That's simply false. Windows NT was designed with authenticated RPC networking at the core. The problem is that this system only works on safe networks and is a total disaster on the hostile Internet. (Maybe you heard of MS-Blaster that killed the RPC service, which caused the computer to reboot!)
UNIX was designed with nearly no network security. Ironically, that helped it become a much more secure OS because most of the services are so dangerous that they are now disabled. OTOH, if you do need Unix RPC, it is usually implemented on a much higher layer -- J2EE for example.
Or, more topically, Ollie North trying to delete incriminating email from the mainframe PROFS system without realizing that the system kept it's own archives.
I read an an interview with Clinton where he claimed to not know how to use a computer, and had basically delegated all IT matters to Al Gore. I don't know why that sounds "insane" to you, most middle-aged executive-level guys didn't use computers pre-1992. He probably uses one now.
In 99 Bush made some political hash about having an AOL account, and there's a picture of him floating around with a Mac powerbook on his desk, which makes him your archetypal "luser", I guess.
I'll give Nutscrape some credit for once... their portal had drag-n-drop RSS feeds way back in the 90s. (Of course it used proprietary Nutscrape DHTML.)
AOL settled a antitrust lawsuit with Microsoft that gave them a bunch of cash and the explicit right to repackage IE.
And a lot of people have made IE-shell browsers, MS provided the system libs and can't stop you from using them. (Using the JET redistributables to make an Access clone is a no-no, I think.)
People keep bringing the Netscape brandname, but version 7 never got close to 1% marketshare, while Firefox is at 6-7% and going up. Face it, after v4 and v6, the Netscape brandname is totally shite and nobody trusts them. Nutscrape Sucks!
Wow you get Notes R6!! You're so lucky... my company's still on R5... from 1999 or whenever... but I still think any version of Notes would be a whole lot better with a regular SDI Mailer UI where messages open in a seperate window. (Although even Outlook has it's own "tabs" for the calendar etc)
All in all I think that tabs should be a part of the window manager, not implemented in individual apps
Agreed wholeheartedly. The world wants Tabs, and it's rather depressing ot see them appear in every single app.
Short answer: The Republican Congress didn't like the idea of creating a National Park in a strong Democratic constituency. So the park has to perma-lease public recreational land to fatcats like Lucas in order to cover the budget. Then Lucas makes movies comparing republican governance to the "rise of the Sith", so it all works out karmically.
Excel has tabs, but not MDI tabs -- each "sheet" is part of the same workbook document.
I can attest that users ARE scared of the tabs in Lotus Notes, and that the MDI/Tabs are one of the most disliked things about that program (among many). So while tabs are a nice option, I think there is solid reasons for not forcing users to use them.
Well, generic-man you are a getting attacked from all sides, but I'll agree with your point.
From a UI Designer/Nazi standpoint, Tabs are a really bad thing -- they are a totally inconsistant form of window management that is only used in one type of application. They defeat the normal applicaiton switchers (taskbar, dock, expose, alt-tab). They aren't quite SDI and aren't quite MDI, and MDI is supposed to be dead anyway. Firefox tabs in particular are bad because you are locked the Z Order based on how you opened them and have no control over how or where they appear.
That having been said, Tabs are damn useful, and I love them!
I noticed that Apple Safari has tabs but disables them by default. That lends credence to the idea that Tabs really are scary to non-power users.
Microsoft has a Tabbed Browser called ".NET SDK Documentation". Rather than being "basic", you can drag-n-drop the tabs and Z-Order works. In other words, they're more advanced than Firefox tabs and hopefully that's what they'll use for IE7.
AC Nielsen makes their money by alleging that their sample set is representative of the entire tv-viewing population.
Actually, TV commercial-viewing population, since the advertisers are who ultimately who pays Nielson. The objective popularity of the show is immaterial, except to the extent it sells commercial time.
If you're watching the commercial-free version on your computer, you've effectively dropped out of the people who "count", and Nielsen is going to exclude your group from the reporting even if they could track you. They've done this with VCRs for years.
Not that this should concern you because there's not really anything you could do about it unless Nielson asks you to use their box.
Default settings of every major mail client + pulled-from-ass statistic of how many people bother to change those defaults. (Nobody I work with). Only plaintext mail I get is from oldtime Internet users, Unix users, and webmail, and businesses don't usually use Unix clients or webmail heavily.
Note that if you are sending plain text, most clients will automatically respond in plain text, so make sure to exclude those messages from your methodology.
I don't think there was ever a time when HTML as a pure markup language was used for Email. When Nutscrape introduced a HTML email client, they did it at the same time as Plugins/Java/Javascript, which is how it got it's "evil" reputation.
