You mean Flash isn't slow? The Flash plugin it takes 10 to 20 seconds to load, and when it's finally loaded, it hogs 90-100% CPU! And I'm using an Athlon 1.4 Ghz.
Re:CMYK, and GIMP UI vs. drop-down menus
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Film Gimp
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· Score: 2
That's exactly how you draw staight lines in Photoshop too...
But anime is still underappriciated by the majority. Look at TV for example. FoxKids only broadcasts *old* kiddie anime like Pokemon/Digimon/Flint/Medabots/Hello Kitty (*gasp*)! Cartoon Network broadcasts DBZ (better than all the cr4p from FoxKids though). And Yourin broadcasts Sailor Moon season 1 (season 1! *gasp*!) and Card Captor Sakura, which is actually the American censored and edited dub dubbed to Dutch using horrible voices.
If things continue like this, it may do more bad than good to people's general view of anime.
"One should also note that Rei has blue hair and red eyes ?rather remarkable traits for a Japanese girl!!" Uhm... unnatural hair colors like purple, blue, white and green look nice. That's it, they look nice. No need to think about *why* they chose that color, it just looks nice!
I think the author of the article is overanalyzing things.
"Typical" jerky graphics and guns blazing loud obnoxious anime? Oh, you must mean those 10+ years old movies released by Manga (the company)?
Watch some recent anime movies, like Inu Yasha or Slayers Premium, or even the somewhat older movies like The Vision of Escaflowne. *Extremely* smooth and beautiful graphics.
"It has been 800,000 years since the last time the poles flipped. At that time, our ancestors were walking around, munching on wooly mammoths an giant sloths, etc., armed with such amazing modern tech as sharpened flint and fire. If they can take it, so can we."
Are you sure? I thought humans were born 200.000 years ago, not 800.000.
Yes, Shockwave and Flash may be useful for some situations, but the problem is that they are more often being abused than actually used. Advertisement in Shockwave/Flash, with sounds and all: rediculous! Not to mention all those websites that are written entirely in Flash! I've seen many websites with a Flash intro, without a link option to bypass the intro! So the only way to get into the website is by using the Flash plugin. Rediculous!
Those points are mostly *already fixed* in GNOME 2.0! Look at it: it's a highly consistent interface, with very little configuration options that can confuse the user.
I don't understand why people call Windows XP or Longhorn or whatever new version of Windows "userfriendly". Look at the screenshots! There's now some kind of sidebar which duplicates the functions of the Start menu ---> confusing to new users. If you open Windows Explorer and check My Computer, you get a complex screen with buttons, icons and progress bars. If you go to My Documents you get overloaded with options! Any new user will get confused by that! Not to mention all the eyecandy. Sure, it looks nice, but all those gradients and icons do is overload the user with information. New users will get confused and will have a hard time recognizing standard controls. The entire UI is extremely cluttered.
The Longhorn GUI is good for advanced users, but will confuse new users! If GNOME or KDE do this, the Windows people will flame us down for creating a "hacker desktop" that's "not consistent" and "overloads the user with too much information". But if Windows does this, it's suddenly allright and called "huge improvements" or "innovation". I just don't get it...
"- "Windows Longhorn XP"? Microsoft always use names like "Windows Longhorn "."
(forgot Slashdot strip HTML tags) What I mean is, names like "Windows [Codename] [Build ID]", such as "Windows Longhorn Build 1678578236785"
Those screenshots just can't be real. They're true usability nightmares. An extra panel that duplicates the Start Menu's function? Totally unintuitive and confusing! Look at Windows Explorer, it's cluttered as hell. Not even Microsoft UIs can be that bad.
Those screenshots are fake! Look at the name in the background. - "Windows Longhorn XP"? Microsoft always use names like "Windows Longhorn ". - Look at the expiration date. A beta that lasts for a year? Impossible. - "MSN Messenger 5.0" in the start menu. MSN Messenger has been renamed to Windows Messenger since WinXP!
They haven't been communist for a long time now. Their economy is a mix between capitalism and communism. There are both private corporations and government communist corporations.
