But it's not really true, is it. phone - very few phones run Linux laptop - a small fraction, most users use windows ATM - now mostly based on Windows, formerly OS/2 There are some categories that use Linux, such as routers and set top boxes, but they are not the exciting ones that would go well in marketing.
I agree that Mork is extremely bad technically, yet the end result is that I like using FF3 less than FF2. Although they improved the db greatly, they also decided to do a lot more with it and this negated most of the gains.
I seem to be unusual. I like the idea (mostly) but dislike the implementation. The first time I open the browser and start typing, the awesome bar search engine grinds into life and thrashes the disk for a while... meanwhile preventing me from typing for a few seconds. After the first time, it's better, although still a bit sluggish.
So it's usually quicker to actually type the first URL in full..
I suppose the publishers or authors guild claimed that the "font choice is an essential part of the complete reading experience". Well OK... perhaps once out of thousands of books I've read, have I noticed the font and thought "hm, that is a nifty little font and slightly enhances the reading experience." Proven!
Microsoft Office succeeded mostly through hard competing, taking the market off the sluggish, complacent competitors like WordPerfect. You could argue XBox took market share off Sony in a similar way, although of course it isn't really a business success yet.
The transparencies might look nice, but they make it feel a bit sluggish to me (FF3). Such features are not widely used because they require a great deal of work from the browser/PC, as well as being unsupported in IE....
I'm reminded of a comment from a previous story, about how it takes strong leadership to manage company lawyers, who will otherwise go on a paranoid spree about their particular fears.
These companies employ lawyers to produce contracts that excuse them any liability and grant them infinite rights "just in case", and then get very surprised when users actually take them seriously. "But we wouldn't really do that!"
Clue: tell your lawyers what you ACTUALLY need and want, don't just let them fill in the gaps with their imaginations.
This is why Slashdot should make moderators (default) browse at -1. But it doesn't, you have to change it yourself and then remember to change it back.
Still, they are very cautious about tinkering with their moderation system, and fair enough, it is one of the best on the web and has had a lot of thought put into making it balanced.
I'm fairly realistic about Microsoft usually, but it's hard to escape the impression lately that they are rudderless, drifting, and desperately trying to copy Apply who are sailing far ahead into profitable new markets with seeming ease. They've always had a tendency to copy the best of other people's ideas, but in the past that worked better for them, and was useful to customers because the rough edges were smooth off. Now Apple and Google seem to be executing well, shuffling Microsoft off to IBM-style irrelevancy.
OK, there is still those Office and Windows cash-cows, but obviously OSX, Linux and OO are nipping at their heels; they are having to reduce prices (Windows CE is extremely cheap, they seem to lose a lot of money on it) and do new unpleasant things for them (like XP for Netbooks).
Interesting concept, but I just can't imagine internet connections (even on broadband) being predictable enough for this to work. My connections occasionally hiccup with a 10-20 pause; not often enough to be really annoying, but what is such a predictor going to do with that?
Very nice job on the summary! It explained exactly what the topic was about and summarised the key findings and where to go for more information. No actual need to visit the article:)
As to the tool, the display looks too complex to provide a simple guide as to edit wars/controversy. Presumably more read bars is bad, or is it? That's really just a slightly graphical form of the edit history itself, when whats needed is a simpler, thermometer style presentation.
Hear hear! Recently two sites that I use semi-regularly were remade entirely as Flash-based *applications* - not just using Flash for video or ads, but the whole thing. Apart from the fact that one of them was so broken it couldn't be used at all, they both were so annoying and difficult that I haven't been back since. Every time this comes up, Flash advocates love to point out that with the latest version of Flash designers *have the option* to fully support accessibility, searching, standard user interface conventions... But this is irrelevant. A browser page *automatically, always* gets a huge bunch of features for free: URLs that are bookmarkable, selecting and copying for text and images, back and forward buttons, keyboard accelerators (tab and enter for links), text rendering that is customised to the hardware and resolution, viewing source for the advanced... the list goes on and on. A thousand little features that operating systems and browsers have been providing for years. If it's up to designers to put those in, none of it will happen for 99% of the implementations. The reality is that Flash designers invariably think they are smarter than everyone else and that their custom GUI is better than all that boring stuff on the desktop. So they *start* with the assumption that they know best. And Macromedia/Adobe plans to rebuild all of that in their own little sandboxed environment, and promise to never make any mistakes that result in security problems?
Example? Certainly, Flash can make cool animations. But when it comes to actually making a USEFUL website, what's an example? We can grant that Flash can be used to make some cute animations on the website to make it more visually interesting. How does that translate to improving the overall site?
Indeed. BUt I feel there is also a lot more that "Linux" would need to do besides just a single distro, none of which is interesting to the Linux community.