I remember when "NeXTMail" (MS-RTF?) was considered a pretty neat trick.
99% of business email is HTML. Nobody cares about the "evil" of HTML mail except a few crusty old geeks. Last I checked, even Mozilla defaults to sending HTML mail.
Keep in mind that business people come from the tradition of using propriety mailers like Lotus ccMail, Lotus Notes, and MSMail, and saw no reason to remove functionality when switching to Internet mail. These people just don't care about the archaic 7-bit Internet olden days. (And, yes, HTML in mail was a design mistake, but as of yet it's the only way to get colored fonts and pictures in your mail, so that's what's used.)
Just make sure include a text/plain part, so if your recpients want to drop the HTML, they have that option.
Well, I think if the siuation was reversed and TigerDirect was selling an product called "AppleDirect", you can bet the injunction would have been granted. AFAICT, how well known a company is and the amount of marketing money they spend is grist for the mill in trademark cases, so the law is somewhat biased towards large corporations. Which means that Apple could be 100% in the wrong and still walk away with the "Tiger" name, although it might cost them some $$$.
(Correction: I was under the impression that TigerDirect sold computers under their own name brand. Looks like they don't or no longer do so, and they are just a retailer.)
In the US, you can trademark common words, so long as it's unrelated to the product being marketed -- so Mustang(tm) Cars is a legit trademark, but Mustang Horses are not.
IIRC, you also have the right to defend your trademark as it applies to a broad category of products. So, for example, Apple Computer's trademark applies to "Computer Hardware and Software", but not "Recorded Music" (where Apple Records has the trademark and is suing Apple Computer over iTunes).
So, at least on the surface, it seems like a computer company called Tiger has a case against an operating system called Tiger. But, it sounds like the judge's preliminary decision was basically "Apple is a much bigger company, so follow the golden rule: Those with the gold makes the rules. Apple spent a lot of money marketing Tiger/10.4, so it stays on the market.".
Still it wouldn't suprise me to see TigerDirect walk away with several million bucks from all of this. In other words this lawsuit is just a negotiating tatic.
Your post is very sensible, but you must realize that "re-engineering" is only a win if provides a substiantial advantage in some tangible "business' (rather than technical) way. Many companies run 30-40 year old proprietary code on very expensive & now obscure leased IBM machines, but the code does it's job well and has never needed to be re-engineered.
Plus, OSS is no magic bullet, and developing software is still a very expensive and risky proposition. The fact is many problems are cookie-cutter, and off the shelf solutions, even with their big price tags, are still much cheaper than rolling your own. "You control the software" has an appeal, but most businesses/academies have no knowledge or experience controlling software and will fail at doing so.
Or perhaps I'm just cynical after seeing my share of those failed IT projects you can read about (nearly all of which who died because of business problems not because of the programming.)
But your main point is still on -- quit playing this marginal Zero Sum Game with Microsoft -- Do a business/risk/cost analysis, and if it makes sense, the numbers will scream that it's the right way to go.
Re:Its only the bad things we head about?
on
Safari vs. KHTML
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· Score: 1
Except one of the big reasons that Konquerer got off the ground so quickly (and caught Apple's eye) is because it was written directly to the KDE API and not burdened with 9 portability/re-implementation layers like you-know-what.
I suppose it's ironic, but both KDE and Apple share the outlook that the platform is more important than the program. Portability is not a big concern for either and that naturally means code can't move very freely.
Sun had *better* be concerned about a Free Software Java replacement.
Sun went to great expense to publish a Java Specificaiton under a licence that allows 3rd parties to reimplement it. Obviously, Sun not only wants, but expects people to implement their own versions of Java(tm, as in according to the spec). And that obviously includes the FSF, who's cloned everything else Sun's made.
Plus the Sun JVM is a zero-revenue product that is shipped for OSes like Linux pretty much only for mindshare purposes. If a 3rd party would pick up platform responsibility for Linux Java, Sun would probably be glad to give it up. If Stallman can kick people in the ass and get a real free software JVM out there, everyone's for it.
It seems to me that this kind of over the top cheerleading is probably one of the main reasons this conflict has become personal. I'm not going to defend OGara's actions, but obviously there was an effort to demonize her long before she started sneaking around people's apartments, and it worked.
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That's simply false. Windows NT was designed with authenticated RPC networking at the core. The problem is that this system only works on safe networks and is a total disaster on the hostile Internet. (Maybe you heard of MS-Blaster that killed the RPC service, which caused the computer to reboot!)
