Microsoft actually does have some products with such ridiculous licensing terms, though. Office SharePoint Server, for example, has a special "Internet" version for if your site is on the Internet. You either have to pay per client, or accept restrictions placed on your content that, frankly, are completely asinine. From Microsoft's FAQ:
If I am using SharePoint for an Internet facing website do I still need to purchase Client Access Licenses ("CALs")?
If you are creating an Internet- or Extranet-facing website, it is recommended that you use Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Internet sites. This license does not require the purchase of Client Access Licenses. However, all content, information, and applications on the "Internet Sites" edition must be accessible to non-employees. Websites hosted using an "Internet Sites" edition cannot be accessed by employees creating, sharing, or collaborating on content which is solely for internal use only, such as an intranet portal scenario.
Now, consider: do you really want Balmer turning into Blofeld?
Heck yeah! If I'm going be captured and strapped into some diabolical machine from which I have to escape, I want it to be one that drops me in a vat of boiling sharks, or cuts me in half with a laser, or something cool like that. A steadily advancing comfy chair just doesn't have the same panache.
You could use calls to a few functions in Eprom, but CP/M was the best you could get as an OS, and then you needed the plug-in card with a real Z80 chip on it!
Well, there was also GEOS, which is pretty impressive considering the limitations of the machines it ran on. But I don't recall ever actually seeing it in the wild.
And what would you want to modify Earth's orbit for anyways?
Martian: My people worked themselves to extinction converting their planet into a navigatable space vessel, using similar technology tested and proven on another nearby planet.
If you'll pardon my saying so, that seems like a rather foolish decision. I've called Microsoft's product activation support before, and I seriously doubt you'd have found it to be more of a hassle than finding a crack.
When I've called them it's never been for anything that required them to issue a new key, so maybe you have a case here where they'd be more difficult to deal with, but you've opted to trust some warez site to modify your operating system and not root you while it's at it, without even bothering to try the support avenues available to you.
The product activation in XP and Vista is certainly unnecessary and obnoxious, but I think it falls well short of being *so* obnoxious that blindly executing untrustworthy code would seem like a reasonable response.
Another good example would be those self-playing Super Mario World levels. They're nothing but gameplay, but obviously qualify as "creative expression".
So then you're suggesting that wheelchair-bound people can't or wouldn't want to do things like run a gym or buy a gift for someone who can use a stairmaster? The alternative is of course that you just didn't think of it, which should well illustrate the problem of assuming there's no need to accommodate people with disabilities.
The one in my neighbor's back yard is made of solid sheet steel, weighs a ton and is about 8 feet in diameter. You could stir-fry enough Chinese food in it to feed the whole neighborhood.
Or you could just sell it, seeing as it's worth five hundred bucks or so (depending on how figurative your tons are) as scrap.
Indeed, I'm not suggesting that you can have more options without more work, and more things that can go wrong. Like any other feature, you have to decide if it's valuable enough to your users to justify the effort.
That said, a third solution to this problem occurs to me: ignore it. Someone might try to enable focus follows mouse and Mac OS-style menu bars, but it won't work well, and they'll have to decide which they want more. People will probably file bugs against it, and closing them all without a fix would look pretty arrogant, but it's still a solution that would satisfy more users than simply not having one or both of the options.
Great, each of those might be something that is wanted by the user. However if you switch them both on you end up with an unusable application, since the moment you move your mouse into the direction of the menu you lose focus. You simply can't combine both.
Sure you can. Wait until you have an event other than mouse movement to actually change the focus. Then keyboard input goes to whatever window the cursor is pointing at, but the menu won't change en route to the menu bar.
Or you could delay changing the menu bar for a bit and see if the cursor lands there. Since the whole point of putting menus at the top of the screen is that you can get to them quickly, the delay ought to be imperceptibly short.
Slashdot Mirror
First you do this part:
Then you do this part:
Easy. :)
Don't fall for this folks. The real 84249 is UID 84229.
Microsoft actually does have some products with such ridiculous licensing terms, though. Office SharePoint Server, for example, has a special "Internet" version for if your site is on the Internet. You either have to pay per client, or accept restrictions placed on your content that, frankly, are completely asinine. From Microsoft's FAQ:
Heck yeah! If I'm going be captured and strapped into some diabolical machine from which I have to escape, I want it to be one that drops me in a vat of boiling sharks, or cuts me in half with a laser, or something cool like that. A steadily advancing comfy chair just doesn't have the same panache.
Well, there was also GEOS, which is pretty impressive considering the limitations of the machines it ran on. But I don't recall ever actually seeing it in the wild.
I would buy this in a second, if only I could decide whether I'd rather play as Diablo tormenting Hello Kitty, or as Hello Kitty tormenting Diablo.
Martian: My people worked themselves to extinction converting their planet into a navigatable space vessel, using similar technology tested and proven on another nearby planet.
Zim: Another planet? Why would you do all that?
Martian: Because it's cool.
Yeah. Considering folks have been calling them that since the sixteenth century or so, it's safe to say you are the very definition of old fashioned.
If you'll pardon my saying so, that seems like a rather foolish decision. I've called Microsoft's product activation support before, and I seriously doubt you'd have found it to be more of a hassle than finding a crack.
When I've called them it's never been for anything that required them to issue a new key, so maybe you have a case here where they'd be more difficult to deal with, but you've opted to trust some warez site to modify your operating system and not root you while it's at it, without even bothering to try the support avenues available to you.
The product activation in XP and Vista is certainly unnecessary and obnoxious, but I think it falls well short of being *so* obnoxious that blindly executing untrustworthy code would seem like a reasonable response.
Another good example would be those self-playing Super Mario World levels. They're nothing but gameplay, but obviously qualify as "creative expression".
So then you're suggesting that wheelchair-bound people can't or wouldn't want to do things like run a gym or buy a gift for someone who can use a stairmaster? The alternative is of course that you just didn't think of it, which should well illustrate the problem of assuming there's no need to accommodate people with disabilities.
Tweakachu! I choose you!
Or you could just sell it, seeing as it's worth five hundred bucks or so (depending on how figurative your tons are) as scrap.
Wanna know who didn't?
Clinton (D-NY), Nay
Okay, so where is OS/1, smart guy?
This is an excellent example of the difference between "warranted" and "advisable".
Are you aware you're effectively betting against people finding a way to distribute porn on Usenet?
It's a black hole. I think it'd be more of a 'SCHLURRRRRP!'
Anybody who makes a sufficiently large contribution to their campaign, apparently.
I was under the impression many people do do that. Isn't that fairly common in NYC?
I think you have overlooked the fatal flaw in your plan: that it hinges on students paying attention in English class.
Where the large crowd of people are waiting to get through the security checkpoint, for example.
Heh. That would be troublesome. Still, all you'd have to do is maximize the window.
Indeed, I'm not suggesting that you can have more options without more work, and more things that can go wrong. Like any other feature, you have to decide if it's valuable enough to your users to justify the effort.
That said, a third solution to this problem occurs to me: ignore it. Someone might try to enable focus follows mouse and Mac OS-style menu bars, but it won't work well, and they'll have to decide which they want more. People will probably file bugs against it, and closing them all without a fix would look pretty arrogant, but it's still a solution that would satisfy more users than simply not having one or both of the options.
Sure you can. Wait until you have an event other than mouse movement to actually change the focus. Then keyboard input goes to whatever window the cursor is pointing at, but the menu won't change en route to the menu bar.
Or you could delay changing the menu bar for a bit and see if the cursor lands there. Since the whole point of putting menus at the top of the screen is that you can get to them quickly, the delay ought to be imperceptibly short.