I'll just take the points in order, easier that way.
1) I wasn't even thinking of smaller projects, but that's a good point. And that's when it's necessary, if the people are persistent, to make it clear what the purpose of the project is and what their desire is and why they don't coincide (and that's a good time to point out, THEN, that it's a volunteer workforce and how much would be required to make the requested changes). If they're difficult, that's when it's time to stop ignoring them. This can also, in some cases, be a chance to make a few dollars by making the changes -- but usually the complainers aren't willing to pony up the cash for what they need.
2) Yes, people bitch - but there are a few points here. First, is your goal to get the projet out there for users? If it's Open/Libre Office, then it is. If you're just writing the program for yourself (which could be one or more developers) and releasing it, thinking, "I find it useful, so others might, too," then that's a case where you may want bug reports and feedback from developers, but not want to create a user community, since that's not at all the purpose of the project.
Second, if the goal is to get users to use it, as with KDE in general, and, in this case, Amarok in particular, then someone on the development team *must* keep in touch with the feelings of users. In this case, I've seen many people bitching over the new GUI in 2.0 and, from what I saw, the new GUI wasn't tested for user feedback. That's a prime example of what I'm talking about. It's a project with a goal of gaining users, but the crew totally ignored the needs of the users. It is common sense that a major GUI change will create a major reaction with users, so it's important to release what you can ahead of time to see how people feel about it compared to the old GUI. I have watched discussions over Amarok, and have seen very few positive comments when it hit 2.0. While it's true haters are more likely to speak up than those who are satisfied, that was still a missed opportunity from the Amarok developers to figure out what end users wanted.
I know it's a pain to maintain two GUIs, but they probably should have given serious consideration to doing that - or to reverting.
Third, yes, I know what hearing all the bitching is like. I used to teach special needs kids, which means nothing is enough for parents and everything is too much from the administration's point of view (where they want to maximize resources) and I write and, as I mentioned, retired from a software company. People love to bitch and some will be helpful when they realize they're listened to and some won't. But the bottom line is if you want people using the project, there's no choice. You have to listen to the "pulse of the public." This can be done through polling or a number of other ways, but if you're trying to market, in any way, then not listening to users is like target shooting with a blindfold.
3) It sounds like your plugin is either for use within an organization or that it has a price on it - in which case one major measure of user satisfaction is if they keep buying it.
4) Overall, and many developers hate it when I bring this up, developers are great engineers, but they're not human engineers. I love developers and the way they think and what it's like being in a room with them, but being the interface between users and a developer team is a special skill, and it's one very few developers have. The problems that I've seen (and this is one of them) is that developers know they're intelligent and think they can do it all, and often do see the user as less intelligent. This leads to them thinking if something is wrong, it *must* be the user.
I spent years working in residential treatment and teaching (before I started my business) and had to learn to deal with all different types of personalities and people with all different kinds of mental strengths in different areas. After leaving there and working with developers, I found that this is
If you mean the way of GNOME, yes. Too focused on technical details so they can't see the forest through the trees and wondering why everyone doesn't see how wonderful their stuff is.
I ran my own software company, based on my software, until about 5 years ago, when I retired at 45 so I could enjoy life. (And it was my company doing well enough that allowed me to retire that many years early.) During the time I was running it, I used FOSS in my systems and I even released FOSS programs for others to use.
Like many people who work with FOSS, I'd love to see it out there and in use in every market and see FOSS software leaving a lot of closed source programs in the dust. And I see that desire in many FOSS developers. They often say that FOSS software is "just better." Then they might, if asked, go into long explanations on the differences between open and closed source software and why FOSS is better.
But the sad truth is that developers, when left to their own means, without someone saying, "Do this and that," do what developers like and think is cool, and then they often try to push the result on users, saying, it's better than what was there. Well, maybe to a developer it is better, but often to an end user it is not. And this comes down to developers who think from their point of view and are unable to see a user's point of view and insist the developer view is right and better. And they think users should change and see the light.
But that isn't going to happen. This is an area where users grab what the need and use what does the job. They don't care what developers say is good or bad. To them, good means it does the job, bad means it either doesn't, or it's a pain to use. So they say, "This program is bad," and that pisses off developers who insist it's good.
