Now listen closely. Just because you like a certain interface, does not make it usable.
I used MacOS X for a couple weeks and it's ok but I just can't get work done at the same speed as in KDE. Therefore it is less usable for ME. End of story.
Yeah. They want to rip us off? Fine, we rip them off. It's just like piracy, but less convenient since you have to actually photocopy the book.
I'd rather have the book than a stack of photocopies, but better yet is buying only one book for a group of people taking the same subject. One of my friends spent $950 for the books that were on the "required" list last semester. I spent about $150 and didn't suffer for it.
Simple case of a crappy interface (icq) being trumped by a simple one (MSN). Love it or hate it, the MSN interface is very simple to use, everyone can figure it out. I use a clone of it for linux (aMsn) with a couple more features but still retaining that simple interface. I used ICQ for years but it always seemed clunky, and had a million features that were useless. ALso MSN was the first with a webcam feature that just worked behind firewalls, and little things like games that people liked to play. ICQ lost because they were perpetually in beta and even with years head start never managed to make a good client.
Usability is the process of making something usable, not making it unusable. Usability is the process of giving control, not taking it away. Usability is elegance in interface.
Not quite. Usability is the process of making something usable for one set group of people. You can try to make this group as large as possible, but you will NEVER have an interface that is usable to all groups. I find the MacOSX UI to be less usable than the KDE UI, just because the way I think does not coincide as well to the way the MacOSX UI works.
What bothers me is that usability experts (along with a bunch of blowhards that think they are experts) seem to think that there is "one true interface" and that their concept of usability will work for everyone. The best you can do is say "this interface is optimized for the novice user" or "this interface is optimized for the long time unix guru". If someone says that an interface is ideal for all users they are lying.
When will you realize that useability is different for everyone? Gnome is not the magic bullet, just as many people hate that crippled interface as love it.
But lines of code isn't everything. I've worked on applications with ~100,000 LOC and about half of that code was either dead or could have easily been eliminated with a bit more thought/design and not as much copy paste which always seems to be rampant among projects like this.
I'll be the first to admit that I do really like some of KDE's flexibility
You like some of the flexibility, another user likes another part of the flexibility, another user thinks the parts you regard as flexibility is useless crap. This is just as stupid an argument as saying most users only need 10% of the features that MS Office has. True but obviously flawed since everyone uses a different set of features.
That said I'd have no problem moving some of the more obscure features to a GConf like system. I think that is actually a planned feature for KDE4.
ah yes.. how witty. Computer with a K? Haha that's funny.. I wonder if I would get modded up as funny if I post something like "iAin't iMac just the iShit?"
I suppose that would be worthy of a +5 funny too right?
There is a small increased risk of penile cancer with uncircumcised males. But there's no overwhelmingly good arguments either side.
I tend to be of the belief that theres probably a reason that it's there. Just like the fad of removing everyone's appendix, or tonsils. Eventually we figure out that removing them is either harmful or useless.
Can you prove this? If they have a license from the russian equivalent of the RIAA, why would the artists not get compensated? Of course only like a cent per song at allofmp3's rates.
Have you looked at the allofmp3 database? It is very expansive and includes all the current hits that are playing on the radio in the US of A.
So allofmp3 is legal in Russia, because they have a license from the russian equivalent of the RIAA. But do the artists get compensated at all? I always wondered about this. Even if they just get 2 cents per download or something it would be a more palatable alternative to Kazaa without going to iTunes or something.
Anyone know if the artists are getting any of the money from the downloads? It seems like they should be, since it is a valid broadcast license.
Even back in the 0.8 days, I had very few problems making a medium sized app (~4000 lines), developed entirely under linux with Mono. Everything worked on the first try when I ran it on windows with.NET.
Now that's true cross platform ability. Even with Java I've never had it work that flawlessly. Thanks Miguel and Mike Kerster and the rest of the Mono team. You guys rock.
Also, I totally don't understand why people say women aren't good at programming -- they're programming LANGUAGES, aren't they? Women are supposed to be good at languages.
Yes, and they are. It is not a question of innate ability in most cases, rather one of practice.
I've always been interested in programming, therefore I've turned it into one of my hobbies and program things for fun. As a result of that, I am better at it than most women I know. Only because they are not interested in it as a hobby, even though they probably would have picked it up faster than I have.
Being told that women only get into graduate school because of affirmative action Being told that women only get good jobs because of affirmative action
I have never seen this happen at my university. On the contrary, female students tend to be greatly respected because they're usually very good at what they do.
Hearing conversations about how women are just naturally not as good as men at science/engineering/other complex field
This is obviously a very volatile subject, but it definitely has some truth behind it. Even in countries where there are no gender stigmas attached to tech jobs (someone mentioned India), males are still in the vast majority. So females are _in_ _general_ not as interested in tech. Perhaps this is because they aren't as good at tasks that require mental visualization or who knows why. But for christ's sake, it is NOT sexist to make that observation! Why should there not be skills that one gender excels at? Women (once again, in general) are much better at some skills than men, and worse at others.
