I'll be honest; there does seem to be something about Arial that seems to be subtly "cheaper" and less obviously perfect to Helvetica. But I'm still not convinced that this isn't simply bias on my part caused by Arial's inclusion in Windows- aside from that negative association alone- which puts it in a position where everyday (i.e. not expert) users are free to use it in an uninspired manner.
I can't really rationalise Helvetica's perceived superiority- the Arial lower-case "a" viewed in isolation looks like it should be more neutral, its upper-case "R" seems more natural under the same circumstances, and yet... having tried to design my own font, I know that it's the simplest, cleanest things that are hardest to explain (and get right).
Aside from Comic Sans, I also hate people using Times New Roman and the like for signs because (in that context) it looks off-the-shelf and unprofessional. Particularly where it's been laser-printed onto a bog-standard sheet of A4 and they haven't bothered to make it fill the sheet of paper.
I guess this means that IBM didn't stand a chance, with all of those bozos who had to wear the blue shirts and matching ties... Ten or fifteen years ago, IBM were- if not headed for bankruptcy, then doing a pretty damn good impression of it.
I've also read that some of the problems at the old (pre-reform) IBM were caused by everyone wanting to be a manager, and the whole company being full of layers of extraneous management.
For instance, someone using Arial instead of Helvetica is very distracting to me. Seriously? Arial is- to all intents and purposes- considered a de facto replacement for Helvetica. Although there are differences, I can't think of a situation where it would be appropriate to use Helvetica but not Arial, unless you just dislike Arial in general.
That said, I generally work without pants. Oh-kay.... that is generally one thing would *not* want to hear.
And I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt of assuming that you're American. If we were to take the British meaning (here the outer garment is known as "trousers", and "pants" is short for "underpants"), it'd be doubly unpleasant.
Personally I get a little more uncomfortable with mismatched braces Weirdest coincidence is that we're talking about clothes, and in Britain "braces" means what you Americans call "suspenders"- i.e. things men use to hold their trousers up.
Meanwhile, "suspenders" is the British name for the garter belts women use to hold up their stockings(!)
a cool puzzle game involving clock hands I believe that you're thinking about Rubik's Clock. I was going to say that it was actually invented by Ern Rubik, the guy behind (surprise) the Rubik's Cube, but apparently he just bought the rights to it from the inventors.
let's see how freedom stands up against the weekly monstrosities Tokyo is facing Further horror ensues when it's discovered that the "cable" is in fact a giant tentacle.
Californian valley girls soon learn what it's like to live with the horror that Japanese schoolgirls face everyday. Meanwhile, enterprising west-coast "gonzo" porn makers film the horrifying attacks and sell them as "Californian Schoolgirl Tentacle Hentai 9".
If you RTA you see that an Indian company is involved in building the cable as well - it's NOT just Japan. So? That's irrelevant. An Indian company is part of the consortium that's *building* the connection. Doesn't mean that the cable itself is going to India any more than it's going to Singapore because another of the companies is from there.
Go back and tell me where it says the cable is going anywhere other than between the US and Japan. It's not.
The fact that traffic might then be passed to and from other indirectly connected networks within mainland Asia (including India) is entirely unrelated to an Indian company's involvement in this particular construction.
The article states that the Titanium Dioxide used is the same compound used in sun screen and cosmetics, so it's probably not going to dissolve anyone's wife anytime soon ^.^ That's what *they* want you to believe. In truth, anyone who's worn sunscreen for any length of time has likely been gradually replaced atom-by-atom without ever noticing, until there's nothing of the original human being left. Sure, they look like hot bikini babes, but they're actually aliens from the planet Ambre Solaire.
No; in the UK, the US definition of billion (10^9) has taken over and is now the overwhelmingly accepted standard for all uses. I can't recall the last time I heard the old (10^12) definition used here- except in a discussion like this- and I'm sure I read that it's officially considered obsolete somewhere.
You're right. The irony is that EA is nowadays in many ways the antithesis of what it started out as. Rather than a seller of endless sequels created by anonymous slave-driven peons, it used to be a well-regarded publisher of generally high-quality games, with the authors even being given named credit on the front of the packaging.