And we end up with more and more FOSS that doesn't fit user needs and users get in the habit of thinking, "Oh, that's some of that open source stuff, and the open source programs I've tried in the past suck."
From the user point of view, they DO suck.
And developers are too busy saying, "We're right!" to listen to that.
Which is why most FOSS is technically beautiful, but sucks.
Yes, someone can commission a developer, but there's the flip side: If you're a developer, and people bitch about your software, and bitch a lot, then maybe it's time to listen *IF* you want people to use it.
Or you can ignore what users say and continue to slide into obscurity and wonder why your program hasn't become a standard for people, like Firefox or VLC or Audacity and why the mindshare is small compared to everything else.
Amarok has been crap since 2.0. It was a great example of a FOSS project producing good software. Then, just when there was a program that everyone loved, they broke everything users liked and said, "Well, if you don't like it, that's tough, this is better and if you don't see it, you're a fool." Posts on boards where this was discussed were self-righteous from the developer end and users were angered by that.
I checked out many feature requests and saw the same kind of developer arrogance: We're not doing that because it's not a good feature. (Or because we can't without doing tons of work or because we don't want to or other self-important reasons.)
And that's when Amarok became an example of the worst of FOSS. Developers fell back on the old saw of, "We're not getting paid, this is volunteer work, and you're lucky we've done any of this for you." Yes, that's true, in part, but the other side to the story is that it's clear developers WANT people to use it. If they didn't, there would not have been a story submitted to Slashdot about this.
So if you want users to use and love your program, listen to them. If you want to do what you want, then do it - but don't wonder why users don't like it or why there's fewer downloads of later versions people don't like.
I used Amarok on Linux, hated it once it got to 2.0, but couldn't find one that was as good as the earlier version (and didn't find out about Clementine until much later). Eventually I switched to OS X, and found other Linux music players ported, but Amarok is still not ported - it relies on MacPorts, which is notorious for being unstable and problematical when updated. Developing an OS X port would be easier than developing a Windows port, yet after years it hasn't been done.
All this has proved that Amarok developers just want to do their own thing and don't give a damn about what users want - yet they still want users to download and use it.
And until they catch on to this, Amarok, in any version, will still suck and will never reach the usefulness it had in version 1.3 and 1.4.
You've described it pretty well. One of their earliest cases was in Richmond, VA and I sat in to videotape a lot of the depositions. (That's how long it's been going on -- VHS and SVHS were still in use when they started suing everyone. That was around 2000-2001.)
They admitted in depositions they were in on the meetings when the standards were drawn up and had no reason for not objecting to designs that were supposedly theirs.
I have to admit, the Rambus lawyers were polite and easy to work with. The lawyers for the other company (a German firm) were mostly from one New York office and were just plain rude and nasty.
I remember one deposition in particular where there was a top memory expert giving testimony and they asked him about flip-flops and if they were memory. They (the Rambus lawyers) were trying to get him to say a flip-flop was a one bit memory and he kept saying, "Under certain conditions." The lawyer was stumped and started getting worse and worse (the only time I saw a Rambus lawyer start to get nasty) because he not only couldn't get him to give the answer they wanted, but the lawyer had no understanding of what any Electronics 101 student would know. I had a hard time not laughing and shaking the camera during the time that topic was being covered. It was pretty clear to me that lawyer had not fully prepared and didn't know at all what the topic was with flip-flops. I would have loved to have stayed in that one all day, since I figured it would only get more technical and confuse the lawyer even more, but someone took my place so I could finish some editing.
I'm not familiar with you or your posts, elrous0, but this comment is enough for you to never gain any credibility with me on this topic (and likely other ones as well), since it tells us that you are thinking in absolutes and you see anyone who disagrees or speaks up for Apple in any way as a fan boy.
Guess what? It's not all black and white. You may say you know that, but your comments show otherwise.
Any 1st year calculus student should know both that it's been proven that Pi is irrational and does NOT repeat, but should be able to do that proof on their own.
Either way, it's a wasted question. Years ago, when Ma Bell was the only phone company and they came out with touch-tone phones, they patented the arrangement with 1-2-3 at the top. So if you want to make a calculator that uses that, you'll have to pay a fee.
