The only reason I read the comments on this story was to figure out what the heck Microsoft could have been doing all this time. Microsoft has a bad reputation with regard to the quality of their code. But they have a really good reputation for shipping products. I also know some really smart people working at Microsoft - and I'm sure there are lots of others I don't know.
So I'm trying to figure out what all these smart people known for shipping products could have been doing all this time. The only thing that makes sense is a scenario like the one you described. In other words, that the management had some unrealistic requirement that they were unwilling to compromise. Porting mountains of existing code to.NET sounds exactly like one of the few things that could have bogged down so many smart people for so long. Maybe Microsoft finally is too big for their own good and they're collapsing under the weight of all the pointy haired bosses.
You didn't seriously pull out the "Weather" card. Puhhhlease.
I agree though that the TV functionality is a serious omission. The rest of that is meaningless crap. If I want the weather, games, or news, I'll turn to one of the many other outlets available for those.
If the interface is really as adaptive as you say then I think it will be a disaster. After looking through the screen shots though, my impression is that it's not that different from Office 2003. If you're used to the MS Office way of thinking then you'll probably be able to adapt to this UI pretty quickly. After all, the current Office UI reorders and hides commands on the toolbar all the time. Most people don't even know that it happens. (In contrast to the predictive menus which were roundly rejected)
I agree though that Office 2003 really is approaching some threshold of annoyance. I absolutely hate it when Office automatically pulls up the clipboard buffer pane. I never ever ever want to see that thing. I know I could probably turn it off somehow but I never get around to doing it. And I'm a software developer - I can't imagine what Bob Twelvepack thinks when that happens.
And don't get me started on the new "reading mode" in Word 2003. For those that don't know, they added a new reading mode in Word 2003 that tries to make it easier to read your documents on screen. The mode by itself is actually very nice. It really is easier to read Word documents with it. The problem is that this mode paginates the document. The pages are different from the ones you get if you print the document out on paper. Hello, McFly?! Does this sound like a point of confusion for anyone else? Two paginated document formats where the paginations are completely unrelated. And the two modes look virtually identical on screen.
And those are just what come to mind off the top of my head.
The very obvious problem for Microsoft is that they've released way too many versions of Office with almost no new functionality that people want. The only thing they have going for them is that many companies (mine included) feel they have to upgrade to the latest versions of MS software to stay current on security upgrades.
I'm no Bush fan but it is the democrats who are usually in the pocket of the ??AA. Not that it matters really since the US two party system is a joke anyway.
I thought this whole domain name speculation thing was over. Who else could have a legitimate claim to googledvr.com? Google shouldn't need to buy the domain - just make a dvr then threaten to take the site through the courts.
Here's a tip to the googledvr.com folks. Get a banner up quick that says "go ogle dvr"s.
Forget about going so far as backup copies. I just want to be able to control the original DVD I purchased in the DVD player I purchased (I'm talking about "prohibited user operations" here folks). If that isn't frickin' fair use, I don't know what is.
Yes, the KDE versus GNOME thing is mostly irrelevant. But your statement that broad acceptance is dependent on having fewer options is probably also true. What often happens in situations like this is that the winner takes all. That ultimately leads to fewer good choices. Sure there will always be choices on the fringe but you can pretty much guarantee that it'll take more effort to live there.
I think this whole discussion is pretty much irrelevant anyway. The real problem with Linux is not applications. The problem is device drivers. I think a huge chunk of the windows market would be happy to use open office, gimp, etc... if they know that when they buy that new wireless card, camera, printer, frikin usb mouse, etc. it would just work. The way this will get resolved is when one of the big boys really decides to compete on the x86 desktop OS market. By big boys, I mean one of IBM, Google, or Apple (yes I know about OS/2). When one of these players starts making deals with device manufacturers you will see a snowball effect in adoption. Granted, it may end up being a BSD based OS. That just underscores my point that the openness of the OS is somewhat of an illusion anyway since one of these companies will end up owning *the* distribution that everyone will standardize on.
what's with all the dead space around toolbars, blocks of text, etc?
Ever heard of Fitt's Law?