I've been telling this for quite a while now, yet nobody believes and instead post excuses like "that one is so old". Well, there's *yet another proof* that what I've been telling is true.
DivX has nothing to do with WMA. DivX is a video codec, WMA is an audio codec. DivX;-) (with the smiley, also known als DivX 3.11) was a hacked version of MSMPEG4v3 (there were also hacked versions of MSMPEG4v2 around, but they aren't called DivX and are incompatible with v3). Although MS calls it "MPEG4vX", they are really incompatible with MPEG 4.
AVI has also nothing to do with DivX and WMA, it's just a container format. It just happens that some AVI files contain DivX video and WMA audio, but it may just as well be Indeo video with MP3 audio or whatever. You can put video and audio made in almost any codec in an AVI container. Because DivX and WMA have nothing to do with AVI, you can, for example, also create Ogg files that contain DivX video with MP3 audio, Theora video with WMA audio, etc.
AVI is old, very old, and it should be replaced. No error detection, not streamable, difficult to support VBR codecs, etc. I hope one day, people will just stop encoding AVI files and switch to Ogg for MCF instead.
You mention RedHat. RedHat is aiming at the corporate desktop. In corporate desktops, only the administator is allowed to configure system settings like the printer. The end user won't notice a thing.
OS X autodetects hardware better than Windows because it has it's own market. In Windows, you still have to setup quite a lot of things after installation. Why does the majority use Windows instead of OS X? Because it's preinstalled and preconfigured. If companies ship computers with Linux preinstalled, the user won't have to configure anything either. And those computers exist: Walmart ships computers with Mandrake preinstalled.
"It shows that you are just a biased zealot, IMNSHO."
Is there anyone in this world *truly* unbiased? Everybody is at least a little biased, even you.
"That's how you started out, fairly stating that Linux isn't as bad as people made it out to be. But after that you changed the rules of the game. Suddenly we may no longer compare Linux to OS X because it would lose."
So what you're saying is: 1. I started out defending Linux but not attacking OS X. 2. I continue to not attack OS X. 3. Conclusion: I was trolling.
"Most of us consider that a legitimate concern to discuss. Why do you try to kill that debate with an offtopic rant?"
Because he was, wrongly, modding down Linux in order to mod MacOS X up. That gives me reason enough to post a rant.
"Ok, it isn't fair. It still sucks and I won't use it. Happy?"
Look, I don't really care wether you will or will not use it. It's an unfair situation - that's all that matters. It likes comparing your grandmother who bakes an apple pie to some huge apple pie factory, and telling your grandmother that her pies suck.
"Do any of these problems matter when I evaluate a product for it's quality? No. So why did you bring them up in this discussion about quality? Trying to troll?"
If I were trolling I would be modding Linux up to the heavens and everything else down to hell. But I was not, I was merely stating that Linux isn't as bad as people think it is. I said nowhere that OS X or Windows are bad products. How can you confuse that with trolling?
"That doesn't really matter from a consumer point of view. I'm not going to use a crappy product because the developers are a sad bunch."
And you shouldn't look at it from a consumer point of view. The fact that Apple and MS have more manpower is a fact, it's the reality. If you're going to criticize something, you must also look at wether the situation is fair. Wether the consumer care or not is irrelevant.
Remember that Apple and Microsoft have a hell lot more experience and manpower.
"On the Macintosh, I don't need to configure anything on my machine."
That's the logical result of dominating your own market. It's all Apple hardware, *of course* they can make everything work out-of-the-box. If Apple were to develop for x86 however, it wouldn't be so easy.
Personally, I don't really care wether Linux "wins" on the desktop. As long as it has a small but visible market share (10/20%?), so that companies won't ignore us, and existing open source apps continue to evolve, I'm happy.
"Because OS X seems to deliver on all of the promises that Linux has been making for years."
Since when did "Linux" made any promises? Linux is just a kernel, and the developers just do whatever they like. They didn't made *any* promises.
Usable desktops? That's up to the GNOME and KDE projects and distributors. Say whatever you want, but GNOME and KDE, as of version 2.0 and 3.0 are very much usable, and more than usable enough for normal usage.
