Re:I searched for keywords britney spears and ...
on
Inspecting MSN Search
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· Score: 1
My all-time favourite illustration from that site has always been the energy levels of the band structure, for varying wavevector...
No kidding. Thought some guy in my research group was nuts when he told me Britney knew a lot about band structure of semiconductors. But turns out, it's true!
...if any/.'ers out there can think of a non-tinfoil-hat use for this? Not really a troll here, because I can't think of anything else really useful beyond the "cool" factor.
Assuming you aren't trolling - which at least one mod thinks you are;) - any sort of automated lexical classification would be a huge impact. Companies spend scads of money on document classification, for instance. Something like this would help extract actual meaning from documents.
Or shit, how about a word processor that can actually proofread your document, if nothing else?
This may not have been true when you posted your comment - but at the moment, I see three separate, top-level, +5 comments reminding us that correlation does not imply causation, one of which invokes the Latin term for the fallacy involved.
So it seems that the pessimism is unwarranted:-).
No, it only proves that slashdot includes three intelligent non-zealots. Okay, and the 12 people that modded them to 5. So I'll give you 15.
Why does everyone want to sue microsoft for integrating product XXX into the OS, but nobody cares that Intel (and other companies) integrate sound, video, networking into their motherboards?
...leveraging them is. MS has a monopoly, integrates the browser, strongarms OEMs so they can't can't bundle netscape and remove IE, etc. Intel has a lot of marketshare for iX86 though not a monopoly, integrates things but doesn't strongarm OEMs and board manufacturers, etc. That's the difference.
You can have features, and you can have a monopoly, but you can't use those facts to kill competitors.
"Because to depress the ctrl effectively, I have to remove my left hand from the keyboard."
You have weird hands.
I have small hands, and the ctrl button is small on a laptop, and oddly placed on Mac laptops. I'm required to move the left hand so I can hit the ctrl effectively.
"Maybe I'm disabled and only have one working hand?"
Then it's a good thing you're using a Mac, which has superior usability for disabled persons.
Really? Except that you have to use the computer as intended for morons if you have only one functioning hand?
I deal with the problems related to two-button mice daily. You (the proficient computer user) are in the minority.
I really want to know. Who are these idiots? What are these problems? How much of Apple's market share do they make up? And why should the majority of us - and I do believe we who can keep two whole buttons straight are a majority - have to have a crippled device to help out morons?
And couldn't a good design get both done? Maybe have a smaller right button? Have two buttons, but have them do the same thing by default and have that behavior changeable in preferences? Solves both problems, gives everybody what they want. What's wrong with that?
I mean, do you want the perception that Apple's products are produced primarily for mental defectives? Because that's been the knock for a long time.
I think there is harm from having another button. I know there's harm, because I deal with it every single day. That second mouse button confuses people, and Apple wants to minimize confusion.
1) Honestly, how stupid do you think people are? Do Apple users completely lack eye-hand coordination? 2) How is using the ctrl key logically easier? "So I'm supposed to hit some key so it does something to the thing I'm clicking on?" That's easier?
I don't know what "crackpot theories" you're talking about, but I'm talking about the dramatic inconsistencies I see on everyday Windows apps. Contextual menus are rarely, if ever, well-implemented. Sometimes they're convenient, but I'd rather have a consistent, predictable interface than one that might have a handy shortcut buried somewhere.
Ultimately, Apple is using contextual menus now, so the question isn't whether they should exist but how they should be accessed. It's really hard to argue that mixing hands and input devices is easier than moving a finger. You're basically arguing that Apple should step back a decade; I'm sure much of their core user base would like to. But now they're caught in the middle - they have good, usable contextual menus but no efficient way to access them from laptops. Not good design.
I'm sitting here with my right hand on the home row, pinkie on the ctrl key, and my left thumb on the trackpad. The world is not exploding. You've got two hands, all the controls are right beneath them, why not use them?
Because I shouldn't have to. Because to depress the ctrl effectively, I have to remove my left hand from the keyboard. Or I might not have been using the keyboard - maybe I'm navigating a webpage with right hand only? Maybe I'm disabled and only have one working hand? Maybe because it's just freaking easier to use my finger to click something my hand's already on?