You drop an unexplained reference to Fitt's Law and expect that to justify dead space? Using Fitt's Law to justify any interface is misguided without a complete GOMS analysis. And even then you'll be ignoring a lot of subtle points like visual attention.
Your argument about clean and uncluttered is also very simplistic. The early Yahoo pages are an extreme example of where the argument breaks down. The "clean, uncluttered" folk were saying "7 links per page" - while Yahoo stuffed hundreds of links on their pages. Guess who changed their tune.
The same goes for RIAA lawsuits. They'll keep sending out lawsuits until it becomes unprofitable to do so. It'll take an awful lot of soccer moms and disabled folks counter suing them to outweigh all those college student settlements. They clearly have no concern about public image and why should they?
Nevertheless, I'm not sure I agree that the recording industry will reconsider. They can go elsewhere and they already have. Where else is Microsoft gonna go for content?
Actually, I thought they should do this for cars. Whenever someone cuts you off on the road or something, you go to a website and add a rating for their license plate. I am sure this would have all sorts of legal problems but could lead to some cool new applications in cars.
It's interesting to me that license plate numbers are publically visible but publishing this data in any way would probably be illegal.
I agree that these are all problems. I use Windows cause I hate, hate, hate spending my time doing anything that isn't related to the things I want to get done. And no, configuring my Linux box is not one of the things I want to get done.
Anyway, it's been noted over and over that the fundamental problem underlying all of these other problems is the lack of device drivers. I think what it will take for this to change is a company like Apple for Linux. What I mean by that is that they have to be in the hardware *and* software business. By hardware, I don't really mean machines - because there are lots of companies making workable factory installed linux machines. The company could outsource that part. What I mean by hardware is peripherals. Someone needs to brand the heck out of their linux distro and then promise that it will plug-n-play with all of the peripherals they sell. I don't mean every junky peripheral a person could buy at Frys. I mean it must work with every peripheral the company sells directly or that they get the seller to label "foo" compatible. Some crucial peripherals are printers, digital cameras, **WIFI Cards**, cell phones, PDAs, MP3 players, mice, etc... Note also that it is not enough to have a website with a list of what's compatible (e.g. basically all the current Linux distros) It's a lot of work to do comparison shopping when you have to keep track of exactly which models from which companies are compatible (i.e. it says the MXV57683942s rev 3 is compatible, so is the MXV57683942s rev 3.1 also compatible???)
Since the aforementioned scheme involves a lot of branding it would help if the company was already considered hip or cool. You can probably guess where I'm going with this. Yes, one good candidate would be Google. And guess what Google. You're going to need it to stay on top, anyway.
For anyone reading this later - the parent post is clearly a troll. But I'll respond in the interest of public awareness.
Here are some typical symptoms of heart palpatations. Your heart starts beating really fast for no reason. This causes you to get very tired and winded. This happens to me while playing sports after having caffeine - my heart will start racing and I get completely exhausted in a few seconds. I basically have to stop exercising until my heart rate returns to normal. For many people, this can also occur during nonstrenuous everyday activities.
Heartburn would be a burning sensation in your esophagus. Nothing to do with heart rate.
I'm not being puritanical here - I'm all for sex, alcohol, and hearty dancing. But I'd like to see the research on caffeine. From what I've read there is a very good chance that it hardens your arteries and causes hypertension. Is this one of the minor side effects you mentioned or has this been disproven?
Also, I have been getting serious heart palpatations due to the caffeine in coffee. It's true that heart palpations can have many causes. However, there are large numbers of heart palpation sufferers like me who see a direct link between caffeine and heart palpations.
Having my freakin' heart act up indicates to me that caffeine is causing my body problems.
Here's a link to the Acclaim advertising story for those hopelessly out of the loop.
Anyway, this idea seems sooo 20th century. Who wants their memoirs running on a physical device tied to a single location. I want people to be able to see me from anywhere in the world - e.g. the internet. I think a better service would be web cemeteries that guarantee a web presence for some particular length of time. *Then* the advertisers can get in loop. The family could even get kickbacks on the ad revenue from the site. Of course, there are some sites already doing this in a non-commercial way like Cemetery.org.