I'm sure I read somewhere that the turning point was sometime around the start of the 90s when they shifted their focus onto games for the 16-bit consoles. Wasn't that also the time that Trip Hawkins left (or at least shifted focus) to concentrate on the flop 3DO console?
If you really think that Microsoft had that much faith in HD-DVD, then why didn't they integrate it into the Xbox 360? Uh, because it would have made the XBox 360 much more expensive?
Yeah, I know Sony included a Blu-Ray drive in the PS3... which is one reason that it cost an arm and a leg. Sony made the decision to risk that, and it may well have paid off, but it's a trade-off, and one that was equally valid for MS to reject at the time.
Honestly wasn't intentional, although I can see how it reads that way.
Basically, it's an example I'd thought about personally- I have a Nintendo DS, but if I'd been choosing between that and the PSP based on their specs on paper, I'd probably have shelled out for the latter. In reality I bought the former because both were tied to being just games machines, and I preferred the style of gaming on the DS even though it was technically inferior.
Apple on dangerous ground? They may lose.01% of their market! [..] saying that Apple is on "dangerous ground" is more self-important internet crap. You got there before me:)
I'm not sure if this is a geek-specific variant version of the "I'm an important customer so they should do what I want or watch out", or if it's just the less arrogant(?) but equally deluded flaw of Slashdotters to assuming that their views and behaviour are representative of more than a tiny percentage of the market. Probably a mixture- they're both facets of the same thing anyway.
The latter case is something like when people say "I [or 'people'] would be more likely to buy the PSP if they removed the DRM restrictions etc. and let me do what I liked with it". Sorry, but a guaranteed sale to 1, or 5 or 500 people is going to be vastly outweighed by the profits Sony thinks (or hoped) it'll make by tying down the machine and selling people content or applications instead of letting them add their own.
I mean, personally I'd have been far more likely to buy a PSP if it had been more hackable or at least an open development environment, but I'm under no delusions as to my importance in the market, or to what Sony actually want.
Your story isn't the first I've heard about Netscape being insufferably arrogant during their heyday.
It says it all that even on Slashdot- whose readers in general play up any anti-MS angle, give the benefit of the doubt to their competitors and mod down dissenting opinion- the prevailing sentiment seems to be that Netscape were responsible for their own downfall with a bloated version 4.x and corporate arrogance.
Side note, but hasn't Netscape (the browser) been killed off once before anyway? And wasn't Netscape's market share also harmed when they spent far too long between releases trying to clean up the codebase for the aborted v5 during the late-1990s? According to WP (salt, etc), the bloated 4.x came out in mid-1997, but v6 didn't come out till 2000, and that was probably rushed out before it was ready. IIRC, the current "Netscape" is based upon (but not identical) to Mozilla and Firefox.
it's only a matter of time before somebody releases as script-kiddy utility for pwning your friends' and enemies' keyboard OLEDs.
I can see it now. Grandma is surfing for recipes and all of a sudden her nice new keyboards starts showing all sorts of inappropriate text and images. That's a nice idea- but what'd be even cooler is if the displays weren't so small and you could *really* go to town with offending Grandma. We need something huge, like 17" or more- Grandma's just sitting there and she sees "inappropriate text and images" in 1024 x 768 or larger. Right in front of her!
*Sigh* It'll never happen... how many people (especially Grandma-types) have esoteric things like 17" LCDs or CRTs attached to their computer? We'll just have to stick to offending them through their Optimus Keyboards- at least they all have one of them!:-)
While it is cool and all. I think Multi-Touch displays may make these keyboards obsolete and perhaps cheaper too. I was going to say that those would be horrible for touch-typing. Then I remembered the review saying that it's actually horrible for doing proper typing on anyway, so you're probably right.
If the intended use was sporadic keypresses (a la Photoshop shortcuts), then a multi-touch display (*) *is* probably just as good. So although this keyboard is cool-looking and all that, ultimately it's going to do better at being a "real" usable keyboard, or it's just going to be an overpriced piggy in the middle.
