The fundamental problem is the basic concept of "earning." It places an arbitrary value on the contributions of an individual to society, when in an equitable society everyone would receive the same compensation for putting in a decent day's work, contributing to society as a whole, whether they were making sandwiches for others to eat or performing surgery.
As long as society focuses on the concept that one has more "worth" than others based on what they do, there will never be equitability.
However, money and worth are intrinsic to the societies we have developed on this planet. And until we evolve beyond that, we're doomed to resemble the Ferengi more and more each day.
Considering the raw power of today's typical smart phone and it's form factor, I'd say we're rapidly approaching the limits on the size of devices, especially when you consider the rooms that computers far less powerful used to occupy in the days of yore.
There are physical limits to how small electronics can be made, even if new lithography technologies are developed. We'd need to come up with something energy based instead of physical in order to get smaller than those barriers.
Plus there's the fact that a user interface device can only be so small and still be useful to anyone. I already find virtually every cell phone on the market to be too small to be useful for anything. I'm not interested in squinting to read text on a 5 inch screen, thank you very much. Never mind the fact that fat fingers tend to be far bigger than the hot-spots on the user interfaces of such devices.
Instead of arbitrarily promoting one application over another, let users rate the applications on how well they conform to providing vertical functions that they claim to. So instead of being based on number of downloads or anything arbitrary like that, it's based on how well it provides functionality.
Of course that takes away from the focus of it being a "store" and focuses on the services the apps can provide, which is probably the direct opposite of what a money-grubbing corporation wants to do.
Then again there is the question of how one can rate the "quality" and "functionality" of a fart-noise app...:P:P:P
If your process was at all stable and reliable, you'd have written the UI design documentation before you coded the UI.
Letting a bunch of programmers loose without a plan is a recipie for inconsistency, unpredictability, and ultimately, disaster for the user.
As others have mentioned, changing the UI so dramatically that you need to keep rewriting the documentation means that the users have to retrain. You can expect them to abandon your project in droves because of the churn.
See Gnome for a lovely example of rogue "programmers" stuffing their perverse and inconsistent ideas down the users throats. And see the rabid hatred of the results of Gnome 3 for a prediction of whats going to happen with your project if you do the same.
Yes, by all means, lets hide away all the comments because some people are mysoginistic or bigotted assholes. Heaven forbid those who stay on topic should be heard near the topic of discussion.
The article is a rather simplistic hardware-centric viewpoint. It doesn't even begin to touch on the areas where IT has always struggled: design, coding, debugging, and deployment. Instead it completely ignores the issue of software development, and instead bleats about how we can "roll back" servers with the click of a button in a virtual environment.
Which, of course, conveniently ignores the fact that someone has to write the code that runs in those virtual servers, debug it, test it, integrate it, package it, and ship it. Should it be an upgrade to an existing service/server, add in the overhead of designing, coding, and testing the database migration scripts for it, and coordinating the deployments of application virtual servers with the database servers.
Are things easier than they used to be? Perhaps for they basic system administration tasks.
But those have never been where the bulk of time and budget go.
Just break down all the employees into the smallest groups possible. Instead of "White" or "African", break it down to German, Swiss, Dutch, South African, Tanzanian, and so on. With everything down to a few dozen members per group, you'll have a nice flat diversity line.:P
Perhaps simplistic, but mere possession of stolen goods is an indictable offense. It does not matter whether you were under the impression that the fence owned the items you bought; they're stolen, and you can't keep them.
And that mentality is precisely why so many web applications suck farts off dead chickens for performance and scalability.
The first step to designing a scalable application is designing a scalable and flexible database model. The database is not an "afterthought", it is the heart of an application.
The code which accesses the database can be tweaked and fiddled, but once you've created your database, it becomes very expensive to change it in the future because of the costs of changing not just the code, but creating and testing database migration scripts to move the data to a new model.
But you go pat yourself on the head that you're a 'leet programmer because you know a scripting language.
And then hang your head in shame when you realize that JS runs in the browser and is only a presentation layer, not the application itself. Only a fool puts the business logic in the client if they have any understanding or concern for transaction consistency and application reliability. You have to assume the presentation client is going to break half way through processing something and leave the database in an inconsistent state if you put the business logic in the front end.
Yes, I know of the Metro interface and Microsoft's App Store. The problem is I've never seen an actual Metro Application, only applets and games. No word processors, spread sheets, compilers, etc. -- those all use the desktop interface style, which, as I noted, is difficult to use with a tablet.