Why don't people accept this fact? It absolutely does not reflect on your personal ability to do the job.
If it's a woman, we take their keyboard and do it for them - thus they learn nothing.
WE?? Speak for yourself but don't include me in it. Unless the person I'm helping is incapable of doing it themselves, then I won't touch his/her keyboard.
Bingo. Java is a great language and I like programming with it, but even today, with fast machines and abundant memory, its not really a feasible choice for desktop apps. Eclipse is the only Java app I can stand using, and even then, it's not equal on all platforms (works best on windows). C# on Mono, on the other hand, let me build a nice, GTK2 app easily and quickly that integrated into my desktop. (Worked on Linux and Windows with no changes). Mono/C# is young compared to Java and I already like it better for a lot of things.
So computers are not simple or intuitive to use. Big deal, nothing is.
Have you ever participated in any usability studies with people who have no <insert machine here> experience?
Cars, bikes, multimeters, guns, vcrs, spinning machines, etc etc. Any reasonably complex tool is not intuitive! And none of these tools are nearly as complex as a computer! I don't know what all the whining is about. You want to use a computer, you need to learn how to use it first!
Breaking news! People new to a computer have trouble moving the mouse. Don't expect to create a complex, but intuitive user interface. The best you can do is discoverable.
I have to disagree with that. Maybe I'm just lucky, but I've been running Debian unstable (even some packages from experimental at times) for the last 2 years and have never had an upgrade make my system unbootable, corrupt data, or even break XFree86 (1).
The worst breakage that I've experienced from running unstable is broken Microsoft fonts and broken browser plugins from time to time.
1) I'm not counting kernel upgrades. While even those have usually gone great, I've had some problems with my USB mouse with recent 2.6 kernels.
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Hey, if you have GRASS installed, play ball! ;)
Just because you like a certain interface, does not make it usable.
Sorry that should say: Just because you like a certain interface, does not make it automatically more usable than another interface.
It's funny that you STILL don't get it.
Now listen closely. Just because you like a certain interface, does not make it usable.
I used MacOS X for a couple weeks and it's ok but I just can't get work done at the same speed as in KDE. Therefore it is less usable for ME. End of story.
Didn't that take you forever? taking a snapshot of 500 pages and piecing them together would take ages, no?
Yeah. They want to rip us off? Fine, we rip them off. It's just like piracy, but less convenient since you have to actually photocopy the book.
I'd rather have the book than a stack of photocopies, but better yet is buying only one book for a group of people taking the same subject. One of my friends spent $950 for the books that were on the "required" list last semester. I spent about $150 and didn't suffer for it.
Simple case of a crappy interface (icq) being trumped by a simple one (MSN). Love it or hate it, the MSN interface is very simple to use, everyone can figure it out. I use a clone of it for linux (aMsn) with a couple more features but still retaining that simple interface.
I used ICQ for years but it always seemed clunky, and had a million features that were useless. ALso MSN was the first with a webcam feature that just worked behind firewalls, and little things like games that people liked to play.
ICQ lost because they were perpetually in beta and even with years head start never managed to make a good client.
Usability is the process of making something usable, not making it unusable. Usability is the process of giving control, not taking it away. Usability is elegance in interface.
Not quite. Usability is the process of making something usable for one set group of people.
You can try to make this group as large as possible, but you will NEVER have an interface that is usable to all groups. I find the MacOSX UI to be less usable than the KDE UI, just because the way I think does not coincide as well to the way the MacOSX UI works.
What bothers me is that usability experts (along with a bunch of blowhards that think they are experts) seem to think that there is "one true interface" and that their concept of usability will work for everyone. The best you can do is say "this interface is optimized for the novice user" or "this interface is optimized for the long time unix guru". If someone says that an interface is ideal for all users they are lying.
When will you realize that useability is different for everyone? Gnome is not the magic bullet, just as many people hate that crippled interface as love it.
You're right, I should have said small app.
But lines of code isn't everything. I've worked on applications with ~100,000 LOC and about half of that code was either dead or could have easily been eliminated with a bit more thought/design and not as much copy paste which always seems to be rampant among projects like this.
Launch feedback? Who cares enough to change that?
Me.
I'll be the first to admit that I do really like some of KDE's flexibility
You like some of the flexibility, another user likes another part of the flexibility, another user thinks the parts you regard as flexibility is useless crap. This is just as stupid an argument as saying most users only need 10% of the features that MS Office has. True but obviously flawed since everyone uses a different set of features.