(*) Preferably separate from your main screen, since it's been generally accepted that touchscreen monitors in the traditional PC configuration suck, and even if it was okay for the occasional keypress, the interface would get in the way. Though I suppose with PS you could touch the existing icons anyway (thus not requiring a separate on-screen keyboard) so it might work after all.
I'm using a usb HSDPA modem supplied by '3', in the UK. Do '3' give you full "proper" internet access, or just the filtered port 80 (HTTP) service someone else was discussing above?
The name is irrelevant outside of the USA but it sounds like it provokes more than mild amusement there. I seriously did not ever hear it in any other context until the movie Pulp Fiction. Okay, trust me, but I was aware of the second meaning (as defined by Urban Dictionary in the link) when I was a kid, at least ten years before Pulp Fiction came out:-
An insult implying that someone is incompetent, stupid, etc. Can also be used to imply that the person is uncool or can't/won't do what everyone else is doing. I also recall it being used with this connotation in the British sci-fi sitcom Red Dwarf. So... sorry, but it's an awful name:)
Seriously, since you (and not I) made an issue of the name, get real! Whatever you think of "Photoshop" as a name, it's nowhere near as bad as "GIMP". "Gimp" has multiple meanings, all of them negative (at least in the context of representing a paint program). Seriously, what the hell were they thinking of?
Photoshop isn't a great name, but your criticisms have an air of exaggeration and contrived misunderstanding to make it seem as bad as "Gimp". I'm not personally aware of any real life "photo shops", but it could(?) be a reference to a photo lab type operation in some areas.
If not, it could still be a play on "print shop", which in addition to being a legitimate business was also the name of an early DTP package that was still popular when Photoshop came out.
And it's a damn good reason for the Gimp developers to ignore the needs of PS users. Some things being *done* by PS may be worth picking up, but because PS has shown how it can be used or misused, NOT because some weiner complained Gimp was a toy. I don't think anyone would argue that something should be done on the basis of *one* person's criticism. But even if the GIMP developers shouldn't automatically jump to include everything that PS users wanted (which would probably just turn it into a copy of PS anyway), there are legitimate criticisms mixed up with problems of image. And with respect, your slightly petulant attitude smacks of taking your ball and going home, which won't fix GIMP's image problem (justified or otherwise) and won't make it a better package.
I have to agree with you about the lack of an "undo" feature though. I'd always wondered why the "standard" undo combination in PS CS2 only gave one-level undo, and the "normal" undo required ctrl-alt-Z. I mean, no proper undo- WTF?!
It's an example of the old attitude of: "The menus are in different places - I'm a goddam professional, what is this shit of having to learn new twisty paths of menus after I leave school" What "it" are you talking about? We were discussing missing high-end features, and you reply as if we were discussing something else. Are you trying to shift the argument?
Or are you somehow suggesting that professionals are don't really need all those silly features at all, and are just using them as an excuse not to learn a new interface?
But since you bring it up, it's quite reasonable not to want to have to learn a whole new way of doing things, particularly when you've got a job to do, and there's no significant advantage to changing. That is not a criticism of the GIMP interface, and I'm not saying that GIMP should necessarily mimic Photoshop. If professionals were used to a GIMP-style interface, they'd probably want to stick to that, and it'd be an equally valid reason. But this isn't the case.
it had undo and photoshop did not - you should have seen the flames when I asked where undo was in a photoshop newsgroup This probably explains the stupid key combination required to get multiple-level undo with current versions of Photoshop- but I can assure you that it is supported nowadays.
Missing features like some 1980's Atari macro mouse player when you have python, perl etc to write scripts in is also missing the point, as is the single interface window versus the multiple windows on multiple desktops argument which will never be resolved. I agree that GIMP's scripting is probably more powerful than Photoshop's when it comes down to it.
However, I note that you don't address the two "missing features" which I specifically discussed:-
16-bit colour
Proper CYMK support (GIMP converts to RGB)
As far as I'm aware, these capabilities (or lack of them) would be part of the core functionality, and I'd be surprised if it was possible to get around the omission by any reasonable use of the scripting facilities.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll be honest; there does seem to be something about Arial that seems to be subtly "cheaper" and less obviously perfect to Helvetica. But I'm still not convinced that this isn't simply bias on my part caused by Arial's inclusion in Windows- aside from that negative association alone- which puts it in a position where everyday (i.e. not expert) users are free to use it in an uninspired manner.
