Yeah, it's still a "context" menu, just not on a right mouse button. The ironic part is that it's actually LESS intuitive than a second damn button, and probably harder for someone to figure out or handle. I've NEVER met anyone (who wasn't intentionally not learning) who couldn't get the hang of right-clicking, but I've met plenty of people who took a while to figure out how to double-click. I can't imagine the pain of explaining why you have to "hold down" the mouse buttons, and the ways that a user could screw that up.
FYI, I just tried dragging and dropping a MPEG into Quicktime app, and finder just sprung the mpeg icon back onto it's window. That REALLY surprised me.
I started playing with Mac OS X when Panther came out, and it's pretty neat. However, Apple has not been up to snuff lately with their app development. I've had all kinds of problems with network sharing, from random disconnects, to refused connections, to kernel panics. iTunes has bugs relating to network files, and popup windows that make it so you have to force the app shut. Preview gets "stuck", so that you can't zoom or change the window size, and using it to open many files is excruciatingly slow.
I just moved from a B&W G3 to a Mac Mini, so I can say for sure it's not the machine. The networking has been getting better with each update (haven't had as many problems on the Mac Mini) but the app problems persist.
Do you (or anyone else) have a recommendation on which free one is the best? I just bought a Mac Mini and am trying (for once) to be very cautious with what software to install.
I'm attempting to move from Linux to MacOS as my primary desktop, but lack of features such as virtual desktops, sloppy focus and windowshading has been...painful.
Ratings were created in response to censorship actions in communities. That's all they were for, to prevent movies from being censored, by pointing out that material was for adults (this came after a supreme court decision stating that you couldn't censor material for adults simply because kids could see it.) It's not perfect, it never was, it gets abused all the time. It was only created to get government off their backs, so in that sense it works fine.
I'm pretty sure that if they hadn't HAD to have created them, they never would have done so. Prior to MPAA ratings, there were just organization "Seal of approval" sorts of relationships. This is the way ratings should be. You are a member of "concerned christians for movie piety" or whatever, and based on their rating for a movie, you go see it or not. If you're not a christian but you're concerned about something else, find a group that will rate your movie according to some criteria, or else form your own organization and provide your ratings to like minded people. The internet makes it really easy to do so. I think a case could be made that ratings are obsolete.
Iraq's enemies, for example Iran. Also, Al Qaeda has a lot to lose if either The USA liberates a muslim country, or if the USA gets a foothold in the middle east. Sunni fighters from other countries have been captured in Iraq. There are a lot of people interested in the failure of "new" Iraq.
Iraq has the problem that it was ruled by a minority, who is now very aware that democratic elections would not favor them. If there weren't Sunnis blowing crap up and outside powers interested in making sure the USA doesn't succeed, I suspect that the vast majority of people in Iraq would not have a problem with free elections.
This is not an endorsement of the Iraq war, however. Merely offering a counter viewpoint.
It is my opinion that the alternatives to right click context menus are worse designs. Context menus were designed to solve bigger UI problems that manifested themselves without them. You get the following options:
1. make a context menu that relies on holding down the mouse button. (This is just a reinforcement of the failure of the one-button mouse, but I will acknowledge that it is at least viable.) 2. contextual items will reside in the menu, greyed out until you take some unknown action to enable them. (right-click context menus were invented to fix this.) 3. actions are only accessible via keyboard. (This does not facilitate exploration, and you will have to guess when you can use it if it's not perfectly intuitive.) 4. Like the parent post mentioned, context menus in combination with a key and mouse. He is correct that this also is an indication of the failure of the single mouse button. want to talk about usability problems? what if you don't have two hands?
I don't disagree that assigning menus to the right click interferes with your work, but in your examples, Maya would have far too many options to put into context menus anyway, I would suspect. It makes sense for that application to provide customizable menus for such applications.
Due to the fact that applications can support right click in OS X, you are pretty much shot out of the water now anyway. If an app decides to implement a right-click option, even if it's redundant, you aren't going to be able to override it.
Sorry, was thinking of the newer G4 mouses without surface buttons at all. Should have made that more clear.
I have stacks of Macintoshes lying around, the oldest being a mac II, up through LC-III, a B&W G3, and as of yesterday, a Mac Mini. I never bought a laptop when I had the chance partly because of no integrated two-buttons. Most unix software DOES assume you have at least two buttons.
I don't remember context menus in OS 8 except via the Kensington mouse and drivers, which wasn't really a solution. Please correct me if I am wrong on this. At any rate, apps prior to OS X couldn't assume you had one (Still shouldn't, but the OS support for it is a first class citizen from the start in OS X.)
