If the spirit rover can last for a year on Mars, why do we need to send astronauts (naughts?)? Wouldn't the money be better spent on more robots?
The robots cannot make decisions on the fly, other than extremely simple obstacle avoidance.
Currently.
When a decision is to be made, the robot talks to us, we think about it, and then command the robot. This takes a huge amount of time.
Currently.
An astronaut can walk faster than these robots can move.
Compared to our current state of the art.
I'm being somewhat whimsical but you hopefully see my point - all the limitations you mention are simple, near-term technical challenges. They could be overcome with another few years' worth of development.
I think we should send humans, but only after we've sent so many damn robots that we can virtually (and thoroughly) tour Mars by telepresence beforehand.
I thought they could shut down the GPS in sections at will already? Didn't they do this when they invaded Iraq (er, 2nd time)?
When Clinton allowed for more accurate GPS signals to be used by civilians, it sure seemed like they just flipped a switch one day and it was suddenly more accurate for everyone...
which brings me back to my idea from 10 years ago.. the charging mat/table. a simple coil in a mat or under the table and then secondary coils built in the electronics.
I too have been looking around at the various 'reviews' popping up online. The PSP looks pretty nice, but everyone should keep in mind that they are not really aimed at the same audience.
The PSP is overpowered as a game machine. Obviously Nintendo knows the magic formula for handheld games is to keep it simple, innovate with the control scheme, and keep your battery life up at the expense of nearly everything else. As a pure game machine, the NDS probably wins in the long run (literally).
However - and its a big however - the PSP is not just a game machine. Sony has made some gut-wrenching design decisions (for them, anyways) to keep this thing open to its users... and the result is actually aimed more at the nascent phone game market, the GameBoy market, the portable audio and video market, and the wireless connectivity market. Its trying to carve a new niche, and this is exactly what Sony is good at.
Witness: a plain USB port with full standards-compliant access to the memory card as a drive volume. Regular folders named with things like 'photos' and 'music'. The screen - which is much better than the DS - is something I could easily see as superior against an iPod Photo. WiFi - the verdict is still out on how this will expand - but its standard, and not some proprietary version. MP3 support, also a major shift from Sony's ATRAC3 (although I guess it will play that too).
And finally let us not ignore the fact that it ships with white headphones. This can mean only one thing: invasion.
As for battery life, it looks pretty good to me, as I rarely play my PS2 for more than 3 hours (ahem) at a time... but that is personally a subjective thing. I do think its still to early to measure realistically as it will likely go up as programmers learn the tricks necessary to optimize/minimize battery drain. (Of course it might go down again as they all try to compete with Metal Gear Acid).
And finally, if you can find a plug, the game equation vs. the DS is a no-brainer if you ask me (peanut gallery: no one did.). The PSP is more capable graphically and those optical cartridges will lay waste to the tiny memory storage of a DS cartridge. The impromptu WiFiLAN party will rock with one of these.
So for me - the DS is neat, I like it. But I've never bought a GameBoy or any other portable game system because I don't want to carry just one gadget for that specific purpose. If it keeps some music, my picures (in a nice display), plays movies and really cool games, and does even a little WiFi access.. hell yeah, I'll take one.
If a person is head of a multi-national company with 150,000 employees, is that person personally criminally liable for the actions of every single employee?
The details of the Bhopal disaster are well-documented. There is no new detail to speak of. UC is obviously, blatantly, indefensably guilty of ignoring critical safety precautions that directly resulted in this massive loss of life. And you, danheskett, sit there behind your keyboard and actually try to explain away and defend these actions with the most blinkered, ignorant red herrings and non sequiturs. Its fucking astonishing, and sickening. Why on earth you would deign to take this position is a mystery, unpenetrated by your bloviatings. Warren Anderson should go to jail and UC should have to pay restitution. Forget Indian law, forget corporate non-person responsability. They should do what's right. They haven't. It's a massive crime, and it's just that simple.
Now, turn it around and look at the game boy and the PSP. The PSP hardware looks like it's going to eat batteries in no time flat. Remember the Game Gear? The PSP has no library. It's PS2 vs. Game Cube with the big N on the winning side this time. The PSP is just another Sega Game Gear or Atari Lynx. Nothing special, plain old portable with fancy graphics and no battery life. The DS brings fantastic innovation, like the wireless networking. We'll see about the second screen, but it's at least a move towards something creative.
I generally agree with your points - although there are a two great big caveats worth pointing out that might change the game.
