Plus: I do like how Vista added the "no to all", which goes nicely with "yes to all". This cuts down on a lot of same-question asking when doing file operations. Yay for that.
Minus: They totally botched up the column resizing method on the "details" view of Explorer. In XP, it's very cut & dry. YOu hover your mouse between the bars to resize them. Why is this now such a pain in Vista? I swear you have to go to the right a bit to it. It doesn't seem synced up with the mouse pointer "hot spot" end. It was never something that was broken to begin with, but they decided to "improve it". Even switching back to the classic Windows theme(I always do this to make remote desktop faster) still gives you the problem.
I do wonder if Vista fixed the annoying "searching for items" problem. You go into explorer, and you might have a few network drives. You quickly see a flash of your whole file tree, then it blanks it out for your convienence while it "searches for items". This might take a while.
Did they also fix the irritating "my network places"? It's tricky to remove the months-old entries in there(which pile up after a while), since if you directly click on one of the locations that might not be there anymore, it takes a 2 minute wait to say no. Then it's a bit annoying to delete.
The latest IE took TOO MUCH out of the freakin' gui. Bring back the basic buttons. I don't care if it takes up more real estate. I've gotten too used to the firefox button set.
Doesn't TiVO run on Linux? That seems to be a widespread success, even though it's moreso in the living room than on the desktop. Of course, nobody knows it's linux underneath since it has a nice interface up-front. No kernel recompiles, etc that would scare non-techies away.
What about the form that is around the captcha, generally a new account application, etc? What if those were to be made dynamic so the automated software trying to look for a hard-coded form fail?
Have the captcha be at the beginning, sometimes middle, sometimes at the end of the form. Mix it up a bit. Have no two application forms look the same.
Or better yet, have questions that modern computer AI has yet to break. Show a picture of a circle and ask "is this round?" or "is this not round?". Generally make the questions a bit more complex as AI gets better.
I wonder if there could be some sort of AI research project that works in conjunction with a captcha system.
My xmas present from my mom was the 8880 super car. The be-all-end-all of realistic cars at the time from Technic. 4 wheel steering, 4 speed tranny, all wheel drive. She hid it from me in the coat closet(I never found it).
I remember being around 10 years old, and, out of sheer boredom, built a guitar, with the neck being mostly made out of technic holed beams. I used rubber bands for strings. Later revisions came with whammy bars(that only worked on one string). I took earplug(like earbud on an ipod), and taped it to the body-ends of the strings. Instant pickups. Sounded like crap, but was fun for a kid.
Then moved onto hardcore Technic projects. Helicopter innards, airplanes with working controls(one even had pitch trim using worm gears). Then I moved onto car transmissions, which would occupy me for years.
My holy grail of projects was to make a 4-speed with reverse transmission. I had it drafted on (graph)paper, but ran into some snags finally building it. Many years later I would rebuild the transmission+overdrive on a '79 Triumph Spitfire, and it was like playing with Lego again.
Ah to be a kid again and have tons of free time to complete it and build a working CVT.
I knew my free time was up when I bought a 1.5 Mindstorms set, and it sat untouched for years(still have it).
This is the same website where users put ALL their pics to be "private", then put up a myspace slide show where you can not only view the pics, you can click on them & see the album in question.
There's often a work policy that auto-deletes messages after X days because of that.
What's great about that features is that it auto-deletes all IMPORTANT emails that you want to keep archived. Most notably: registration numbers(for software), passwords for health care providers, info for stock options, and so forth. All of it, gone. Guess I could back it up to gmail or something off-site, but it is still a pain.
That's what gets me. I just don't get the point of a thinner notebook, and if I'm reading this right, needs dongles for every port. Never have I seen anybody complain about laptops being overly thick. Nobody says, "wow, I wish this notebook was 2cm thinner, as this would be revolutionary!". Of course, we've seen Apple innovations go the way of smaller iPods, on the x & y axis. Now the laptop is just smaller on the Z plane.
You want innovation? How about a cheaper laptop? A laptop that costs less than $500 that has all the features of competing laptops $1200+ would get my attention.
Want more innovation? Shrink the size of those dang power bricks. We can make everything else smaller in computing, except the power supply?