How about a search for mortgage on Google. Hmmm, this looks familiar. The two top results seem to be sponsored links instead of real results. Does "this [infer] that commerce puts people above the law"" on Google?
I don't think your complaint is really with the ultra-conservatives. It's fairly predictable that they would react strongly to an issue that they disagree strongly with. Whether their response is Christian or not is really irrelevant since there will always be hypocrites in any religion. I think what you're really upset about is their level of power in American politics. So I think you might, on first glance, be upset at the Republican party. But there is no incentive for the Republican party to change. Why fix what ain't broke. They continue to win elections. I think you're actually upset with the Democrats. The Democrats should be changing so that more moderate republicans will side with them. This will ultimately make the Republican party more moderate and give less power to the ultra-conservatives.
Not to mention the fact that it's still buggy. Take a look at this. I've also never had a good experience with printing directions on Google maps. They can probably get away with bugs of the first type but the printing bugs could be a killer.
I agree. But I don't think it was the unconventionalness that I minded so much (although the first few pages did have me trying to resolve the metaphors...his mother is a washing machine?)
I liked the story overall but I didn't like the ending. I don't mind ambiguous or unresolved endings but this one just left me unsatisfied for some reason. It felt like it was building to a tremendous climax or catharsis but then just fizzled out. For example, I can accept that I don't know the outcomes of the characters. But I was left not even knowing the larger motives for their actions (e.g. Brian). So I can't even speculate on why it ended where it did. Or where it might go from where it left off.
One other aspect that bothered me was the character of Krishna. I found him to be inconsistent and unbelievable in his interactions with Davey. Surpisingly, in a book that required so much suspension of disbelief, this was one of the biggest distractions for me.
Having been in the job market for a while recently, I can tell you that this is very difficult thing to determine. The main problem is that you get almost no feedback from most companies that you apply to. It's hard to know why they don't respond. Was it because you don't have enough experience with a particular language or not enough experience with a particular library or even IDE. Or do they not like the descriptions of the work you've done. It's basically a black box that usually returns no answer.
My experience with this black box suggests that most companies want to hire the person whose resume matches their job description most closely. They don't actually ask people questions that would test their creativity or programming skill. If you ask me, this is probably the worst way to hire software developers. Do you really want the mediocre guy with experience in your particular library/tool/IDE or the great programmer who doesn't have some particular bit of experience?
The times where I have gotten interviews, it is because the interviewers recognize this and actually try to determine creativity and skill versus what specific tools you know.
The plot information is certainly presented. The question is how many people actually understand it. It's a jumble of facts and characters. Episodes I-III have Republics, Federations, Empires, Separatists, a Senate, Clone Armies, Droid Armies, Creature Armies, Sith, Chancellors, Counts, Lords, etc... It's complex enough that most people give up trying to understand it. Instead, people just revel in the pretty pictures, the familiar characters, and the funny little quips. Episode IV, for example, has a much simpler story that almost everyone understands 1) Princess captured by bad guys 2) Good guys save Princess 3) Good Guys blow up the bad guys.
Also, I'd like to join the long line of people mocking this new set of Star Wars movies. First, I'd just like to point out that Episode I has a gratuitous fart joke. Does it get any more lowest common denominator than that?
Another of my favorite differences between the two series is what the Jedi do with their light sabers between fight sequences. In Episodes IV-VI, the characters hold them fairly stoicly like real swords. In Episodes I-III, the characters are constantly spinning them around like comic book collectors in the park staging mock sword fights. If you haven't noticed this, go back and compare for yourself.
The motorcycle was pretty sweet though. It used only steering to keep it balanced rather than doing the whole Segway thing. You got to at least admire the engineering on that one. I heard the guy running it say that he was sleep deprived and forgot to turn on the auto-balance thing right before the race. That's why it only went about 5 feet. They knew they wouldn't be able to finish in time anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
The only reason I read the comments on this story was to figure out what the heck Microsoft could have been doing all this time. Microsoft has a bad reputation with regard to the quality of their code. But they have a really good reputation for shipping products. I also know some really smart people working at Microsoft - and I'm sure there are lots of others I don't know.