If Microsoft thinks their big selling point is compatability with Windows applications, then by all means they should pull the plug on RT.
As to the Surface Pro, I think it suffers from one big glaring flaw: it runs Windows applications.
That means using menus, right clicks, and other such interface behaviours that are far from natural for a tablet/touch screen interface. What is needed for a successful tablet is an ecosystem of applications that are built just for tablet use. All the gestures in the world won't make it easy to right-click with one button (your finger), and let's face it: most of the useful functions of a Windows application interface are provided by the right-click menus.
Even something so trivial as the toolbars and buttons/icons have to be upscaled for a touch interface, otherwise you get touches/clicks on the wrong interface widget. That which is easily clicked by an accurate device like a mouse or touchpad is notoriously hard to nail down with a fat finger.
Nowadays your "real world learning" seems to mean sitting with an X-Box or equivalent for hours a day. There are several kids living on my block -- I've seen them outside less often than I do during the school year, so it's not like they're spending the summer days playing outdoors or anything like that.
No, every kid I know is glued to a TV, a cellphone, a tablet, or a computer. They're not learning *shit* about the "real world".
Summer vacation was originally created so farmers could use their children as labourers during the crop season.
Nowadays it exists mainly because the teachers unions would scream bloody murder if teachers had to work all year like everyone else.
With the number of double-income families nowadays, it would be a lot easier for parents to deal with 4 1-2 week breaks per year instead of a couple months at one shot, due to the hassles of arranging child care for the summer months.
However, I don't expect anything to change in the near future. See earlier point on unions.
Slashdot Mirror
The fundamental problem is the basic concept of "earning." It places an arbitrary value on the contributions of an individual to society, when in an equitable society everyone would receive the same compensation for putting in a decent day's work, contributing to society as a whole, whether they were making sandwiches for others to eat or performing surgery.
As long as society focuses on the concept that one has more "worth" than others based on what they do, there will never be equitability.
However, money and worth are intrinsic to the societies we have developed on this planet. And until we evolve beyond that, we're doomed to resemble the Ferengi more and more each day.
See the IBM User Interface Styleguides for where the notion of "F1" as a help key came from.
Microsoft followed CUA; they did not create it.
Considering the raw power of today's typical smart phone and it's form factor, I'd say we're rapidly approaching the limits on the size of devices, especially when you consider the rooms that computers far less powerful used to occupy in the days of yore.
There are physical limits to how small electronics can be made, even if new lithography technologies are developed. We'd need to come up with something energy based instead of physical in order to get smaller than those barriers.
Plus there's the fact that a user interface device can only be so small and still be useful to anyone. I already find virtually every cell phone on the market to be too small to be useful for anything. I'm not interested in squinting to read text on a 5 inch screen, thank you very much. Never mind the fact that fat fingers tend to be far bigger than the hot-spots on the user interfaces of such devices.
See SourceForge.net and the now-defunct FreeCode for examples.
Instead of arbitrarily promoting one application over another, let users rate the applications on how well they conform to providing vertical functions that they claim to. So instead of being based on number of downloads or anything arbitrary like that, it's based on how well it provides functionality.
Of course that takes away from the focus of it being a "store" and focuses on the services the apps can provide, which is probably the direct opposite of what a money-grubbing corporation wants to do.
Then again there is the question of how one can rate the "quality" and "functionality" of a fart-noise app... :P :P :P
If your process was at all stable and reliable, you'd have written the UI design documentation before you coded the UI.
Letting a bunch of programmers loose without a plan is a recipie for inconsistency, unpredictability, and ultimately, disaster for the user.
As others have mentioned, changing the UI so dramatically that you need to keep rewriting the documentation means that the users have to retrain. You can expect them to abandon your project in droves because of the churn.
See Gnome for a lovely example of rogue "programmers" stuffing their perverse and inconsistent ideas down the users throats. And see the rabid hatred of the results of Gnome 3 for a prediction of whats going to happen with your project if you do the same.
Yes, by all means, lets hide away all the comments because some people are mysoginistic or bigotted assholes. Heaven forbid those who stay on topic should be heard near the topic of discussion.
Censorship, much?
The article is a rather simplistic hardware-centric viewpoint. It doesn't even begin to touch on the areas where IT has always struggled: design, coding, debugging, and deployment. Instead it completely ignores the issue of software development, and instead bleats about how we can "roll back" servers with the click of a button in a virtual environment.
