... and is modded up using the collaborative karma system.
Anyone else giggling about this?
Or are you all waiting for a post that everyone sane can understand, like how to modify your Gentoo PPC install to use both OSS and ALSA without frying your SBLive?
A few months back I wrote avar.icio.us, which does autocompletion and dynamic suggestion of tags based purely on your own tag coincidence statistics. You can see it in action on Bowen Dwelle's site: try typing "ja" in the tags field - it should autocomplete "javascript" in the textbox and then suggest a couple more tags beneath. (This is all based on Bowen's own tags) Note that autocompletion only works in Mozilloids and IE/Win at the moment.
A popular add-on that makes suggestions from other user's tags is Greg Sadetsky's nutr.icio.us (unfortunately unavailable at the moment). Joshua is building some of those features into del.icio.us core.
He has a legitimate use for a site called itunes.co.uk -- to talk about iTunes.
Then let him register itunestalk.co.uk or itunesfans.co.uk. Registering itunes.co.uk long after Apple has made the name of its product public is what's known as "passing off".
But the assumption that one can make something usable for everyone is false and damaging because it ignores the very different thinking styles of different users.
That's very true too. Sorry, I was reading your post as implying that all software has to make the choice between beginner and advanced users. Ultimately, it's still about putting the user first.
It's not about programmers vs non-programmers. It's about the person who created the application vs everyone else. And when it's put like that, there's no choice to make. If software hasn't been designed for other people to use, there's no point releasing it.
The idea that only non-programmers fall victim to usability problems is wildly wrong. The vast majority of usability problems are not about beginners not having enough general knowledge in the field, they're mostly about non-optimal design. Take the example in the original article (you did read it, didn't you?) about search tools throwing up error dialogs when they fail. A programmer is going to get just as annoyed about that as a non-programmer.
I'm a coder who administers multiple Windows and Linux machines and codes in a variety of different languages. Usability problems piss me off more than most users, because I realise they're the fault of a programmer who just said, "It's good enough for me!"
The distinction you make - that usability comes down to a choice between two groups of people who fundamentally differ in technical ability - is not only very wrong, it's actively harmful, and the reason why so many OSS interfaces (whether GUI or CLI-based) have such poor usability. The programmer thought he could get away with poor interface design because he was aiming at geeks. What he ends up with is no users.
It all came from trying to get GParted running on a RedHat 9 box. After three hours of chasing random extra packages which it needed, and which those packages needed, and which those packages needed, I gave up.
I should clarify that had I not eventually hit some bizarre brick wall that stopped me getting GParted installed and working, you wouldn't be seeing this complaint. But I did. In other words, it's not just that I had to follow dependencies that were not installed and get those too; nor is it just that I had to do a bunch of renaming and symlinking in order to get new versions of.so's working either. It's that after I did all that, there was still stuff that refused to install, and gave me such arcane reasons that I gave up.
In other words - there is only so much that I should have to know about a system's internals in order to install software. Once I have to understand C and edit header files of packages which I didn't write, that's already way too much.
If you had less problems with it on Windows then either you happen to only use products from vendors that are extremely carefull, or simply had a lot of luck.
Let's move this one from theoretical differences to real world experiences, shall we?
Personally, I've been a Windows user since before Win95. I've used Linux a fair amount, but not nearly as much.
My experiences with Linux dependency hell are such that in the past month I've had more of it than in all of my years using Windows. It all came from trying to get GParted running on a RedHat 9 box. After three hours of chasing random extra packages which it needed, and which those packages needed, and which those packages needed, I gave up.
Now, someone's obviously going to chime in and berate me for using RH9, and obviously Debian - no wait Gentoo - no, hang on - Slackware does it better. Well, please don't tell me that unless you've had no problems at all, ever. On the lists I'm on I continually hear users of those distributions complaining as well. Not saying they're not better than RH/Fedora, but dammit, they're a long way off perfect. Every time there's a/. post about new multimedia apps on Linux I see a ton of posts about how people can't get MPlayer and JACK to play happily with ALSA, and CUPS isn't happy either, and...
In other words, I want users of yum/apt/portage to tell me they've never encountered dependency problems if they've been using them for more than a couple of years. (No, seriously. I would really like to hear, because then I would know which dist to choose)
Sod that. Wanna know how many experiences with DLL hell I've had? None. Zero. In ten years. And that's with me being a heat-seeking beta bunny half the time. The most I've ever had to do is drag a DLL into WINDOWS\SYSTEM32. Never had to go to a command line, ever. I'm not allergic to the CLI by any means, but I do object to being forced to use it because a system's designed badly.