Look, you'll never win the argument that it's physically easier to use another hand and another device than to use your finger on a device it's already interacting with. This policy is the vestiges of the whole "everything in a GUI should be navigable from the main screen" policy. Which, for its day, was a great idea. But it's outdated, which is why apple and devs have been forced into the keyboard modifier business. But when you introduce the idea of keyboard modifiers, it defeats the entire purpose of GUI transparency. They're no more transparent than right clicking...
Finally, the presence of the ctrl key - and its straight mapping to the equivalent of the right mouse button as you point out - completely negates your argument about devs not being able to rely on contextual menus. Well, since EVERYBODY has a ctrl key, they certainly can do it, and would if they were so inclined. So since it serves the same purpose, how is it a better design? From a GUI standpoint, it does the same thing. Apple is essentially admitting its GUI standard is woefully outdated.
At that point, the only question is, which way is physically easier? I say that anyone coming into this debate tabula rasa will prefer a two button mouse. That said, there are old mac users like yourself who prefer the keyboard modifier. Fine; the openminded thing is do allow both. What's annoying is that this outdated 1985 orthodoxy is getting in the way of what is otherwise for me a very good unix system.
Install SideTrack. Be happy. Apple isn't going to be changing their basic UI design any time soon, so I suggest that you might be well advised to look for other strategies.
I want a real button. That's not good enough. If I look for other strategies, it would involve trying linux on a PC laptop. If Apple's idea is to not actually embrace the crossover business they've been getting lately, fine, but it seems they want us.
I completely disagree with you that it's bad UI design. It's certainly UI design that you don't like, but I think Apple is absolutely correct.
That's the point of it being a bad design - allowing for only one way of doing something IS bad design. Bottom line is, there's not HARM from having another button, so why not put it on, other than crackpot theories of rogue developers doing away with standard menus?
I like Google but the statement is not correct in all domains. Technical searches is getting very hard, as the "sales" sites are crowding out the support pages.
True, but an intelligent search minimizes this effect. Adding the word "review" or a brief synopsis of the problem usually suffices. You can also specify "anti-keywords" like "price."
I do think google is working on some clustering technology (you can see it in google labs), and if implemented it could possibly provide the least correlated yet still relevant hits - and less correlated would presumably mean "not all commercial."
What else could they do? Are mice REALLY that hard to come by that this inconveniences anybody? Have you ever actually tried to use the system as designed, or are you just assuming that it doesn't work very well?
Yes, a two-button trackpad is impossible to come by for a laptop. It certainly inconveniences me. Recall I'm saying this as a powerbook owner. I really don't like the cmd-click thing (or alt-click, or opt-click, or shift-click, or cmd-alt-shift-click). It's awkward. It involves another hand and another input device. It involves recalling which modifier(s) is/are required. Right clicking would simply be easier.
If all I had to do was find a mouse, that would be fine. Also, it's not acceptable to say "just use a mouse with the laptop." The trackpad is necessary, and having only one button is reduced functionality for many of us.
I'm not trying to convert other users to the right button, but since different people work in different ways it's not a particularly good idea to shoehorn people into a certain way of using things. It's bad UI design. And the justifications aren't sufficient.
The best way to ensure that this is the way the apps get designed is to not ship two-button mice.
Yeah, but kind of in the way that decapitation is the best way to prevent acne. Gets the job done, but a little overboard.
Apple is enforcing good UI design, and ((since they've got the best track record in the business) I'm inclined to let them.
First, they're doing it in the most ham-handed way possible. Second, if they were doing it again, I don't think they'd make this decision. I think hubris plays a significant role now.
Of course, I've been using multi-button mice on my Macs for upwards of ten years, so I'm really confused as to what the problem is in the first place...
Then as a long time windows user and current powerbook owner, I'm in a better position to appreciate how handy the second button is, and how awfully awkward the cmd-click and so on is. Also, I have never - NEVER - seen a developer even on windows put an option in the context menu ONLY. So I think Apple is going a long way and hindring the functionality of their machines to solve a nonexistent problem.
I think the best compromise for them would be to put a small extra button on the laptops. If you have a desktop you can get a better mouse, but my powerbook is crippled for life.
That's not bad at all. You really don't want to buy the first generation of an Apple product. Remember the first Powerbook G3? Or the first Powerbook G4?