1. With OS X, Apple finally added context menus to the operating system. 2. Now that context menus are available, almost no one uses a single mouse button on OS X except the computerphobic. 3. With the Mac Mini, Apple is bundling no mouse, knowing full well that almost no one would be using their worthless hockey puck anyway.
This is implicit admission of the worthlessness of the single button mouse. So the question is, why does Apple bother? It's an affront to reason. The people that sound like morons are the tiny minority who actually feel the urge to defend the superfluous single button mouse. You guys don't even have to defend it anymore, you are not even stuck with it so that you HAD to defend it. Being a mac owner isn't even that exclusive anymore, so it's not even like having it makes you special, either.
I agree 100%. I can't stand whiners who claim that Java portability is a myth. The exceptions are trivial and few. It is my opinion that such complainers are either not Java programmers, or whose only interest in Java is finding such examples to trash on it.
Re:Best management advice I ever heard
on
Geeks in Management?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I have heard before that my job is to make my manager look good. The manager who said this interpreted it in the following ways:
taking the blame for his mistakes. doing parts of his job he does not like doing. not showing initiative, because it maked him look lazy by comparison.
Now, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you're not like that. However, what consists of making my boss look good that does not consist of doing my job to the best of my abilities? I wasn't hired to pat someone's belly, I was hired to do a job. It is my belief that such an opinion as "it is your job to make your boss look good" is far too abusable to be wielded safely. I have never met a boss yet who believed this and complied with his end of the social contract.
Furthermore, is it the opinion of YOUR boss that YOUR underlings' responsibility is to make you look good, or to do a good job? Isn't that pretty much why places like Enron and their accounting firm went under? Corporate policy focused on the illusion of a smoothly operating facility, but did not actually mind the business. In any situation I could probably think of ways to make me and my boss look good that in fact have negative impact on the business. Instituting new policies for no reason (to demonstrate you are "doing" something as a manager) comes immediately to mind.
Back when I was running JDK 1.4.whatever, there were inconsistencies in operation between Windows and Linux using the NIO (non-blocking I/O) libraries. There are several messages on Sun's message boards relating to this. It seems to have been worked out by now. NIO was kind of squirrely for a few revisions there.
I have coded a wide range of applications, and have used many of the facilities provided by Java. NIO was the only part of the standard library that gave me trouble. However, I have a friend who was using Java3D for a project. His jobsite uses pretty much the gamut of operating systems. He has told me that Java3D is just plain not portable. Code that worked on Windows would not work on Solaris. I have no details on this, but they ended up using something else, according to him.
While I agree in principle, studies have found for example that access to cable television has reduced prison riots. There are practical reasons to give prisoners some amenities. Some people are never going to pick up a book or take a vocational class no matter how bored they are.
On the other hand, I don't think they need violent video games for the same purpose. Usually on Slashdot when talking about banning violent video games there is a freakout and everyone points out that if someone shoots a bunch of people because of a game, they were already messed up. Well, violent offenders in prison have already demonstrated a propensity for violence, so depriving _them_ of these games only makes sense.
I found details on a way around this. You create a new loopback interface on your Windows machine, and do port forwarding from your secure machine to your windows loopback interface, port 139. Then that keeps your regular port 139 open for normal file sharing, and to get to your remote server, you connect to the new loopback interface. Instructions are here:
http://www.blisstonia.com/eolson/notes/smboverss h. php
I have reason to distrust Microsoft hiring an alternative browser developer, because of MS' history in this area. If MS had never tried to destroy Netscape or break Opera support on their web pages, I probably wouldn't worry if MS hired a Firefox developer.
Thus far I have seen no reason to distrust Google with regards to this hiring. I suspect most FOSS programmers have day jobs, so that he got one at Google doesn't bother me.
Thanks for your response. I don't even have files worth protecting, it's just a hobby learning how to set up systems like this.:-D Good to know it's reasonable.
I just learned how to create a second loopback interface on Windows. By binding the SSH port forwarding to this address you can use regular windows file sharing at the same time you're attached to your secure machine, so that solves that problem (that's what was holding me back from trying it right now.) (If anyone's interested, go here
to read how.)
Once I get that working, I might try out port knocking so I can allow an arbitrary IP address through the firewall when I'm out and about and want to use my machine.
I have a box dedicated to file storage only. I secure it in the following manner (well, in the process of doing so.)