.NET sounds exactly like one of the few things that could have bogged down so many smart people for so long. Maybe Microsoft finally is too big for their own good and they're collapsing under the weight of all the pointy haired bosses.
So I'm trying to figure out what all these smart people known for shipping products could have been doing all this time. The only thing that makes sense is a scenario like the one you described. In other words, that the management had some unrealistic requirement that they were unwilling to compromise. Porting mountains of existing code to
Look out the window?
Yes, exactly. Or skip that step and just assume the same weather as yesterday...
You didn't seriously pull out the "Weather" card. Puhhhlease.
I agree though that the TV functionality is a serious omission. The rest of that is meaningless crap. If I want the weather, games, or news, I'll turn to one of the many other outlets available for those.
If the interface is really as adaptive as you say then I think it will be a disaster. After looking through the screen shots though, my impression is that it's not that different from Office 2003. If you're used to the MS Office way of thinking then you'll probably be able to adapt to this UI pretty quickly. After all, the current Office UI reorders and hides commands on the toolbar all the time. Most people don't even know that it happens. (In contrast to the predictive menus which were roundly rejected)
I agree though that Office 2003 really is approaching some threshold of annoyance. I absolutely hate it when Office automatically pulls up the clipboard buffer pane. I never ever ever want to see that thing. I know I could probably turn it off somehow but I never get around to doing it. And I'm a software developer - I can't imagine what Bob Twelvepack thinks when that happens.
And don't get me started on the new "reading mode" in Word 2003. For those that don't know, they added a new reading mode in Word 2003 that tries to make it easier to read your documents on screen. The mode by itself is actually very nice. It really is easier to read Word documents with it. The problem is that this mode paginates the document. The pages are different from the ones you get if you print the document out on paper. Hello, McFly?! Does this sound like a point of confusion for anyone else? Two paginated document formats where the paginations are completely unrelated. And the two modes look virtually identical on screen.
And those are just what come to mind off the top of my head.
The very obvious problem for Microsoft is that they've released way too many versions of Office with almost no new functionality that people want. The only thing they have going for them is that many companies (mine included) feel they have to upgrade to the latest versions of MS software to stay current on security upgrades.
I'm no Bush fan but it is the democrats who are usually in the pocket of the ??AA. Not that it matters really since the US two party system is a joke anyway.
I thought this whole domain name speculation thing was over. Who else could have a legitimate claim to googledvr.com? Google shouldn't need to buy the domain - just make a dvr then threaten to take the site through the courts.
Here's a tip to the googledvr.com folks. Get a banner up quick that says "go ogle dvr"s.
Forget about going so far as backup copies. I just want to be able to control the original DVD I purchased in the DVD player I purchased (I'm talking about "prohibited user operations" here folks). If that isn't frickin' fair use, I don't know what is.
Yes, the KDE versus GNOME thing is mostly irrelevant. But your statement that broad acceptance is dependent on having fewer options is probably also true. What often happens in situations like this is that the winner takes all. That ultimately leads to fewer good choices. Sure there will always be choices on the fringe but you can pretty much guarantee that it'll take more effort to live there.
I think this whole discussion is pretty much irrelevant anyway. The real problem with Linux is not applications. The problem is device drivers. I think a huge chunk of the windows market would be happy to use open office, gimp, etc... if they know that when they buy that new wireless card, camera, printer, frikin usb mouse, etc. it would just work. The way this will get resolved is when one of the big boys really decides to compete on the x86 desktop OS market. By big boys, I mean one of IBM, Google, or Apple (yes I know about OS/2). When one of these players starts making deals with device manufacturers you will see a snowball effect in adoption. Granted, it may end up being a BSD based OS. That just underscores my point that the openness of the OS is somewhat of an illusion anyway since one of these companies will end up owning *the* distribution that everyone will standardize on.
what's with all the dead space around toolbars, blocks of text, etc?
Ever heard of Fitt's Law?
You drop an unexplained reference to Fitt's Law and expect that to justify dead space? Using Fitt's Law to justify any interface is misguided without a complete GOMS analysis. And even then you'll be ignoring a lot of subtle points like visual attention.