Fox News didn't start leaning to the left. The intent from the start was not to provide news made up of facts, but to provide "news" that helped that group feel good about their beliefs and standings. There's an article on the Rolling Stone website, I think it's current now (5/31/11) on Roger Ailes. His intent from the start was to present the news as he saw it, with is anything but fair and balanced.
Fox News was never intended as anything more than a propaganda machine for the Republican Party. It's based on fear, and so is the internal organization. Even Rupert Murdoch thinks Ailes is kind of whack because of the things he believes, but as long as Fox News brings in more money than any other part of Fox, including the movie division, they're going to get whatever they want.
I know it won't help, but I've been to Germany, Luxembourg, France, Andorra, Spain, Switzerland, Italy, Yugoslavia and even Lichtenstein.
I've seen them and most of those countries are quite beautiful. Yes, even Yugoslavia.
I know he'll say I'm a liberal plant, but if he has the balls, he can always go himself and see. If he's right, he'll see it. If he's wrong -- well, he won't be able to accept it.
Do they think people are really that unaware of the problems with their network that they'll believe that AT&T LTE will work any better than AT&T as it is?
I don't think the people behind SyFy now have the brains to make it work as a premium network. They're stuck with a genre network and they know nothing about the genre and just need to rebrand it as "20-something and Stupid!" and get it over with.
It'd be cool to find a real SF network that played old classics (like UFO or others you don't see much or at all) as well as new and original productions.
Caprica shot themselves in the foot by running 3-4 episodes in a row that did nothing but give you reasons to not trust or despise characters.
But, and speaking from the point of view of someone with a writing, literature, and film background, SG:U was actually very well written and acted and once I saw that, I didn't expect it to last long on SyFy. And, honestly, I didn't expect many "SF fans" to go for it, since, as much as many protest they want something that challenges them intellectually, all many of them want are lasers, spaceships, and babes in spandex or leather.
I came within a hair's breadth of writing for TNG, but they shut the door on all freelancers to rush through the 2 parter with Spock in it, then Roddenberry died, and by the time they would even talk to freelancers again, I was dealing with a divorce and not at a point where I could worry about anything but the immediate issues around me.
While I loved TNG, I think DS9 showed a higher level of quality than any of the other Trek shows, and I always suspected that's why many Trekkies didn't like it: It actually was outside the box and had real, flawed characters with ongoing conflicts that were about more than phasers and variable-tri-phase inverters. Speaking critically, the writers had more freedom on DS9 and I think that led to a higher quality of writing than on the other shows. Part of that was it wasn't constrained by Roddenberry's later limits he put on TNG. (And boy, did I hit those limits every time I pitched -- it's interesting that one of the big TNG writers, Ron Moore, later got notice for running what was often called "the best sf show on TV" by breaking the very limits he was required to follow while working on TNG.)
And even in the USA, I just checked. In spite of what the article says, the original is NOT available, at least not yet on my account. It's still DVD only.
The only version of Trek available for Instant Watch on my USA account is the 2009 movie.
He was originally VERY opposed to creating the charity and it was his Father and wife who convinced him to do it.
His kids are also not going to inherit much. Both he and his Father are quite active in insisting on high inheritance taxes because they believe the next generation should not inherit much wealth.
Considering how much he has, he really won't notice it at all in his lifestyle if he gave away 3/4 of his wealth.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll just take the points in order, easier that way.
1) I wasn't even thinking of smaller projects, but that's a good point. And that's when it's necessary, if the people are persistent, to make it clear what the purpose of the project is and what their desire is and why they don't coincide (and that's a good time to point out, THEN, that it's a volunteer workforce and how much would be required to make the requested changes). If they're difficult, that's when it's time to stop ignoring them. This can also, in some cases, be a chance to make a few dollars by making the changes -- but usually the complainers aren't willing to pony up the cash for what they need.
2) Yes, people bitch - but there are a few points here. First, is your goal to get the projet out there for users? If it's Open/Libre Office, then it is. If you're just writing the program for yourself (which could be one or more developers) and releasing it, thinking, "I find it useful, so others might, too," then that's a case where you may want bug reports and feedback from developers, but not want to create a user community, since that's not at all the purpose of the project.