1. I run OpenBSD and know how to admin it. It runs ONLY SSH and Samba. It's behind a software router, runs pf. 2. Samba will only be accessible on the loopback interface. 3. Connections to the machine are made via SSH, you must have both a password and a PK authentication. The client has to port forward the appropriate ports for Samba to work. 4. Firewall scrubs packets (prevents some potential TCP/IP exploit tricks)and only allows connections to and from my internal network and my machine at work from the outside.
And that's it. I don't think this would work with more than one machine serving files via Samba, because of port forwarding. I haven't gotten the Samba attached to the local interface yet, right now samba is just limited to the single client I access files from via the firewall. I'd be curious if anyone has issues with the security of this setup. Basically, I want Samba, but with the stronger authentication and encryption of SSH.
I've wasted thousands of man-hours messing with our in-house fee calculation app. Instead of just buying Oracle Financials, we had a bunch of PL/SQL hackers write a giant, poorly documented, database-driven general ledger. Fantastic. I'm sure someone thought we were getting off cheap, but I can't even hope to calculate how much money we've lost over the last 7 years due to maintenance and bugfix, not to mention lost productivitly due to the inflexibility of a system built by people that aren't even experts on accounting.
The problem is that it's easier to convince bean counters you can make a "lean" custom app that only serves our needs _right now_, because it will cost less RIGHT NOW, than an expensive, but reliable and flexible USEFUL package.
I have heard complaints about Photoshop 7 in WINE, relating to layer rendering, font placement and unopenable dialog boxes. I don't think I would trust it under those conditions.
I personally have additional problems. I use a Wacom artpad, and I've been able to find no information on whether compiling X with pad support, and WINE and Photoshop will all work together, with full pressure and tilt support. It's a LOT of work to recompile and install and troubleshoot all that shit just to find out if it MIGHT work.
I suspect a large number of people are in a similar situation. A lot of people working with photoshop have artpads, but who knows if it works? I can't find anyone who knows, and I've asked in all the right places.
As for IE, I wouldn't trust IE under WINE to give good results. If you have XP, you can use rdesktop to connect to your windows machine to run IE, that's what I do when I really need it. You can't get rid of your windows desktop, but you can hide it somewhere and just use rdesktop to connect to it.
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Yeah, it's still a "context" menu, just not on a right mouse button. The ironic part is that it's actually LESS intuitive than a second damn button, and probably harder for someone to figure out or handle. I've NEVER met anyone (who wasn't intentionally not learning) who couldn't get the hang of right-clicking, but I've met plenty of people who took a while to figure out how to double-click. I can't imagine the pain of explaining why you have to "hold down" the mouse buttons, and the ways that a user could screw that up.
Expose has reduced my need for virtual desktop considerably...but lack of sloppy focus is *almost* painful.
FYI, I just tried dragging and dropping a MPEG into Quicktime app, and finder just sprung the mpeg icon back onto it's window. That REALLY surprised me.
I started playing with Mac OS X when Panther came out, and it's pretty neat. However, Apple has not been up to snuff lately with their app development. I've had all kinds of problems with network sharing, from random disconnects, to refused connections, to kernel panics. iTunes has bugs relating to network files, and popup windows that make it so you have to force the app shut. Preview gets "stuck", so that you can't zoom or change the window size, and using it to open many files is excruciatingly slow.
I just moved from a B&W G3 to a Mac Mini, so I can say for sure it's not the machine. The networking has been getting better with each update (haven't had as many problems on the Mac Mini) but the app problems persist.
Do you (or anyone else) have a recommendation on which free one is the best? I just bought a Mac Mini and am trying (for once) to be very cautious with what software to install. I'm attempting to move from Linux to MacOS as my primary desktop, but lack of features such as virtual desktops, sloppy focus and windowshading has been...painful.
Ratings were created in response to censorship actions in communities. That's all they were for, to prevent movies from being censored, by pointing out that material was for adults (this came after a supreme court decision stating that you couldn't censor material for adults simply because kids could see it.) It's not perfect, it never was, it gets abused all the time. It was only created to get government off their backs, so in that sense it works fine.
I'm pretty sure that if they hadn't HAD to have created them, they never would have done so. Prior to MPAA ratings, there were just organization "Seal of approval" sorts of relationships. This is the way ratings should be. You are a member of "concerned christians for movie piety" or whatever, and based on their rating for a movie, you go see it or not. If you're not a christian but you're concerned about something else, find a group that will rate your movie according to some criteria, or else form your own organization and provide your ratings to like minded people. The internet makes it really easy to do so. I think a case could be made that ratings are obsolete.
It IS wrong if you didn't pay for it or already own it though, isn't it?
