using a dumb patent they aquired.
I know its recursive, but the idea is just as good as the one Yahoo and company have embarked on.
OSX has a ways to go too. Personally I think it has a lot of usability issues - I only started using it a month ago.
One of them is its incredibly easy to lose open windows (keep in mind I'm a new user). As far as I can tell open Windows don't show up on the doc unless they are minimized, and if you've lost one for some reason the only way to truely find them is to minimize all of them, use the window command or to hit a function key to use expose to find it. I know its customizable, but by default you have to find F9 on your keyboard. With microsoft all open Windows show up as tasks so you can hit it on the taskbar, use alt+tab (which I noticed OSX borrowed from Windows 3.1) or whatever. Surely they could do better. Plus there's the fact it never remembers any window positions and dimensions for any directory and the manual doesn't tell you how to make it remember them.
Fact is Apple and Linux borrow ideas from Microsoft all the time and visa versa. The first start button I ever saw was on Windows, but these days its hard to find a evironment on Linux without one (under KDE and Gnome as an example). Apple's dock is obviously an extension of Microsoft's taskbar.
RDP is really just a solution to a problem. How to get multiple users on one windows machine and lower TCO. I think they did a pretty good job personally.
There's nothing wrong with that in my opinion - and thats the point.
I want to know why they don't cover OSX bugs? I recently bought a Mini-Mac, and at least once a week the auto-updater says its fixing security holes.
Its only a matter of time before spyware and viruses start coming to the mac. And people will say but they require you to type in your password before installing things. Well - the solution is obvious. Spyware should imitate that updater window and claim its installing a patch for you - ask for your password and walk right in. And as someone who has done mac support be the first to tell you mac users would be more than happy to do that.
(btw thats the same way a lot of windows viruses and spyware walk in)
Well and the other thing is there are lots of us who haven't had any problems with Windows.
My Windows XP machine never locks up, never crashes and applications rarely fail on it. It plays all the latest games, I can play movies, use photoshop, use indesign/quark etc.
I've never had a virus, I admit however I did have some spyware on my machine, but I cleaned it up pretty easily and I don't use IE anymore.
On the other hand - I just got a mac-mini. I really like it:) and I use it all the time. It won't play my games but as far as the user experience goes its pretty decent. But at the same time I really truely don't see anything wrong with Windows as an OS.
Isn't samba based on RFC 1001 (written in the 80's)? I suspect Windows used the same documentation. Two things not covered by that RFC are NT 3/4 domain controllers and ADS domain controllers - neither of which samba work with all that reliably.
I dunno - Nadesico, and Wedding peach are any indication. Both were licensed in the US, but it took over 6 years for Nadesico (and they butchered the graphics) and just under 10 for Wedding Peach - which was a really good release. I've never seen a fansub take that long to make. I remember Orange Road - we were watching that in the 80's. Animeigo only released it on DVD recently - there's more than a 20 year gap there.
Nadesico was one of the most watched anime series in Japan when it came out - still took them forever to release in the US. I've been in fan subbing as well - in fact I worked on the Wedding Peach fansub. It was pretty short lived, but we did most of the first season - I still have the laser disks. I was actually suprised it was even released in the US - way to wierd. But I bought all the dvd's anyhow:).
I had similar experiences - and before you blame it on my system it was a run of the mill Dell Pentium 2.4 GHz - nothing odd about it. By the 5th card I called them and said I was sending this one back. And that the card they send me I wanted them to throughly test (two of the ones they sent were DOA - and tested on several machines). A month went by and finally I got a card in the mail that seems to work perfectly. They must have listened. One shouldn't have to send 6 cards back to get one that works good.
Of course its obsolete compared to the 6800GT I bought out of disapointment for ATI products. I'll never buy another one again. Someone should be happy to buy this on ebay though.
My 6800 has never drawn one pixel bad no matter how long I'm playing games. I'll never look back.
Honestly they could make a card that runs 10 times quicker - I rather have good support and service over superior performance, poor QA and poor customer service.
Interesting question actually. If the EULA says one thing, and Microsoft Exec's say another which holds true?