Second, if the goal is to get users to use it, as with KDE in general, and, in this case, Amarok in particular, then someone on the development team *must* keep in touch with the feelings of users. In this case, I've seen many people bitching over the new GUI in 2.0 and, from what I saw, the new GUI wasn't tested for user feedback. That's a prime example of what I'm talking about. It's a project with a goal of gaining users, but the crew totally ignored the needs of the users. It is common sense that a major GUI change will create a major reaction with users, so it's important to release what you can ahead of time to see how people feel about it compared to the old GUI. I have watched discussions over Amarok, and have seen very few positive comments when it hit 2.0. While it's true haters are more likely to speak up than those who are satisfied, that was still a missed opportunity from the Amarok developers to figure out what end users wanted.
I know it's a pain to maintain two GUIs, but they probably should have given serious consideration to doing that - or to reverting.
Third, yes, I know what hearing all the bitching is like. I used to teach special needs kids, which means nothing is enough for parents and everything is too much from the administration's point of view (where they want to maximize resources) and I write and, as I mentioned, retired from a software company. People love to bitch and some will be helpful when they realize they're listened to and some won't. But the bottom line is if you want people using the project, there's no choice. You have to listen to the "pulse of the public." This can be done through polling or a number of other ways, but if you're trying to market, in any way, then not listening to users is like target shooting with a blindfold.
3) It sounds like your plugin is either for use within an organization or that it has a price on it - in which case one major measure of user satisfaction is if they keep buying it.
4) Overall, and many developers hate it when I bring this up, developers are great engineers, but they're not human engineers. I love developers and the way they think and what it's like being in a room with them, but being the interface between users and a developer team is a special skill, and it's one very few developers have. The problems that I've seen (and this is one of them) is that developers know they're intelligent and think they can do it all, and often do see the user as less intelligent. This leads to them thinking if something is wrong, it *must* be the user.
I spent years working in residential treatment and teaching (before I started my business) and had to learn to deal with all different types of personalities and people with all different kinds of mental strengths in different areas. After leaving there and working with developers, I found that this is
Way or name of GNOME?
If you mean the way of GNOME, yes. Too focused on technical details so they can't see the forest through the trees and wondering why everyone doesn't see how wonderful their stuff is.
Actually, that misses the point.
I ran my own software company, based on my software, until about 5 years ago, when I retired at 45 so I could enjoy life. (And it was my company doing well enough that allowed me to retire that many years early.) During the time I was running it, I used FOSS in my systems and I even released FOSS programs for others to use.
Like many people who work with FOSS, I'd love to see it out there and in use in every market and see FOSS software leaving a lot of closed source programs in the dust. And I see that desire in many FOSS developers. They often say that FOSS software is "just better." Then they might, if asked, go into long explanations on the differences between open and closed source software and why FOSS is better.
But the sad truth is that developers, when left to their own means, without someone saying, "Do this and that," do what developers like and think is cool, and then they often try to push the result on users, saying, it's better than what was there. Well, maybe to a developer it is better, but often to an end user it is not. And this comes down to developers who think from their point of view and are unable to see a user's point of view and insist the developer view is right and better. And they think users should change and see the light.
But that isn't going to happen. This is an area where users grab what the need and use what does the job. They don't care what developers say is good or bad. To them, good means it does the job, bad means it either doesn't, or it's a pain to use. So they say, "This program is bad," and that pisses off developers who insist it's good.
And we end up with more and more FOSS that doesn't fit user needs and users get in the habit of thinking, "Oh, that's some of that open source stuff, and the open source programs I've tried in the past suck."
From the user point of view, they DO suck.
And developers are too busy saying, "We're right!" to listen to that.
Which is why most FOSS is technically beautiful, but sucks.
Yes, someone can commission a developer, but there's the flip side: If you're a developer, and people bitch about your software, and bitch a lot, then maybe it's time to listen *IF* you want people to use it.
Or you can ignore what users say and continue to slide into obscurity and wonder why your program hasn't become a standard for people, like Firefox or VLC or Audacity and why the mindshare is small compared to everything else.