That said I'd have no problem moving some of the more obscure features to a GConf like system. I think that is actually a planned feature for KDE4.
ah yes.. how witty. Computer with a K? Haha that's funny.. I wonder if I would get modded up as funny if I post something like "iAin't iMac just the iShit?"
I suppose that would be worthy of a +5 funny too right?
There is a small increased risk of penile cancer with uncircumcised males. But there's no overwhelmingly good arguments either side.
I tend to be of the belief that theres probably a reason that it's there. Just like the fad of removing everyone's appendix, or tonsils. Eventually we figure out that removing them is either harmful or useless.
And the musicians don't either.
Can you prove this? If they have a license from the russian equivalent of the RIAA, why would the artists not get compensated? Of course only like a cent per song at allofmp3's rates.
Have you looked at the allofmp3 database? It is very expansive and includes all the current hits that are playing on the radio in the US of A.
So allofmp3 is legal in Russia, because they have a license from the russian equivalent of the RIAA. But do the artists get compensated at all? I always wondered about this. Even if they just get 2 cents per download or something it would be a more palatable alternative to Kazaa without going to iTunes or something.
Anyone know if the artists are getting any of the money from the downloads? It seems like they should be, since it is a valid broadcast license.
Even back in the 0.8 days, I had very few problems making a medium sized app (~4000 lines), developed entirely under linux with Mono. Everything worked on the first try when I ran it on windows with .NET.
Now that's true cross platform ability. Even with Java I've never had it work that flawlessly. Thanks Miguel and Mike Kerster and the rest of the Mono team. You guys rock.
Hahaha :) Thanks for that story.. funny stuff.
I'm not sure if that should be attributed to a sexist attitude by the computer guy or just plain stupidity. Seems equally likely either way,
Also, I totally don't understand why people say women aren't good at programming -- they're programming LANGUAGES, aren't they? Women are supposed to be good at languages.
Yes, and they are. It is not a question of innate ability in most cases, rather one of practice.
I've always been interested in programming, therefore I've turned it into one of my hobbies and program things for fun. As a result of that, I am better at it than most women I know. Only because they are not interested in it as a hobby, even though they probably would have picked it up faster than I have.
Being told that women only get into graduate school because of affirmative action
Being told that women only get good jobs because of affirmative action
I have never seen this happen at my university. On the contrary, female students tend to be greatly respected because they're usually very good at what they do.
Hearing conversations about how women are just naturally not as good as men at science/engineering/other complex field
This is obviously a very volatile subject, but it definitely has some truth behind it. Even in countries where there are no gender stigmas attached to tech jobs (someone mentioned India), males are still in the vast majority.
So females are _in_ _general_ not as interested in tech. Perhaps this is because they aren't as good at tasks that require mental visualization or who knows why. But for christ's sake, it is NOT sexist to make that observation! Why should there not be skills that one gender excels at? Women (once again, in general) are much better at some skills than men, and worse at others.
Why don't people accept this fact? It absolutely does not reflect on your personal ability to do the job.
If it's a woman, we take their keyboard and do it for them - thus they learn nothing.
WE?? Speak for yourself but don't include me in it. Unless the person I'm helping is incapable of doing it themselves, then I won't touch his/her keyboard.
None of those programs are busy
Harsh sentence, but I don't have a lot of sympathy. Idiot makes virus, idiot gets caught, idiot gets punished.
Next please.
Haha! Watch out Slashdot! I've just sent you to legal hell!
Bingo. Java is a great language and I like programming with it, but even today, with fast machines and abundant memory, its not really a feasible choice for desktop apps.
Eclipse is the only Java app I can stand using, and even then, it's not equal on all platforms (works best on windows).
C# on Mono, on the other hand, let me build a nice, GTK2 app easily and quickly that integrated into my desktop. (Worked on Linux and Windows with no changes). Mono/C# is young compared to Java and I already like it better for a lot of things.
So computers are not simple or intuitive to use. Big deal, nothing is.
Have you ever participated in any usability studies with people who have no <insert machine here> experience?
Cars, bikes, multimeters, guns, vcrs, spinning machines, etc etc. Any reasonably complex tool is not intuitive! And none of these tools are nearly as complex as a computer!
I don't know what all the whining is about. You want to use a computer, you need to learn how to use it first!
Breaking news! People new to a computer have trouble moving the mouse. Don't expect to create a complex, but intuitive user interface. The best you can do is discoverable.
I have to disagree with that. Maybe I'm just lucky, but I've been running Debian unstable (even some packages from experimental at times) for the last 2 years and have never had an upgrade make my system unbootable, corrupt data, or even break XFree86 (1).
The worst breakage that I've experienced from running unstable is broken Microsoft fonts and broken browser plugins from time to time.
1) I'm not counting kernel upgrades. While even those have usually gone great, I've had some problems with my USB mouse with recent 2.6 kernels.