Convergence - my pet theory is that the PSP is not designed simply to take on the DS in the game space, but also the iPod/MP3 player market, the nascent portable video market, and some of the wireless gadget market. Of course it is way overpowered to compete with the oh-so-simple GameBoy, but that's a hint right there. The PSP has 802.11, and will play MP3 format. These are big design decisions from Sony's point of view, particularly the MP3 support as up until now they have stuck doggedly with ATRAC.
Furthermore, we have seen some interesting moves from Sony in regards to expanding the PS2 beyond its original game console roots, such as the EyeToy. With the extra hardware in the PSP they can leverage the thing to more powerful pursuits, like ad-hoc WiFi videoconferencing for example. Nintendo could do something like this as well but historically its this space where Sony really shines.
Form factor - the PSP is probably sexier than the DS. The point is up for debate depending on your taste of course but I can easily see the sleek black PSP appealing to the older (read: richer) crowd more than the DS. I have not played with the DS yet but I have concerns about that touchpad deal - we should all applaud Nintendo for pushing the envelope but let us not forget they have pushed it too far in the past (*cough* VirtualBoy *cough*). I don't think its a disaster or anything but it hardly seems like the kind of feature people will instantly get - and want- when they first see it. Perhaps the software innovation department will help out here.
Sony obviously has a problem on its hands with the late launch of the PSP in terms of Xmas sales but I would hardly count them out of the game just yet. Nintendo has the jump on the early market but who knows, we may just see the same phenomenon with the handhelds that we have witnessed over the last 1.5 years with the consoles - that consumers have often chosen not one or the either, but both.
Kerry is more popular because the rest of the world is even stupider than the average American voter.
Congratulations - you have constructed a recursively stupid statement! By merely typing that sentence, you disprove its validity the instant it is made. Nicely done.
How is kepress-click-dragging with a one-button mouse any more "ergonomic" than click-dragging with a multi-button mouse? Seems to me that using one finger for either a left, middle or right mouse click, while dragging, is at least as easy as using one finger to click left and another finger on another hand to hold down a key....
All I can say is, try it. For single-click actions I agree with you, but for held-down modifier actions there is no contest. You really don't think its any harder to hold down 3 mouse buttons simultaneously while dragging, instead of holding down two keys with one hand and the mouse in the other?
Also, using the keyboard for modifiers also gives you many more options than you could ever cram on a mouse.
Don't get me wrong - I love my Logitech mouse that I use with my Mac, its got something like 7 or 8 buttons. I have mapped them all to Expose, or page up/down, or close window (wheel press). I still use (left-handed) shift/option/control-type modifiers for all those situations that call for it.
In the first part of your post, you talk about operating keys with your left hand while steering the mouse with your left hand? THAT sounds like a tough game of twister.
Yeah that was a mistake, sorry. Meant to say right hand.
As for the other functions you describe, maybe you missed my point. Almost all the "instant shorthand" functions you describe, except the multi-key combinations (shift-option click) could be implemented via different mouse buttons --- and in most cases already ARE on the Mac, if you buy yourself a multi-button mouse. (e.g. pressing the middle mouse button while closing a Finder window...) So the issue is just "Why won't Macs ship with a multi-button mouse?"
Well to my knowledge the right button and mouse wheel are natevely supported. I think you have to define anything beyond that.
The answer for your last question, I believe is an answer to the coding practices of developers. When you do not know for sure if your entire Mac audience has multibutton mice, you must make sure that your application does not rely on a right-click for any specific action. This enforces the notion that right-clicking should not be required for any action - it should only offer shortcuts to actions or functions already available in more obvious or logical places.
You can of course buy a Mac shipped with a multibutton mouse, you just have to tell them that you want one. The fact that there is no multibutton mouse with the Apple logo on it is a bit irrelevant - they sell Logitech and other mice at the Apple Store (or any retail location).
As a Mac user, I'm annoyed that I have to "Option-Click", "Control-Click" and "Command-Click" --- i.e. make motions which require two hands, when a simple 3-button mouse would let me do all of these quickly and easily. How are these key-click combinations "more user-friendly" than single clicks on a multi-button mouse?
There are a few different reasons.
Ergonomically, it is easier to maintain a keypress while performing a dragging option, if you are using your left hand to activate the modifier (control, option) and the left hand to steer the mouse. This is a natural position for many people as one tends to keep a hand near/on the mouse while the other hovers over the keyboard for quick Undos, Cut/Copy/Pastes, etc. You can see this on the newer Logitech keyboards where they have even gone so far as to include an extra scroll wheel on the left edge of the keyboard.