"I don't want to learn the intricacies of my Xfree86 config files."
You don't have to! Your XF86Config is setup automatically by RedHat/Mandrake/SuSE/FooBar's auto-hardware-detection-installer!
"I don't want to find where Red Hat hid Apache today."
You don't have to! Applications->System Tools->Service Configuration -- now how hard was that? (and the average user doesn't even want to run a webserver!)
"I just want to fire up my Dev Tools/Word Processor/Photoshop and get to work."
Login --> Applications->Office->AbiWord --> start being productive. Was that hard? I don't think so.
Really, "Linux"'s usability is heavily underrated. People seem to be stuck with those "omfg I have to edit 3000 text files to get it working!"-mentality from a few years ago. OS X may be o-so-userfriendly, but don't underrate Linux as some kind of usability nightmare that can't be used to get anything done.
Another "X sucks" post again. Yeah sure, you claim that X* will never cut it in the desktop world. Why? OK, network transparency is not imporant to you, but it doesn't hurt you either! What's so wrong with X that it needs to be replaced? It's got support for lots of video cards, 2D graphics, 3D hardware acceleration (OpenGL/DRI), hardware YUV acceleration (XVideo), video mode switching (XVidMode), translucent rendering (Xrender), antialiasing (Xft), and soon root window resizing (RandR) and perhaps translucent windows. And most important of all: X is designed to be extensible! All the other 'replacements' are big jokes. DirectFB/GGI/Berlin don't support nearly as many video cards and aren't nearly as mature.
* It's the X window System, or just X! NOT "X-windows", "X-window", "X windows" or "X window".
And I can sit on my Mandrake 7.2 box and develop a GTK+ app, and it will run on RedHat 8.0. If for some reason it doesn't run: recompile and viola, it works. Heck, it even compiles on other Unices!
Slashdot Mirror
You mean Flash isn't slow? The Flash plugin it takes 10 to 20 seconds to load, and when it's finally loaded, it hogs 90-100% CPU! And I'm using an Athlon 1.4 Ghz.
That's exactly how you draw staight lines in Photoshop too...
But anime is still underappriciated by the majority. Look at TV for example. FoxKids only broadcasts *old* kiddie anime like Pokemon/Digimon/Flint/Medabots/Hello Kitty (*gasp*)! Cartoon Network broadcasts DBZ (better than all the cr4p from FoxKids though). And Yourin broadcasts Sailor Moon season 1 (season 1! *gasp*!) and Card Captor Sakura, which is actually the American censored and edited dub dubbed to Dutch using horrible voices.
If things continue like this, it may do more bad than good to people's general view of anime.
"One should also note that Rei has blue hair and red eyes ?rather remarkable traits for a Japanese girl!!"
Uhm... unnatural hair colors like purple, blue, white and green look nice. That's it, they look nice. No need to think about *why* they chose that color, it just looks nice!
I think the author of the article is overanalyzing things.
"Typical" jerky graphics and guns blazing loud obnoxious anime?
Oh, you must mean those 10+ years old movies released by Manga (the company)?
Watch some recent anime movies, like Inu Yasha or Slayers Premium, or even the somewhat older movies like The Vision of Escaflowne. *Extremely* smooth and beautiful graphics.
"It has been 800,000 years since the last time the poles flipped. At that time, our ancestors were walking around, munching on wooly mammoths an giant sloths, etc., armed with such amazing modern tech as sharpened flint and fire. If they can take it, so can we."
Are you sure? I thought humans were born 200.000 years ago, not 800.000.
Yes, Shockwave and Flash may be useful for some situations, but the problem is that they are more often being abused than actually used.
Advertisement in Shockwave/Flash, with sounds and all: rediculous! Not to mention all those websites that are written entirely in Flash! I've seen many websites with a Flash intro, without a link option to bypass the intro! So the only way to get into the website is by using the Flash plugin. Rediculous!
Those points are mostly *already fixed* in GNOME 2.0! Look at it: it's a highly consistent interface, with very little configuration options that can confuse the user.