Of course, any laptop I've seen that's smaller & cuter at the store, the prices astronomically rise. I have an hp zd7000 laptop from work, and frankly don't need the monster size. I'd rather have a smaller screen & a right-side Windows key.
Forget the Air, I'll wait for the bigger-screen size Asus EEE & save over a grand. That'll be nice to take to the coffee shop to check mail, surf the web, etc.
If we get rid of those, we'll be severing the last remaining connection to the machine's origins.
Good riddance. Trying to mitigate ribbon IDE cables + daisy-chained power cables was never fun. I just wonder why it took 27 years to do it. Really, I will have no gloating of the PCs of tomorrow having no inherent design flaws with PCs of yesteryear. The less of a rat's nest of cables in a PC, the happier I will be. No more worries of cables getting in the way of fan blades, etc.
I remember on an episode of SeaQuest DSV these hacker kids had a keyboard that can only be described as having been punctured inward. Imagine 2 bowls next to each other, and the keys are on the bottom surface. Supposedly this was more ergonomic, but I can't see how. Anyone know what I'm talking about? Naturally, it wasn't listed in TFA.
HP keyboards: They for some reason omitted the "windows key" to the right of the spacebar, like all the other keyboards have. I find myself missing it quite a bit do to quick shortcuts(bring up explorer, run, etc). My work keyboard has since been replaced with a cheesy Logitech one. Someday I'll get around to repmapping the "context menu key"(which I have never used ever) to the windows key on my HP laptop.
That was my first thought too: trade secrets. I'm sure "Skip" at the NSA will be more than happy to sign a NDA before inspecting the laptop, with hundreds of impatient travellers waiting behind me.
Also, it should go the other way. If I own a company, and trade secrets are stolen & stuffed in a laptop, the TSA should be fully responsible for confiscating the laptop if it tries to leave the country. I mean, after all, you ARE inspecting the laptop for something, right? Stolen secrets are a bad thing.
Also, top secret government information is stored on laptop. Imagine the hilarity that ensues when top government brass shows Skip the TSA employee the powerpoint presentation for invading Iran. I mean, the gubment inspects its own laptops, right?
If you're going to be sifting through EVERY laptop that passes in & out of the country, you are now liable & responsible for many many wonderful new things. If not, what the heck are you inspecting laptops for in the first place? Fun?
I remember being first exposed to Dysfunctional Family Circuis in paper form in 1995. A manager had the comics, loosely printed, not in book form or anything. Not sure if it was connected to the official DFC website though.
I highly doubt excess unsold Wiis would end up in landfills(literally or metaphorically). IIRC Atari made more copies of the ET game than there were 2600 consoles sold. Wha, you gonna buy TWO copies of the same game? A console itself is different.
I wonder if the writers' strike, resulting in numerous TV reruns(& reality shows) would give a boost in video gaming. No new episodes of your favorite shows? Fire up the console then.
In Roseville, MN there was a CompUSA(real close to a BB), and there was this computer guy working the desk. He was in his 40s, and it was hilarious to watch him work. He berated customers with his know-it-all condascending attitude. Fun to watch a crowd rile him up with dumb computer questions. It was more fun to watch him do his act than actually shop there.
I too stayed way too long with the TI-99/4A, up until 1990, until I got a used Atari 800XL. Yes, I also had the PEB & such, learning to BBS on it in 1989.
I have. I simply don't use Facebook since it requires your real name, and don't mention my real name on myspace. While I have 3 coworkers on my myspace friends list, they know the barriers between work & personal life.
Prosecuting MP3 downloaders = bad Prosecuting GPL violators = good
Huh?
I swear, once a year we get some Slashdot story of a GPL violation where the submitter tries to stir up an angry fedora-hat & rimmed glasses wearing mob, and fails.
Slashdot Mirror
Plus: I do like how Vista added the "no to all", which goes nicely with "yes to all". This cuts down on a lot of same-question asking when doing file operations. Yay for that.
