I'm thinking of moving my campaign off the internet, and into print / radio. But even then, how many people are just going to glaze through the ad when it's being played on the radio? For how many people I *might* appeal to, how many people will I *not* appeal to?
Well, ya hit the nail right on the head missed by the NYT article (of course they have their own bias).
With almost any form of Internet advertising you know EXACTLY how many people paid attention to the ad. Nobody clicks on an ad for something they are totally disinterested in.
But for TV and print advertising even with the futuristic gadgets they are talking about deploying it is still a lot of guesswork.
The irony is that print and TV medias LIKES it that way. They entice advertisers with how many MILLIONS of viewers/readers they have and leave it to the advertisers imaginations as to how effective an ad with them will be.
Why do you think national print media is so timid about putting their entire content on the web? Wouldn't it make sense for them to say "Hey, in addition to our MILLIONS of subscribers your ad will be seen by tens of MILLIONS of people who view our content on the Internet!"
The only problem is they would be asked to offer some proof of that, and the results would cast doubt on how many people even read each article much less pay attention to the ads.
They don't get it, because they don't want to get it. After some of the current media conglomerates collapse, or their top execs die of old age there will be some change. While the predictions of that Flash presentation titled "EPIC" are a bit far fetched, the gist of it is true, these newspapers are going to end up being newsletters and all broadcast media will be the domain of short-wave hobbyists as Internet based on-demand media displace them.
In my experience, software issues occur for one of two reasons: (1) "Broken" code:.....
(2) Bad communication / misuse of code:....
You left one out:
(0) Bad Design: The code does everything you intended it to do and the users are using it properly, but you didn't think of all the possible states in which the code could find itself and decide what to do about them.
This is often lumped in with (1), but shouldn't be IMHO. It's one reason I think that comments in code are valuable (as are formal design documents) since it forces the person, or people doing the design and coding to restate their intentions in at least a couple of different ways.
I have written and worked with well written specs and they tend to reduce the number of pure coding errors by leaving less to the imagination of the coder. Well written specs can still fail to account for all possibilities however and that's a good reason to have meaningful design discussions (rather than the formally mandated ones that people attend these days in body but not mind).
There are many people today who think of themselves as ace coders. The world would do well to have more people who are design experts who don't practice coding at all. The two disciplines complement one another well.
What company would rely on such advice rather than do their own tests with their own unique situation?
A brain-dead company thats who.
These former "research" companies are having to rely more and more on funding by very interested parties to the tests becuase nobody in their right mind takes them seriously any more (and thus don't subscribe to their privately issued studies).
Well, there are some of us that are not totally sold on the unified menu bar concept. It doesn't (for example) work with x-windows applications (yet anyway) and there are an increasing number of things that use that tiny bit of real-estate on the right (sound,battery, bluetooth, wireless, date/time indicators) and on smaller screens those drop-down menus on the left and those status indicators on the right run into one another with undesirable results.
I've run into many situations with applications supposedly written FOR Aqua where the placement of controls on the window vs the hotspots that activate those elements are off by exactly the width of that menu bar.
To me this indicates that there is some confusion among developers about what it means to take over the entire screen, maximize a window, etc.
Finally, try running for a while in dual-head mode where you are using two monitors. There is only one menu bar. You have to choose which monitor it will appear on. If you are actively using applications on both screens this results in a lot of mileage on your mouse (depending on the nature of the app of course).
Maybe the new system will address some of these things, but I have a feeling that the Dashboard concept will make life more complicated without addressing existing issues.
Well, I see that the Apple zealots have totally missed my point. (I should point out that my every-day computer these days is a Powerbook.)
But why couldn't this new functionality simply been added to the control panel, or made available as a separate all-in-one application.
Adding something like this as an entirely new design element to me is questionable for a system that prides itself on the simplicity of its interface.
Now when a new user is not sure where some functionality is they will have FOUR places to look instead of THREE.
What I see operating here reminds me too much of the release strategy for Windows. You have to have frequent new releases to keep a revenue stream going (rather than just charge users annually for support on their existing OS) and in order to justify a new release you have to CHANGE something, preferably something that is easily noticed. Further, those who don't upgrade have to be punished in some way, in this case by new application that will only work if you have Dashboard.
Really it was small changes like this, made over many years that has made Windows (and the MS apps that go with it) the monstrosity that it is now, and the same is true of the more bloated Linux interfaces.
Well, the examples of what you could put on the dashboard certainly looked cool (mind you nothing that I haven't seen in Windows or Linux), but aren't we getting a bit overwhelmed with different types of control panels?