Speaking of columns... the editorials in Asimovs especially are now usually long rambling discursions by the editors on the glory days of SF gone by. Analog was generally more interesting, but Stan had a very predictable pattern for his editorials that also started to become tiresome.
Some time ago I noticed that that the SF magazines are feeling OLD of all things... it hurts to say it, but for some reason the genre seems to have passed it's time. I guess several perennial topics have either happened or dissappeared: major space travel looks unlikely to happen, computers and virtual reality have become almost everyday, social changes are happening everywhere. It's like there's less need to speculate.
As I read the FA, the methane from the atmosphere is lost to the surface, not into space. It evaporates from lakes but rains back again and forms "methane derived haze particles"... they think these two forms are more than evaporation... ergo there should be not much methane in the atmosphere over the long term. This point wasn't terribly clear in the article however.
Indeed, that's just crazy in these times of "release the beta as retail, fix it later". Most games benefit hugely from several patches, sometimes going from unplayable to good.
I actually think that would be a fairly dull movie in some ways. If done like 2001, very slow and thoughtful, it would be good, but nobody is going to make it like that these days.
To quickly summarise why this proposal so far entirely misses the point of Bladerunner:
the nature of the off-world colonies
Totally irrelevant
what happens to the Tyrell Corporation in the wake of its founder's death
Mostly irrelevant, and not interesting
and what would become of Rachel.
We already know this, in fact, this is explained in one of the most famous lines of BR.
I think Blade Runner made some very interesting suggestions to the origins of Harrison Ford's character
No kidding. This is only, you know, the entire point of the movie.
addressing the idea of immortality
What? No. Simply wrong. This is actually contrary to the point of Bladerunner. So in conclusion, none of the ideas are very interesting, most are pointless, and some would actually damage the original ideas. Another genius move from Hollywood. The fact is seems to be the personal project of a relatively new screenwriter is a little bizarre, like me deciding to write a sequel to War and Peace.
Slashdot Mirror
But it's not really true, is it.
phone - very few phones run Linux
laptop - a small fraction, most users use windows
ATM - now mostly based on Windows, formerly OS/2
There are some categories that use Linux, such as routers and set top boxes, but they are not the exciting ones that would go well in marketing.
I agree that Mork is extremely bad technically, yet the end result is that I like using FF3 less than FF2. Although they improved the db greatly, they also decided to do a lot more with it and this negated most of the gains.
So in general, a better economy in Russia should tend to see these things die out?
I seem to be unusual. I like the idea (mostly) but dislike the implementation. The first time I open the browser and start typing, the awesome bar search engine grinds into life and thrashes the disk for a while ... meanwhile preventing me from typing for a few seconds.
After the first time, it's better, although still a bit sluggish.
So it's usually quicker to actually type the first URL in full..
I suppose the publishers or authors guild claimed that the "font choice is an essential part of the complete reading experience". Well OK... perhaps once out of thousands of books I've read, have I noticed the font and thought "hm, that is a nifty little font and slightly enhances the reading experience." Proven!
I must be missing something - those phones UI look extremely similar to iPhone and many of the screens look pretty straightforward, with text menus.
A bunch of people getting shafted by Microsoft after believing their promises? Say it ain't so!
It's because Add-Remove is trying to guess a whole lot of missing information.
http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2004/07/09/178342.aspx
One without the guessing:
http://aaronlawrence.fastmail.fm/AddRemove.html
Microsoft Office succeeded mostly through hard competing, taking the market off the sluggish, complacent competitors like WordPerfect.
You could argue XBox took market share off Sony in a similar way, although of course it isn't really a business success yet.
The transparencies might look nice, but they make it feel a bit sluggish to me (FF3). Such features are not widely used because they require a great deal of work from the browser/PC, as well as being unsupported in IE....
I'm reminded of a comment from a previous story, about how it takes strong leadership to manage company lawyers, who will otherwise go on a paranoid spree about their particular fears.
These companies employ lawyers to produce contracts that excuse them any liability and grant them infinite rights "just in case", and then get very surprised when users actually take them seriously. "But we wouldn't really do that!"
Clue: tell your lawyers what you ACTUALLY need and want, don't just let them fill in the gaps with their imaginations.
This is why Slashdot should make moderators (default) browse at -1. But it doesn't, you have to change it yourself and then remember to change it back.
Still, they are very cautious about tinkering with their moderation system, and fair enough, it is one of the best on the web and has had a lot of thought put into making it balanced.
What makes you think the next space station will be any better?
I'm fairly realistic about Microsoft usually, but it's hard to escape the impression lately that they are rudderless, drifting, and desperately trying to copy Apply who are sailing far ahead into profitable new markets with seeming ease.