Minus: They totally botched up the column resizing method on the "details" view of Explorer. In XP, it's very cut & dry. YOu hover your mouse between the bars to resize them. Why is this now such a pain in Vista? I swear you have to go to the right a bit to it. It doesn't seem synced up with the mouse pointer "hot spot" end. It was never something that was broken to begin with, but they decided to "improve it". Even switching back to the classic Windows theme(I always do this to make remote desktop faster) still gives you the problem.
I do wonder if Vista fixed the annoying "searching for items" problem. You go into explorer, and you might have a few network drives. You quickly see a flash of your whole file tree, then it blanks it out for your convienence while it "searches for items". This might take a while.
Did they also fix the irritating "my network places"? It's tricky to remove the months-old entries in there(which pile up after a while), since if you directly click on one of the locations that might not be there anymore, it takes a 2 minute wait to say no. Then it's a bit annoying to delete.
The latest IE took TOO MUCH out of the freakin' gui. Bring back the basic buttons. I don't care if it takes up more real estate. I've gotten too used to the firefox button set.
Doesn't TiVO run on Linux? That seems to be a widespread success, even though it's moreso in the living room than on the desktop. Of course, nobody knows it's linux underneath since it has a nice interface up-front. No kernel recompiles, etc that would scare non-techies away.
What about the form that is around the captcha, generally a new account application, etc? What if those were to be made dynamic so the automated software trying to look for a hard-coded form fail?
Have the captcha be at the beginning, sometimes middle, sometimes at the end of the form. Mix it up a bit. Have no two application forms look the same.
Or better yet, have questions that modern computer AI has yet to break. Show a picture of a circle and ask "is this round?" or "is this not round?". Generally make the questions a bit more complex as AI gets better.
I wonder if there could be some sort of AI research project that works in conjunction with a captcha system.
My xmas present from my mom was the 8880 super car. The be-all-end-all of realistic cars at the time from Technic. 4 wheel steering, 4 speed tranny, all wheel drive. She hid it from me in the coat closet(I never found it).
The embarassing thing about it: I was 18.
I remember being around 10 years old, and, out of sheer boredom, built a guitar, with the neck being mostly made out of technic holed beams. I used rubber bands for strings. Later revisions came with whammy bars(that only worked on one string). I took earplug(like earbud on an ipod), and taped it to the body-ends of the strings. Instant pickups. Sounded like crap, but was fun for a kid.
Then moved onto hardcore Technic projects. Helicopter innards, airplanes with working controls(one even had pitch trim using worm gears). Then I moved onto car transmissions, which would occupy me for years.
My holy grail of projects was to make a 4-speed with reverse transmission. I had it drafted on (graph)paper, but ran into some snags finally building it. Many years later I would rebuild the transmission+overdrive on a '79 Triumph Spitfire, and it was like playing with Lego again.
Ah to be a kid again and have tons of free time to complete it and build a working CVT.
I knew my free time was up when I bought a 1.5 Mindstorms set, and it sat untouched for years(still have it).
This is the same website where users put ALL their pics to be "private", then put up a myspace slide show where you can not only view the pics, you can click on them & see the album in question.
* smacks forehead *
There's often a work policy that auto-deletes messages after X days because of that.
What's great about that features is that it auto-deletes all IMPORTANT emails that you want to keep archived. Most notably: registration numbers(for software), passwords for health care providers, info for stock options, and so forth. All of it, gone. Guess I could back it up to gmail or something off-site, but it is still a pain.
That's what gets me. I just don't get the point of a thinner notebook, and if I'm reading this right, needs dongles for every port. Never have I seen anybody complain about laptops being overly thick. Nobody says, "wow, I wish this notebook was 2cm thinner, as this would be revolutionary!". Of course, we've seen Apple innovations go the way of smaller iPods, on the x & y axis. Now the laptop is just smaller on the Z plane.
You want innovation? How about a cheaper laptop? A laptop that costs less than $500 that has all the features of competing laptops $1200+ would get my attention.
Want more innovation? Shrink the size of those dang power bricks. We can make everything else smaller in computing, except the power supply?
Of course, any laptop I've seen that's smaller & cuter at the store, the prices astronomically rise. I have an hp zd7000 laptop from work, and frankly don't need the monster size. I'd rather have a smaller screen & a right-side Windows key.