Sure, but the faster the G5's come out, the faster the, ahem, "public beta testing" is over, and the sooner it's safe to buy one! So it would still be great if the thing came out. Of course, I got my powerbook a year ago, so I'm in no hurry.
Context menus are just bad user-interface design. Period. The fact that you have gotten accustomed to them doesn't change the fact that they're bad design. In particular, it's wrong of you to expect everybody else to get used to them just because you had to.
No. They're not. They're only bad if the options they contain are ONLY found in the context menu. Context menus are meant to contain redundant options that can be found more easily and more logically than they way they're placed in the menu.
There are many more than one way to think and work - what's wrong with providing keyboard shortcuts for those that prefer, and context menus for others?
Utlimately, there's a reason I evolved more than one finger per hand, and I'd like to be rewarded as such.
We all know perfectly well that the role assumed by the second, third etc mouse buttons on other platforms has always been mapped to Apple's COMMAND, OPTION and CONTROL modifier keys. You may find modifier keys difficult, but the rest of the fucking universe can manage them quite well after 30mins Windows unlearning.
Yes, we do. And it's a hell of a lot more awkward than actually just clicking with the right button. Mixing mouse and keyboard is a design flaw. I have a powerbook, and that's my (nearly) sole complaint.
No, iTunes will frustrate me. Shouldn't software conform to the desires of the user and not the other way around?
In a perfect world sure, but there are a lot of cantankerous users, and no piece of software can make them all happy.
That said, iTunes does a good attempt. If you really don't like its indexing feature, I think you can turn it off in the preferences.
That said, of all the people I've known who didn't like it in the beginning, I've never met anyone who used iTunes' indexing more than two days without liking it. I include myself - at first, I thought of my music as a bunch of files, but you'll like it if you let iTunes take care of it.
I also don't like th iTunes GUI. I just want a little player up there, thats it. Instead, I have a bulky GUI to deal... Yeah yeah yeah there are iTunes "remotes" but give me a break.
You know, you can resize iTunes and it does it really well. You can make it about the size of Winamp and it's still well laid out, incredibly usable. I don't own an ipod, but I like iTunes a lot. Took a little getting used to - previously I'd used winamp too, then XMMS on linux - but I got to the point that when I use XMMS, it seems awkward.
I will say that if you're trying to get itunes to deal with your music as a collection of files rather than music that it deals with as it will, you'll frustrate yourself. I understabd your USB hard drive desires; might be able to re-specify where Itunes keeps its library to keep it on the hard drive, and do that on all the machines you use? If you do, they should all be able to coexist and be happy. Haven't tried it, but I know you can change the default music directory.
You might want to try iTunes again, I bet there's a way for it to do exactly what you want. Other than that, I think some people have gotten XMMS working for Mac, but that's probably not an option unless you're pretty unix-y.
MATLAB can compile and optimize code; I forget which toolbox you need for this, but it can in fact produce compiled C code to run your scripts. This can net you anything from factor of 1 to factor of 50 improvement (yes, I have seen a factor of 50 improvement) over the raw script, which usually isn't awful these days.
I know that - but it ain't that great. Better than Matlab natively, yes - I mean, it's an interpreted language, it has to be - but it's not good on par with good C++, and can't touch Fortran. If speed of execution doesn't matter that much, don't worry. If it does, you won't use matlab, compiled or not.
Have never compared it to FORTRAN in speed, but the fact that it's a lot quicker to write/maintain makes most of that speed differential meaningless.
Sure. I have one friend who actually develops in Fortran because it's what his dad recommended. I think he's insane. So sure, for day to day stuff I use matlab.
When I need speed, I get the best of both worlds - I develop in python, which is on par with matlab for development speed, and it calls screaming Fortran libraries (via NumPy) I didn't write myself. Can't beat that - speed of Fortran, ease of Matlab. If you only use Matlab, try Python with NumPy sometime. I did, because of that and because of Matlab's being proprietary. You'll never know when your next job won't support matlab, and knowing other scripted development methods is a very good thing.
This is a fucking scandal and a disgrace for the US school system. Since I'm a foreigner there's nothing I can do, besides urging you to act on this outrage.