I mean one on top that we can't get rid of (to make more screen real-estate). One down bottom (that we can at least move around). And now ANOTHER one UNDER that?
I think I like the paradigm mostly used by KDE and Gnome better. As many toolbars as you want. Put theme where you want. Allow some to pop out of others. And most importantly: allow all of them to hide themselves automatically and allow you to arrange things on them any way you like.
I know that the "simplicity" of the Apple interfaces is supposed to make things easier by forcing everyone to live within a narrow framework... but they are clearly moving away from that simplicity now. Next thing you know it will be Windows.
And I think you are exactly right about the dynamic between grumpy mainframe maintenance guys (of whom I was one) and the people outside the air-conditioned room.
What gets missed is that we were grumpy for a very good reason! We were responsible for, in some cases, millions of dollars worth of equipment, and often, held the future of the company in our hands. While we were fairly well paid, most of us didn't think we were paid ENOUGH to compensate for the 3AM phone calls, 18 hour days, and still having to be in for the 9 AM staff meeting with a tie on.
Along with all the technology (both hardware and software) that has been re-invented for the PC world, we have re-invented that grumpy old system administrator. The network admins are really not all that much different than the mainframe "admins" were in the old days, except there seem to be a lot more of them. They still have that responsibility, they are still, for that reason, relatively uninterested in the user-problem of the day, and in my opinion, they drop the ball a lot more often than us mainframers used to.
Part of that is our lazy culture I think, but part of that is that the PC technology, as old as it is at this point, is still in the 70's when it comes to comparison with the mainframe model. That means that a network admin can try his hardest to cover all the bases, but miss one patch from Microsoft, or misapply that patch and you could lose days or weeks of data (back to that backup issue again).
In all of my mainframe career I had one small case where I was responsible (partially) for the loss of data. I was practically suicidal over it. These days, I'm not so sure that the typical sysadmin is so concerned, but then, that might have to do with there being so many of them.
Which brings me to the final PC myth, which is that the PC has saved many organizations money over what they were spending in the "old days". While I'm sure there may be a case or two in which this is true, I've never run into such an organization. The excuse often given for the dramatically INCREASED cost of a modern LAN/WAN setup over the old mainframe days is that "we are doing so many more things than we used to do". But I find that the "more things" is often impossible to quantify. Yes, a lot more e-mail flows in and out of today's organization, but the bulk of it is time waster stuff, junk mail, personal correspondence, and in many cases, miscommunications due to the lack of formality that such documents have by comparison with true written memos and business letters.
Anyway it's been nice dredging up these old memories. As a mostly plain old "user" or should I say "victim" of modern technology, I'm optimistic that things will improve, but I try to impress on young folk when I get the chance that a lot of this stuff is really not "new" after all. (And yes, I know how that makes me sound, but hey I *AM* and old fart after all).
I had been in the mainframe business for quit a while when the PC showed up. IBM developed them with no clear notion of how they would be used to fend off, among other things, people asking to interface mainframe applications to machines they had purchased from Radio Shack.
A company in Washington State (from whom MS ultimately purchased the rights to what became MS DOS) had lobbied Intel to market the 8008 (I think) as a general purpose computer without much success.
Primitive graphical interfaces were actually available on mainframes at this time, but the existing 3270 (IBM Terminal) had a lot of baggage of it's own that made it much more suitable as a character device. Plus, they were expensive. As a result, one of the primary uses of early PCs that were bought for businesses was as a 3270 replacement.
That the IBM PC allowed very small businesses to first use computers to do things which formerly was done with calculators I don't deny, but by and large these efforts were being carried out by people with no data processing background and often ended up with data lost or corrupted. In most cases these people simply did not know that they were re-inventing the wheel in terms of reliability, scalability and data synchronization that had already been worked out on mainframe systems.
I tend to agree with this assesment:
http://www.thocp.net/timeline/1974.htm
4 January 1974, INTEL introduces the 8080 microprocessor, an improved 8 bit version. This chip has a price tag of "just" 360 U$. The processor contains a Kernel of 75 instructions, the so called micro code. It is ten times as fast as the 8008 with 2Mhz. It addresses a memory of 64.000 bytes. There are 6.000 transistors (3micron) mounted on this chip. (23) The designers and marketing people are thinking they have given the final solution to the still rising demand for computing power (64Kb address). This monumental mistake will have catastrophic results towards further development of better(faster) chips and software development for the next few decades.
I totally empathize with your anger. While MS and Windows are probably the worst offenders, just about everything that passes for "computer science" in the PC industry is half-assed. You don't have to analyze the code to see what the problem is either. Simply look at the precepts that these people start with (both sides of the issue in the "debate" that takes place in the article).