Iraq's enemies, for example Iran. Also, Al Qaeda has a lot to lose if either The USA liberates a muslim country, or if the USA gets a foothold in the middle east. Sunni fighters from other countries have been captured in Iraq. There are a lot of people interested in the failure of "new" Iraq.
I cannot argue with your logic. It would however at least be a popular mandate, and not a minority mandate, for what that's worth.
Iraq has the problem that it was ruled by a minority, who is now very aware that democratic elections would not favor them. If there weren't Sunnis blowing crap up and outside powers interested in making sure the USA doesn't succeed, I suspect that the vast majority of people in Iraq would not have a problem with free elections.
This is not an endorsement of the Iraq war, however. Merely offering a counter viewpoint.
It is my opinion that the alternatives to right click context menus are worse designs. Context menus were designed to solve bigger UI problems that manifested themselves without them. You get the following options:
1. make a context menu that relies on holding down the mouse button. (This is just a reinforcement of the failure of the one-button mouse, but I will acknowledge that it is at least viable.)
2. contextual items will reside in the menu, greyed out until you take some unknown action to enable them. (right-click context menus were invented to fix this.)
3. actions are only accessible via keyboard. (This does not facilitate exploration, and you will have to guess when you can use it if it's not perfectly intuitive.)
4. Like the parent post mentioned, context menus in combination with a key and mouse. He is correct that this also is an indication of the failure of the single mouse button. want to talk about usability problems? what if you don't have two hands?
I don't disagree that assigning menus to the right click interferes with your work, but in your examples, Maya would have far too many options to put into context menus anyway, I would suspect. It makes sense for that application to provide customizable menus for such applications.
Due to the fact that applications can support right click in OS X, you are pretty much shot out of the water now anyway. If an app decides to implement a right-click option, even if it's redundant, you aren't going to be able to override it.
Sorry, was thinking of the newer G4 mouses without surface buttons at all. Should have made that more clear.
I have stacks of Macintoshes lying around, the oldest being a mac II, up through LC-III, a B&W G3, and as of yesterday, a Mac Mini. I never bought a laptop when I had the chance partly because of no integrated two-buttons. Most unix software DOES assume you have at least two buttons.
I don't remember context menus in OS 8 except via the Kensington mouse and drivers, which wasn't really a solution. Please correct me if I am wrong on this. At any rate, apps prior to OS X couldn't assume you had one (Still shouldn't, but the OS support for it is a first class citizen from the start in OS X.)
So far the evidence seems to be the following:
1. With OS X, Apple finally added context menus to the operating system.
2. Now that context menus are available, almost no one uses a single mouse button on OS X except the computerphobic.
3. With the Mac Mini, Apple is bundling no mouse, knowing full well that almost no one would be using their worthless hockey puck anyway.
This is implicit admission of the worthlessness of the single button mouse. So the question is, why does Apple bother? It's an affront to reason. The people that sound like morons are the tiny minority who actually feel the urge to defend the superfluous single button mouse. You guys don't even have to defend it anymore, you are not even stuck with it so that you HAD to defend it. Being a mac owner isn't even that exclusive anymore, so it's not even like having it makes you special, either.
I agree 100%. I can't stand whiners who claim that Java portability is a myth. The exceptions are trivial and few. It is my opinion that such complainers are either not Java programmers, or whose only interest in Java is finding such examples to trash on it.
I have heard before that my job is to make my manager look good. The manager who said this interpreted it in the following ways:
taking the blame for his mistakes.
doing parts of his job he does not like doing.
not showing initiative, because it maked him look lazy by comparison.
Now, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you're not like that. However, what consists of making my boss look good that does not consist of doing my job to the best of my abilities? I wasn't hired to pat someone's belly, I was hired to do a job. It is my belief that such an opinion as "it is your job to make your boss look good" is far too abusable to be wielded safely. I have never met a boss yet who believed this and complied with his end of the social contract.
Furthermore, is it the opinion of YOUR boss that YOUR underlings' responsibility is to make you look good, or to do a good job? Isn't that pretty much why places like Enron and their accounting firm went under? Corporate policy focused on the illusion of a smoothly operating facility, but did not actually mind the business. In any situation I could probably think of ways to make me and my boss look good that in fact have negative impact on the business. Instituting new policies for no reason (to demonstrate you are "doing" something as a manager) comes immediately to mind.
Back when I was running JDK 1.4.whatever, there were inconsistencies in operation between Windows and Linux using the NIO (non-blocking I/O) libraries. There are several messages on Sun's message boards relating to this. It seems to have been worked out by now. NIO was kind of squirrely for a few revisions there.
