I believe that people will need to have something familiar in order to make the switch. There are simply too many different things outside the windows desktop for the average computer illiterate to cope with at one time. Once a user has made the switch to GNOME/KDE/other-windows-clone they will slowly expand their view of the world and be more ready for enlightenment/fluxbox/other-specialized-wm. I think we need both the people who are immitating windows and the innovators. The enlightenment team is still at work and has made some really nice steps towards E17 which I believe will be as innovative as E16 was. Once the average user has made the switch to the windows-clone-ui he will be less scared by the prospect of E. But it is a whole new world and we should not expect the computer illiterate to accept all of it at once.
I think that Herbie actually would count as prior art. It is after all a car and it does display emotions. Remember that patents are about inventions not how they are used. If the inventors of a car that displays emotions choose only to use their invention in a movie how does that make it less of an invention? So, yeah, prior art.
Prior art is where we have seen patents fail miserably a lot lately. This is yet another example of it. On top of that it IS kinda stupid. Admit it. Even though stupidity isn't in itself reason to void a patent it makes it stand out more so we might notice it.
If it aint broke...
When just about everyone here can find examples of prior art within seconds how can the people granting these patents miss it? Could it be because the authority granting patents earn money from granting patents are not the same people who have to uphold them, or even enforce them.
Haha. It seems that I am not very qualified to write such a sequel, doesn't it? Im my defense I can say that my usage of loose/lose was an honest typo, not a misunderstanding of the words the way it seems that people are misunderstanding their/there.
In my experience, this is exacly the problem in the usability discussion. Most people completely miss the point, saying that after countless tweaks which are very hard to implement for a novice user, the system works just fine.
IMHO, they take the easy way out. Making a system usable by default is hard. Very hard.
There seems to be two options here: either make something that is configured "right" from the beginning and therefore isn't really configurable (why would the user want to change stuff when it's already done right), or make something that can be changed to suit individual needs but which needs tweaking in order to work properly.
Let's take a example from real-life. RL examples brought to the computer world are almost always flawed, but stay with me here... Forks have a set width width and length and cannot be varied. The dinner fork has one size, the smaller fork used for eating cakes has another size. Each is done "right" the first time and cannot be configured by the user. All Is Well. If forks are not configurable since they have only one use.
My window manager of choice (enlightenment) is configurable because it can be used in multiple ways. Because people have different routines when working. I like to be able to to change border-style on my windows on the fly. I like having a pager displaying snapshots of my 16 virtual desktops. I like being able to have both multiple desktops and virtual desktops at the same time. The most usable window manager for me is not necessarily the most usable window manager for you. In order to properly research usablility you need to acknowledge that there are different ways to interact with your computer. You can only have a usable default if there is only one type of usage. If there is more than one type of usage then defaults are void.
But seriously, if your girlfriend won't let you look at porn you need to make a choice, her or porn and give up the other.
I love my SO very much, and would rather not loose her. Especially not over something as trivial as my browsing habits. That said I consider my browsing as something personal. My SO rarely touches any of my computers, and when she does she has her own login, which kind of eliminates all cache/history/privacy issues. I also maintain a diary in my home directory which I'd rather not have her read. With all these privacy issues out of the way I could browse all the porn I'd like to without her ever knowing about it.
It seems to me that we are still individual creatures even though we share a relationship. There are things which are mine alone, and things which are hers alone. Neither of us see any reason to try and change that. While we share a lot of things, some things are still private. That is the way it should be. Let me have my porn in peace. While my porn needs dwindled conciderably when I met my SO they are still mine, and I would like to keep them among the things she does not interfere with. Browsing habits, personal diary, are among the things I'd like to keep personal, YMMV.
But seriously, if my girlfriend sets up any kind of ultimatum where she asks me to choose between her and something (anything) whe better be prepared to loose me. She is basically saying that our relationship isn't more important than my [browsing habits, nose picking, whatever]. If she thinks so little of our relationship that she is willing to compare it to [browsing habits, nose picking, whatever] then the relationship is going downhill fast anyway.
Quoting from that page: "Relying on version information is not the best way to test for a feature. Instead, refer to the documentation for the feature of interest. For more information on common techniques for feature detection, see Operating System Version."