You want to know why I sound so angry about this? Because this is the ONE THING REMAINING that keeps me on Windows. Otherwise, I'm pretty sick of it, and am relishing the chance to move to an OS that's fast, free, and will let me do what I want.
Okay, I may well be the one lucky Windows user, but I doubt it. I know I'm not the one unlucky Linux user. And I do genuinely want to hear experiences or tips that contradict mine, so that I can move to an OS where I can actually see what's going on.
Half the time Windows machines don't see each other in the "workgroup" or refuse to exchange information or doggedly insist on logging you in as the wrong user. In both cases, printing and networking, if something doesn't work correctly there's often nothing you can do to fix it besided rebooting and seeing if that helps (which, bizzarely, often does).
You're right, Windows Workgroup networking utterly sucks. I ccontinually wonder how something so successful and so mature can still be so hideously unreliable.
However, your criticism is irrelevant, because almost all large enterprise installations of Windows use Domains rather than Workgroups, which work a hell of a lot better.
Not exactly parallel, but where is, for example, the support in Windows for ReiserFS, ext3, and JFS? I say that makes Windows "not ready for the corporate desktop" because it can't read non-MS filesystems.
Oh, please. "I'm not driving on the wrong side of the road! Everyone else is!"
Besides, anyone who's going to access those filesystems from Windows in a corporate environment is going to do so over the network, so filesystem drivers are irrelevant. You either want Samba on the UNIX side or NFS on the Windows side.
In an effort to avoid an association between the book originally titled Katie.com and the website Katie.com, Plume and the author decide to make this title change.
New York, New York, August 6, 2004... In 2000, Dutton published a hardcover book called Katie.com by Katie Tarbox, an eye-opening account of one teenager's descent into the seductive world of the Internet. After the book was released into the market, it was brought to Dutton's attention that a website of the same name existed on the Internet. The fact that the book, Katie.com, and the website shared the same name was purely coincidental. In an effort to avoid any association between the book and the site, when Plume issued the book in trade paperback in 2001, it printed on the copyright page that the author of Katie.com and events described in the book have no connection whatsoever with the website domain owner Katie Jones or her e-mail address.
Trena Keating, Editor-in-chief of Plume, said, "We have made every effort to clarify the fact that Plume's book, Katie.com, and the website, Katie.com, are not in any way associated with one another. In addition, it was erroneously reported recently that Plume had asked its attorney to attempt to buy the web site Katie.com from domain owner Katie Jones. This is absolutely not true. Ms. Jones confirms this point in a message currently posted on her web site.
"We are not working in association with author Katie Tarbox or any other individual in an attempt to assume ownership of the domain name address www.katie.com. Of course, the personal views of the author are hers and do not represent Plume in any way. "Going forward, Plume and the author have decided to re-title this book A Girl's Life Online. This is an important book about predatory pedophiles on the Internet and how we can protect our children. We changed the title to keep focus on this issue. The newly titled book will be released next month. We have always taken this situation very seriously. And we hope that by making this title change, it will demonstrate just how dedicated Plume is to clarifying this matter."
Yes, database copyright does exist in UK law (15 years from making or publication). Actually, my understanding is that it's existed for ages and UK law was one of few that didn't need to adopt that EU directive because they already had equivalent legislation.
It's what we used to get a successful injunction against the people who were datamining Nominet's whois.
Ah yes... Apparently to prevent people (and businesses) from doing too many searches. Not quite sure why this is a problem, but apparantly it is.
It's a problem because postcode mapping data is valuable, and a dataset normally costs several thousand pounds to purchase. (No, it's not free to the public, even though it's the ONS that comes up with it)
At FaxYourMP.com, an e-democracy site for which I volunteer, a big chunk of our money goes to paying for that data so that we can tell people who their MP is just from them giving us their postcode.
When I went over to Jerusalem in November with a friend of mine we picked up an open node while standing in Kikar Tzion (Zion Square) - it was on the corner closest to that little side road that runs down towards the park, I can't remember the name. (Opposite side to Ben Yehuda)
Said friend of mine was quite keen on netstumbling during that trip... continually walking around with a laptop open on top of the baby buggy containing her daughter!
If you can afford to fly King David class on El-Al, the KD Lounge in Ben-Gurion airport has a free node. Not sure if you can pick it up outside.
1: Proper internationalisation support. You don't need this if you're an English-speaker only reading and writing English feeds, but do remember that, in global terms, this puts you in the minority.
2: Flexible comment feeds embedded in the main feed, so people can keep track of the comments going on in your blog in a standard fashion that's configurable in their reader.