Those arguments of him are a bit outdated.
"However, at least in the programs I write, GCC still produces large executables."
strip --strip-all foo ?
I don't understand why people call Windows XP or Longhorn or whatever new version of Windows "userfriendly". Look at the screenshots!
There's now some kind of sidebar which duplicates the functions of the Start menu ---> confusing to new users.
If you open Windows Explorer and check My Computer, you get a complex screen with buttons, icons and progress bars.
If you go to My Documents you get overloaded with options! Any new user will get confused by that!
Not to mention all the eyecandy. Sure, it looks nice, but all those gradients and icons do is overload the user with information. New users will get confused and will have a hard time recognizing standard controls.
The entire UI is extremely cluttered.
The Longhorn GUI is good for advanced users, but will confuse new users! If GNOME or KDE do this, the Windows people will flame us down for creating a "hacker desktop" that's "not consistent" and "overloads the user with too much information". But if Windows does this, it's suddenly allright and called "huge improvements" or "innovation".
I just don't get it...
"- "Windows Longhorn XP"? Microsoft always use names like "Windows Longhorn "."
(forgot Slashdot strip HTML tags)
What I mean is, names like "Windows [Codename] [Build ID]", such as "Windows Longhorn Build 1678578236785"
Those screenshots just can't be real. They're true usability nightmares. An extra panel that duplicates the Start Menu's function? Totally unintuitive and confusing! Look at Windows Explorer, it's cluttered as hell. Not even Microsoft UIs can be that bad.
Those screenshots are fake! Look at the name in the background.
- "Windows Longhorn XP"? Microsoft always use names like "Windows Longhorn ".
- Look at the expiration date. A beta that lasts for a year? Impossible.
- "MSN Messenger 5.0" in the start menu. MSN Messenger has been renamed to Windows Messenger since WinXP!
They haven't been communist for a long time now. Their economy is a mix between capitalism and communism. There are both private corporations and government communist corporations.
I've been telling this for quite a while now, yet nobody believes and instead post excuses like "that one is so old". Well, there's *yet another proof* that what I've been telling is true.
DivX has nothing to do with WMA. DivX is a video codec, WMA is an audio codec. ;-) (with the smiley, also known als DivX 3.11) was a hacked version of MSMPEG4v3 (there were also hacked versions of MSMPEG4v2 around, but they aren't called DivX and are incompatible with v3). Although MS calls it "MPEG4vX", they are really incompatible with MPEG 4.
DivX
AVI has also nothing to do with DivX and WMA, it's just a container format. It just happens that some AVI files contain DivX video and WMA audio, but it may just as well be Indeo video with MP3 audio or whatever. You can put video and audio made in almost any codec in an AVI container.
Because DivX and WMA have nothing to do with AVI, you can, for example, also create Ogg files that contain DivX video with MP3 audio, Theora video with WMA audio, etc.
AVI is old, very old, and it should be replaced. No error detection, not streamable, difficult to support VBR codecs, etc. I hope one day, people will just stop encoding AVI files and switch to Ogg for MCF instead.
OK you want to hear more logical arguments?
You mention RedHat. RedHat is aiming at the corporate desktop. In corporate desktops, only the administator is allowed to configure system settings like the printer. The end user won't notice a thing.
OS X autodetects hardware better than Windows because it has it's own market. In Windows, you still have to setup quite a lot of things after installation. Why does the majority use Windows instead of OS X?
Because it's preinstalled and preconfigured. If companies ship computers with Linux preinstalled, the user won't have to configure anything either. And those computers exist: Walmart ships computers with Mandrake preinstalled.
"It shows that you are just a biased zealot, IMNSHO."
Is there anyone in this world *truly* unbiased? Everybody is at least a little biased, even you.
"That's how you started out, fairly stating that Linux isn't as bad as people made it out to be. But after that you changed the rules of the game. Suddenly we may no longer compare Linux to OS X because it would lose."
So what you're saying is:
1. I started out defending Linux but not attacking OS X.
2. I continue to not attack OS X.
3. Conclusion: I was trolling.
???????