Things that make you go "hmmm"... relying on version info is bad, to check for features see chapter on finding OS version...
One place where I worked they had Aphex Twin's "I want your soul" as their music of choice. It seriously lowered the amount of people who actually waited in line, which ment we got time to work in stead of answering calls;)
Why would a Linux (I'm stepping out on a limb here) zealot want MORE windows licenses out in the world??!?!?!?
My final goal (in this context at least) would be that windows should be shipped for free, since no-one would pay for a windows license just to get hold of the music on a cd they just bought. If windows were to be shipped for free along with each and every DRM protected music cd there would be little to no point to keeping the windows source closed. Once the windows source is open all the bugs in the system could (possibly) be fixed and we would have the best of F/OSS and windows in one package.
You are dumb.
Wow. How constructive. I can see why you posted as an AC.
That would have been funnier if it was remotely true. What could happen (and what I have had happen to me previously) was that the DRM protected media is unplayable without the DRM malware, for instance I am unable to view the one e-book I bought without a wandows installation, and sadly the book didn't come with a windows license. IMHO it would have been appropriate to ship a windows license along with e-books since it's needed to read it.
Traditionally sports are physical endeavours (sp?), lately it seems
that counter strike (and the like) has been accepted as sports. If not
in the oplympics then at least to the degree that there are leagues
and turnaments being held professionaly.
While there is little chance that programming will ever become a
sport it would be fun to see things like perl poetry tournaments. I do
remember attending one RPG con where they has a contest where the
participants were given 4 hours to write a scenario which would then
be rated. There was some geeky price for the best scenario, of
course.
Well, regardless of who wrote that, it's an example of the rampant "if you don't do thing _my_ particular way, you're a n00b/retard/luser/fossil/whatever. I couldn't care less about what _you_ need.
[snip - lots of good reasons why spatial isn't right for everyone]
It seems to me that the gnome project has been making this kind of decisions for a while now. I used to be able to do lots of things to change nautilus. These days it seems all the configuration settings have gone away. More and more it looks like windows: "you can change what little we would like you to change, for the rest go look in the registry and hope you are lucky." This is very much accepted by the windows crowd, they stick to the tasks described in the article most of the time. Those of us who use our computers for more specialized tasks will have to go out of our way to configure our computers to our likes.
The ideas described in the article are indeed a means of getting my grandma to use gnome, and I'm pretty sure that she will like to use a computer where she does not have to worry about things like bitrates and file hierachies. Me, I stick to enlightenment where I can change the stacking of windows, border type for when the developer of some third party app screwed up, as for file browsing im stuck with the gnome 2.4 nautilus until that day when enlightenment 17 stops being vaporware or I find something more configurable. I am not going to be using shallow file hierachies any time soon, and naither are any other people doing specialist work on their computers, I think.
It seemed that F/OSS was all about choice, the gnome people seems to be taking more and more of that choice away from us in the name of usability. So I choose to use something else. All power to the gnome developers for making "grandma's computer," but it's not for me.
If these 2 geek girls had tens of thousands of guys hitting on them and had to spend of bunch of their time dealing with these guys whould they still be considered geeks?
Well, if they solved the problem by automating the process of dealing with all the guys hitting on them, then yes - they would still be considered geeks:)
Nobody HAS to use GMail so what is the real problem here? Don't send mail to people with gmail.com accounts if you don't want it archived and scanned. Duh.
There's a real difference here, while nobody is forcing me to use gmail I still didn't consent to having any mail I send to a gmail mailbox scanned. Also, what if someone has forwarded innocentlooking@mailbox.com to iambeingscanned@gmail.com? how do I protect myself against scanning by google, which I didn't consent to in the first place?
I would rather not have to cut off any friends of mine who started to use gmail, on the other hand I would like to maintain my privacy, even if those people I write to don't care about privacy
Adding ssh would either imply that MS acknowledges that there is a need to connect to other OS'es or mean that a sshd should be added too. Adding sshd to windows would be rather useless since almost nothing can be done via the command line on windows. Either way adding ssh to windows draws attention to areas where windows is lacking.
