No, it wouldn't. A simple step makes the monkeys learn to click. A difficult set of steps makes them think about what they're doing
Um, no. A difficult set of steps makes the monkeys either learn to perform a difficult set of steps, or stop using Firefox 3 and go back to a less secure browser because it's less hassle to use.
Cars have throttle on the right and brake on the left. Period.
Except for all the cars where the pedal on the left is the clutch, and the brake is in the middle, of course. And the cars where there are two brake pedals. And the cars that have been modified for the benefit of people with disabilities and have the throttle to the left of the brake.
And your analogy only holds for pedals. Other controls differ far more. Which stalk controls the indicators? How are the wipers and headlights operated? How are the gears controlled? What about the horn? There are dozens of ways in which the interfaces of two cars will differ, and the differences are often more significant than the differences between GNOME and KDE. But people don't seem to care.
Doom 3 is perfect if you played in a completly dark room where your eyes can adjust
And presumably if you have a CRT screen. Increasingly people these days have LCD screens, which can't do black at all. Playing in a dark room with an LCD -- even a good gaming LCD -- means having an immersion-wrecking glowing rectangle hovering in the air in front of you. It just doesn't work.
Kudos to Blizzard for actually trying to design a game that will look good on real people's PCs, instead of pandering to the crazy obsessions of a tiny minority.
With proprietary software, you only get one entity to assure you it's legit, and that's the vendor. If the vendor is a trojan author of doom, you're screwed.
With open-source software, you get many people looking to see if there's anything sneaky going on. Since you have multiple samples, your result is more likely to be accurate. If one or more of them are trojan authors of doom, then it doesn't really matter, because the honest ones can spot and point out the malicious code.
Ultimately, let the best software win. The rest can go to bit-afterlife.
Yes, that's kind of the whole point of the LSB.
Customers choose OSes based on many criteria. One of them is how much of the software they need will run on each platform. Now, this is rarely actually determined by the quality of the platform -- it's mostly a question of which platforms were already popular enough to be targeted. In theory, LSB will make it easier for new Linux-based OSes to run existing software, and will make it easier for ISVs to write software for Linux-based OSes in general.
Those OSes can then compete on more interesting metrics like performance, stability, scalability, price, and quality of support. How is this not a good thing?
If they'd simply called it 'enhanced address bar', made it optional but default, and described it as 'awesome' there wouldn't have been this massive resistance to it.
They did. The feature in question is called the Smart Location Bar. "Awesomebar" is just a nickname.
Convenient or not, this is counterintuitive behavior which will just confuse new users of Firefox who you've been trying to convince to use it for security reasons.
Nonsense. Anyone in that category probably doesn't understand what the address bar is for anyway, and certainly wouldn't expect it to only look at the URL. Searching the page title too is the intuitive behaviour -- someone looking for Google Maps will expect to be able to type "google maps" and get it. The awesomebar does that. The dumb address bar didn't.
And just looking at the start of the text isn't good enough either. What if someone's looking for YouTube but can't remember what the full title is -- just that it's got "tube" in it? Hey, lookie here, they can type "tube" and get it!
Okay, you might argue that they should be using a search engine instead. But a search engine can't see their browser history. The awesomebar can answer the question they're implicitly asking, which is "what's the site with 'tube' in its name that I visited recently?". Google can't do that.
God, yes. I was trying to register MacAfee (or however you spell that name) the other day,* and was flabbergasted. They had "internationalised" their address form by adding a drop-down list of countries... but whatever country you selected, you had to fill in the "Zip code" field, which only accepted numbers.
Hint to McAffee: in the UK, our postcodes include letters. If you want your UK customers to register their software, how about you let us type in our fucking addresses?
* Not for myself. I wouldn't let that POS on any computer I own.
Do you have figures when the new member states are removed?
The only new member states in the Eurozone are Cyprus and Slovenia, so I doubt it skews the figures that much. Poland, Romania, etc. hadn't adopted the Euro last time I checked.
But, yes, you make valid points. The USA does seem to have more dead-end make-work jobs (store greeters, fuel station pump attendants, etc), and it would be interesting to know how that compares to having more people on benefits in practice. I doubt we'll ever know, though, because the political feeling and rhetoric are too strong.
I thaught the power of a trademark was diminished once it became so common that the average person used it to referance anything similar to it.
It is.
I think scrabble ranks up there with xerox,kleenex and aspirin.