I have coded a wide range of applications, and have used many of the facilities provided by Java. NIO was the only part of the standard library that gave me trouble. However, I have a friend who was using Java3D for a project. His jobsite uses pretty much the gamut of operating systems. He has told me that Java3D is just plain not portable. Code that worked on Windows would not work on Solaris. I have no details on this, but they ended up using something else, according to him.
While I agree in principle, studies have found for example that access to cable television has reduced prison riots. There are practical reasons to give prisoners some amenities. Some people are never going to pick up a book or take a vocational class no matter how bored they are.
On the other hand, I don't think they need violent video games for the same purpose. Usually on Slashdot when talking about banning violent video games there is a freakout and everyone points out that if someone shoots a bunch of people because of a game, they were already messed up. Well, violent offenders in prison have already demonstrated a propensity for violence, so depriving _them_ of these games only makes sense.
I found details on a way around this. You create a new loopback interface on your Windows machine, and do port forwarding from your secure machine to your windows loopback interface, port 139. Then that keeps your regular port 139 open for normal file sharing, and to get to your remote server, you connect to the new loopback interface. Instructions are here:
s h. php
http://www.blisstonia.com/eolson/notes/smbovers
I have reason to distrust Microsoft hiring an alternative browser developer, because of MS' history in this area. If MS had never tried to destroy Netscape or break Opera support on their web pages, I probably wouldn't worry if MS hired a Firefox developer.
Thus far I have seen no reason to distrust Google with regards to this hiring. I suspect most FOSS programmers have day jobs, so that he got one at Google doesn't bother me.
They are however charging advertizers, I'm sure. I wonder what their uptime policy for their advertizers is.
I just learned how to create a second loopback interface on Windows. By binding the SSH port forwarding to this address you can use regular windows file sharing at the same time you're attached to your secure machine, so that solves that problem (that's what was holding me back from trying it right now.) (If anyone's interested, go here to read how.)
Once I get that working, I might try out port knocking so I can allow an arbitrary IP address through the firewall when I'm out and about and want to use my machine.
I have a box dedicated to file storage only. I secure it in the following manner (well, in the process of doing so.)
1. I run OpenBSD and know how to admin it. It runs ONLY SSH and Samba. It's behind a software router, runs pf.
2. Samba will only be accessible on the loopback interface.
3. Connections to the machine are made via SSH, you must have both a password and a PK authentication. The client has to port forward the appropriate ports for Samba to work.
4. Firewall scrubs packets (prevents some potential TCP/IP exploit tricks)and only allows connections to and from my internal network and my machine at work from the outside.
And that's it. I don't think this would work with more than one machine serving files via Samba, because of port forwarding. I haven't gotten the Samba attached to the local interface yet, right now samba is just limited to the single client I access files from via the firewall. I'd be curious if anyone has issues with the security of this setup. Basically, I want Samba, but with the stronger authentication and encryption of SSH.
My fileserver sounds like a harrier jet, but it doesn't matter when it's stored in the basement. It's _network_ storage, doesn't have to be nearby.
I've wasted thousands of man-hours messing with our in-house fee calculation app. Instead of just buying Oracle Financials, we had a bunch of PL/SQL hackers write a giant, poorly documented, database-driven general ledger. Fantastic. I'm sure someone thought we were getting off cheap, but I can't even hope to calculate how much money we've lost over the last 7 years due to maintenance and bugfix, not to mention lost productivitly due to the inflexibility of a system built by people that aren't even experts on accounting.
The problem is that it's easier to convince bean counters you can make a "lean" custom app that only serves our needs _right now_, because it will cost less RIGHT NOW, than an expensive, but reliable and flexible USEFUL package.
I have heard complaints about Photoshop 7 in WINE, relating to layer rendering, font placement and unopenable dialog boxes. I don't think I would trust it under those conditions.
I personally have additional problems. I use a Wacom artpad, and I've been able to find no information on whether compiling X with pad support, and WINE and Photoshop will all work together, with full pressure and tilt support. It's a LOT of work to recompile and install and troubleshoot all that shit just to find out if it MIGHT work.
I suspect a large number of people are in a similar situation. A lot of people working with photoshop have artpads, but who knows if it works? I can't find anyone who knows, and I've asked in all the right places.
As for IE, I wouldn't trust IE under WINE to give good results. If you have XP, you can use rdesktop to connect to your windows machine to run IE, that's what I do when I really need it. You can't get rid of your windows desktop, but you can hide it somewhere and just use rdesktop to connect to it.
This contributed to the lack of developer support for the full feature set of the saturn. Scant few games actually took advantage of the dual CPUs.