I tend to agree that software companies (unless you are paying a lot of money for that kind of liability - and there are companies who provide this, but most people can't afford this) should not be held repsonsible for loss of data, breach of security, system failures etc - simply because end user environments are too unpredictable - and frankly because mistakes in software are all to common.
Microsoft should however be made to put their money where their mouth is and start being more responsible not only for the rhetoric they spount, but also their security issues like Nick McGrath says they do.
I don't see what Windows has to do with anything. Besides Lynx runs on Windows too.
Re:Finally, on the same level as the PC, for now.
on
More On PS3 and Xbox 2
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· Score: 1
I especially like it as anyone who has played around with the hl2 engine knows what a hack it is:). Good example - it really can't do actual dynamic lighting the likes of which you can see in doom3 (or farcry for that matter).
Ah well the reason I said turn of the century is because I'm living in the past:).
Re:Linux Desktop Thoughts...
on
Linux, Inc.
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· Score: 1
I'm not saying there's only room for one. Thats definately not the case. I think OSX proves this - Apple is doing quite well in the marketplace and in general they provide a consistant experience. What I'm saying is that Linux and Unix in general need a consistant interface - one that is tested by users. OSX proves you can have that on Unix, just its never going to make it to linux because of Apple. The variations I've seen in Gnome and KDE alone prove that the Linux desktop is not a consistant interface.
In all the software companies I've worked for (places like Adobe even - currently I work for a vertical market software company who makes accounting apps) they only release what they can support - I've seen more than one application literally die off because usability testing proved (and in most cases I agreed) that a particular product could not be supported. Framemaker 5 for Linux was a good example of this. It was finished and everything but it won't see the light of day literally because it was too expensive to support. I have a fried who works in the upper echelons of Netgear - they quit putting "works with linux" on their product boxes not because their stuff doesn't work with linux, but they literally found they couldn't afford to support it (and they did try)
Good luck on the Windows system I have at work. It doesn't have a either of those icons on the desktop.
Just as I predicted - someone will always find an exception. You need to trust me when I say that I've taken over 12000+ calls on Windows in the last 4 years and the vast majority of the time what I say is true - Windows does deliver a consistant interface. The rest of the time if its not there just go into the control panel and set it (again - its in the same place on every version of Windows viva consistancy).
Re:Linux Desktop Thoughts...
on
Linux, Inc.
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· Score: 1
The Windows desktop is perceived to be user friendly *ONLY* because it is familiar to people.
You say that like it happened out of the blue - like Microsoft got lucky or something. Unix/X11 has had 20+ years to own the market, but hasn't. Why is that? It runs on anything, and like you suggested the desktop is fully customizable. Personally I like that, but its not easily supportable. I'll give you some real support scenarios I deal with every day.
Explain to me how to add an icon to a desktop to load a program or open a documents folder in Unix/X11 - the first question out of your mouth should be what environment - thats strike one because there's hundreds. Lets says CDE as a good example (like on Solaris 8 or 9). I love CDE as an example, because it was hyped as the easy to use Unix in the early and mid 90's and it cost more than it cost to develope than Windows 95 did. And it takes over 15 steps to add an icon to anything in CDE and by far the vast majority of Unix apps do not have their own Icon so start searching because users hate stock icons.
Take linux for example - tell me how to install a program in your favorite environment - in windows pop the disk in most of the time (if that fails run setup.exe). Next question you'll ask me is what distro. Then say I'm using debian (which I use daily and I love it) - there's probably a hundred different ways to add an application to it (most being front ends to dpkg). Say we go back to the icon on the desktop test. In gnome I can do this easily, but I have to pick the icon to make it look nice (users are very demanding). Mozilla and Firefox are good examples - both modern apps, but I have to select the icon by hand for both - not so in Windows (except for MS-DOS apps). Next I'll ask how to change network settings in Gnome - again no consistant way of doing this - in fact in looking over my gnome system I can't find any way of doing this - even as root. What some Linux geek will tell me though is to get a different desktop environment, or a install an application I can't possibly maintain in Debian.