I can't really rationalise Helvetica's perceived superiority- the Arial lower-case "a" viewed in isolation looks like it should be more neutral, its upper-case "R" seems more natural under the same circumstances, and yet... having tried to design my own font, I know that it's the simplest, cleanest things that are hardest to explain (and get right).
Aside from Comic Sans, I also hate people using Times New Roman and the like for signs because (in that context) it looks off-the-shelf and unprofessional. Particularly where it's been laser-printed onto a bog-standard sheet of A4 and they haven't bothered to make it fill the sheet of paper.
I've also read that some of the problems at the old (pre-reform) IBM were caused by everyone wanting to be a manager, and the whole company being full of layers of extraneous management.
Comic Sans on the other hand....
*shudder*
And I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt of assuming that you're American. If we were to take the British meaning (here the outer garment is known as "trousers", and "pants" is short for "underpants"), it'd be doubly unpleasant.
Meanwhile, "suspenders" is the British name for the garter belts women use to hold up their stockings(!)
Californian valley girls soon learn what it's like to live with the horror that Japanese schoolgirls face everyday. Meanwhile, enterprising west-coast "gonzo" porn makers film the horrifying attacks and sell them as "Californian Schoolgirl Tentacle Hentai 9".
Go back and tell me where it says the cable is going anywhere other than between the US and Japan. It's not.
The fact that traffic might then be passed to and from other indirectly connected networks within mainland Asia (including India) is entirely unrelated to an Indian company's involvement in this particular construction.
No; in the UK, the US definition of billion (10^9) has taken over and is now the overwhelmingly accepted standard for all uses. I can't recall the last time I heard the old (10^12) definition used here- except in a discussion like this- and I'm sure I read that it's officially considered obsolete somewhere.
You're right. The irony is that EA is nowadays in many ways the antithesis of what it started out as. Rather than a seller of endless sequels created by anonymous slave-driven peons, it used to be a well-regarded publisher of generally high-quality games, with the authors even being given named credit on the front of the packaging.
I'm sure I read somewhere that the turning point was sometime around the start of the 90s when they shifted their focus onto games for the 16-bit consoles. Wasn't that also the time that Trip Hawkins left (or at least shifted focus) to concentrate on the flop 3DO console?
Yeah, I know Sony included a Blu-Ray drive in the PS3... which is one reason that it cost an arm and a leg. Sony made the decision to risk that, and it may well have paid off, but it's a trade-off, and one that was equally valid for MS to reject at the time.
Honestly wasn't intentional, although I can see how it reads that way.
Basically, it's an example I'd thought about personally- I have a Nintendo DS, but if I'd been choosing between that and the PSP based on their specs on paper, I'd probably have shelled out for the latter. In reality I bought the former because both were tied to being just games machines, and I preferred the style of gaming on the DS even though it was technically inferior.
I'm not sure if this is a geek-specific variant version of the "I'm an important customer so they should do what I want or watch out", or if it's just the less arrogant(?) but equally deluded flaw of Slashdotters to assuming that their views and behaviour are representative of more than a tiny percentage of the market. Probably a mixture- they're both facets of the same thing anyway.
The latter case is something like when people say "I [or 'people'] would be more likely to buy the PSP if they removed the DRM restrictions etc. and let me do what I liked with it". Sorry, but a guaranteed sale to 1, or 5 or 500 people is going to be vastly outweighed by the profits Sony thinks (or hoped) it'll make by tying down the machine and selling people content or applications instead of letting them add their own.
I mean, personally I'd have been far more likely to buy a PSP if it had been more hackable or at least an open development environment, but I'm under no delusions as to my importance in the market, or to what Sony actually want.
Your story isn't the first I've heard about Netscape being insufferably arrogant during their heyday.