Your argument about clean and uncluttered is also very simplistic. The early Yahoo pages are an extreme example of where the argument breaks down. The "clean, uncluttered" folk were saying "7 links per page" - while Yahoo stuffed hundreds of links on their pages. Guess who changed their tune.
The same goes for RIAA lawsuits. They'll keep sending out lawsuits until it becomes unprofitable to do so. It'll take an awful lot of soccer moms and disabled folks counter suing them to outweigh all those college student settlements. They clearly have no concern about public image and why should they?
Nevertheless, I'm not sure I agree that the recording industry will reconsider. They can go elsewhere and they already have. Where else is Microsoft gonna go for content?
Actually, I thought they should do this for cars. Whenever someone cuts you off on the road or something, you go to a website and add a rating for their license plate. I am sure this would have all sorts of legal problems but could lead to some cool new applications in cars.
It's interesting to me that license plate numbers are publically visible but publishing this data in any way would probably be illegal.
I agree that these are all problems. I use Windows cause I hate, hate, hate spending my time doing anything that isn't related to the things I want to get done. And no, configuring my Linux box is not one of the things I want to get done.
Anyway, it's been noted over and over that the fundamental problem underlying all of these other problems is the lack of device drivers. I think what it will take for this to change is a company like Apple for Linux. What I mean by that is that they have to be in the hardware *and* software business. By hardware, I don't really mean machines - because there are lots of companies making workable factory installed linux machines. The company could outsource that part. What I mean by hardware is peripherals. Someone needs to brand the heck out of their linux distro and then promise that it will plug-n-play with all of the peripherals they sell. I don't mean every junky peripheral a person could buy at Frys. I mean it must work with every peripheral the company sells directly or that they get the seller to label "foo" compatible. Some crucial peripherals are printers, digital cameras, **WIFI Cards**, cell phones, PDAs, MP3 players, mice, etc... Note also that it is not enough to have a website with a list of what's compatible (e.g. basically all the current Linux distros) It's a lot of work to do comparison shopping when you have to keep track of exactly which models from which companies are compatible (i.e. it says the MXV57683942s rev 3 is compatible, so is the MXV57683942s rev 3.1 also compatible???)
Since the aforementioned scheme involves a lot of branding it would help if the company was already considered hip or cool. You can probably guess where I'm going with this. Yes, one good candidate would be Google. And guess what Google. You're going to need it to stay on top, anyway.
For anyone reading this later - the parent post is clearly a troll. But I'll respond in the interest of public awareness.
Here are some typical symptoms of heart palpatations. Your heart starts beating really fast for no reason. This causes you to get very tired and winded. This happens to me while playing sports after having caffeine - my heart will start racing and I get completely exhausted in a few seconds. I basically have to stop exercising until my heart rate returns to normal. For many people, this can also occur during nonstrenuous everyday activities.
Heartburn would be a burning sensation in your esophagus. Nothing to do with heart rate.
I'm not being puritanical here - I'm all for sex, alcohol, and hearty dancing. But I'd like to see the research on caffeine. From what I've read there is a very good chance that it hardens your arteries and causes hypertension. Is this one of the minor side effects you mentioned or has this been disproven?
Also, I have been getting serious heart palpatations due to the caffeine in coffee. It's true that heart palpations can have many causes. However, there are large numbers of heart palpation sufferers like me who see a direct link between caffeine and heart palpations.
Having my freakin' heart act up indicates to me that caffeine is causing my body problems.
Here's a link to the Acclaim advertising story for those hopelessly out of the loop.
Anyway, this idea seems sooo 20th century. Who wants their memoirs running on a physical device tied to a single location. I want people to be able to see me from anywhere in the world - e.g. the internet. I think a better service would be web cemeteries that guarantee a web presence for some particular length of time. *Then* the advertisers can get in loop. The family could even get kickbacks on the ad revenue from the site. Of course, there are some sites already doing this in a non-commercial way like Cemetery.org.
How about a search for mortgage on Google. Hmmm, this looks familiar. The two top results seem to be sponsored links instead of real results. Does "this [infer] that commerce puts people above the law"" on Google?