UNIX was designed with nearly no network security. Ironically, that helped it become a much more secure OS because most of the services are so dangerous that they are now disabled. OTOH, if you do need Unix RPC, it is usually implemented on a much higher layer -- J2EE for example.
Or, more topically, Ollie North trying to delete incriminating email from the mainframe PROFS system without realizing that the system kept it's own archives.
I read an an interview with Clinton where he claimed to not know how to use a computer, and had basically delegated all IT matters to Al Gore. I don't know why that sounds "insane" to you, most middle-aged executive-level guys didn't use computers pre-1992. He probably uses one now.
In 99 Bush made some political hash about having an AOL account, and there's a picture of him floating around with a Mac powerbook on his desk, which makes him your archetypal "luser", I guess.
I'll give Nutscrape some credit for once ... their portal had drag-n-drop RSS feeds way back in the 90s. (Of course it used proprietary Nutscrape DHTML.)
AOL settled a antitrust lawsuit with Microsoft that gave them a bunch of cash and the explicit right to repackage IE.
And a lot of people have made IE-shell browsers, MS provided the system libs and can't stop you from using them. (Using the JET redistributables to make an Access clone is a no-no, I think.)
People keep bringing the Netscape brandname, but version 7 never got close to 1% marketshare, while Firefox is at 6-7% and going up. Face it, after v4 and v6, the Netscape brandname is totally shite and nobody trusts them. Nutscrape Sucks!
Generally true, but the big example of MS Blaster was on the loose in the skript kiddie community before Microsoft released a patch.
Wow you get Notes R6!! You're so lucky ... my company's still on R5 ... from 1999 or whenever ... but I still think any version of Notes would be a whole lot better with a regular SDI Mailer UI where messages open in a seperate window. (Although even Outlook has it's own "tabs" for the calendar etc)
All in all I think that tabs should be a part of the window manager, not implemented in individual apps
Agreed wholeheartedly. The world wants Tabs, and it's rather depressing ot see them appear in every single app.
Short answer: The Republican Congress didn't like the idea of creating a National Park in a strong Democratic constituency. So the park has to perma-lease public recreational land to fatcats like Lucas in order to cover the budget. Then Lucas makes movies comparing republican governance to the "rise of the Sith", so it all works out karmically.
In classic MDI, you can resize the child windows within the main one.
Thanks for the tip (everyone!) about LastTab -- I've got it installed. Now someone just needs to convice the FF devs that Z-Order matters.
Excel has tabs, but not MDI tabs -- each "sheet" is part of the same workbook document.
I can attest that users ARE scared of the tabs in Lotus Notes, and that the MDI/Tabs are one of the most disliked things about that program (among many). So while tabs are a nice option, I think there is solid reasons for not forcing users to use them.
Well, generic-man you are a getting attacked from all sides, but I'll agree with your point.
From a UI Designer/Nazi standpoint, Tabs are a really bad thing -- they are a totally inconsistant form of window management that is only used in one type of application. They defeat the normal applicaiton switchers (taskbar, dock, expose, alt-tab). They aren't quite SDI and aren't quite MDI, and MDI is supposed to be dead anyway. Firefox tabs in particular are bad because you are locked the Z Order based on how you opened them and have no control over how or where they appear.
That having been said, Tabs are damn useful, and I love them!
I noticed that Apple Safari has tabs but disables them by default. That lends credence to the idea that Tabs really are scary to non-power users.
Microsoft has a Tabbed Browser called ".NET SDK Documentation". Rather than being "basic", you can drag-n-drop the tabs and Z-Order works. In other words, they're more advanced than Firefox tabs and hopefully that's what they'll use for IE7.
Originally it consisted of NFS/NIS servers for Unix clients, so that's how it got it's backwards name.
"Unix for Windows" would be the most accurate name for the current product.
AC Nielsen makes their money by alleging that their sample set is representative of the entire tv-viewing population.
Actually, TV commercial-viewing population, since the advertisers are who ultimately who pays Nielson. The objective popularity of the show is immaterial, except to the extent it sells commercial time.
If you're watching the commercial-free version on your computer, you've effectively dropped out of the people who "count", and Nielsen is going to exclude your group from the reporting even if they could track you. They've done this with VCRs for years.
Not that this should concern you because there's not really anything you could do about it unless Nielson asks you to use their box.
Default settings of every major mail client + pulled-from-ass statistic of how many people bother to change those defaults. (Nobody I work with). Only plaintext mail I get is from oldtime Internet users, Unix users, and webmail, and businesses don't usually use Unix clients or webmail heavily.