Also, Macs have always used this system as it becomes instant shorthand for oft-used modified actions across many applications. I know with reasonable certainty that holding shift, option, apple-key or control will modify a mouse click in ways that are directly related to the tool I have selected. For instance holding option while closing a Finder window will close all finder windows. Or a better example, holding shift in photoshop (or any other application with a selection mode) will constrain the selection to a square aspect ratio. Further, holding option will cause the selection to grow centrally from the mouse click position. Option-shift-click will accomplish both at the same time. This is very useful.
Trying to perform any actions that require holding down buttons while click-dragging the mouse would quickly result in a weird cramped game of Twister with your fingers on the mouse.
So, does this mean that Florida won't be allowed to vote in the coming elections?
"Well, so be it. Nothing's perfect in life, so you have an election that's not quite perfect. Is it better than not having an election? "You bet," [Rumsfeld] said.
No offense, but Salon is not offering the full story,
Shit, none taken - I forget sometimes that I have an account that is cookie'd.
I won't paste the whole interview out of respect for their work but I will quote liberally the section of greatest interest.. and it is pretty specific. This is from Senator Graham's interview:
Your investigation in Congress focused on a Saudi national named Omar al-Bayoumi, who had provided extensive assistance to two of the 9/11 hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, when they lived in San Diego. You say al-Bayoumi was apparently a covert agent of the Saudi government, and from that you conclude there was official Saudi support for the plot. Yet the independent 9/11 commission came to a different conclusion. Its executive director, Philip Zelikow, has said his investigation had more access to information than yours -- including the opportunity to interview al-Bayoumi. And the commission concluded he had nothing to do with the attacks, that his contacts with the hijackers were coincidental.
Let me say that what we know about this comes primarily from FBI and CIA reports that were in the file in San Diego. And in those files, FBI agents referred to Bayoumi as being a Saudi Arabian agent or Saudi Arabian spy. In the summer of 2002, a CIA agent filed a report that said it was "incontrovertible" that terrorists were receiving assistance, financial and otherwise, from Saudis in San Diego. No. 2: Bayoumi was supposed to be working for a firm that was a subcontractor for the Saudi civil aviation authority. Yet he never showed up for work. His boss tried to fire him, and he received a letter from the Saudi civil aviation authority demanding that he be retained on their payroll despite the fact he wasn't performing any services. And the subcontracting company that employed Bayoumi was owned by a Saudi national who, according to documents seized in Bosnia, was an early financial backer of al-Qaida. Now, that's rather suspicious.
Also suspicious is the number of telephone conversations between Bayoumi and Saudi government representatives. It was a very substantial number that remains classified. Then, the event that really raised our suspicions was that shortly after Alhazmi and Almihdhar flew from Bangkok [Thailand] to Los Angeles [after attending an al-Qaida conference in Malaysia that resulted in their being added to a CIA watch list], Bayoumi tells various persons that he was going to Los Angeles to "pick up some visitors." He drives from San Diego to Los Angeles with a friend. His first stop in Los Angeles was at the consulate of the Saudi government, where he stays for an hour and meets with a diplomat named Fahad al-Thumairy, who subsequently was deported for terrorist-related activities.
After that one-hour meeting, he and that companion go to a Middle Eastern restaurant in Los Angeles to have lunch. They overhear Arabic being spoken at a nearby table. They invite the two young men who are at that table to come and join them. It turns out those two young men are Alhazmi and Almihdhar, two of the 9/11 terrorists. When I asked the staff director of the 9/11 commission about this, he thought it was just a coincidence that they met at this restaurant. I did some independent research. There are at least 134 Middle Eastern restaurants in Los Angeles. So the statistical odds of these two groups meeting at the same Middle Eastern restaurant at the same time are staggering.
You don't believe the meeting was a coincidence?
I'm almost certain this was a prearranged meeting. Later, Bayoumi takes the two terrorists to San Diego, where he introduces them to people who arrange for them to obtain [phony] Social Security cards and flying lessons.
Did the White House specifically request classification of the section on the Saudis?
Technically, it was done by the CIA, but it was at the direction of the White House. I cannot tell
The only thing I took issue with was claims about the family ties between Bush and bin Laden.
Don't be so sure just yet... Senator Graham just released a book that details a very specific occurrence dealing with the Saudi ties. Salon has a cover story today about it.
Would you consider Steve's rejection of your proposal more of the hubris for which he is famous and does it ultimately doom Apple to being a niche player?
Actually I'll take this one Rob, if you don't mind.