Since I feel like burning some karma, and to explain (not excuse) myself: English is not my native tongue. I try to use correct spelling and grammar whenever I can, but sadly english grammar is very far that of my native tongue, and being a programmer I tend reverse the order of quotation marks, parantheses and periods.
"This is a sentence written with programmer grammar". The idea is that a string is a single token and should not be mixed with the period which is another token.
I will be reading up on english grammar, but I won't be preaching about it's proper use before I have a better grasp of it myself.
I find it very funny that your sig is trying to correct their and there, yet you use make believe words like virii in your post.
You are such a fucking retard.
The misuse of the words "there" and "their" comes from ignorance of their proper use. The use of words like "virii," "vira," and "boxen" have nothing to do with ignorance of proper english. These words are used as slang and incorporate some foreign grammar (like latin or german) into the language. There is nothing make believe about the words I used.
Oh, and a nother thing: Go read the internet etiquette. Do not call me a retard unless you would call a perfect stranger you met in real life a retard. You should stop and consider what you write. For instance, using the lamguage you just used in a bar would most likely earn you a severe beating.
You forgot to mention that "sasser" only infects windows machines.
It should be the default assumption that since it is a worm then it only infects windows (the same goes for virii of course). I would think that it would be worth mentioning if it infected anything besides windows boxes...
I think I'm getting too old for world domination. These days I'd rather have people NOT use linux. There are two issues, as I see it:
Firstly, if my grandma started to use linux in stead of windows then she would come to me and ask me for help. Right now she sticks to asking windows people for help.
Secondly, I think people should use what works for them. If windows works for you then use windows. There is no need to switch to linux merely for the sake of switching to linux. If you feel like switching to linux, then do it to solve some problem (like "I do not like it when some internet worm infects my computer and reboots it continously").
Slashdot Mirror
In order for you to NOT be trolling yourself you need to supply us with the correct information...
I believe that people will need to have something familiar in order to make the switch. There are simply too many different things outside the windows desktop for the average computer illiterate to cope with at one time. Once a user has made the switch to GNOME/KDE/other-windows-clone they will slowly expand their view of the world and be more ready for enlightenment/fluxbox/other-specialized-wm. I think we need both the people who are immitating windows and the innovators. The enlightenment team is still at work and has made some really nice steps towards E17 which I believe will be as innovative as E16 was. Once the average user has made the switch to the windows-clone-ui he will be less scared by the prospect of E. But it is a whole new world and we should not expect the computer illiterate to accept all of it at once.
I think that Herbie actually would count as prior art. It is after all a car and it does display emotions. Remember that patents are about inventions not how they are used. If the inventors of a car that displays emotions choose only to use their invention in a movie how does that make it less of an invention? So, yeah, prior art.
Prior art is where we have seen patents fail miserably a lot lately. This is yet another example of it. On top of that it IS kinda stupid. Admit it. Even though stupidity isn't in itself reason to void a patent it makes it stand out more so we might notice it.
If it aint broke...
When just about everyone here can find examples of prior art within seconds how can the people granting these patents miss it? Could it be because the authority granting patents earn money from granting patents are not the same people who have to uphold them, or even enforce them.
Haha. It seems that I am not very qualified to write such a sequel, doesn't it? Im my defense I can say that my usage of loose/lose was an honest typo, not a misunderstanding of the words the way it seems that people are misunderstanding their/there.
In my experience, this is exacly the problem in the usability discussion. Most people completely miss the point, saying that after countless tweaks which are very hard to implement for a novice user, the system works just fine.
IMHO, they take the easy way out. Making a system usable by default is hard. Very hard.
There seems to be two options here: either make something that is configured "right" from the beginning and therefore isn't really configurable (why would the user want to change stuff when it's already done right), or make something that can be changed to suit individual needs but which needs tweaking in order to work properly.
Let's take a example from real-life. RL examples brought to the computer world are almost always flawed, but stay with me here... Forks have a set width width and length and cannot be varied. The dinner fork has one size, the smaller fork used for eating cakes has another size. Each is done "right" the first time and cannot be configured by the user. All Is Well. If forks are not configurable since they have only one use.