Xerox? Generic name for any photocopier. Kleenex? Generic name for any paper handkerchief. Aspirin? Generic name for any painkiller with acetylsalicylic acid as its active ingredient.
Scrabble? Um, highly specific name for a single board game made exclusively by two companies. The average person wouldn't refer to any other board game as "a scrabble", even if it involved making words with tiles.
They're not claiming copyright on anything if I understand correctly.
They're claiming both copyright and trademark infringement. The copyright part appears to include a claim that the layout of the game board is protected, though I must admit I don't quite follow that part.
This is my preferred location (the reasons why aren't important, but it makes far more sense to me to put the tool bar there).
An increasing number of displays nowadays have wide aspect ratios. On such screens, there's plenty of horizontal space, but vertical space can be at a premium. It's hard to see why anyone with a wide display would not want the toolbar to be vertical...
Can someone please clue me in as to what a plasmoid is?
As usual, Wikipedia is your friend:
A plasmoid is an extra-chromosomal DNA molecule separate from the chromosomal DNA which is capable of replicating independently of the chromosomal DNA. In many cases, it is circular and double-stranded. Plasmoids usually occur naturally in bacteria, but are sometimes found in eukaryotic organisms (e.g., the 2-micrometre-ring in Saccharomyces cerevisiae).
Why all the fuss about the desktop background? It is just a background after all, and hidden by any windows you have open.
Some of us have screens more than 12" across, and therefore do not automatically maximise every window.
Fortunately, it turns out that (properly configured -- I don't know if KDE4 supports useful configurations) the root window is very convenient. Right-clicking in it pops up the application menu, removing the tiresome need to reach all the way to a corner of the screen just to open another xterm. Minimised application icons go to the desktop, making it possible to organise your running programs in a full 2D grid instead of the fiddly and restrictive 1D line that "panels" limit you to.
Yup, I'm describing the UNIX desktops of 15 years ago, from back before Windows 95 poisoned the minds of GUI designers. Fortunately it's still available -- Xfce, at least, can be configured to provide a sane and efficient desktop, though it inexplicably appears to mimic Gnome by default (or maybe that's just Xubuntu).
OP said "worst writing", not "worst grammar". It's stylistically dreadful, regardless of whether or not it's grammatically correct. (Which I don't think it is.)
So basically the guy enjoyed playing "guess the syntax" games, where you know WHAT you need to do but have to spend hours trying to guess how to tell the computer to make your character do it. Having to try 300 combinations to figure out how to unlock a door to discover that you had to type "put jade encrusted key into the keyhole, turn key and turn handle" or whatever isn't fun, the only challenge is how much boredom you can tolerate.
Which of Grim Fandango, Monkey Island, and Myst do you think involved typing verbal commands?
Ever play the first Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy game? You could get pretty far past screwing up something that would prevent you from finishing before you ran into a dead end that you would never find unless you saught outside help or restarted it and noticed it the next time around. I remember that one. I was stuck on the ship and could never get off.
You made it onto the ship? Impressive. I always died within about 20 moves of the start, usually by being hit in the head by a flying brick. It didn't take very long for me to decide that homework was more fun.
So you're saying they should have programmed it in Lisp or Scheme?
Yes, or maybe Smalltalk. Something with a fast implementation that still provides users with the ability to tinker with the program while it's running.
The same framework that makes the "Share and Share Alike" clause of the GPL enforceable is the same one that lets a proprietary software maker set its terms for distribution.
Proprietary software makers' terms for distribution are pretty much all the same: "don't".
The interesting EULA terms are the ones that put non-distribution-related restrictions in, like.NET's prohibition of benchmarking, or Apple's prohibition of use with non-Apple hardware. That's what would be tested in any Mac clone lawsuit, and that's not covered by anything remotely related to the bits of the law that make the GPL work.
honestly now, if you aren't a for-profit business or some other entity that is likely to be audited for software piracy, then why should you care about inane crap like "copyrights" and "end-user license agreements".
It's right there in your first word. This inconvenient little thing called "honesty". People work hard to write software, and you don't have the right to benefit from their hard work unless they give you that right -- in exchange for you meeting their conditions. And the law allows for a wide range of conditions, including requiring you to pay money, requiring you not to redistribute the software, etc.
I'll admit, if you are profiting from the software, then fine, you should do the right thing and pay for it and put up with the restrictions on it (or find a free alternative and save money). But its for your own personal use, then I don't see any problem with downloading it and doing whatever the hell you want with it.