OSX is great - I really really like it. Its probably the best thing to happen to Unix ever. Except it only runs on one platform. If you're running any other kind of unix you're SOL because apple won't help you. It needs some consistancy work too. On network settings for example Apple kept changing this (I know becuase I used to support OSX [not for apple] when I was at Stream) - and to be honest I really can't tell you the differences off the top of my head. But if you want to see exactly what I'm talking about look at how to change the IP for example in 10.1.x and 10.2.x - quite a big difference. Same goes for adding users.
Windows really only runs on one platform too, but its an ubiquitous platform and its a mostly consistant interface. I can tell you with my eyes closed how to setup network properties in Windows 95, 98, NT4, 2000 and XP because its in the same place (right click on network neighborhood/my network places - then double click on tcp/ip). I can tell you how to make an icon on desktop with the same distributions of windows mention above because its the exact same process for each of them > right click on the desktop and click on create new shortcut. Installing programs is a generally consistant process as well. People will reply with exceptions, but take it from me 99% of the time run the install app and it will work (the big exception to this would be terminal services is the need to run change user before running setup)
I don't think I'm talking out of my ass either. I've do tech support on multiple platforms (including Solaris, Linux, Mac and Windows) - and tech support is the ultimate ultimate ultimate usability test (software engineers should realize this and spend at least one day taking calls from real users). I really truely don't believe a tech support company who had to support kde/gnome/linux distro whatever would survive one day.
Years of sitting there getting failing grades in a series of high school math class's taught by football coach's hasn't helped me one bit:( (on a side note - the jocks in the class always got straight A's - I suspect it was so they wouldn't be kicked from the team for being as dumb as rocks). I have a good grasp of logic, and how numbers work now (as an example I do tech support for accounting software), but in college I had a really hard time with calculus - still though I got good grades there:).
I must be out of the loop. I have a 10 gig ipod, and it maybe has 5 purchased itunes songs on it - and most of those came from the pepsi promotion. The only thing I use Itunes for is to navigate its buggy interface to copy music to the Ipod. If I could easily interact directly with the Ipod I would be a happy camper:).
Most of the stuff I have on there I either downloaded from someplace else (remix.kwed.org:)) or ripped on my own.
Xbox is kinda funny. As I recall the reason to use the funky plug was to increase endurance.
Oddly enough the usb adapter MS gave away can be used with any usb device you like. One thing I did was plug a lexar usb flash device into it - and you can save games to it. You can also connect joysticks to it as well.
It makes me sad when people feel superior for being older. Seriously. Have you ever used an abacus? Washed your clothes on a washboard?
There seems to be a general apathy towards older technology. Personally I have the philosophy that something that was complex 20-30 years ago is really simple to build today and can lead to greater understanding how todays technology works. For example - building your own transmitter to send and recieve morse code. Used to take a room-full of equipment at the turn of the century, but today can literally fit on a single board (if someone worked hard enough at it they could fit it on a single chip). Why is that important? Its the most fundamental mode of radio communications and once you understand how to do that more complex digital modes (like PSK/FSK which most wireless cards use) seem easier to understand.
Anyhow I've never washed my clothes on a washboard, or used an abacus, but when I was a kid we had a rotary phone in the kitchen:) - the 80's don't seem like that long ago to be honest. (my first computer coincidentally, a Sinclair ZX-81 had 1K of ram too).
Every time I log into my debian machine it says the following,
"The programs included with the Debian GNU/Linux system are free software; the exact distribution terms for each program are described in the individual files in/usr/share/doc/*/copyright.
Debian GNU/Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by applicable law."
Its not at all uncommon with the warning in small type that comes up when I launch certian applications in Windows/Mac in the splash screen. If I violate the terms of the GPL don't they enforce it the same way companies enforce EULA's? Its the same thing really.
Slashdot Mirror
Or how about patenting a process where you make a stupid patent on an already existing idea (or a similar idea) and sue everyone who uses such an idea to make money.
Then you could turn around and sue anyone who sues someone using a dumb patent they aquired.
I know its recursive, but the idea is just as good as the one Yahoo and company have embarked on.
OSX has a ways to go too. Personally I think it has a lot of usability issues - I only started using it a month ago.