We are doing our best, but quite frankly, I don't think we're doing bad. We have the infernal DMCA, but there's a chance the CMCRA will go through, and I don't like the INDUCE act's chances.
Comparing us to other countries, e don't have a tax on consumable media (CD-R), like Canada and a number of othersdo. I haven't heard of a kid getting penalized here for putting up *hyperlinks* to free music sites, though I could be mistaken.
Not trying to start a flame war, that's not at all the point. But the magnifying glass is on the US - rightfully so to a degree, but I think govs in a lot of other countries are taking a lot of bribes and selling out your liberties without getting enough heat. As bad if not worse than what's going on here. You didn't mention where you're from - unless you're one of the lucky ones, I'd start looking in my own back yard if I were you.
1) Array, vector, and matrix processing can not only be done better, but with FAR less work in MATLAB, and using their converter, will nicely produce C (C++?) on the other end.
It's not optimized at all. Matlab is great for doing routine work - I use it all the time - but it'll never compare to Fortran for something you REALLY need to be fast.
Check out some of the numerical libraries for python (Numpy, etc.) - they're all wrappers around compiled FORTRAN. Why? Fortran's made to do math. Partly the languages, partly the compilers available, but in the end, it'll do matrix math faster than anything. C++ most certainly included
it maintains the very sensible UI rule that you should be able to do everything without using it - all features you'd RMB for are available in the menu
For moronically simple programs, yes, that's true. For programs that are involve multiple tools, preferences, whatever, what you do is essentially bury things in the menu that could also be contextual. I'd rather right click and see the options that pertain to what I clicked on, than find it buried in a menu, Also, double-clicking, holding the button for two seconds after clicking, or doing the old CMD-click, alt-click, or whatever are all more awkward ways of getting around a right click, so those don't count.
So ultimately, the challenge is to develop a program that can do everything using either a single click, or a click and drag, without using the keyboard. That's hard - even Apple's given that up long ago. Now the mess they have is trying to remember which key I have to hit while clicking to get the necessary functionality, and that is NOT better than a second button. I say this as a powerbook owner.
Extra buttons and wheels are undoubtably useful things for shortcuts, but the design principle that everything should be available in a consistent manner without HAVING to use them is great for those of us that don't use them very often.
It always is. I've NEVER seen a functionality that could ONLY be found through use of the right mouse button. Anyone who does that as a programmer, I agree, should be shot. For that matter, I don't much like functionality that can only be done with keyboard or only with mouse.
Ultimately, right-clicking when used well is a convenient redundancy - everything's still in the main menu, but who wouldn't rather have it attached to the object being used?
Somehow Microsoft got into the same sentence as non-proprietary
Please correct and resubmit
Funny, but remember MS's theory of "embrace and extend" which they do to many, many "open" standards that they can then effectively "close" after they get established.
To some extent this is why cool looking/small PC's fail. If a PC looks good but costs more than a similar PC, most people will just skip it. However, Apple's only competition comes from PC's which are a somewhat different product. Apple doesn't have to worry about someone buying off-the-shelf pieces and putting together a cheaper low end Apple which doesn't look as nice.
You can't just take a machine, make it a bit smaller, and expect to sell. You have to sell "cool." How to do that? Make it pretty. Make it small. And make it expensive, because people don't show off cheap things.
Thus, the difference between HP and Apple. One could argue which is better, but any company would kill for Apple's margins, if not their volume.
That being said, after reading all of the crap that EA has been putting their employees through
I don't want to have to defend EA here, but do we really know if they're worse than the rest of the industry? I'd never work for a company like that, but let's remember that this whole thing started from the blog of a wife of an EA programmer. Now we have slashdot posting everything they do. I'm not saying they *aren't* the antichrist, but let's actually consider first whether there's some manipulation or just plain shoddy reporting at fault too.
Slashdot Mirror
No kidding. Thought some guy in my research group was nuts when he told me Britney knew a lot about band structure of semiconductors. But turns out, it's true!
Assuming you aren't trolling - which at least one mod thinks you are ;) - any sort of automated lexical classification would be a huge impact. Companies spend scads of money on document classification, for instance. Something like this would help extract actual meaning from documents.
Or shit, how about a word processor that can actually proofread your document, if nothing else?
Fucking savages.