It's just amazing how this Apple thing has turned rational people into drooling proprietary codec loving anti-freedom freaks.
It is amazing, particularly because Apple appears to have earned it.
These 'drooling freaks' are people like my cousin, who didn't know there was any DRM, and has been using iTMS since day one. Or like my roommate - who has four Macs - also hadn't noticed, and doesn't care, and gets mad at me for even explaining it.
Don't you get it? There's no barrier here for any of these people using iTunes if - this is the tricky bit - they have not bumped their heads up against it. As far as these people concerned (and I think I can safely say its the majority of iPod/iTunes users at this point) the whole Apple music suite has done nothing but empower them to use their music in all sorts of ways they could never have before, while not restricting any of the things they used to do.
I know this is a difficult concept for a drooling open-source-loving anti-proprietary freak like yourself, but give the notion a try, will you? I'm as much for open standards as anyone but frankly at some point you have to recognize that there has to be at least a little give-and-take vis-a-vis the record industry, no matter how fucking retarded you know they are.
I don't think Firewire800 is necessary, but I am surprised Apple didn't include gigE.
Just as an interesting aside... I mentioned this to an engineer friend of mine and he pointed out that GigE controllers actually tend to throw off quite a bit of heat... maybe that was the deal-breaker.
I have a P4 based PC that is the same formfactor as the 'new' G5. 17" TFT out front with all the worky bits behind it. Guess what? Its silent. And also guess what? It costs the same as this system. And guess what? If you are willing to invest money in it, you can also get the same level of noise reduction in an off the shelf $399 P4 based system. Its very simple a case of you get what you pay for, a $399 price point doesnt lend itself to $199 in cooling technology.
And the name/make of this fantastic PC would be...?
WMP10 GUI is godly compared to Longhorn.... What the fuck is Microsoft smoking with Longhorn? 2 taskbars, 2 clocks, huge huge huge amounts of wasted space with every window having a giant banner with common (and useless) tasks across the top. Giant carnival buttons to close windows. Theyve seriously lost their minds. You could have a 24" widescreen and still barely fit 2 Longhorn Windows on screen. What in gods name?
Ok, so I went and looked at the shot you linked.
I had no idea.
Don't know what to say.
One thing I will add - there are so many, so very many things I could single out - but one thing that really struck me is the complete loss of coherence between the desktop and a 'window'. I suspect there is a window open in that shot but I really cannot know for sure. There are window-control widgets scattered all over that screen and I have no idea what any of them relate to. None of the text labels are aligned... the clock, the fucking clock... gah, I'll stop there.
Maybe they want to help sell bigger screens on purpose, who knows. (You could make the same argument about Apple - except that OS X 10.4 introduces resolution scaling in the UI, so that kills their motivation to sell big screens that way...)
Now, having said all that - let's wait until its out of beta before we bash it. But yeah I totally agree, looking at that example, Longhorn Outlook Not So Good.
Linux didn't need to catch up to become "ready for the desktop." It just had to wait for everyone else to get worse, so that users would lower their standards.
Funny and accurate.
At least, in Microsoft's case; their marketing department holds such sway over the final appearance of their apps that, once this year's laundry-list of *New Features!* gets grafted onto the old look, you end up with a cats-cradle of mismatched widgets and weird styles.
So you are completely right - all a Linux developer need do is keep their eye on the ball, and watch the competition get uglier and stupider as time goes on. Got Word?
If you are such an expert on interface design, one of the principles you may have read about would be not just arbitrarily changing things for the sake of change.
Absolutely.
Millions upon millions of people have used Windows Media Player. They have had the transport controls in the lower left for at least a couple of versions now (read several years). Why should they arbitrarily move it around now?
Because the controls have been in a bad spot for years, at this point?
Plus, you seem to be assuming that the primary way that people get a song to play is to click the "Play" button, but since this is running on a Windows PC the user has presumably been conditioned to launching things by double clicking. In this case that is a heck of a lot more convenient than single-clicking a song/movie/whatever, then *moving the mouse* (regardless of whether it's up, down, left, or right), and click on a Play button.
Sure, that's much easier. However the point of the Play button is to make it obvious to people how to play a song, and to show that the song is, in fact, playing (button highlights/changes to pause). It is easier to double-click if you know to do that. By your argument, Microsoft should just remove the Play button altogether.
Yeah, I consider the good/bad of a GUI to be a pretty subjective thing.
It is actually in two parts.