My window manager of choice (enlightenment) is configurable because it can be used in multiple ways. Because people have different routines when working. I like to be able to to change border-style on my windows on the fly. I like having a pager displaying snapshots of my 16 virtual desktops. I like being able to have both multiple desktops and virtual desktops at the same time. The most usable window manager for me is not necessarily the most usable window manager for you. In order to properly research usablility you need to acknowledge that there are different ways to interact with your computer. You can only have a usable default if there is only one type of usage. If there is more than one type of usage then defaults are void.
But seriously, if your girlfriend won't let you look at porn you need to make a choice, her or porn and give up the other.
I love my SO very much, and would rather not loose her. Especially not over something as trivial as my browsing habits. That said I consider my browsing as something personal. My SO rarely touches any of my computers, and when she does she has her own login, which kind of eliminates all cache/history/privacy issues. I also maintain a diary in my home directory which I'd rather not have her read. With all these privacy issues out of the way I could browse all the porn I'd like to without her ever knowing about it.
It seems to me that we are still individual creatures even though we share a relationship. There are things which are mine alone, and things which are hers alone. Neither of us see any reason to try and change that. While we share a lot of things, some things are still private. That is the way it should be. Let me have my porn in peace. While my porn needs dwindled conciderably when I met my SO they are still mine, and I would like to keep them among the things she does not interfere with. Browsing habits, personal diary, are among the things I'd like to keep personal, YMMV.
But seriously, if my girlfriend sets up any kind of ultimatum where she asks me to choose between her and something (anything) whe better be prepared to loose me. She is basically saying that our relationship isn't more important than my [browsing habits, nose picking, whatever]. If she thinks so little of our relationship that she is willing to compare it to [browsing habits, nose picking, whatever] then the relationship is going downhill fast anyway.
It's not free for the Windows version
Except that it's released under GPL (among other licenses) which had no mention of cost on the windows platform last time I checked.
What prevents you from developing cross-platform GPL programs with QT?
Quoting from that page: "Relying on version information is not the best way to test for a feature. Instead, refer to the documentation for the feature of interest. For more information on common techniques for feature detection, see Operating System Version."
Things that make you go "hmmm" ... relying on version info is bad, to check for features see chapter on finding OS version...
One place where I worked they had Aphex Twin's "I want your soul" as their music of choice. It seriously lowered the amount of people who actually waited in line, which ment we got time to work in stead of answering calls ;)
Why would a Linux (I'm stepping out on a limb here) zealot want MORE windows licenses out in the world??!?!?!?
My final goal (in this context at least) would be that windows should be shipped for free, since no-one would pay for a windows license just to get hold of the music on a cd they just bought. If windows were to be shipped for free along with each and every DRM protected music cd there would be little to no point to keeping the windows source closed. Once the windows source is open all the bugs in the system could (possibly) be fixed and we would have the best of F/OSS and windows in one package.
You are dumb.
Wow. How constructive. I can see why you posted as an AC.
That would have been funnier if it was remotely true. What could happen (and what I have had happen to me previously) was that the DRM protected media is unplayable without the DRM malware, for instance I am unable to view the one e-book I bought without a wandows installation, and sadly the book didn't come with a windows license. IMHO it would have been appropriate to ship a windows license along with e-books since it's needed to read it.
Traditionally sports are physical endeavours (sp?), lately it seems that counter strike (and the like) has been accepted as sports. If not in the oplympics then at least to the degree that there are leagues and turnaments being held professionaly.
While there is little chance that programming will ever become a sport it would be fun to see things like perl poetry tournaments. I do remember attending one RPG con where they has a contest where the participants were given 4 hours to write a scenario which would then be rated. There was some geeky price for the best scenario, of course.
Well, regardless of who wrote that, it's an example of the rampant "if you don't do thing _my_ particular way, you're a n00b/retard/luser/fossil/whatever. I couldn't care less about what _you_ need.
[snip - lots of good reasons why spatial isn't right for everyone]
It seems to me that the gnome project has been making this kind of decisions for a while now. I used to be able to do lots of things to change nautilus. These days it seems all the configuration settings have gone away. More and more it looks like windows: "you can change what little we would like you to change, for the rest go look in the registry and hope you are lucky." This is very much accepted by the windows crowd, they stick to the tasks described in the article most of the time. Those of us who use our computers for more specialized tasks will have to go out of our way to configure our computers to our likes.