The PC started it's life as a would-be controller for dishwashers back when all real data processing was done on "mainframes". Those systems, even as far back as the 80's stayed up for months at a time, had hot-swappable components, mature backup-restore facilities and there simply was no such thing as an "exploit", unless you had access to the computer room. Did we have to sacrifice all of that just to get a graphical user interface?
The PC industry represents a NIH (Not Invented Here) syndrome of the worst proportions, particularly when you realize that we are gradually moving back to a server-centric paradigm for not only business, but personal uses of computers (even gaming!)
I don't care who gets the blame for this from a historical perspective (although I think the candidates are pretty obvious), I'm just glad that even the most naive of users are beginning to understand that they can't trust anything important to a mere "PC". Those who try and convince us otherwise will gradually erode their own credibility.
All of which leads me to wonder whether Bill is just that much out of touch with reality or simply saying that which will be good for Microsoft (in his opinion).
His notion of ubiquitous computing would be well served if Microsoft had either closed shop, or followed other's lead years ago. My Palm Pilot has never rebooted, and since batteries last two months at a time I've never had to do a "restore" on my todo list. People expect (and should expect) hardware to "just work", a goal that Microsoft has fallen far short of at every opportunity.
Ultimately whether the computing power is on the desktop, centralized or a bit of both should not be noticeable by the user and it is not the sort of thing that should require constant downloads or complete OS replacements every 2 years. Nor, in the long run, is it something that should cost $400 for either hardware, software, or the combination.
Bill's article, and recent pronouncements by Balmer ($100 computers) ring hollow when you realize that Microsoft has stood in the way of these goals from their inception (intentionally or not).
All I can say about their recent attempts at being "visionaries" is that I hope they get their way. Now what remains to be seen is whether Microsoft will be a part of the solution or whether, as in the past, the solution will have to work around Microsoft leaving it to play catch-up and attempt to rewrite history.
The easiest way to have a lot of predictions come true is to predict everything.
It has interested me that over at Blogger.com (a Google property) they haven't immediately come out with their own photo-blogging spin-off. Google mean time acquired another photo company (who's name I forget) that only works for Windows (Hence I don't use it) and they have been recommending that non-Windows users use Flickr instead (which I have).
Now I wonder what Googles response will be? Continue recommending a Yahoo product?
Seems to me there is significant risk in this photo-blogging thing. The industry hasn't even digested the changes precipitated by Gmail yet. All of a sudden they are tripping all over themselves to give away online storage again. A gig, multiplied by 100 million users. Pretty soon you are talking some serious storage requirements there.
Flickr gives away storage for 100 photos. Is that enough? I might decided not to even bother with the free option... and I might or might not want to actually pay for the service. If I send them $30 and upload every huge photo that my monthly quota allows, are they going to make any money? If a few million people do that are they going to make any money? Will they have enough storage? Will their servers grind to a halt (the way Gmail is already starting to do)?
While I hate to discourage the "investor class" from giving away the store, it seems to me there are still a lot of perfectly valid TEXT based applications that would not need so many resources but would be just as valuable to the average person as photo-blogging.
My theory has always been that Google would eventually come out with a free online equivalent to Word and Excel (feature limited no doubt) that would allow most of us to not only dispense with those Microsoft products, but also no longer have to copy our documents from one PC to another. Nothing ground breaking here... but during the last Dot-com bubble, it was only provided as an offline Java program and the online storage was limited to 100 meg or so, after which you had to buy more space. Google, using the Gmail technology, and the server-farm behind it could offer a LOT more for free, and probably convince me (and others) to fork over a small annual fee for added space/functionality. That value proposition along with the NEED to have as opposed to the NICE to have features of photo-blogging is what I think may separate Google from the rest. (Or I could be totally wrong about this).
My other reaction regarding Yahoo, is that they tend to buy things and then change their mind about them only a short time later. Broadband.com I think was a fairly interesting place to download movie clips until Yahoo got them. They also do a lot of joint-marketing deals that don't last long enough to be more than bait and switch deals IMHO. I use, and even pay for some of their old-line core services... but I always take a wait and see approach when they launch something new (especially if it involves buying a company).
Not to mention that there is no version of IE for those of us using Linux, and the version for OS X is fairly redundant (I've already deleted my copy). It's nice that Firefox will run on Windows, but the big advantage of it running over there (as far as I'm concerned) is to convince people that they don't need to be running windows at all. When I was still using Windows I used Mozilla for web, usenet, e-mail, OpenOffice for document sharing with Word users. By the time I fully stopped using Windows my desktop there looked almost identical to my Linux desktop. All I had to do was switch to Gaim from the other IM clients.