I don't think your complaint is really with the ultra-conservatives. It's fairly predictable that they would react strongly to an issue that they disagree strongly with. Whether their response is Christian or not is really irrelevant since there will always be hypocrites in any religion. I think what you're really upset about is their level of power in American politics. So I think you might, on first glance, be upset at the Republican party. But there is no incentive for the Republican party to change. Why fix what ain't broke. They continue to win elections. I think you're actually upset with the Democrats. The Democrats should be changing so that more moderate republicans will side with them. This will ultimately make the Republican party more moderate and give less power to the ultra-conservatives.
Thus ends this lesson in convoluted logic.
Not to mention the fact that it's still buggy. Take a look at this. I've also never had a good experience with printing directions on Google maps. They can probably get away with bugs of the first type but the printing bugs could be a killer.
I agree. But I don't think it was the unconventionalness that I minded so much (although the first few pages did have me trying to resolve the metaphors...his mother is a washing machine?)
I liked the story overall but I didn't like the ending. I don't mind ambiguous or unresolved endings but this one just left me unsatisfied for some reason. It felt like it was building to a tremendous climax or catharsis but then just fizzled out. For example, I can accept that I don't know the outcomes of the characters. But I was left not even knowing the larger motives for their actions (e.g. Brian). So I can't even speculate on why it ended where it did. Or where it might go from where it left off.
One other aspect that bothered me was the character of Krishna. I found him to be inconsistent and unbelievable in his interactions with Davey. Surpisingly, in a book that required so much suspension of disbelief, this was one of the biggest distractions for me.
to find a new dominant player you actually have to start looking at a totally different market altogether
<chorus>to find a new dominant player you actually have to start looking at a totally different market</chorus>
Having been in the job market for a while recently, I can tell you that this is very difficult thing to determine. The main problem is that you get almost no feedback from most companies that you apply to. It's hard to know why they don't respond. Was it because you don't have enough experience with a particular language or not enough experience with a particular library or even IDE. Or do they not like the descriptions of the work you've done. It's basically a black box that usually returns no answer.
My experience with this black box suggests that most companies want to hire the person whose resume matches their job description most closely. They don't actually ask people questions that would test their creativity or programming skill. If you ask me, this is probably the worst way to hire software developers. Do you really want the mediocre guy with experience in your particular library/tool/IDE or the great programmer who doesn't have some particular bit of experience?
The times where I have gotten interviews, it is because the interviewers recognize this and actually try to determine creativity and skill versus what specific tools you know.
The plot information is certainly presented. The question is how many people actually understand it. It's a jumble of facts and characters. Episodes I-III have Republics, Federations, Empires, Separatists, a Senate, Clone Armies, Droid Armies, Creature Armies, Sith, Chancellors, Counts, Lords, etc... It's complex enough that most people give up trying to understand it. Instead, people just revel in the pretty pictures, the familiar characters, and the funny little quips. Episode IV, for example, has a much simpler story that almost everyone understands 1) Princess captured by bad guys 2) Good guys save Princess 3) Good Guys blow up the bad guys.
Also, I'd like to join the long line of people mocking this new set of Star Wars movies. First, I'd just like to point out that Episode I has a gratuitous fart joke. Does it get any more lowest common denominator than that?
Another of my favorite differences between the two series is what the Jedi do with their light sabers between fight sequences. In Episodes IV-VI, the characters hold them fairly stoicly like real swords. In Episodes I-III, the characters are constantly spinning them around like comic book collectors in the park staging mock sword fights. If you haven't noticed this, go back and compare for yourself.
In fact, forget the $24. Here's my patented free solution:
1) Mount fridge in the window of your room
2) Open fridge door
3) Profit!
The motorcycle was pretty sweet though. It used only steering to keep it balanced rather than doing the whole Segway thing. You got to at least admire the engineering on that one. I heard the guy running it say that he was sleep deprived and forgot to turn on the auto-balance thing right before the race. That's why it only went about 5 feet. They knew they wouldn't be able to finish in time anyway.
That's ForeverLawn XP . The wave of the future, dude.