"Most of us consider that a legitimate concern to discuss. Why do you try to kill that debate with an offtopic rant?"
Because he was, wrongly, modding down Linux in order to mod MacOS X up. That gives me reason enough to post a rant.
"Ok, it isn't fair. It still sucks and I won't use it. Happy?"
Look, I don't really care wether you will or will not use it. It's an unfair situation - that's all that matters. It likes comparing your grandmother who bakes an apple pie to some huge apple pie factory, and telling your grandmother that her pies suck.
"Do any of these problems matter when I evaluate a product for it's quality? No. So why did you bring them up in this discussion about quality? Trying to troll?"
If I were trolling I would be modding Linux up to the heavens and everything else down to hell. But I was not, I was merely stating that Linux isn't as bad as people think it is. I said nowhere that OS X or Windows are bad products. How can you confuse that with trolling?
"That doesn't really matter from a consumer point of view. I'm not going to use a crappy product because the developers are a sad bunch."
And you shouldn't look at it from a consumer point of view.
The fact that Apple and MS have more manpower is a fact, it's the reality. If you're going to criticize something, you must also look at wether the situation is fair. Wether the consumer care or not is irrelevant.
Remember that Apple and Microsoft have a hell lot more experience and manpower.
"On the Macintosh, I don't need to configure anything on my machine."
That's the logical result of dominating your own market. It's all Apple hardware, *of course* they can make everything work out-of-the-box. If Apple were to develop for x86 however, it wouldn't be so easy.
Personally, I don't really care wether Linux "wins" on the desktop. As long as it has a small but visible market share (10/20%?), so that companies won't ignore us, and existing open source apps continue to evolve, I'm happy.
"Because OS X seems to deliver on all of the promises that Linux has been making for years."
Since when did "Linux" made any promises? Linux is just a kernel, and the developers just do whatever they like. They didn't made *any* promises.
Usable desktops? That's up to the GNOME and KDE projects and distributors. Say whatever you want, but GNOME and KDE, as of version 2.0 and 3.0 are very much usable, and more than usable enough for normal usage.
"I don't want to learn the intricacies of my Xfree86 config files."
You don't have to! Your XF86Config is setup automatically by RedHat/Mandrake/SuSE/FooBar's auto-hardware-detection-installer!
"I don't want to find where Red Hat hid Apache today."
You don't have to! Applications->System Tools->Service Configuration -- now how hard was that? (and the average user doesn't even want to run a webserver!)
"I just want to fire up my Dev Tools/Word Processor/Photoshop and get to work."
Login --> Applications->Office->AbiWord --> start being productive. Was that hard? I don't think so.
Really, "Linux"'s usability is heavily underrated. People seem to be stuck with those "omfg I have to edit 3000 text files to get it working!"-mentality from a few years ago.
OS X may be o-so-userfriendly, but don't underrate Linux as some kind of usability nightmare that can't be used to get anything done.
OK, good points. You should send that to the usability mailing list too.
But... what do those points have to do with the *user interface guidelines*?
Another "X sucks" post again.
Yeah sure, you claim that X* will never cut it in the desktop world. Why? OK, network transparency is not imporant to you, but it doesn't hurt you either! What's so wrong with X that it needs to be replaced?
It's got support for lots of video cards, 2D graphics, 3D hardware acceleration (OpenGL/DRI), hardware YUV acceleration (XVideo), video mode switching (XVidMode), translucent rendering (Xrender), antialiasing (Xft), and soon root window resizing (RandR) and perhaps translucent windows.
And most important of all: X is designed to be extensible!
All the other 'replacements' are big jokes. DirectFB/GGI/Berlin don't support nearly as many video cards and aren't nearly as mature.
* It's the X window System, or just X! NOT "X-windows", "X-window", "X windows" or "X window".
And I can sit on my Mandrake 7.2 box and develop a GTK+ app, and it will run on RedHat 8.0. If for some reason it doesn't run: recompile and viola, it works. Heck, it even compiles on other Unices!
www.gnome.org
That's because of a lack of certain tools. What does the user interface guidelines have anything to do with that?