Same here. I hadn't heard anything about Infospace since those AvantGo days and I never would have thought that content any more than what could be produced by a couple folks grabbing headlines off of Yahoo. I also never would have considered actually paying for any of that content. And now the company makes millions selling RING TONES?!
The value system the world then (and still) operates under is close to being FUBAR. I just don't get it.
Please don't write any description of the product unless you actually know what it does. And please don't think you know what it does just because you've looked at Groove's website. That sort of uniformed spewage gives Slashdot a bad name.
You seem to be defending Groove here, which is fine, but I'd never heard of them either, so I also checked their web page and found it not particularly informative.
I'm not tempted to feel guilty for not being impressed by fuzzy marketing language. In fact, web pages full of such are usually created by exactly the type of company I wish to avoid. Such companies work from the top down in large organizations always saying "YES!" to questions of the form "can you do...?" and then after they have your money, the technical people (that would be most Slashdot readers) are put in contact with the support staff who roll their eyes and say things like "What have our sales reps told you now?"
My guess is the company is on shaky ground and was ripe for the plucking by Microsoft. In desperation they probably made their marketing message less and less specific hoping to troll for a larger customer base. Now that won't be a worry any more.
I think you are exactly right on every point. However programming prima-donnas rule the industry, and probably provide a good living for people who have to come after them and rescue a mess. I don't blame this on the programmers however so much as weak or stupid management.
From what I gather, the original author of the article redefines "design" to mean good programming practices and "architecture" to mean good design. Of course when I was working on big OS projects we would have felt a bit silly announcing that we were going to have an "architecture" meeting tomorrow to go over the changes for the next version.... but if the current generation of programmers needs to invent a new language to get the job done, so be it. LOL, OMGWTF!1!
Wow, guess OSX really is a *nix. What happened to all the "everything just works" through the gui nonsense, bah!
I think the concept of "everything just works" and "everything works through the GUI" are separate, the former being mostly applicable to the Apple OS(es) and the latter being a Bill Gates formulation.
From some articles I've read, even the Microsoft designers have learned that putting everything in the GUI (or even trying to) leads to a very confusing, buggy, and hard to document interface.
In my opinion, both Apple and Microsoft would do well to learn one more lesson: That separating the base operating system from the GUI entirely is the best way to go. With Linux (my preference by a thin margin over OS X) I can have a complex GUI like KDE, a simpler one like Gnome, or a dozen others with their own strengths and weaknesses... or I can run them all at the same time! Both companies however, particularly Microsoft, can't resist the urge to lock users into a single way of doing things. Since users have hardly rebelled from these tactics I don't expect them to change any time soon. The existence out there of Linux as an alternative and other things like X and KDE for OSX may eventually pry their fingers from this point of view and convince them that in the long run KILLER APS need to stand on their own merit and not be dependent on advertising budgets, government bribes, or secret OS hooks to keep users buying them.
Well whatever it is...
on
SHA-1 Broken
·
· Score: 4, Funny
Not to mention (except I am) the problems you can run into when your screens are full of spreadsheets already, the lights go out... and that space robot makes all electrical devices on earth stop working until he can retrieve Michael Remy's body and bring him back to life.
Whenever those things happen and I still need to balance my checkbook, I just whip out my old K&E (which I paid too much for used, from a graduating senior in high school). Or something.
None of this has anything to do with my current financial situation however!
I agree 100 percent. I don't use Windows either for the same reason. I use Linux most of the time, but also use OS X when I want something to interface that just doesn't work with Linux. If it only works with Windows then screw it.
What really puzzles me though is when I observe "dumb users" working with a Windows (or even windowed) interface in professional settings, airline ticket counters, car reservation, hotel desk clerks, etc. There is no doubt in my mind that they would be better served by a character mode interface (assuming it was properly designed). Over and over I see them squint at almost unreadable text, struggle with cut and paste actions that should probably be PF key functions, and wait, wait, wait while the screen refreshes. As you suggest, a single PC could handle hundreds of these in text mode, but more importantly, text mode would be not only an improvement in terms of efficiency, but ease of use as well.
While a windowed interface with documents made to look like paper is useful for many situations I don't think the end results for these desk clerk business applications (among others) is an improvement at all. Furthermore, the errors introduced by the much more complex code behind these applications affects us all adversely every day.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd say the conference itself is the product of some random text generator.
I'm thinking of moving my campaign off the internet, and into print / radio. But even then, how many people are just going to glaze through the ad when it's being played on the radio? For how many people I *might* appeal to, how many people will I *not* appeal to?