One of them is its incredibly easy to lose open windows (keep in mind I'm a new user). As far as I can tell open Windows don't show up on the doc unless they are minimized, and if you've lost one for some reason the only way to truely find them is to minimize all of them, use the window command or to hit a function key to use expose to find it. I know its customizable, but by default you have to find F9 on your keyboard. With microsoft all open Windows show up as tasks so you can hit it on the taskbar, use alt+tab (which I noticed OSX borrowed from Windows 3.1) or whatever. Surely they could do better. Plus there's the fact it never remembers any window positions and dimensions for any directory and the manual doesn't tell you how to make it remember them.
Fact is Apple and Linux borrow ideas from Microsoft all the time and visa versa. The first start button I ever saw was on Windows, but these days its hard to find a evironment on Linux without one (under KDE and Gnome as an example). Apple's dock is obviously an extension of Microsoft's taskbar.
RDP is really just a solution to a problem. How to get multiple users on one windows machine and lower TCO. I think they did a pretty good job personally.
There's nothing wrong with that in my opinion - and thats the point.
You're the kind of person who calls me at technical support when that process breaks other applications.
I want to know why they don't cover OSX bugs? I recently bought a Mini-Mac, and at least once a week the auto-updater says its fixing security holes.
Its only a matter of time before spyware and viruses start coming to the mac. And people will say but they require you to type in your password before installing things. Well - the solution is obvious. Spyware should imitate that updater window and claim its installing a patch for you - ask for your password and walk right in. And as someone who has done mac support be the first to tell you mac users would be more than happy to do that.
(btw thats the same way a lot of windows viruses and spyware walk in)
Well and the other thing is there are lots of us who haven't had any problems with Windows.
:) and I use it all the time. It won't play my games but as far as the user experience goes its pretty decent. But at the same time I really truely don't see anything wrong with Windows as an OS.
My Windows XP machine never locks up, never crashes and applications rarely fail on it. It plays all the latest games, I can play movies, use photoshop, use indesign/quark etc.
I've never had a virus, I admit however I did have some spyware on my machine, but I cleaned it up pretty easily and I don't use IE anymore.
On the other hand - I just got a mac-mini. I really like it
Can it easily replace an Active Directory Server? Nope. Can it *easily* replace a Windows NT Domain - not really.
:).
Otherwise it works great
Isn't samba based on RFC 1001 (written in the 80's)? I suspect Windows used the same documentation. Two things not covered by that RFC are NT 3/4 domain controllers and ADS domain controllers - neither of which samba work with all that reliably.
What about teachers using computers to help layout and manage paperwork - like it talks about in the article.
Do you think you could do your job without a computer? In K-12 the classroom is typically the teachers office as well.
I dunno - Nadesico, and Wedding peach are any indication. Both were licensed in the US, but it took over 6 years for Nadesico (and they butchered the graphics) and just under 10 for Wedding Peach - which was a really good release. I've never seen a fansub take that long to make. I remember Orange Road - we were watching that in the 80's. Animeigo only released it on DVD recently - there's more than a 20 year gap there.
:).
Nadesico was one of the most watched anime series in Japan when it came out - still took them forever to release in the US. I've been in fan subbing as well - in fact I worked on the Wedding Peach fansub. It was pretty short lived, but we did most of the first season - I still have the laser disks. I was actually suprised it was even released in the US - way to wierd. But I bought all the dvd's anyhow
I should add - this is a 100% ATI video card - even has the ATI logo on the fan. Besides ATI wouldn't RMA non ATI cards now would they?
I had similar experiences - and before you blame it on my system it was a run of the mill Dell Pentium 2.4 GHz - nothing odd about it. By the 5th card I called them and said I was sending this one back. And that the card they send me I wanted them to throughly test (two of the ones they sent were DOA - and tested on several machines). A month went by and finally I got a card in the mail that seems to work perfectly. They must have listened. One shouldn't have to send 6 cards back to get one that works good.
Of course its obsolete compared to the 6800GT I bought out of disapointment for ATI products. I'll never buy another one again. Someone should be happy to buy this on ebay though.