3: The confidence that the content you create will retain its integrity in every conformant reader due to a completely unambiguous spec, which is not the case with RSS 2.0.
As I've said elsewhere: The difference between a completed technical standard placed under the Creative Commons and a truly open one is the difference between being allowed to scribble over the President's name in the newspaper and being able to vote for his opponent in the first place.
I could take the CC-licensed RSS spec and change it however I wanted, and it wouldn't help things one bit because it wouldn't be an accepted standard any further than my own hard drive. It would just be another incompatible spec calling itself RSS 2.0 that developers have to deal with.
I'd like to add another note of thanks to Tom for a completely fantastic game that my girlfriend introduced me to (she was hooked for months) and which filled my dreams with the sounds of squeaking gnomes...
(No, it's not just another Arkanoid clone. The gnomes, man, it's all about the gnomes...)
I would think there is at least some communication between the different divisions of Sony.
This would be the same Sony whose music division created copy-protected CD albums that couldn't be used with the electronics division's Net-MD player's ripping system, yes?
What's so bad about nuclear missile guidance systems? Has one ever been used in anger? The long answer is NO.
Oh, a nuclear missile guidance system that isn't being used is just fine. It's only when nuclear missiles are actually used for the purpose for which they were designed (i.e. use in anger) that I have trouble with them.
Isn't the same technologies that would allow enough accuaracy for a Nuclear Missile warhead to have a yield reduced 75% to achieve nuetralization of an enemies nuclear missile, also alow a safer flight in a 747 in bad weather?
I can't parse your question, but as far as I can tell the answer is no.
Slashdot Mirror
... and is modded up using the collaborative karma system.
Anyone else giggling about this?
Or are you all waiting for a post that everyone sane can understand, like how to modify your Gentoo PPC install to use both OSS and ALSA without frying your SBLive?
*sighs wearily*
A few months back I wrote avar.icio.us, which does autocompletion and dynamic suggestion of tags based purely on your own tag coincidence statistics. You can see it in action on Bowen Dwelle's site: try typing "ja" in the tags field - it should autocomplete "javascript" in the textbox and then suggest a couple more tags beneath. (This is all based on Bowen's own tags) Note that autocompletion only works in Mozilloids and IE/Win at the moment.
A popular add-on that makes suggestions from other user's tags is Greg Sadetsky's nutr.icio.us (unfortunately unavailable at the moment). Joshua is building some of those features into del.icio.us core.
He has a legitimate use for a site called itunes.co.uk -- to talk about iTunes.
Then let him register itunestalk.co.uk or itunesfans.co.uk. Registering itunes.co.uk long after Apple has made the name of its product public is what's known as "passing off".
See section 3a of the Nominet Dispute Resolution Service policy document.
But the assumption that one can make something usable for everyone is false and damaging because it ignores the very different thinking styles of different users.
That's very true too. Sorry, I was reading your post as implying that all software has to make the choice between beginner and advanced users. Ultimately, it's still about putting the user first.
It's not about programmers vs non-programmers. It's about the person who created the application vs everyone else. And when it's put like that, there's no choice to make. If software hasn't been designed for other people to use, there's no point releasing it.
The idea that only non-programmers fall victim to usability problems is wildly wrong. The vast majority of usability problems are not about beginners not having enough general knowledge in the field, they're mostly about non-optimal design. Take the example in the original article (you did read it, didn't you?) about search tools throwing up error dialogs when they fail. A programmer is going to get just as annoyed about that as a non-programmer.
I'm a coder who administers multiple Windows and Linux machines and codes in a variety of different languages. Usability problems piss me off more than most users, because I realise they're the fault of a programmer who just said, "It's good enough for me!"
The distinction you make - that usability comes down to a choice between two groups of people who fundamentally differ in technical ability - is not only very wrong, it's actively harmful, and the reason why so many OSS interfaces (whether GUI or CLI-based) have such poor usability. The programmer thought he could get away with poor interface design because he was aiming at geeks. What he ends up with is no users.
Thanks for the advice! I'll definitely be trying a Debian dist soon - possibly Ubuntu (since I've heard it's a much easier install than plain Debian)
It all came from trying to get GParted running on a RedHat 9 box. After three hours of chasing random extra packages which it needed, and which those packages needed, and which those packages needed, I gave up.
.so's working either. It's that after I did all that, there was still stuff that refused to install, and gave me such arcane reasons that I gave up.
I should clarify that had I not eventually hit some bizarre brick wall that stopped me getting GParted installed and working, you wouldn't be seeing this complaint. But I did. In other words, it's not just that I had to follow dependencies that were not installed and get those too; nor is it just that I had to do a bunch of renaming and symlinking in order to get new versions of
In other words - there is only so much that I should have to know about a system's internals in order to install software. Once I have to understand C and edit header files of packages which I didn't write, that's already way too much.