The visual design of an application is a subjective thing. Whether or not you like the style of buttons, how the rollovers look, that sort of thing. In this sense the gradients don't bother you and that is fair to say.
interface design does, in fact, follow rules that I guess you don't know about. Believe me, there are rules for these things, just like there are rules for composition in photography or good coding methods. Rules that can be broken, but only for a very, very good reason.
Some things, like colours and composition, straddle both these diciplines. This is where real UI magicx happens.
So - for example, let's use your reference to the buttons in the lower-left taking an extra second to find. It might take you an extra second. Someone else will take longer. Someone who moves the window down (even a touch, in this case) will lose sight of those controls entirely - much less likely to happen if they are at the top. Mentally, it makes the control scheme dubservient to the content. Organizationally, you must hunt through a greater sea of widgets to specifically bulls-eye the button you want. All this stuff adds up.
You can't spell it out point by point because it isn't as objective as bad code. If I look at the GUI and say, "hey, that's kinda cool looking," then that pretty much proves you wrong right there. Unless you go by some metric I don't know of?
Yes, the metric of good usability. You can take University courses on this very subject and be paid very well for it. So I think I've proven that you can spell it out. Uninformed opinion is just that, uninformed.
Again, don't take it the wrong way. This subject is a constant in my line of work, because of the lack of respect for people who do think about it professionally.
I think you said it best with, "everyone, everyone has an opinion on visual things. So if it works for you, I say, go for it."
Have you read the review? The guy gushes all over the place about how wonderful Microsoft is, and how WiMP is "the best"! Where the hell did his head go?
Up Bill's ass. This is Paul Thurrot we're talking about here. He's just a bit of a Microsoft fanboy.
Slashdot Mirror
The robots cannot make decisions on the fly, other than extremely simple obstacle avoidance.
Currently.
When a decision is to be made, the robot talks to us, we think about it, and then command the robot. This takes a huge amount of time.
Currently.
An astronaut can walk faster than these robots can move.
Compared to our current state of the art.
I'm being somewhat whimsical but you hopefully see my point - all the limitations you mention are simple, near-term technical challenges. They could be overcome with another few years' worth of development.
I think we should send humans, but only after we've sent so many damn robots that we can virtually (and thoroughly) tour Mars by telepresence beforehand.
When Clinton allowed for more accurate GPS signals to be used by civilians, it sure seemed like they just flipped a switch one day and it was suddenly more accurate for everyone...
Seen this?
The PSP is overpowered as a game machine. Obviously Nintendo knows the magic formula for handheld games is to keep it simple, innovate with the control scheme, and keep your battery life up at the expense of nearly everything else. As a pure game machine, the NDS probably wins in the long run (literally).
However - and its a big however - the PSP is not just a game machine. Sony has made some gut-wrenching design decisions (for them, anyways) to keep this thing open to its users... and the result is actually aimed more at the nascent phone game market, the GameBoy market, the portable audio and video market, and the wireless connectivity market. Its trying to carve a new niche, and this is exactly what Sony is good at.
Witness: a plain USB port with full standards-compliant access to the memory card as a drive volume. Regular folders named with things like 'photos' and 'music'. The screen - which is much better than the DS - is something I could easily see as superior against an iPod Photo. WiFi - the verdict is still out on how this will expand - but its standard, and not some proprietary version. MP3 support, also a major shift from Sony's ATRAC3 (although I guess it will play that too).
And finally let us not ignore the fact that it ships with white headphones. This can mean only one thing: invasion.
As for battery life, it looks pretty good to me, as I rarely play my PS2 for more than 3 hours (ahem) at a time... but that is personally a subjective thing. I do think its still to early to measure realistically as it will likely go up as programmers learn the tricks necessary to optimize/minimize battery drain. (Of course it might go down again as they all try to compete with Metal Gear Acid).
And finally, if you can find a plug, the game equation vs. the DS is a no-brainer if you ask me (peanut gallery: no one did.). The PSP is more capable graphically and those optical cartridges will lay waste to the tiny memory storage of a DS cartridge. The impromptu WiFiLAN party will rock with one of these.
So for me - the DS is neat, I like it. But I've never bought a GameBoy or any other portable game system because I don't want to carry just one gadget for that specific purpose. If it keeps some music, my picures (in a nice display), plays movies and really cool games, and does even a little WiFi access.. hell yeah, I'll take one.