My 6800 has never drawn one pixel bad no matter how long I'm playing games. I'll never look back.
Honestly they could make a card that runs 10 times quicker - I rather have good support and service over superior performance, poor QA and poor customer service.
Looks like mirrordot got slammed too.
Interesting question actually. If the EULA says one thing, and Microsoft Exec's say another which holds true?
I tend to agree that software companies (unless you are paying a lot of money for that kind of liability - and there are companies who provide this, but most people can't afford this) should not be held repsonsible for loss of data, breach of security, system failures etc - simply because end user environments are too unpredictable - and frankly because mistakes in software are all to common.
Microsoft should however be made to put their money where their mouth is and start being more responsible not only for the rhetoric they spount, but also their security issues like Nick McGrath says they do.
Do what I did. Go in there ask for the card, but never fill out the paperwork.
I have an Albertsons card and a Safeways's card that I've done this for the last few years with.
I don't see what Windows has to do with anything. Besides Lynx runs on Windows too.
I especially like it as anyone who has played around with the hl2 engine knows what a hack it is :). Good example - it really can't do actual dynamic lighting the likes of which you can see in doom3 (or farcry for that matter).
Sun still makes up for a decent percentage of my tech portfolio.
You brave soul. You are truely a king, a hero among mankind.
Ah well the reason I said turn of the century is because I'm living in the past :).
I'm not saying there's only room for one. Thats definately not the case. I think OSX proves this - Apple is doing quite well in the marketplace and in general they provide a consistant experience. What I'm saying is that Linux and Unix in general need a consistant interface - one that is tested by users. OSX proves you can have that on Unix, just its never going to make it to linux because of Apple. The variations I've seen in Gnome and KDE alone prove that the Linux desktop is not a consistant interface.
In all the software companies I've worked for (places like Adobe even - currently I work for a vertical market software company who makes accounting apps) they only release what they can support - I've seen more than one application literally die off because usability testing proved (and in most cases I agreed) that a particular product could not be supported. Framemaker 5 for Linux was a good example of this. It was finished and everything but it won't see the light of day literally because it was too expensive to support. I have a fried who works in the upper echelons of Netgear - they quit putting "works with linux" on their product boxes not because their stuff doesn't work with linux, but they literally found they couldn't afford to support it (and they did try)
Good luck on the Windows system I have at work. It doesn't have a either of those icons on the desktop.
Just as I predicted - someone will always find an exception. You need to trust me when I say that I've taken over 12000+ calls on Windows in the last 4 years and the vast majority of the time what I say is true - Windows does deliver a consistant interface. The rest of the time if its not there just go into the control panel and set it (again - its in the same place on every version of Windows viva consistancy).
The Windows desktop is perceived to be user friendly *ONLY* because it is familiar to people.
You say that like it happened out of the blue - like Microsoft got lucky or something. Unix/X11 has had 20+ years to own the market, but hasn't. Why is that? It runs on anything, and like you suggested the desktop is fully customizable. Personally I like that, but its not easily supportable. I'll give you some real support scenarios I deal with every day.
Explain to me how to add an icon to a desktop to load a program or open a documents folder in Unix/X11 - the first question out of your mouth should be what environment - thats strike one because there's hundreds. Lets says CDE as a good example (like on Solaris 8 or 9). I love CDE as an example, because it was hyped as the easy to use Unix in the early and mid 90's and it cost more than it cost to develope than Windows 95 did. And it takes over 15 steps to add an icon to anything in CDE and by far the vast majority of Unix apps do not have their own Icon so start searching because users hate stock icons.
Take linux for example - tell me how to install a program in your favorite environment - in windows pop the disk in most of the time (if that fails run setup.exe). Next question you'll ask me is what distro. Then say I'm using debian (which I use daily and I love it) - there's probably a hundred different ways to add an application to it (most being front ends to dpkg). Say we go back to the icon on the desktop test. In gnome I can do this easily, but I have to pick the icon to make it look nice (users are very demanding). Mozilla and Firefox are good examples - both modern apps, but I have to select the icon by hand for both - not so in Windows (except for MS-DOS apps). Next I'll ask how to change network settings in Gnome - again no consistant way of doing this - in fact in looking over my gnome system I can't find any way of doing this - even as root. What some Linux geek will tell me though is to get a different desktop environment, or a install an application I can't possibly maintain in Debian.