You have rather a narrow definition of "profit" there. I use OS X strictly for my own personal use, but I certainly profit from it on a daily basis: with it I can get some tasks out of the way very quickly, meaning I gain free time to spend doing other stuff.
There is nothing inherently wrong with downloading from thepiratebay or any other such source.
Let me rephrase that for you: "There is nothing inherently wrong with breaking the law." Hmmm, somehow I don't think you'll get a significant proportion of the public to agree with you on that one.
It expands the popularity and userbase of the software and potentially creates more willingly paying customers in the long run. ESPECIALLY so in this case because if you like OSX86 enough it might even convince you to buy a Mac!
It's hard for me to argue with this, given that it's not that far off my own experience: I used the PearPC emulator for a while before I bought my Mac.
However, I didn't illegally download OS X for that purpose, and I simply do not see any justification for doing so. At the time I believed I should be allowed to do whatever I like with software I own; I certainly didn't believe it was OK to take other people's work without even paying for it.
The law does not give you the right to do things for other people's benefit if they don't want you to. You might think it's good to redecorate old ladies' houses, but that doesn't give you the right to break and enter. Similarly, you might think it's good to increase the OS X user base, but that doesn't give you the right to violate Apple's copyright.
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This is why I like Steam.
Um, no. A difficult set of steps makes the monkeys either learn to perform a difficult set of steps, or stop using Firefox 3 and go back to a less secure browser because it's less hassle to use.
So, remind me, exactly what is it that prevents the phishers from buying $10 certificates?
Your evidence for this, please?
Except for all the cars where the pedal on the left is the clutch, and the brake is in the middle, of course. And the cars where there are two brake pedals. And the cars that have been modified for the benefit of people with disabilities and have the throttle to the left of the brake.
And your analogy only holds for pedals. Other controls differ far more. Which stalk controls the indicators? How are the wipers and headlights operated? How are the gears controlled? What about the horn? There are dozens of ways in which the interfaces of two cars will differ, and the differences are often more significant than the differences between GNOME and KDE. But people don't seem to care.
And presumably if you have a CRT screen. Increasingly people these days have LCD screens, which can't do black at all. Playing in a dark room with an LCD -- even a good gaming LCD -- means having an immersion-wrecking glowing rectangle hovering in the air in front of you. It just doesn't work.
Kudos to Blizzard for actually trying to design a game that will look good on real people's PCs, instead of pandering to the crazy obsessions of a tiny minority.
You're missing the point.
With proprietary software, you only get one entity to assure you it's legit, and that's the vendor. If the vendor is a trojan author of doom, you're screwed.
With open-source software, you get many people looking to see if there's anything sneaky going on. Since you have multiple samples, your result is more likely to be accurate. If one or more of them are trojan authors of doom, then it doesn't really matter, because the honest ones can spot and point out the malicious code.
Yes, that's kind of the whole point of the LSB.
Customers choose OSes based on many criteria. One of them is how much of the software they need will run on each platform. Now, this is rarely actually determined by the quality of the platform -- it's mostly a question of which platforms were already popular enough to be targeted. In theory, LSB will make it easier for new Linux-based OSes to run existing software, and will make it easier for ISVs to write software for Linux-based OSes in general.
Those OSes can then compete on more interesting metrics like performance, stability, scalability, price, and quality of support. How is this not a good thing?
My keyboard doesn't have a right Ctrl key, you insensitive clod!
They did. The feature in question is called the Smart Location Bar. "Awesomebar" is just a nickname.
Nonsense. Anyone in that category probably doesn't understand what the address bar is for anyway, and certainly wouldn't expect it to only look at the URL. Searching the page title too is the intuitive behaviour -- someone looking for Google Maps will expect to be able to type "google maps" and get it. The awesomebar does that. The dumb address bar didn't.
And just looking at the start of the text isn't good enough either. What if someone's looking for YouTube but can't remember what the full title is -- just that it's got "tube" in it? Hey, lookie here, they can type "tube" and get it!
Okay, you might argue that they should be using a search engine instead. But a search engine can't see their browser history. The awesomebar can answer the question they're implicitly asking, which is "what's the site with 'tube' in its name that I visited recently?". Google can't do that.
God, yes. I was trying to register MacAfee (or however you spell that name) the other day,* and was flabbergasted. They had "internationalised" their address form by adding a drop-down list of countries... but whatever country you selected, you had to fill in the "Zip code" field, which only accepted numbers.