Well, ya hit the nail right on the head missed by the NYT article (of course they have their own bias).
With almost any form of Internet advertising you know EXACTLY how many people paid attention to the ad. Nobody clicks on an ad for something they are totally disinterested in.
But for TV and print advertising even with the futuristic gadgets they are talking about deploying it is still a lot of guesswork.
The irony is that print and TV medias LIKES it that way. They entice advertisers with how many MILLIONS of viewers/readers they have and leave it to the advertisers imaginations as to how effective an ad with them will be.
Why do you think national print media is so timid about putting their entire content on the web? Wouldn't it make sense for them to say "Hey, in addition to our MILLIONS of subscribers your ad will be seen by tens of MILLIONS of people who view our content on the Internet!"
The only problem is they would be asked to offer some proof of that, and the results would cast doubt on how many people even read each article much less pay attention to the ads.
They don't get it, because they don't want to get it. After some of the current media conglomerates collapse, or their top execs die of old age there will be some change. While the predictions of that Flash presentation titled "EPIC" are a bit far fetched, the gist of it is true, these newspapers are going to end up being newsletters and all broadcast media will be the domain of short-wave hobbyists as Internet based on-demand media displace them.
whacking the USPTO upside the head.
In my experience, software issues occur for one of two reasons:
(1) "Broken" code:.....
(2) Bad communication / misuse of code:....
You left one out:
(0) Bad Design: The code does everything you intended it to do and the users are using it properly, but you didn't think of all the possible states in which the code could find itself and decide what to do about them.
This is often lumped in with (1), but shouldn't be IMHO. It's one reason I think that comments in code are valuable (as are formal design documents) since it forces the person, or people doing the design and coding to restate their intentions in at least a couple of different ways.
I have written and worked with well written specs and they tend to reduce the number of pure coding errors by leaving less to the imagination of the coder. Well written specs can still fail to account for all possibilities however and that's a good reason to have meaningful design discussions (rather than the formally mandated ones that people attend these days in body but not mind).
There are many people today who think of themselves as ace coders. The world would do well to have more people who are design experts who don't practice coding at all. The two disciplines complement one another well.
are a pile-o-crap.
What company would rely on such advice rather than do their own tests with their own unique situation?
A brain-dead company thats who.
These former "research" companies are having to rely more and more on funding by very interested parties to the tests becuase nobody in their right mind takes them seriously any more (and thus don't subscribe to their privately issued studies).
Actually kinda handy to be able to search my two favorite engines at once.
Even if it is just a joke page.
Well, there are some of us that are not totally sold on the unified menu bar concept. It doesn't (for example) work with x-windows applications (yet anyway) and there are an increasing number of things that use that tiny bit of real-estate on the right (sound,battery, bluetooth, wireless, date/time indicators) and on smaller screens those drop-down menus on the left and those status indicators on the right run into one another with undesirable results.
I've run into many situations with applications supposedly written FOR Aqua where the placement of controls on the window vs the hotspots that activate those elements are off by exactly the width of that menu bar.
To me this indicates that there is some confusion among developers about what it means to take over the entire screen, maximize a window, etc.
Finally, try running for a while in dual-head mode where you are using two monitors. There is only one menu bar. You have to choose which monitor it will appear on. If you are actively using applications on both screens this results in a lot of mileage on your mouse (depending on the nature of the app of course).
Maybe the new system will address some of these things, but I have a feeling that the Dashboard concept will make life more complicated without addressing existing issues.
Well, I see that the Apple zealots have totally missed my point. (I should point out that my every-day computer these days is a Powerbook.)
But why couldn't this new functionality simply been added to the control panel, or made available as a separate all-in-one application.
Adding something like this as an entirely new design element to me is questionable for a system that prides itself on the simplicity of its interface.
Now when a new user is not sure where some functionality is they will have FOUR places to look instead of THREE.
What I see operating here reminds me too much of the release strategy for Windows. You have to have frequent new releases to keep a revenue stream going (rather than just charge users annually for support on their existing OS) and in order to justify a new release you have to CHANGE something, preferably something that is easily noticed. Further, those who don't upgrade have to be punished in some way, in this case by new application that will only work if you have Dashboard.
Really it was small changes like this, made over many years that has made Windows (and the MS apps that go with it) the monstrosity that it is now, and the same is true of the more bloated Linux interfaces.
Well, the examples of what you could put on the dashboard certainly looked cool (mind you nothing that I haven't seen in Windows or Linux), but aren't we getting a bit overwhelmed with different types of control panels?
I mean one on top that we can't get rid of (to make more screen real-estate). One down bottom (that we can at least move around). And now ANOTHER one UNDER that?