Note that if you are sending plain text, most clients will automatically respond in plain text, so make sure to exclude those messages from your methodology.
I don't think there was ever a time when HTML as a pure markup language was used for Email. When Nutscrape introduced a HTML email client, they did it at the same time as Plugins/Java/Javascript, which is how it got it's "evil" reputation.
I remember when "NeXTMail" (MS-RTF?) was considered a pretty neat trick.
Hopefully your *Usenet boldface marks* were intentional :)
99% of business email is HTML. Nobody cares about the "evil" of HTML mail except a few crusty old geeks. Last I checked, even Mozilla defaults to sending HTML mail.
Keep in mind that business people come from the tradition of using propriety mailers like Lotus ccMail, Lotus Notes, and MSMail, and saw no reason to remove functionality when switching to Internet mail. These people just don't care about the archaic 7-bit Internet olden days. (And, yes, HTML in mail was a design mistake, but as of yet it's the only way to get colored fonts and pictures in your mail, so that's what's used.)
Just make sure include a text/plain part, so if your recpients want to drop the HTML, they have that option.
Well, I think if the siuation was reversed and TigerDirect was selling an product called "AppleDirect", you can bet the injunction would have been granted. AFAICT, how well known a company is and the amount of marketing money they spend is grist for the mill in trademark cases, so the law is somewhat biased towards large corporations. Which means that Apple could be 100% in the wrong and still walk away with the "Tiger" name, although it might cost them some $$$.
(Correction: I was under the impression that TigerDirect sold computers under their own name brand. Looks like they don't or no longer do so, and they are just a retailer.)
Eh, sounds to me like you can't see the forest from the one particular tree of this Banner system.
In the US, you can trademark common words, so long as it's unrelated to the product being marketed -- so Mustang(tm) Cars is a legit trademark, but Mustang Horses are not.
IIRC, you also have the right to defend your trademark as it applies to a broad category of products. So, for example, Apple Computer's trademark applies to "Computer Hardware and Software", but not "Recorded Music" (where Apple Records has the trademark and is suing Apple Computer over iTunes).
So, at least on the surface, it seems like a computer company called Tiger has a case against an operating system called Tiger. But, it sounds like the judge's preliminary decision was basically "Apple is a much bigger company, so follow the golden rule: Those with the gold makes the rules. Apple spent a lot of money marketing Tiger/10.4, so it stays on the market.".
Still it wouldn't suprise me to see TigerDirect walk away with several million bucks from all of this. In other words this lawsuit is just a negotiating tatic.
Your post is very sensible, but you must realize that "re-engineering" is only a win if provides a substiantial advantage in some tangible "business' (rather than technical) way. Many companies run 30-40 year old proprietary code on very expensive & now obscure leased IBM machines, but the code does it's job well and has never needed to be re-engineered.
Plus, OSS is no magic bullet, and developing software is still a very expensive and risky proposition. The fact is many problems are cookie-cutter, and off the shelf solutions, even with their big price tags, are still much cheaper than rolling your own. "You control the software" has an appeal, but most businesses/academies have no knowledge or experience controlling software and will fail at doing so.
Or perhaps I'm just cynical after seeing my share of those failed IT projects you can read about (nearly all of which who died because of business problems not because of the programming.)
But your main point is still on -- quit playing this marginal Zero Sum Game with Microsoft -- Do a business/risk/cost analysis, and if it makes sense, the numbers will scream that it's the right way to go.
Except one of the big reasons that Konquerer got off the ground so quickly (and caught Apple's eye) is because it was written directly to the KDE API and not burdened with 9 portability/re-implementation layers like you-know-what.
I suppose it's ironic, but both KDE and Apple share the outlook that the platform is more important than the program. Portability is not a big concern for either and that naturally means code can't move very freely.
Sun had *better* be concerned about a Free Software Java replacement.
Sun went to great expense to publish a Java Specificaiton under a licence that allows 3rd parties to reimplement it. Obviously, Sun not only wants, but expects people to implement their own versions of Java(tm, as in according to the spec). And that obviously includes the FSF, who's cloned everything else Sun's made.
Plus the Sun JVM is a zero-revenue product that is shipped for OSes like Linux pretty much only for mindshare purposes. If a 3rd party would pick up platform responsibility for Linux Java, Sun would probably be glad to give it up. If Stallman can kick people in the ass and get a real free software JVM out there, everyone's for it.
It seems to me that this kind of over the top cheerleading is probably one of the main reasons this conflict has become personal. I'm not going to defend OGara's actions, but obviously there was an effort to demonize her long before she started sneaking around people's apartments, and it worked.