I use Clementine, based on Amarok 1.3.
I don't use iTunes because it doesn't use FLAC, but may consider, at some point, converting to ALAC, since they've open sourced it.
Amarok has been crap since 2.0. It was a great example of a FOSS project producing good software. Then, just when there was a program that everyone loved, they broke everything users liked and said, "Well, if you don't like it, that's tough, this is better and if you don't see it, you're a fool." Posts on boards where this was discussed were self-righteous from the developer end and users were angered by that.
I checked out many feature requests and saw the same kind of developer arrogance: We're not doing that because it's not a good feature. (Or because we can't without doing tons of work or because we don't want to or other self-important reasons.)
And that's when Amarok became an example of the worst of FOSS. Developers fell back on the old saw of, "We're not getting paid, this is volunteer work, and you're lucky we've done any of this for you." Yes, that's true, in part, but the other side to the story is that it's clear developers WANT people to use it. If they didn't, there would not have been a story submitted to Slashdot about this.
So if you want users to use and love your program, listen to them. If you want to do what you want, then do it - but don't wonder why users don't like it or why there's fewer downloads of later versions people don't like.
I used Amarok on Linux, hated it once it got to 2.0, but couldn't find one that was as good as the earlier version (and didn't find out about Clementine until much later). Eventually I switched to OS X, and found other Linux music players ported, but Amarok is still not ported - it relies on MacPorts, which is notorious for being unstable and problematical when updated. Developing an OS X port would be easier than developing a Windows port, yet after years it hasn't been done.
All this has proved that Amarok developers just want to do their own thing and don't give a damn about what users want - yet they still want users to download and use it.
And until they catch on to this, Amarok, in any version, will still suck and will never reach the usefulness it had in version 1.3 and 1.4.
Kind of shocking the guys at Slashdot would miss something as big as this. Wonder if they're just too young and inexperienced to know about Woz.
(Yeah, I know they're not -- which means only temporary idiocy could explain them making that mistake!)
You've described it pretty well. One of their earliest cases was in Richmond, VA and I sat in to videotape a lot of the depositions. (That's how long it's been going on -- VHS and SVHS were still in use when they started suing everyone. That was around 2000-2001.)
They admitted in depositions they were in on the meetings when the standards were drawn up and had no reason for not objecting to designs that were supposedly theirs.
I have to admit, the Rambus lawyers were polite and easy to work with. The lawyers for the other company (a German firm) were mostly from one New York office and were just plain rude and nasty.
I remember one deposition in particular where there was a top memory expert giving testimony and they asked him about flip-flops and if they were memory. They (the Rambus lawyers) were trying to get him to say a flip-flop was a one bit memory and he kept saying, "Under certain conditions." The lawyer was stumped and started getting worse and worse (the only time I saw a Rambus lawyer start to get nasty) because he not only couldn't get him to give the answer they wanted, but the lawyer had no understanding of what any Electronics 101 student would know. I had a hard time not laughing and shaking the camera during the time that topic was being covered. It was pretty clear to me that lawyer had not fully prepared and didn't know at all what the topic was with flip-flops. I would have loved to have stayed in that one all day, since I figured it would only get more technical and confuse the lawyer even more, but someone took my place so I could finish some editing.
I'm not familiar with you or your posts, elrous0, but this comment is enough for you to never gain any credibility with me on this topic (and likely other ones as well), since it tells us that you are thinking in absolutes and you see anyone who disagrees or speaks up for Apple in any way as a fan boy.
Guess what? It's not all black and white. You may say you know that, but your comments show otherwise.
Any 1st year calculus student should know both that it's been proven that Pi is irrational and does NOT repeat, but should be able to do that proof on their own.
Either way, it's a wasted question. Years ago, when Ma Bell was the only phone company and they came out with touch-tone phones, they patented the arrangement with 1-2-3 at the top. So if you want to make a calculator that uses that, you'll have to pay a fee.
So, I take it, you live in or have lived in that area so you know these people?
And if you stick a really nasty looking syringe on it, it makes a great Deathstar interrogation system.