No, it only proves that slashdot includes three intelligent non-zealots. Okay, and the 12 people that modded them to 5. So I'll give you 15.
...leveraging them is. MS has a monopoly, integrates the browser, strongarms OEMs so they can't can't bundle netscape and remove IE, etc. Intel has a lot of marketshare for iX86 though not a monopoly, integrates things but doesn't strongarm OEMs and board manufacturers, etc. That's the difference.
You can have features, and you can have a monopoly, but you can't use those facts to kill competitors.
You have weird hands.
I have small hands, and the ctrl button is small on a laptop, and oddly placed on Mac laptops. I'm required to move the left hand so I can hit the ctrl effectively.
"Maybe I'm disabled and only have one working hand?"
Then it's a good thing you're using a Mac, which has superior usability for disabled persons.
Really? Except that you have to use the computer as intended for morons if you have only one functioning hand?
I deal with the problems related to two-button mice daily. You (the proficient computer user) are in the minority.
I really want to know. Who are these idiots? What are these problems? How much of Apple's market share do they make up? And why should the majority of us - and I do believe we who can keep two whole buttons straight are a majority - have to have a crippled device to help out morons?
And couldn't a good design get both done? Maybe have a smaller right button? Have two buttons, but have them do the same thing by default and have that behavior changeable in preferences? Solves both problems, gives everybody what they want. What's wrong with that?
I mean, do you want the perception that Apple's products are produced primarily for mental defectives? Because that's been the knock for a long time.
1) Honestly, how stupid do you think people are? Do Apple users completely lack eye-hand coordination? 2) How is using the ctrl key logically easier? "So I'm supposed to hit some key so it does something to the thing I'm clicking on?" That's easier?
I don't know what "crackpot theories" you're talking about, but I'm talking about the dramatic inconsistencies I see on everyday Windows apps. Contextual menus are rarely, if ever, well-implemented. Sometimes they're convenient, but I'd rather have a consistent, predictable interface than one that might have a handy shortcut buried somewhere.
Ultimately, Apple is using contextual menus now, so the question isn't whether they should exist but how they should be accessed. It's really hard to argue that mixing hands and input devices is easier than moving a finger. You're basically arguing that Apple should step back a decade; I'm sure much of their core user base would like to. But now they're caught in the middle - they have good, usable contextual menus but no efficient way to access them from laptops. Not good design.
Because I shouldn't have to. Because to depress the ctrl effectively, I have to remove my left hand from the keyboard. Or I might not have been using the keyboard - maybe I'm navigating a webpage with right hand only? Maybe I'm disabled and only have one working hand? Maybe because it's just freaking easier to use my finger to click something my hand's already on?
Look, you'll never win the argument that it's physically easier to use another hand and another device than to use your finger on a device it's already interacting with. This policy is the vestiges of the whole "everything in a GUI should be navigable from the main screen" policy. Which, for its day, was a great idea. But it's outdated, which is why apple and devs have been forced into the keyboard modifier business. But when you introduce the idea of keyboard modifiers, it defeats the entire purpose of GUI transparency. They're no more transparent than right clicking...
Finally, the presence of the ctrl key - and its straight mapping to the equivalent of the right mouse button as you point out - completely negates your argument about devs not being able to rely on contextual menus. Well, since EVERYBODY has a ctrl key, they certainly can do it, and would if they were so inclined. So since it serves the same purpose, how is it a better design? From a GUI standpoint, it does the same thing. Apple is essentially admitting its GUI standard is woefully outdated.
At that point, the only question is, which way is physically easier? I say that anyone coming into this debate tabula rasa will prefer a two button mouse. That said, there are old mac users like yourself who prefer the keyboard modifier. Fine; the openminded thing is do allow both. What's annoying is that this outdated 1985 orthodoxy is getting in the way of what is otherwise for me a very good unix system.
I want a real button. That's not good enough. If I look for other strategies, it would involve trying linux on a PC laptop. If Apple's idea is to not actually embrace the crossover business they've been getting lately, fine, but it seems they want us.
I completely disagree with you that it's bad UI design. It's certainly UI design that you don't like, but I think Apple is absolutely correct.
That's the point of it being a bad design - allowing for only one way of doing something IS bad design. Bottom line is, there's not HARM from having another button, so why not put it on, other than crackpot theories of rogue developers doing away with standard menus?