The details of the Bhopal disaster are well-documented. There is no new detail to speak of. UC is obviously, blatantly, indefensably guilty of ignoring critical safety precautions that directly resulted in this massive loss of life. And you, danheskett, sit there behind your keyboard and actually try to explain away and defend these actions with the most blinkered, ignorant red herrings and non sequiturs. Its fucking astonishing, and sickening. Why on earth you would deign to take this position is a mystery, unpenetrated by your bloviatings. Warren Anderson should go to jail and UC should have to pay restitution. Forget Indian law, forget corporate non-person responsability. They should do what's right. They haven't. It's a massive crime, and it's just that simple.
I generally agree with your points - although there are a two great big caveats worth pointing out that might change the game.
Convergence - my pet theory is that the PSP is not designed simply to take on the DS in the game space, but also the iPod/MP3 player market, the nascent portable video market, and some of the wireless gadget market. Of course it is way overpowered to compete with the oh-so-simple GameBoy, but that's a hint right there. The PSP has 802.11, and will play MP3 format. These are big design decisions from Sony's point of view, particularly the MP3 support as up until now they have stuck doggedly with ATRAC.
Furthermore, we have seen some interesting moves from Sony in regards to expanding the PS2 beyond its original game console roots, such as the EyeToy. With the extra hardware in the PSP they can leverage the thing to more powerful pursuits, like ad-hoc WiFi videoconferencing for example. Nintendo could do something like this as well but historically its this space where Sony really shines.
Form factor - the PSP is probably sexier than the DS. The point is up for debate depending on your taste of course but I can easily see the sleek black PSP appealing to the older (read: richer) crowd more than the DS. I have not played with the DS yet but I have concerns about that touchpad deal - we should all applaud Nintendo for pushing the envelope but let us not forget they have pushed it too far in the past (*cough* VirtualBoy *cough*). I don't think its a disaster or anything but it hardly seems like the kind of feature people will instantly get - and want- when they first see it. Perhaps the software innovation department will help out here.
Sony obviously has a problem on its hands with the late launch of the PSP in terms of Xmas sales but I would hardly count them out of the game just yet. Nintendo has the jump on the early market but who knows, we may just see the same phenomenon with the handhelds that we have witnessed over the last 1.5 years with the consoles - that consumers have often chosen not one or the either, but both.
Congratulations - you have constructed a recursively stupid statement! By merely typing that sentence, you disprove its validity the instant it is made. Nicely done.
All I can say is, try it. For single-click actions I agree with you, but for held-down modifier actions there is no contest. You really don't think its any harder to hold down 3 mouse buttons simultaneously while dragging, instead of holding down two keys with one hand and the mouse in the other?
Also, using the keyboard for modifiers also gives you many more options than you could ever cram on a mouse.
Don't get me wrong - I love my Logitech mouse that I use with my Mac, its got something like 7 or 8 buttons. I have mapped them all to Expose, or page up/down, or close window (wheel press). I still use (left-handed) shift/option/control-type modifiers for all those situations that call for it.
In the first part of your post, you talk about operating keys with your left hand while steering the mouse with your left hand? THAT sounds like a tough game of twister.
Yeah that was a mistake, sorry. Meant to say right hand.
As for the other functions you describe, maybe you missed my point. Almost all the "instant shorthand" functions you describe, except the multi-key combinations (shift-option click) could be implemented via different mouse buttons --- and in most cases already ARE on the Mac, if you buy yourself a multi-button mouse. (e.g. pressing the middle mouse button while closing a Finder window...) So the issue is just "Why won't Macs ship with a multi-button mouse?"
Well to my knowledge the right button and mouse wheel are natevely supported. I think you have to define anything beyond that.
The answer for your last question, I believe is an answer to the coding practices of developers. When you do not know for sure if your entire Mac audience has multibutton mice, you must make sure that your application does not rely on a right-click for any specific action. This enforces the notion that right-clicking should not be required for any action - it should only offer shortcuts to actions or functions already available in more obvious or logical places.
You can of course buy a Mac shipped with a multibutton mouse, you just have to tell them that you want one. The fact that there is no multibutton mouse with the Apple logo on it is a bit irrelevant - they sell Logitech and other mice at the Apple Store (or any retail location).
There are a few different reasons.
Ergonomically, it is easier to maintain a keypress while performing a dragging option, if you are using your left hand to activate the modifier (control, option) and the left hand to steer the mouse. This is a natural position for many people as one tends to keep a hand near/on the mouse while the other hovers over the keyboard for quick Undos, Cut/Copy/Pastes, etc. You can see this on the newer Logitech keyboards where they have even gone so far as to include an extra scroll wheel on the left edge of the keyboard.