I think I like the paradigm mostly used by KDE and Gnome better. As many toolbars as you want. Put theme where you want. Allow some to pop out of others. And most importantly: allow all of them to hide themselves automatically and allow you to arrange things on them any way you like.
I know that the "simplicity" of the Apple interfaces is supposed to make things easier by forcing everyone to live within a narrow framework... but they are clearly moving away from that simplicity now. Next thing you know it will be Windows.
(as is almost always the case when the government releases a study on anything)
Where can I go to get a refund?
Well, at least we sort of agree on the history.
And I think you are exactly right about the dynamic between grumpy mainframe maintenance guys (of whom I was one) and the people outside the air-conditioned room.
What gets missed is that we were grumpy for a very good reason! We were responsible for, in some cases, millions of dollars worth of equipment, and often, held the future of the company in our hands. While we were fairly well paid, most of us didn't think we were paid ENOUGH to compensate for the 3AM phone calls, 18 hour days, and still having to be in for the 9 AM staff meeting with a tie on.
Along with all the technology (both hardware and software) that has been re-invented for the PC world, we have re-invented that grumpy old system administrator. The network admins are really not all that much different than the mainframe "admins" were in the old days, except there seem to be a lot more of them. They still have that responsibility, they are still, for that reason, relatively uninterested in the user-problem of the day, and in my opinion, they drop the ball a lot more often than us mainframers used to.
Part of that is our lazy culture I think, but part of that is that the PC technology, as old as it is at this point, is still in the 70's when it comes to comparison with the mainframe model. That means that a network admin can try his hardest to cover all the bases, but miss one patch from Microsoft, or misapply that patch and you could lose days or weeks of data (back to that backup issue again).
In all of my mainframe career I had one small case where I was responsible (partially) for the loss of data. I was practically suicidal over it. These days, I'm not so sure that the typical sysadmin is so concerned, but then, that might have to do with there being so many of them.
Which brings me to the final PC myth, which is that the PC has saved many organizations money over what they were spending in the "old days". While I'm sure there may be a case or two in which this is true, I've never run into such an organization. The excuse often given for the dramatically INCREASED cost of a modern LAN/WAN setup over the old mainframe days is that "we are doing so many more things than we used to do". But I find that the "more things" is often impossible to quantify. Yes, a lot more e-mail flows in and out of today's organization, but the bulk of it is time waster stuff, junk mail, personal correspondence, and in many cases, miscommunications due to the lack of formality that such documents have by comparison with true written memos and business letters.
Anyway it's been nice dredging up these old memories. As a mostly plain old "user" or should I say "victim" of modern technology, I'm optimistic that things will improve, but I try to impress on young folk when I get the chance that a lot of this stuff is really not "new" after all. (And yes, I know how that makes me sound, but hey I *AM* and old fart after all).
You are quibbling over semantics.
I had been in the mainframe business for quit a while when the PC showed up. IBM developed them with no clear notion of how they would be used to fend off, among other things, people asking to interface mainframe applications to machines they had purchased from Radio Shack.
A company in Washington State (from whom MS ultimately purchased the rights to what became MS DOS) had lobbied Intel to market the 8008 (I think) as a general purpose computer without much success.
Primitive graphical interfaces were actually available on mainframes at this time, but the existing 3270 (IBM Terminal) had a lot of baggage of it's own that made it much more suitable as a character device. Plus, they were expensive. As a result, one of the primary uses of early PCs that were bought for businesses was as a 3270 replacement.
That the IBM PC allowed very small businesses to first use computers to do things which formerly was done with calculators I don't deny, but by and large these efforts were being carried out by people with no data processing background and often ended up with data lost or corrupted. In most cases these people simply did not know that they were re-inventing the wheel in terms of reliability, scalability and data synchronization that had already been worked out on mainframe systems.
I tend to agree with this assesment:
http://www.thocp.net/timeline/1974.htm
4 January 1974, INTEL introduces the 8080 microprocessor, an improved 8 bit version. This chip has a price tag of "just" 360 U$. The processor contains a Kernel of 75 instructions, the so called micro code. It is ten times as fast as the 8008 with 2Mhz. It addresses a memory of 64.000 bytes. There are 6.000 transistors (3micron) mounted on this chip. (23)
The designers and marketing people are thinking they have given the final solution to the still rising demand for computing power (64Kb address). This monumental mistake will have catastrophic results towards further development of better(faster) chips and software development for the next few decades.
I totally empathize with your anger. While MS and Windows are probably the worst offenders, just about everything that passes for "computer science" in the PC industry is half-assed. You don't have to analyze the code to see what the problem is either. Simply look at the precepts that these people start with (both sides of the issue in the "debate" that takes place in the article).