True, but an intelligent search minimizes this effect. Adding the word "review" or a brief synopsis of the problem usually suffices. You can also specify "anti-keywords" like "price."
I do think google is working on some clustering technology (you can see it in google labs), and if implemented it could possibly provide the least correlated yet still relevant hits - and less correlated would presumably mean "not all commercial."
If they're not working on that, they should.
Yes, a two-button trackpad is impossible to come by for a laptop. It certainly inconveniences me. Recall I'm saying this as a powerbook owner. I really don't like the cmd-click thing (or alt-click, or opt-click, or shift-click, or cmd-alt-shift-click). It's awkward. It involves another hand and another input device. It involves recalling which modifier(s) is/are required. Right clicking would simply be easier.
If all I had to do was find a mouse, that would be fine. Also, it's not acceptable to say "just use a mouse with the laptop." The trackpad is necessary, and having only one button is reduced functionality for many of us.
I'm not trying to convert other users to the right button, but since different people work in different ways it's not a particularly good idea to shoehorn people into a certain way of using things. It's bad UI design. And the justifications aren't sufficient.
Yeah, but kind of in the way that decapitation is the best way to prevent acne. Gets the job done, but a little overboard.
Apple is enforcing good UI design, and ((since they've got the best track record in the business) I'm inclined to let them.
First, they're doing it in the most ham-handed way possible. Second, if they were doing it again, I don't think they'd make this decision. I think hubris plays a significant role now.
Of course, I've been using multi-button mice on my Macs for upwards of ten years, so I'm really confused as to what the problem is in the first place...
Then as a long time windows user and current powerbook owner, I'm in a better position to appreciate how handy the second button is, and how awfully awkward the cmd-click and so on is. Also, I have never - NEVER - seen a developer even on windows put an option in the context menu ONLY. So I think Apple is going a long way and hindring the functionality of their machines to solve a nonexistent problem.
I think the best compromise for them would be to put a small extra button on the laptops. If you have a desktop you can get a better mouse, but my powerbook is crippled for life.
Sure, but the faster the G5's come out, the faster the, ahem, "public beta testing" is over, and the sooner it's safe to buy one! So it would still be great if the thing came out. Of course, I got my powerbook a year ago, so I'm in no hurry.
No. They're not. They're only bad if the options they contain are ONLY found in the context menu. Context menus are meant to contain redundant options that can be found more easily and more logically than they way they're placed in the menu.
There are many more than one way to think and work - what's wrong with providing keyboard shortcuts for those that prefer, and context menus for others?
Utlimately, there's a reason I evolved more than one finger per hand, and I'd like to be rewarded as such.
Yes, we do. And it's a hell of a lot more awkward than actually just clicking with the right button. Mixing mouse and keyboard is a design flaw. I have a powerbook, and that's my (nearly) sole complaint.
In a perfect world sure, but there are a lot of cantankerous users, and no piece of software can make them all happy.
That said, iTunes does a good attempt. If you really don't like its indexing feature, I think you can turn it off in the preferences.
That said, of all the people I've known who didn't like it in the beginning, I've never met anyone who used iTunes' indexing more than two days without liking it. I include myself - at first, I thought of my music as a bunch of files, but you'll like it if you let iTunes take care of it.
You know, you can resize iTunes and it does it really well. You can make it about the size of Winamp and it's still well laid out, incredibly usable. I don't own an ipod, but I like iTunes a lot. Took a little getting used to - previously I'd used winamp too, then XMMS on linux - but I got to the point that when I use XMMS, it seems awkward.
I will say that if you're trying to get itunes to deal with your music as a collection of files rather than music that it deals with as it will, you'll frustrate yourself. I understabd your USB hard drive desires; might be able to re-specify where Itunes keeps its library to keep it on the hard drive, and do that on all the machines you use? If you do, they should all be able to coexist and be happy. Haven't tried it, but I know you can change the default music directory.
You might want to try iTunes again, I bet there's a way for it to do exactly what you want. Other than that, I think some people have gotten XMMS working for Mac, but that's probably not an option unless you're pretty unix-y.