Also, Macs have always used this system as it becomes instant shorthand for oft-used modified actions across many applications. I know with reasonable certainty that holding shift, option, apple-key or control will modify a mouse click in ways that are directly related to the tool I have selected. For instance holding option while closing a Finder window will close all finder windows. Or a better example, holding shift in photoshop (or any other application with a selection mode) will constrain the selection to a square aspect ratio. Further, holding option will cause the selection to grow centrally from the mouse click position. Option-shift-click will accomplish both at the same time. This is very useful.
Trying to perform any actions that require holding down buttons while click-dragging the mouse would quickly result in a weird cramped game of Twister with your fingers on the mouse.
"Well, so be it. Nothing's perfect in life, so you have an election that's not quite perfect. Is it better than not having an election? "You bet," [Rumsfeld] said.
I think its a possibility.
From the makers of Return to Castle Wolfenstein!
From the makers of Quake!
I sense a pattern...
Shit, none taken - I forget sometimes that I have an account that is cookie'd.
I won't paste the whole interview out of respect for their work but I will quote liberally the section of greatest interest.. and it is pretty specific. This is from Senator Graham's interview:
Your investigation in Congress focused on a Saudi national named Omar al-Bayoumi, who had provided extensive assistance to two of the 9/11 hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, when they lived in San Diego. You say al-Bayoumi was apparently a covert agent of the Saudi government, and from that you conclude there was official Saudi support for the plot. Yet the independent 9/11 commission came to a different conclusion. Its executive director, Philip Zelikow, has said his investigation had more access to information than yours -- including the opportunity to interview al-Bayoumi. And the commission concluded he had nothing to do with the attacks, that his contacts with the hijackers were coincidental.
Let me say that what we know about this comes primarily from FBI and CIA reports that were in the file in San Diego. And in those files, FBI agents referred to Bayoumi as being a Saudi Arabian agent or Saudi Arabian spy. In the summer of 2002, a CIA agent filed a report that said it was "incontrovertible" that terrorists were receiving assistance, financial and otherwise, from Saudis in San Diego. No. 2: Bayoumi was supposed to be working for a firm that was a subcontractor for the Saudi civil aviation authority. Yet he never showed up for work. His boss tried to fire him, and he received a letter from the Saudi civil aviation authority demanding that he be retained on their payroll despite the fact he wasn't performing any services. And the subcontracting company that employed Bayoumi was owned by a Saudi national who, according to documents seized in Bosnia, was an early financial backer of al-Qaida. Now, that's rather suspicious.
Also suspicious is the number of telephone conversations between Bayoumi and Saudi government representatives. It was a very substantial number that remains classified. Then, the event that really raised our suspicions was that shortly after Alhazmi and Almihdhar flew from Bangkok [Thailand] to Los Angeles [after attending an al-Qaida conference in Malaysia that resulted in their being added to a CIA watch list], Bayoumi tells various persons that he was going to Los Angeles to "pick up some visitors." He drives from San Diego to Los Angeles with a friend. His first stop in Los Angeles was at the consulate of the Saudi government, where he stays for an hour and meets with a diplomat named Fahad al-Thumairy, who subsequently was deported for terrorist-related activities.
After that one-hour meeting, he and that companion go to a Middle Eastern restaurant in Los Angeles to have lunch. They overhear Arabic being spoken at a nearby table. They invite the two young men who are at that table to come and join them. It turns out those two young men are Alhazmi and Almihdhar, two of the 9/11 terrorists. When I asked the staff director of the 9/11 commission about this, he thought it was just a coincidence that they met at this restaurant. I did some independent research. There are at least 134 Middle Eastern restaurants in Los Angeles. So the statistical odds of these two groups meeting at the same Middle Eastern restaurant at the same time are staggering.
You don't believe the meeting was a coincidence?
I'm almost certain this was a prearranged meeting. Later, Bayoumi takes the two terrorists to San Diego, where he introduces them to people who arrange for them to obtain [phony] Social Security cards and flying lessons.
Did the White House specifically request classification of the section on the Saudis?
Technically, it was done by the CIA, but it was at the direction of the White House. I cannot tell
Don't be so sure just yet... Senator Graham just released a book that details a very specific occurrence dealing with the Saudi ties. Salon has a cover story today about it.
Actually I'll take this one Rob, if you don't mind.
ahem
No.
It is amazing, particularly because Apple appears to have earned it.
These 'drooling freaks' are people like my cousin, who didn't know there was any DRM, and has been using iTMS since day one. Or like my roommate - who has four Macs - also hadn't noticed, and doesn't care, and gets mad at me for even explaining it.