Which, of course, conveniently ignores the fact that someone has to write the code that runs in those virtual servers, debug it, test it, integrate it, package it, and ship it. Should it be an upgrade to an existing service/server, add in the overhead of designing, coding, and testing the database migration scripts for it, and coordinating the deployments of application virtual servers with the database servers.
Are things easier than they used to be? Perhaps for they basic system administration tasks.
But those have never been where the bulk of time and budget go.
Just break down all the employees into the smallest groups possible. Instead of "White" or "African", break it down to German, Swiss, Dutch, South African, Tanzanian, and so on. With everything down to a few dozen members per group, you'll have a nice flat diversity line. :P
Yeah, "just a copy", blah, blah, blah.
The point is that "good faith" is not a defense against charges nor does it give free reign to continue the offending action.
Perhaps simplistic, but mere possession of stolen goods is an indictable offense. It does not matter whether you were under the impression that the fence owned the items you bought; they're stolen, and you can't keep them.
And that mentality is precisely why so many web applications suck farts off dead chickens for performance and scalability.
The first step to designing a scalable application is designing a scalable and flexible database model. The database is not an "afterthought", it is the heart of an application.
The code which accesses the database can be tweaked and fiddled, but once you've created your database, it becomes very expensive to change it in the future because of the costs of changing not just the code, but creating and testing database migration scripts to move the data to a new model.
But you go pat yourself on the head that you're a 'leet programmer because you know a scripting language.
And then hang your head in shame when you realize that JS runs in the browser and is only a presentation layer, not the application itself. Only a fool puts the business logic in the client if they have any understanding or concern for transaction consistency and application reliability. You have to assume the presentation client is going to break half way through processing something and leave the database in an inconsistent state if you put the business logic in the front end.
Yes, I know of the Metro interface and Microsoft's App Store. The problem is I've never seen an actual Metro Application, only applets and games. No word processors, spread sheets, compilers, etc. -- those all use the desktop interface style, which, as I noted, is difficult to use with a tablet.
If Microsoft thinks their big selling point is compatability with Windows applications, then by all means they should pull the plug on RT.
As to the Surface Pro, I think it suffers from one big glaring flaw: it runs Windows applications.
That means using menus, right clicks, and other such interface behaviours that are far from natural for a tablet/touch screen interface. What is needed for a successful tablet is an ecosystem of applications that are built just for tablet use. All the gestures in the world won't make it easy to right-click with one button (your finger), and let's face it: most of the useful functions of a Windows application interface are provided by the right-click menus.
Even something so trivial as the toolbars and buttons/icons have to be upscaled for a touch interface, otherwise you get touches/clicks on the wrong interface widget. That which is easily clicked by an accurate device like a mouse or touchpad is notoriously hard to nail down with a fat finger.
They've re-invented PL/1!
But it's China.
You know. The evil communists.
Well, ok, they're not communists any more. But they're still socialists, and that's almost as evil.
Of course the NSA is evil, too, but they're American, so they're ok. Rah, rah, rah, USA!
Nowadays your "real world learning" seems to mean sitting with an X-Box or equivalent for hours a day. There are several kids living on my block -- I've seen them outside less often than I do during the school year, so it's not like they're spending the summer days playing outdoors or anything like that.
No, every kid I know is glued to a TV, a cellphone, a tablet, or a computer. They're not learning *shit* about the "real world".
Summer vacation was originally created so farmers could use their children as labourers during the crop season.
Nowadays it exists mainly because the teachers unions would scream bloody murder if teachers had to work all year like everyone else.
With the number of double-income families nowadays, it would be a lot easier for parents to deal with 4 1-2 week breaks per year instead of a couple months at one shot, due to the hassles of arranging child care for the summer months.
However, I don't expect anything to change in the near future. See earlier point on unions.
Why didn't they just post it to a private web server with no public facing ports?
The issue is not PowerPC hardware. The issue is the early Intel hardware which is widely reported as unsupported by later versions of OS/X.
Stick your head back in the nice comfortable Apple sand. I'm sure it's warm and moist in there like mama's womb.
That inability to upgrade is precisely what Mac users were complaining about in the last thread on this topic only this past week.
I was running Windows 7 on 10 year old hardware. Can you say the same for OS/X?
I thought not.
Fanboi.
Yeah, free upgrades if your old hardware is supported.
Hundreds of billions of dollars, and it's obsolete and useless before it even gets out the hangar.
See what happens when you whine enough? Even Microsoft provides longer term support for obsolete, unsupported operating systems than Apple does.
Suck it up fanbois: Apple sucks farts off dead chickens. Their only game is to keep you on the re-purchase treadmill.