I know that - but it ain't that great. Better than Matlab natively, yes - I mean, it's an interpreted language, it has to be - but it's not good on par with good C++, and can't touch Fortran. If speed of execution doesn't matter that much, don't worry. If it does, you won't use matlab, compiled or not.
Have never compared it to FORTRAN in speed, but the fact that it's a lot quicker to write/maintain makes most of that speed differential meaningless.
Sure. I have one friend who actually develops in Fortran because it's what his dad recommended. I think he's insane. So sure, for day to day stuff I use matlab.
When I need speed, I get the best of both worlds - I develop in python, which is on par with matlab for development speed, and it calls screaming Fortran libraries (via NumPy) I didn't write myself. Can't beat that - speed of Fortran, ease of Matlab. If you only use Matlab, try Python with NumPy sometime. I did, because of that and because of Matlab's being proprietary. You'll never know when your next job won't support matlab, and knowing other scripted development methods is a very good thing.
Other than the speed control on the site, if you click and hold the scroll bar it won't update. Let go, it updates. That's in Firefox, dunno about IE.
We are doing our best, but quite frankly, I don't think we're doing bad. We have the infernal DMCA, but there's a chance the CMCRA will go through, and I don't like the INDUCE act's chances.
Comparing us to other countries, e don't have a tax on consumable media (CD-R), like Canada and a number of othersdo. I haven't heard of a kid getting penalized here for putting up *hyperlinks* to free music sites, though I could be mistaken.
Not trying to start a flame war, that's not at all the point. But the magnifying glass is on the US - rightfully so to a degree, but I think govs in a lot of other countries are taking a lot of bribes and selling out your liberties without getting enough heat. As bad if not worse than what's going on here. You didn't mention where you're from - unless you're one of the lucky ones, I'd start looking in my own back yard if I were you.
It's not optimized at all. Matlab is great for doing routine work - I use it all the time - but it'll never compare to Fortran for something you REALLY need to be fast.
Check out some of the numerical libraries for python (Numpy, etc.) - they're all wrappers around compiled FORTRAN. Why? Fortran's made to do math. Partly the languages, partly the compilers available, but in the end, it'll do matrix math faster than anything. C++ most certainly included
99% of users have two or more mouse buttons.
it maintains the very sensible UI rule that you should be able to do everything without using it - all features you'd RMB for are available in the menu
For moronically simple programs, yes, that's true. For programs that are involve multiple tools, preferences, whatever, what you do is essentially bury things in the menu that could also be contextual. I'd rather right click and see the options that pertain to what I clicked on, than find it buried in a menu, Also, double-clicking, holding the button for two seconds after clicking, or doing the old CMD-click, alt-click, or whatever are all more awkward ways of getting around a right click, so those don't count.
So ultimately, the challenge is to develop a program that can do everything using either a single click, or a click and drag, without using the keyboard. That's hard - even Apple's given that up long ago. Now the mess they have is trying to remember which key I have to hit while clicking to get the necessary functionality, and that is NOT better than a second button. I say this as a powerbook owner.
Extra buttons and wheels are undoubtably useful things for shortcuts, but the design principle that everything should be available in a consistent manner without HAVING to use them is great for those of us that don't use them very often.
It always is. I've NEVER seen a functionality that could ONLY be found through use of the right mouse button. Anyone who does that as a programmer, I agree, should be shot. For that matter, I don't much like functionality that can only be done with keyboard or only with mouse.
Ultimately, right-clicking when used well is a convenient redundancy - everything's still in the main menu, but who wouldn't rather have it attached to the object being used?
Funny, but remember MS's theory of "embrace and extend" which they do to many, many "open" standards that they can then effectively "close" after they get established.
You can't just take a machine, make it a bit smaller, and expect to sell. You have to sell "cool." How to do that? Make it pretty. Make it small. And make it expensive, because people don't show off cheap things.
Thus, the difference between HP and Apple. One could argue which is better, but any company would kill for Apple's margins, if not their volume.
I don't want to have to defend EA here, but do we really know if they're worse than the rest of the industry? I'd never work for a company like that, but let's remember that this whole thing started from the blog of a wife of an EA programmer. Now we have slashdot posting everything they do. I'm not saying they *aren't* the antichrist, but let's actually consider first whether there's some manipulation or just plain shoddy reporting at fault too.