The ideas described in the article are indeed a means of getting my grandma to use gnome, and I'm pretty sure that she will like to use a computer where she does not have to worry about things like bitrates and file hierachies. Me, I stick to enlightenment where I can change the stacking of windows, border type for when the developer of some third party app screwed up, as for file browsing im stuck with the gnome 2.4 nautilus until that day when enlightenment 17 stops being vaporware or I find something more configurable. I am not going to be using shallow file hierachies any time soon, and naither are any other people doing specialist work on their computers, I think.
It seemed that F/OSS was all about choice, the gnome people seems to be taking more and more of that choice away from us in the name of usability. So I choose to use something else. All power to the gnome developers for making "grandma's computer," but it's not for me.
If these 2 geek girls had tens of thousands of guys hitting on them and had to spend of bunch of their time dealing with these guys whould they still be considered geeks?
Well, if they solved the problem by automating the process of dealing with all the guys hitting on them, then yes - they would still be considered geeks :)
or even better: adblock. Not exactly the same functionality, but a very powerful ad blocker indeed.
Nobody HAS to use GMail so what is the real problem here? Don't send mail to people with gmail.com accounts if you don't want it archived and scanned. Duh.
There's a real difference here, while nobody is forcing me to use gmail I still didn't consent to having any mail I send to a gmail mailbox scanned. Also, what if someone has forwarded innocentlooking@mailbox.com to iambeingscanned@gmail.com? how do I protect myself against scanning by google, which I didn't consent to in the first place?
I would rather not have to cut off any friends of mine who started to use gmail, on the other hand I would like to maintain my privacy, even if those people I write to don't care about privacy
hey look features are features but a few are missing
I would like a IM client (IRC does not rock my world) a Jabber client would be good
jabber support
I would like a iCal clone... (in process)
Indeed it is :)
I would like OpenPGP intergrated (only 128bit to save the export legal stuff) just basic crypto would be great (make it easy to setup as well)
There's a gpg extension, will that do?
Adding ssh would either imply that MS acknowledges that there is a need to connect to other OS'es or mean that a sshd should be added too. Adding sshd to windows would be rather useless since almost nothing can be done via the command line on windows. Either way adding ssh to windows draws attention to areas where windows is lacking.
Since I feel like burning some karma, and to explain (not excuse) myself: English is not my native tongue. I try to use correct spelling and grammar whenever I can, but sadly english grammar is very far that of my native tongue, and being a programmer I tend reverse the order of quotation marks, parantheses and periods.
"This is a sentence written with programmer grammar". The idea is that a string is a single token and should not be mixed with the period which is another token.
I will be reading up on english grammar, but I won't be preaching about it's proper use before I have a better grasp of it myself.
I find it very funny that your sig is trying to correct their and there, yet you use make believe words like virii in your post.
You are such a fucking retard.
The misuse of the words "there" and "their" comes from ignorance of their proper use. The use of words like "virii," "vira," and "boxen" have nothing to do with ignorance of proper english. These words are used as slang and incorporate some foreign grammar (like latin or german) into the language. There is nothing make believe about the words I used.
Oh, and a nother thing: Go read the internet etiquette. Do not call me a retard unless you would call a perfect stranger you met in real life a retard. You should stop and consider what you write. For instance, using the lamguage you just used in a bar would most likely earn you a severe beating.
You forgot to mention that "sasser" only infects windows machines.
It should be the default assumption that since it is a worm then it only infects windows (the same goes for virii of course). I would think that it would be worth mentioning if it infected anything besides windows boxes...
I think I'm getting too old for world domination. These days I'd rather have people NOT use linux. There are two issues, as I see it:
Firstly, if my grandma started to use linux in stead of windows then she would come to me and ask me for help. Right now she sticks to asking windows people for help.
Secondly, I think people should use what works for them. If windows works for you then use windows. There is no need to switch to linux merely for the sake of switching to linux. If you feel like switching to linux, then do it to solve some problem (like "I do not like it when some internet worm infects my computer and reboots it continously").
there != their
My point is that you can do a hell of a lot more with java then you can with XUL.
An example of something you can do with java that you cannot do with XUL would be nice. Not required, but nice.