They've always had a tendency to copy the best of other people's ideas, but in the past that worked better for them, and was useful to customers because the rough edges were smooth off.
Now Apple and Google seem to be executing well, shuffling Microsoft off to IBM-style irrelevancy.
OK, there is still those Office and Windows cash-cows, but obviously OSX, Linux and OO are nipping at their heels; they are having to reduce prices (Windows CE is extremely cheap, they seem to lose a lot of money on it) and do new unpleasant things for them (like XP for Netbooks).
Interesting concept, but I just can't imagine internet connections (even on broadband) being predictable enough for this to work. My connections occasionally hiccup with a 10-20 pause; not often enough to be really annoying, but what is such a predictor going to do with that?
That's good, but they are still (IMO) wasting Mozilla resources on things which are largely pointless, while much more basic features and bugs go neglected
Such as a usable file upload progress, so important to Web2.0/photo/video sharing type situations,
or the way the whole UI blocks while plugins load
or the inability to cope with plugin problems
Very nice job on the summary! It explained exactly what the topic was about and summarised the key findings and where to go for more information. :)
No actual need to visit the article
As to the tool, the display looks too complex to provide a simple guide as to edit wars/controversy. Presumably more read bars is bad, or is it? That's really just a slightly graphical form of the edit history itself, when whats needed is a simpler, thermometer style presentation.
Hear hear! Recently two sites that I use semi-regularly were remade entirely as Flash-based *applications* - not just using Flash for video or ads, but the whole thing. ...
Apart from the fact that one of them was so broken it couldn't be used at all, they both were so annoying and difficult that I haven't been back since.
Every time this comes up, Flash advocates love to point out that with the latest version of Flash designers *have the option* to fully support accessibility, searching, standard user interface conventions
But this is irrelevant. A browser page *automatically, always* gets a huge bunch of features for free: URLs that are bookmarkable, selecting and copying for text and images, back and forward buttons, keyboard accelerators (tab and enter for links), text rendering that is customised to the hardware and resolution, viewing source for the advanced... the list goes on and on. A thousand little features that operating systems and browsers have been providing for years.
If it's up to designers to put those in, none of it will happen for 99% of the implementations. The reality is that Flash designers invariably think they are smarter than everyone else and that their custom GUI is better than all that boring stuff on the desktop. So they *start* with the assumption that they know best.
And Macromedia/Adobe plans to rebuild all of that in their own little sandboxed environment, and promise to never make any mistakes that result in security problems?
Example?
Certainly, Flash can make cool animations. But when it comes to actually making a USEFUL website, what's an example?
We can grant that Flash can be used to make some cute animations on the website to make it more visually interesting. How does that translate to improving the overall site?
Indeed. BUt I feel there is also a lot more that "Linux" would need to do besides just a single distro, none of which is interesting to the Linux community.
http://reverse-entropy.livejournal.com/
Speaking of columns... the editorials in Asimovs especially are now usually long rambling discursions by the editors on the glory days of SF gone by. Analog was generally more interesting, but Stan had a very predictable pattern for his editorials that also started to become tiresome.
Some time ago I noticed that that the SF magazines are feeling OLD of all things... it hurts to say it, but for some reason the genre seems to have passed it's time. I guess several perennial topics have either happened or dissappeared: major space travel looks unlikely to happen, computers and virtual reality have become almost everyday, social changes are happening everywhere. It's like there's less need to speculate.
As I read the FA, the methane from the atmosphere is lost to the surface, not into space. It evaporates from lakes but rains back again and forms "methane derived haze particles"... they think these two forms are more than evaporation... ergo there should be not much methane in the atmosphere over the long term.
This point wasn't terribly clear in the article however.
Indeed, that's just crazy in these times of "release the beta as retail, fix it later". Most games benefit hugely from several patches, sometimes going from unplayable to good.
I actually think that would be a fairly dull movie in some ways. If done like 2001, very slow and thoughtful, it would be good, but nobody is going to make it like that these days.
To quickly summarise why this proposal so far entirely misses the point of Bladerunner:
the nature of the off-world colonies
Totally irrelevant
what happens to the Tyrell Corporation in the wake of its founder's death
Mostly irrelevant, and not interesting
and what would become of Rachel.
We already know this, in fact, this is explained in one of the most famous lines of BR.
I think Blade Runner made some very interesting suggestions to the origins of Harrison Ford's character
No kidding. This is only, you know, the entire point of the movie.
addressing the idea of immortality
What? No. Simply wrong. This is actually contrary to the point of Bladerunner.
So in conclusion, none of the ideas are very interesting, most are pointless, and some would actually damage the original ideas. Another genius move from Hollywood. The fact is seems to be the personal project of a relatively new screenwriter is a little bizarre, like me deciding to write a sequel to War and Peace.