It says it all that even on Slashdot- whose readers in general play up any anti-MS angle, give the benefit of the doubt to their competitors and mod down dissenting opinion- the prevailing sentiment seems to be that Netscape were responsible for their own downfall with a bloated version 4.x and corporate arrogance.
Side note, but hasn't Netscape (the browser) been killed off once before anyway? And wasn't Netscape's market share also harmed when they spent far too long between releases trying to clean up the codebase for the aborted v5 during the late-1990s? According to WP (salt, etc), the bloated 4.x came out in mid-1997, but v6 didn't come out till 2000, and that was probably rushed out before it was ready. IIRC, the current "Netscape" is based upon (but not identical) to Mozilla and Firefox.
*Sigh* It'll never happen... how many people (especially Grandma-types) have esoteric things like 17" LCDs or CRTs attached to their computer? We'll just have to stick to offending them through their Optimus Keyboards- at least they all have one of them!
If the intended use was sporadic keypresses (a la Photoshop shortcuts), then a multi-touch display (*) *is* probably just as good. So although this keyboard is cool-looking and all that, ultimately it's going to do better at being a "real" usable keyboard, or it's just going to be an overpriced piggy in the middle.
(*) Preferably separate from your main screen, since it's been generally accepted that touchscreen monitors in the traditional PC configuration suck, and even if it was okay for the occasional keypress, the interface would get in the way. Though I suppose with PS you could touch the existing icons anyway (thus not requiring a separate on-screen keyboard) so it might work after all.
Sorry, should have pointed out that I live (and was brought up in) the UK.
GIMP has a fairly powerful scripting engine- more flexible than PS's I believe.
Photoshop isn't a great name, but your criticisms have an air of exaggeration and contrived misunderstanding to make it seem as bad as "Gimp". I'm not personally aware of any real life "photo shops", but it could(?) be a reference to a photo lab type operation in some areas.
If not, it could still be a play on "print shop", which in addition to being a legitimate business was also the name of an early DTP package that was still popular when Photoshop came out.
And it's a damn good reason for the Gimp developers to ignore the needs of PS users. Some things being *done* by PS may be worth picking up, but because PS has shown how it can be used or misused, NOT because some weiner complained Gimp was a toy. I don't think anyone would argue that something should be done on the basis of *one* person's criticism. But even if the GIMP developers shouldn't automatically jump to include everything that PS users wanted (which would probably just turn it into a copy of PS anyway), there are legitimate criticisms mixed up with problems of image. And with respect, your slightly petulant attitude smacks of taking your ball and going home, which won't fix GIMP's image problem (justified or otherwise) and won't make it a better package.
I have to agree with you about the lack of an "undo" feature though. I'd always wondered why the "standard" undo combination in PS CS2 only gave one-level undo, and the "normal" undo required ctrl-alt-Z. I mean, no proper undo- WTF?!
Or are you somehow suggesting that professionals are don't really need all those silly features at all, and are just using them as an excuse not to learn a new interface?
But since you bring it up, it's quite reasonable not to want to have to learn a whole new way of doing things, particularly when you've got a job to do, and there's no significant advantage to changing. That is not a criticism of the GIMP interface, and I'm not saying that GIMP should necessarily mimic Photoshop. If professionals were used to a GIMP-style interface, they'd probably want to stick to that, and it'd be an equally valid reason. But this isn't the case. it had undo and photoshop did not - you should have seen the flames when I asked where undo was in a photoshop newsgroup This probably explains the stupid key combination required to get multiple-level undo with current versions of Photoshop- but I can assure you that it is supported nowadays. Missing features like some 1980's Atari macro mouse player when you have python, perl etc to write scripts in is also missing the point, as is the single interface window versus the multiple windows on multiple desktops argument which will never be resolved. I agree that GIMP's scripting is probably more powerful than Photoshop's when it comes down to it.
However, I note that you don't address the two "missing features" which I specifically discussed:-
- 16-bit colour
- Proper CYMK support (GIMP converts to RGB)
As far as I'm aware, these capabilities (or lack of them) would be part of the core functionality, and I'd be surprised if it was possible to get around the omission by any reasonable use of the scripting facilities.