The PC started it's life as a would-be controller for dishwashers back when all real data processing was done on "mainframes". Those systems, even as far back as the 80's stayed up for months at a time, had hot-swappable components, mature backup-restore facilities and there simply was no such thing as an "exploit", unless you had access to the computer room. Did we have to sacrifice all of that just to get a graphical user interface?
The PC industry represents a NIH (Not Invented Here) syndrome of the worst proportions, particularly when you realize that we are gradually moving back to a server-centric paradigm for not only business, but personal uses of computers (even gaming!)
I don't care who gets the blame for this from a historical perspective (although I think the candidates are pretty obvious), I'm just glad that even the most naive of users are beginning to understand that they can't trust anything important to a mere "PC". Those who try and convince us otherwise will gradually erode their own credibility.
All of which leads me to wonder whether Bill is just that much out of touch with reality or simply saying that which will be good for Microsoft (in his opinion).
His notion of ubiquitous computing would be well served if Microsoft had either closed shop, or followed other's lead years ago. My Palm Pilot has never rebooted, and since batteries last two months at a time I've never had to do a "restore" on my todo list. People expect (and should expect) hardware to "just work", a goal that Microsoft has fallen far short of at every opportunity.
Ultimately whether the computing power is on the desktop, centralized or a bit of both should not be noticeable by the user and it is not the sort of thing that should require constant downloads or complete OS replacements every 2 years. Nor, in the long run, is it something that should cost $400 for either hardware, software, or the combination.
Bill's article, and recent pronouncements by Balmer ($100 computers) ring hollow when you realize that Microsoft has stood in the way of these goals from their inception (intentionally or not).
All I can say about their recent attempts at being "visionaries" is that I hope they get their way. Now what remains to be seen is whether Microsoft will be a part of the solution or whether, as in the past, the solution will have to work around Microsoft leaving it to play catch-up and attempt to rewrite history.
The easiest way to have a lot of predictions come true is to predict everything.
I was about to say something like that.
It has interested me that over at Blogger.com (a Google property) they haven't immediately come out with their own photo-blogging spin-off. Google mean time acquired another photo company (who's name I forget) that only works for Windows (Hence I don't use it) and they have been recommending that non-Windows users use Flickr instead (which I have).
Now I wonder what Googles response will be? Continue recommending a Yahoo product?
Seems to me there is significant risk in this photo-blogging thing. The industry hasn't even digested the changes precipitated by Gmail yet. All of a sudden they are tripping all over themselves to give away online storage again. A gig, multiplied by 100 million users. Pretty soon you are talking some serious storage requirements there.
Flickr gives away storage for 100 photos. Is that enough? I might decided not to even bother with the free option... and I might or might not want to actually pay for the service. If I send them $30 and upload every huge photo that my monthly quota allows, are they going to make any money? If a few million people do that are they going to make any money? Will they have enough storage? Will their servers grind to a halt (the way Gmail is already starting to do)?
While I hate to discourage the "investor class" from giving away the store, it seems to me there are still a lot of perfectly valid TEXT based applications that would not need so many resources but would be just as valuable to the average person as photo-blogging.
My theory has always been that Google would eventually come out with a free online equivalent to Word and Excel (feature limited no doubt) that would allow most of us to not only dispense with those Microsoft products, but also no longer have to copy our documents from one PC to another. Nothing ground breaking here... but during the last Dot-com bubble, it was only provided as an offline Java program and the online storage was limited to 100 meg or so, after which you had to buy more space. Google, using the Gmail technology, and the server-farm behind it could offer a LOT more for free, and probably convince me (and others) to fork over a small annual fee for added space/functionality. That value proposition along with the NEED to have as opposed to the NICE to have features of photo-blogging is what I think may separate Google from the rest. (Or I could be totally wrong about this).
My other reaction regarding Yahoo, is that they tend to buy things and then change their mind about them only a short time later. Broadband.com I think was a fairly interesting place to download movie clips until Yahoo got them. They also do a lot of joint-marketing deals that don't last long enough to be more than bait and switch deals IMHO. I use, and even pay for some of their old-line core services... but I always take a wait and see approach when they launch something new (especially if it involves buying a company).
Not to mention that there is no version of IE for those of us using Linux, and the version for OS X is fairly redundant (I've already deleted my copy). It's nice that Firefox will run on Windows, but the big advantage of it running over there (as far as I'm concerned) is to convince people that they don't need to be running windows at all. When I was still using Windows I used Mozilla for web, usenet, e-mail, OpenOffice for document sharing with Word users. By the time I fully stopped using Windows my desktop there looked almost identical to my Linux desktop. All I had to do was switch to Gaim from the other IM clients.