If you had less problems with it on Windows then either you happen to only use products from vendors that are extremely carefull, or simply had a lot of luck.
/. post about new multimedia apps on Linux I see a ton of posts about how people can't get MPlayer and JACK to play happily with ALSA, and CUPS isn't happy either, and...
Let's move this one from theoretical differences to real world experiences, shall we?
Personally, I've been a Windows user since before Win95. I've used Linux a fair amount, but not nearly as much.
My experiences with Linux dependency hell are such that in the past month I've had more of it than in all of my years using Windows. It all came from trying to get GParted running on a RedHat 9 box. After three hours of chasing random extra packages which it needed, and which those packages needed, and which those packages needed, I gave up.
Now, someone's obviously going to chime in and berate me for using RH9, and obviously Debian - no wait Gentoo - no, hang on - Slackware does it better. Well, please don't tell me that unless you've had no problems at all, ever. On the lists I'm on I continually hear users of those distributions complaining as well. Not saying they're not better than RH/Fedora, but dammit, they're a long way off perfect. Every time there's a
In other words, I want users of yum/apt/portage to tell me they've never encountered dependency problems if they've been using them for more than a couple of years. (No, seriously. I would really like to hear, because then I would know which dist to choose)
Sod that. Wanna know how many experiences with DLL hell I've had? None. Zero. In ten years. And that's with me being a heat-seeking beta bunny half the time. The most I've ever had to do is drag a DLL into WINDOWS\SYSTEM32. Never had to go to a command line, ever. I'm not allergic to the CLI by any means, but I do object to being forced to use it because a system's designed badly.
You want to know why I sound so angry about this? Because this is the ONE THING REMAINING that keeps me on Windows. Otherwise, I'm pretty sick of it, and am relishing the chance to move to an OS that's fast, free, and will let me do what I want.
Okay, I may well be the one lucky Windows user, but I doubt it. I know I'm not the one unlucky Linux user. And I do genuinely want to hear experiences or tips that contradict mine, so that I can move to an OS where I can actually see what's going on.
Half the time Windows machines don't see each other in the "workgroup" or refuse to exchange information or doggedly insist on logging you in as the wrong user. In both cases, printing and networking, if something doesn't work correctly there's often nothing you can do to fix it besided rebooting and seeing if that helps (which, bizzarely, often does).
You're right, Windows Workgroup networking utterly sucks. I ccontinually wonder how something so successful and so mature can still be so hideously unreliable.
However, your criticism is irrelevant, because almost all large enterprise installations of Windows use Domains rather than Workgroups, which work a hell of a lot better.
Not exactly parallel, but where is, for example, the support in Windows for ReiserFS, ext3, and JFS? I say that makes Windows "not ready for the corporate desktop" because it can't read non-MS filesystems.
Oh, please. "I'm not driving on the wrong side of the road! Everyone else is!"
Besides, anyone who's going to access those filesystems from Windows in a corporate environment is going to do so over the network, so filesystem drivers are irrelevant. You either want Samba on the UNIX side or NFS on the Windows side.
Perhaps because it has nothing to do with the game?
On the subject of a movie of the game, Gabe Newell has nixed the idea for the forseeable future.
Plume Re-titles Book by Katie Tarbox A Girl's Life Online (PDF)
... In 2000, Dutton published a hardcover book
(text reproduced below)
In an effort to avoid an association between the book originally titled Katie.com and
the website Katie.com, Plume and the author decide to make this title change.
New York, New York, August 6, 2004
called Katie.com by Katie Tarbox, an eye-opening account of one teenager's descent into
the seductive world of the Internet. After the book was released into the market, it was
brought to Dutton's attention that a website of the same name existed on the Internet.
The fact that the book, Katie.com, and the website shared the same name was purely
coincidental. In an effort to avoid any association between the book and the site, when
Plume issued the book in trade paperback in 2001, it printed on the copyright page that
the author of Katie.com and events described in the book have no connection whatsoever
with the website domain owner Katie Jones or her e-mail address.
Trena Keating, Editor-in-chief of Plume, said, "We have made every effort to clarify the
fact that Plume's book, Katie.com, and the website, Katie.com, are not in any way
associated with one another. In addition, it was erroneously reported recently that Plume
had asked its attorney to attempt to buy the web site Katie.com from domain owner Katie
Jones. This is absolutely not true. Ms. Jones confirms this point in a message currently
posted on her web site.