Fox News didn't start leaning to the left. The intent from the start was not to provide news made up of facts, but to provide "news" that helped that group feel good about their beliefs and standings. There's an article on the Rolling Stone website, I think it's current now (5/31/11) on Roger Ailes. His intent from the start was to present the news as he saw it, with is anything but fair and balanced.
Fox News was never intended as anything more than a propaganda machine for the Republican Party. It's based on fear, and so is the internal organization. Even Rupert Murdoch thinks Ailes is kind of whack because of the things he believes, but as long as Fox News brings in more money than any other part of Fox, including the movie division, they're going to get whatever they want.
I know it won't help, but I've been to Germany, Luxembourg, France, Andorra, Spain, Switzerland, Italy, Yugoslavia and even Lichtenstein.
I've seen them and most of those countries are quite beautiful. Yes, even Yugoslavia.
I know he'll say I'm a liberal plant, but if he has the balls, he can always go himself and see. If he's right, he'll see it. If he's wrong -- well, he won't be able to accept it.
Do they think people are really that unaware of the problems with their network that they'll believe that AT&T LTE will work any better than AT&T as it is?
It's all in the question -- ask the right question and the answer is obvious.
It's not if something happened because you're in Vegas.
It's not what we should do.
It's who we can contact for help -- in other words, "Who ya gonna call?"
And that question pretty much tells us who should be dealing with this whole thing.
Nah, I know a few chicks who want much more than just babes in spandex or leather. So I figure there's gotta be lasers and spaceships.
I hate to agree.
I don't think the people behind SyFy now have the brains to make it work as a premium network. They're stuck with a genre network and they know nothing about the genre and just need to rebrand it as "20-something and Stupid!" and get it over with.
It'd be cool to find a real SF network that played old classics (like UFO or others you don't see much or at all) as well as new and original productions.
Caprica shot themselves in the foot by running 3-4 episodes in a row that did nothing but give you reasons to not trust or despise characters.
But, and speaking from the point of view of someone with a writing, literature, and film background, SG:U was actually very well written and acted and once I saw that, I didn't expect it to last long on SyFy. And, honestly, I didn't expect many "SF fans" to go for it, since, as much as many protest they want something that challenges them intellectually, all many of them want are lasers, spaceships, and babes in spandex or leather.
Guess you made your point. It's fixed now.
And this thread will look silly to anyone reading it with the correct veresion in place.
I'm glad to hear from someone else who likes DS9.
I came within a hair's breadth of writing for TNG, but they shut the door on all freelancers to rush through the 2 parter with Spock in it, then Roddenberry died, and by the time they would even talk to freelancers again, I was dealing with a divorce and not at a point where I could worry about anything but the immediate issues around me.
While I loved TNG, I think DS9 showed a higher level of quality than any of the other Trek shows, and I always suspected that's why many Trekkies didn't like it: It actually was outside the box and had real, flawed characters with ongoing conflicts that were about more than phasers and variable-tri-phase inverters. Speaking critically, the writers had more freedom on DS9 and I think that led to a higher quality of writing than on the other shows. Part of that was it wasn't constrained by Roddenberry's later limits he put on TNG. (And boy, did I hit those limits every time I pitched -- it's interesting that one of the big TNG writers, Ron Moore, later got notice for running what was often called "the best sf show on TV" by breaking the very limits he was required to follow while working on TNG.)
And even in the USA, I just checked. In spite of what the article says, the original is NOT available, at least not yet on my account. It's still DVD only.
The only version of Trek available for Instant Watch on my USA account is the 2009 movie.
I guess FF people think so. Why else would each version require more and more and MORE memory and CPU time?
I can't even use FF in a multi-tasking environment anymore because it's gotten so big.
He was originally VERY opposed to creating the charity and it was his Father and wife who convinced him to do it.
His kids are also not going to inherit much. Both he and his Father are quite active in insisting on high inheritance taxes because they believe the next generation should not inherit much wealth.
Considering how much he has, he really won't notice it at all in his lifestyle if he gave away 3/4 of his wealth.
What about .ccccccuuuuuuuuummmmmm?
(Hey, have you ever tried screaming "orgasm" intelligibly at that point?)
I'm not going for .xxx. I figure porn is a business so I'm using .com until they do it right and I can use .cum.