Same here. I hadn't heard anything about Infospace since those AvantGo days and I never would have thought that content any more than what could be produced by a couple folks grabbing headlines off of Yahoo. I also never would have considered actually paying for any of that content. And now the company makes millions selling RING TONES?!
The value system the world then (and still) operates under is close to being FUBAR. I just don't get it.
Please don't write any description of the product unless you actually know what it does. And please don't think you know what it does just because you've looked at Groove's website. That sort of uniformed spewage gives Slashdot a bad name.
...?" and then after they have your money, the technical people (that would be most Slashdot readers) are put in contact with the support staff who roll their eyes and say things like "What have our sales reps told you now?"
You seem to be defending Groove here, which is fine, but I'd never heard of them either, so I also checked their web page and found it not particularly informative.
I'm not tempted to feel guilty for not being impressed by fuzzy marketing language. In fact, web pages full of such are usually created by exactly the type of company I wish to avoid. Such companies work from the top down in large organizations always saying "YES!" to questions of the form "can you do
My guess is the company is on shaky ground and was ripe for the plucking by Microsoft. In desperation they probably made their marketing message less and less specific hoping to troll for a larger customer base. Now that won't be a worry any more.
All I see is black on that camera...it's as if the view was obscured by... err... steam and ash.
"Has sanity finally set in, or is this just a blip in Microsoft's dominance in controlling government software decisions?"
I'd guess blip.
I think you are exactly right on every point. However programming prima-donnas rule the industry, and probably provide a good living for people who have to come after them and rescue a mess. I don't blame this on the programmers however so much as weak or stupid management.
From what I gather, the original author of the article redefines "design" to mean good programming practices and "architecture" to mean good design. Of course when I was working on big OS projects we would have felt a bit silly announcing that we were going to have an "architecture" meeting tomorrow to go over the changes for the next version.... but if the current generation of programmers needs to invent a new language to get the job done, so be it. LOL, OMGWTF!1!
Wow, guess OSX really is a *nix. What happened to all the "everything just works" through the gui nonsense, bah!
I think the concept of "everything just works" and "everything works through the GUI" are separate, the former being mostly applicable to the Apple OS(es) and the latter being a Bill Gates formulation.
From some articles I've read, even the Microsoft designers have learned that putting everything in the GUI (or even trying to) leads to a very confusing, buggy, and hard to document interface.
In my opinion, both Apple and Microsoft would do well to learn one more lesson: That separating the base operating system from the GUI entirely is the best way to go. With Linux (my preference by a thin margin over OS X) I can have a complex GUI like KDE, a simpler one like Gnome, or a dozen others with their own strengths and weaknesses... or I can run them all at the same time! Both companies however, particularly Microsoft, can't resist the urge to lock users into a single way of doing things. Since users have hardly rebelled from these tactics I don't expect them to change any time soon. The existence out there of Linux as an alternative and other things like X and KDE for OSX may eventually pry their fingers from this point of view and convince them that in the long run KILLER APS need to stand on their own merit and not be dependent on advertising budgets, government bribes, or secret OS hooks to keep users buying them.
I hope they get it fixed soon.
Good points.
Not to mention (except I am) the problems you can run into when your screens are full of spreadsheets already, the lights go out... and that space robot makes all electrical devices on earth stop working until he can retrieve Michael Remy's body and bring him back to life.
Whenever those things happen and I still need to balance my checkbook, I just whip out my old K&E (which I paid too much for used, from a graduating senior in high school). Or something.
None of this has anything to do with my current financial situation however!
I agree 100 percent. I don't use Windows either for the same reason. I use Linux most of the time, but also use OS X when I want something to interface that just doesn't work with Linux. If it only works with Windows then screw it.
What really puzzles me though is when I observe "dumb users" working with a Windows (or even windowed) interface in professional settings, airline ticket counters, car reservation, hotel desk clerks, etc. There is no doubt in my mind that they would be better served by a character mode interface (assuming it was properly designed). Over and over I see them squint at almost unreadable text, struggle with cut and paste actions that should probably be PF key functions, and wait, wait, wait while the screen refreshes. As you suggest, a single PC could handle hundreds of these in text mode, but more importantly, text mode would be not only an improvement in terms of efficiency, but ease of use as well.
While a windowed interface with documents made to look like paper is useful for many situations I don't think the end results for these desk clerk business applications (among others) is an improvement at all. Furthermore, the errors introduced by the much more complex code behind these applications affects us all adversely every day.