"We are not working in association with author Katie Tarbox or any other individual in
an attempt to assume ownership of the domain name address www.katie.com. Of course,
the personal views of the author are hers and do not represent Plume in any way.
"Going forward, Plume and the author have decided to re-title this book A Girl's Life
Online. This is an important book about predatory pedophiles on the Internet and how
we can protect our children. We changed the title to keep focus on this issue. The newly
titled book will be released next month. We have always taken this situation very
seriously. And we hope that by making this title change, it will demonstrate just how
dedicated Plume is to clarifying this matter."
Reference: Louis Armstrong's "What A Wonderful World" was the music played at the very end of the 1980 BBC TV series.
Easter Egg: Watch the upper-left corner of the screen at the end of the trailer.
-- Yoz
From a friend of mine who's on Nominet's board:
Yes, database copyright does exist in UK law (15 years from making or publication). Actually, my understanding is that it's existed for ages and UK law was one of few that didn't need to adopt that EU directive because they already had equivalent legislation.
It's what we used to get a successful injunction against the people who were datamining Nominet's whois.
Ah yes... Apparently to prevent people (and businesses) from doing too many searches. Not quite sure why this is a problem, but apparantly it is.
It's a problem because postcode mapping data is valuable, and a dataset normally costs several thousand pounds to purchase. (No, it's not free to the public, even though it's the ONS that comes up with it)
At FaxYourMP.com, an e-democracy site for which I volunteer, a big chunk of our money goes to paying for that data so that we can tell people who their MP is just from them giving us their postcode.
To push a few more /. buttons, this reminds me of the old RIAA slogan:
HOME TAPING IS KILLING MUSIC
which inspired the t-shirt riposte:
HOME FUCKING IS KILLING PROSTITUTION
(No, I'm not equating paid programmers with prostitutes... oh, just laugh, will you?)
The BBC mini-site for the new series is here, and includes a short making-of video as well as an audio montage of the new stuff.
The first of the new series (The Tertiary Phase) has been completed, and the rest are yet to be recorded.
I use regedit about once every three months, and it's always for power-user stuff.
On Linux, I usually find myself hand-editing a config file once every couple of days.
When I went over to Jerusalem in November with a friend of mine we picked up an open node while standing in Kikar Tzion (Zion Square) - it was on the corner closest to that little side road that runs down towards the park, I can't remember the name. (Opposite side to Ben Yehuda)
Said friend of mine was quite keen on netstumbling during that trip... continually walking around with a laptop open on top of the baby buggy containing her daughter!
If you can afford to fly King David class on El-Al, the KD Lounge in Ben-Gurion airport has a free node. Not sure if you can pick it up outside.
1: Proper internationalisation support. You don't need this if you're an English-speaker only reading and writing English feeds, but do remember that, in global terms, this puts you in the minority.
2: Flexible comment feeds embedded in the main feed, so people can keep track of the comments going on in your blog in a standard fashion that's configurable in their reader.
3: The confidence that the content you create will retain its integrity in every conformant reader due to a completely unambiguous spec, which is not the case with RSS 2.0.
... which would be fine if all that RSS 2.0 needed to fix it was a few new elements.
As I've said elsewhere: The difference between a completed technical standard placed under the Creative Commons and a truly open one is the difference between being allowed to scribble over the President's name in the newspaper and being able to vote for his opponent in the first place.
I could take the CC-licensed RSS spec and change it however I wanted, and it wouldn't help things one bit because it wouldn't be an accepted standard any further than my own hard drive. It would just be another incompatible spec calling itself RSS 2.0 that developers have to deal with.
it just deserves better than a 0, is all.
I'd like to add another note of thanks to Tom for a completely fantastic game that my girlfriend introduced me to (she was hooked for months) and which filled my dreams with the sounds of squeaking gnomes...
(No, it's not just another Arkanoid clone. The gnomes, man, it's all about the gnomes...)
I would think there is at least some communication between the different divisions of Sony.
This would be the same Sony whose music division created copy-protected CD albums that couldn't be used with the electronics division's Net-MD player's ripping system, yes?
What's so bad about nuclear missile guidance systems? Has one ever been used in anger? The long answer is NO.
Oh, a nuclear missile guidance system that isn't being used is just fine. It's only when nuclear missiles are actually used for the purpose for which they were designed (i.e. use in anger) that I have trouble with them.
Isn't the same technologies that would allow enough accuaracy for a Nuclear Missile warhead to have a yield reduced 75% to achieve nuetralization of an enemies nuclear missile, also alow a safer flight in a 747 in bad weather?
I can't parse your question, but as far as I can tell the answer is no.