Forget the Air, I'll wait for the bigger-screen size Asus EEE & save over a grand. That'll be nice to take to the coffee shop to check mail, surf the web, etc.
If we get rid of those, we'll be severing the last remaining connection to the machine's origins.
Good riddance. Trying to mitigate ribbon IDE cables + daisy-chained power cables was never fun. I just wonder why it took 27 years to do it. Really, I will have no gloating of the PCs of tomorrow having no inherent design flaws with PCs of yesteryear. The less of a rat's nest of cables in a PC, the happier I will be. No more worries of cables getting in the way of fan blades, etc.
Comcast to be expected not to support it even by 2020. It's Comcastic!
I remember on an episode of SeaQuest DSV these hacker kids had a keyboard that can only be described as having been punctured inward. Imagine 2 bowls next to each other, and the keys are on the bottom surface. Supposedly this was more ergonomic, but I can't see how. Anyone know what I'm talking about? Naturally, it wasn't listed in TFA.
HP keyboards: They for some reason omitted the "windows key" to the right of the spacebar, like all the other keyboards have. I find myself missing it quite a bit do to quick shortcuts(bring up explorer, run, etc). My work keyboard has since been replaced with a cheesy Logitech one. Someday I'll get around to repmapping the "context menu key"(which I have never used ever) to the windows key on my HP laptop.
That was my first thought too: trade secrets. I'm sure "Skip" at the NSA will be more than happy to sign a NDA before inspecting the laptop, with hundreds of impatient travellers waiting behind me.
Also, it should go the other way. If I own a company, and trade secrets are stolen & stuffed in a laptop, the TSA should be fully responsible for confiscating the laptop if it tries to leave the country. I mean, after all, you ARE inspecting the laptop for something, right? Stolen secrets are a bad thing.
Also, top secret government information is stored on laptop. Imagine the hilarity that ensues when top government brass shows Skip the TSA employee the powerpoint presentation for invading Iran. I mean, the gubment inspects its own laptops, right?
If you're going to be sifting through EVERY laptop that passes in & out of the country, you are now liable & responsible for many many wonderful new things. If not, what the heck are you inspecting laptops for in the first place? Fun?
They spend $10-$20 to buy a gigabit ethernet adapter.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the PS3 already have this? If so, good thinking on Sony's part thinking ahead.
I remember being first exposed to Dysfunctional Family Circuis in paper form in 1995. A manager had the comics, loosely printed, not in book form or anything. Not sure if it was connected to the official DFC website though.
It could suck more if JonKatz did a 30-page story about the story being posted.
It's BAD name recognition.
It's like taking a brand new car model and calling it "Yugo". Sure, everyone's heard of Yugo, but it's at the butt of all automotive related jokes.
I highly doubt excess unsold Wiis would end up in landfills(literally or metaphorically). IIRC Atari made more copies of the ET game than there were 2600 consoles sold. Wha, you gonna buy TWO copies of the same game? A console itself is different.
You're recommending* the downloading of RealPlayer on Slashdot? Turn in your keys, sir.
I wonder if the writers' strike, resulting in numerous TV reruns(& reality shows) would give a boost in video gaming. No new episodes of your favorite shows? Fire up the console then.
In Roseville, MN there was a CompUSA(real close to a BB), and there was this computer guy working the desk. He was in his 40s, and it was hilarious to watch him work. He berated customers with his know-it-all condascending attitude. Fun to watch a crowd rile him up with dumb computer questions. It was more fun to watch him do his act than actually shop there.
I too stayed way too long with the TI-99/4A, up until 1990, until I got a used Atari 800XL. Yes, I also had the PEB & such, learning to BBS on it in 1989.
I have. I simply don't use Facebook since it requires your real name, and don't mention my real name on myspace. While I have 3 coworkers on my myspace friends list, they know the barriers between work & personal life.
So let me get this straight.
Prosecuting MP3 downloaders = bad
Prosecuting GPL violators = good
Huh?
I swear, once a year we get some Slashdot story of a GPL violation where the submitter tries to stir up an angry fedora-hat & rimmed glasses wearing mob, and fails.
...that requires your REAL FUCKING NAME about privacy issues?
Hilarious.