OSX is great - I really really like it. Its probably the best thing to happen to Unix ever. Except it only runs on one platform. If you're running any other kind of unix you're SOL because apple won't help you. It needs some consistancy work too. On network settings for example Apple kept changing this (I know becuase I used to support OSX [not for apple] when I was at Stream) - and to be honest I really can't tell you the differences off the top of my head. But if you want to see exactly what I'm talking about look at how to change the IP for example in 10.1.x and 10.2.x - quite a big difference. Same goes for adding users.
Windows really only runs on one platform too, but its an ubiquitous platform and its a mostly consistant interface. I can tell you with my eyes closed how to setup network properties in Windows 95, 98, NT4, 2000 and XP because its in the same place (right click on network neighborhood/my network places - then double click on tcp/ip). I can tell you how to make an icon on desktop with the same distributions of windows mention above because its the exact same process for each of them > right click on the desktop and click on create new shortcut. Installing programs is a generally consistant process as well. People will reply with exceptions, but take it from me 99% of the time run the install app and it will work (the big exception to this would be terminal services is the need to run change user before running setup)
I don't think I'm talking out of my ass either. I've do tech support on multiple platforms (including Solaris, Linux, Mac and Windows) - and tech support is the ultimate ultimate ultimate usability test (software engineers should realize this and spend at least one day taking calls from real users). I really truely don't believe a tech support company who had to support kde/gnome/linux distro whatever would survive one day.
Years of sitting there getting failing grades in a series of high school math class's taught by football coach's hasn't helped me one bit :( (on a side note - the jocks in the class always got straight A's - I suspect it was so they wouldn't be kicked from the team for being as dumb as rocks). I have a good grasp of logic, and how numbers work now (as an example I do tech support for accounting software), but in college I had a really hard time with calculus - still though I got good grades there :).
The iPod is not the killer product, iTunes is.
:).
:)) or ripped on my own.
I must be out of the loop. I have a 10 gig ipod, and it maybe has 5 purchased itunes songs on it - and most of those came from the pepsi promotion. The only thing I use Itunes for is to navigate its buggy interface to copy music to the Ipod. If I could easily interact directly with the Ipod I would be a happy camper
Most of the stuff I have on there I either downloaded from someplace else (remix.kwed.org
Xbox is kinda funny. As I recall the reason to use the funky plug was to increase endurance.
Oddly enough the usb adapter MS gave away can be used with any usb device you like. One thing I did was plug a lexar usb flash device into it - and you can save games to it. You can also connect joysticks to it as well.
It makes me sad when people feel superior for being older. Seriously. Have you ever used an abacus? Washed your clothes on a washboard?
:) - the 80's don't seem like that long ago to be honest. (my first computer coincidentally, a Sinclair ZX-81 had 1K of ram too).
There seems to be a general apathy towards older technology. Personally I have the philosophy that something that was complex 20-30 years ago is really simple to build today and can lead to greater understanding how todays technology works. For example - building your own transmitter to send and recieve morse code. Used to take a room-full of equipment at the turn of the century, but today can literally fit on a single board (if someone worked hard enough at it they could fit it on a single chip). Why is that important? Its the most fundamental mode of radio communications and once you understand how to do that more complex digital modes (like PSK/FSK which most wireless cards use) seem easier to understand.
Anyhow I've never washed my clothes on a washboard, or used an abacus, but when I was a kid we had a rotary phone in the kitchen
Every time I log into my debian machine it says the following,
/usr/share/doc/*/copyright.
"The programs included with the Debian GNU/Linux system are free software; the exact distribution terms for each program are described in the
individual files in
Debian GNU/Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by applicable law."
Its not at all uncommon with the warning in small type that comes up when I launch certian applications in Windows/Mac in the splash screen. If I violate the terms of the GPL don't they enforce it the same way companies enforce EULA's? Its the same thing really.