Don't you get it? There's no barrier here for any of these people using iTunes if - this is the tricky bit - they have not bumped their heads up against it. As far as these people concerned (and I think I can safely say its the majority of iPod/iTunes users at this point) the whole Apple music suite has done nothing but empower them to use their music in all sorts of ways they could never have before, while not restricting any of the things they used to do.
I know this is a difficult concept for a drooling open-source-loving anti-proprietary freak like yourself, but give the notion a try, will you? I'm as much for open standards as anyone but frankly at some point you have to recognize that there has to be at least a little give-and-take vis-a-vis the record industry, no matter how fucking retarded you know they are.
Just as an interesting aside... I mentioned this to an engineer friend of mine and he pointed out that GigE controllers actually tend to throw off quite a bit of heat... maybe that was the deal-breaker.
And the name/make of this fantastic PC would be...?
Nice! It looks better already.
Ok, so I went and looked at the shot you linked.
I had no idea.
Don't know what to say.
One thing I will add - there are so many, so very many things I could single out - but one thing that really struck me is the complete loss of coherence between the desktop and a 'window'. I suspect there is a window open in that shot but I really cannot know for sure. There are window-control widgets scattered all over that screen and I have no idea what any of them relate to. None of the text labels are aligned... the clock, the fucking clock... gah, I'll stop there.
Maybe they want to help sell bigger screens on purpose, who knows. (You could make the same argument about Apple - except that OS X 10.4 introduces resolution scaling in the UI, so that kills their motivation to sell big screens that way...)
Now, having said all that - let's wait until its out of beta before we bash it. But yeah I totally agree, looking at that example, Longhorn Outlook Not So Good.
Funny and accurate.
At least, in Microsoft's case; their marketing department holds such sway over the final appearance of their apps that, once this year's laundry-list of *New Features!* gets grafted onto the old look, you end up with a cats-cradle of mismatched widgets and weird styles.
So you are completely right - all a Linux developer need do is keep their eye on the ball, and watch the competition get uglier and stupider as time goes on. Got Word?
Absolutely.
Millions upon millions of people have used Windows Media Player. They have had the transport controls in the lower left for at least a couple of versions now (read several years). Why should they arbitrarily move it around now?
Because the controls have been in a bad spot for years, at this point?
Plus, you seem to be assuming that the primary way that people get a song to play is to click the "Play" button, but since this is running on a Windows PC the user has presumably been conditioned to launching things by double clicking. In this case that is a heck of a lot more convenient than single-clicking a song/movie/whatever, then *moving the mouse* (regardless of whether it's up, down, left, or right), and click on a Play button.
Sure, that's much easier. However the point of the Play button is to make it obvious to people how to play a song, and to show that the song is, in fact, playing (button highlights/changes to pause). It is easier to double-click if you know to do that. By your argument, Microsoft should just remove the Play button altogether.
No - I'd go completely mental, as opposed to just being disappointed, because Apple knows better.
It is actually in two parts.
The visual design of an application is a subjective thing. Whether or not you like the style of buttons, how the rollovers look, that sort of thing. In this sense the gradients don't bother you and that is fair to say.
interface design does, in fact, follow rules that I guess you don't know about. Believe me, there are rules for these things, just like there are rules for composition in photography or good coding methods. Rules that can be broken, but only for a very, very good reason.
Some things, like colours and composition, straddle both these diciplines. This is where real UI magicx happens. So - for example, let's use your reference to the buttons in the lower-left taking an extra second to find. It might take you an extra second. Someone else will take longer. Someone who moves the window down (even a touch, in this case) will lose sight of those controls entirely - much less likely to happen if they are at the top. Mentally, it makes the control scheme dubservient to the content. Organizationally, you must hunt through a greater sea of widgets to specifically bulls-eye the button you want. All this stuff adds up.
You can't spell it out point by point because it isn't as objective as bad code. If I look at the GUI and say, "hey, that's kinda cool looking," then that pretty much proves you wrong right there. Unless you go by some metric I don't know of?
Yes, the metric of good usability. You can take University courses on this very subject and be paid very well for it. So I think I've proven that you can spell it out. Uninformed opinion is just that, uninformed.
Again, don't take it the wrong way. This subject is a constant in my line of work, because of the lack of respect for people who do think about it professionally.
I think you said it best with, "everyone, everyone has an opinion on visual things. So if it works for you, I say, go for it."
Visual things, yes. UI design, no.
Up Bill's ass. This is Paul Thurrot we're talking about here. He's just a bit of a Microsoft fanboy.