Hint to McAffee: in the UK, our postcodes include letters. If you want your UK customers to register their software, how about you let us type in our fucking addresses?
* Not for myself. I wouldn't let that POS on any computer I own.
The only new member states in the Eurozone are Cyprus and Slovenia, so I doubt it skews the figures that much. Poland, Romania, etc. hadn't adopted the Euro last time I checked.
But, yes, you make valid points. The USA does seem to have more dead-end make-work jobs (store greeters, fuel station pump attendants, etc), and it would be interesting to know how that compares to having more people on benefits in practice. I doubt we'll ever know, though, because the political feeling and rhetoric are too strong.
It is.
Xerox? Generic name for any photocopier. Kleenex? Generic name for any paper handkerchief. Aspirin? Generic name for any painkiller with acetylsalicylic acid as its active ingredient.
Scrabble? Um, highly specific name for a single board game made exclusively by two companies. The average person wouldn't refer to any other board game as "a scrabble", even if it involved making words with tiles.
They only can shut it down in North America. Hasbro does not own the rights to Scrabble elsewhere in the world.
They're claiming both copyright and trademark infringement. The copyright part appears to include a claim that the layout of the game board is protected, though I must admit I don't quite follow that part.
An increasing number of displays nowadays have wide aspect ratios. On such screens, there's plenty of horizontal space, but vertical space can be at a premium. It's hard to see why anyone with a wide display would not want the toolbar to be vertical...
As usual, Wikipedia is your friend:
Hope that clears things up some.
Some of us have screens more than 12" across, and therefore do not automatically maximise every window.
Fortunately, it turns out that (properly configured -- I don't know if KDE4 supports useful configurations) the root window is very convenient. Right-clicking in it pops up the application menu, removing the tiresome need to reach all the way to a corner of the screen just to open another xterm. Minimised application icons go to the desktop, making it possible to organise your running programs in a full 2D grid instead of the fiddly and restrictive 1D line that "panels" limit you to.
Yup, I'm describing the UNIX desktops of 15 years ago, from back before Windows 95 poisoned the minds of GUI designers. Fortunately it's still available -- Xfce, at least, can be configured to provide a sane and efficient desktop, though it inexplicably appears to mimic Gnome by default (or maybe that's just Xubuntu).
OP said "worst writing", not "worst grammar". It's stylistically dreadful, regardless of whether or not it's grammatically correct. (Which I don't think it is.)
Which of Grim Fandango, Monkey Island, and Myst do you think involved typing verbal commands?
You made it onto the ship? Impressive. I always died within about 20 moves of the start, usually by being hit in the head by a flying brick. It didn't take very long for me to decide that homework was more fun.
Yes, or maybe Smalltalk. Something with a fast implementation that still provides users with the ability to tinker with the program while it's running.
Proprietary software makers' terms for distribution are pretty much all the same: "don't".
The interesting EULA terms are the ones that put non-distribution-related restrictions in, like .NET's prohibition of benchmarking, or Apple's prohibition of use with non-Apple hardware. That's what would be tested in any Mac clone lawsuit, and that's not covered by anything remotely related to the bits of the law that make the GPL work.
It's right there in your first word. This inconvenient little thing called "honesty". People work hard to write software, and you don't have the right to benefit from their hard work unless they give you that right -- in exchange for you meeting their conditions. And the law allows for a wide range of conditions, including requiring you to pay money, requiring you not to redistribute the software, etc.
You have rather a narrow definition of "profit" there. I use OS X strictly for my own personal use, but I certainly profit from it on a daily basis: with it I can get some tasks out of the way very quickly, meaning I gain free time to spend doing other stuff.
Let me rephrase that for you: "There is nothing inherently wrong with breaking the law." Hmmm, somehow I don't think you'll get a significant proportion of the public to agree with you on that one.
It's hard for me to argue with this, given that it's not that far off my own experience: I used the PearPC emulator for a while before I bought my Mac.
However, I didn't illegally download OS X for that purpose, and I simply do not see any justification for doing so. At the time I believed I should be allowed to do whatever I like with software I own; I certainly didn't believe it was OK to take other people's work without even paying for it.
The law does not give you the right to do things for other people's benefit if they don't want you to. You might think it's good to redecorate old ladies' houses, but that doesn't give you the right to break and enter. Similarly, you might think it's good to increase the OS X user base, but that doesn't give you the right to violate Apple's copyright.