> Nevermind that the single biggest complaint about the fanning windows 9x start menu was-- THAT IT TOOK UP THE WHOLE DAMNED SCREEN. Well, Now its replacement REALLY DOES take up the whole damned screen, with a task switch to boot.
It's perverse. It's almost like the "most often requested" list was swapped with the "most annoying feature" list during Win8 development. I expect Anonymous to claim responsibility any day now.
> The win7 start menu keeps track what what I launch from it frequently, and puts quick links in for those applications, waaaaaaaaaay above the demonized 'all programs' area. I DON'T HAVE TO MANAGE THIS LIST. It is simply populated with what I most frequently invoke. Thus, to start calulator, it is literally: START->Calculator.
This. The "most often used" feature is the greatest thing about Win7. It allows me to do the things I do most often with a minimum of gestures, and as he said, the self-population is the best thing about it. I don't have to screw around with shortcuts even if policy allowed me.
Now all I see is a big mess of icons, many of which I touch seldom, some (builtins) which I've never touched. It's insane.
> What exactly do you want the start menu back for?
Because the menus were hierarchically organized. There were categories, of which you could read the contents by hovering. You could have a very large number of applications represented in a very small space -- far smaller than any modern screen size. Going back to a flat representation of a huge number of icons is a definitive step backwards. It's a necessary simplification for smaller devices -- tablets, phones -- but is an absolutely unmitigated pain in the posterior on desktop machines.
What we've been saying over and over again is that if you want Metro on small touch devices, fine. Maybe it's appropriate there. But it sucks on the desktop. Allow desktop users with big screens to see a *real* desktop interface, with real walking menus, instead of trying to pretend that everything is a touch screen, and you might have something. As it is, it's a mess. And 8.1 is an insult.
We're giving away our Win8 laptop, and we will be sticking with Win7 until MSTR pulls head out of posterior, or something better comes along, whichever happens first.
> Sometimes class is not the only thing in my life with an emotional impact.
Man, no kidding. Two years ago I got a text from my daughter "man with gun school in lockdown". I wonder what facial recognition would have made of that.
(It turned out ok; the person in question was fleeing a robbery and there were reports he had crossed school property.)
Rather than dealing with the privacy issues and with the inevitable plethora of false positives, wouldn't it make more sense to have a button called "Raise Hand" or "Express Confusion" or "I'm lost"? In fact, very much like the buttons that already exist on distance learning interfaces?
Is this supposed to handle the case where users are confused but can't make themselves ask for help? Or is this setting up a framework to later require that all distance learning students have a camera trained on them? I was going to preface that with "tinfoil hat time" but constant surveillance seems to be less and less the stuff of conspiracy theories and more and more the stuff of daily life.
It's ok so long as it's not a device restricted to only content from iTunes.
Understood. Which includes basically any appliance that isn't a laptop. So this SD card thingy is for laptops only. Got it.
Parenthetically, this DRM-enforcement-by-forbidding-replaceable-storage thing was so last decade, with DRM-unencumbered music available from so many sources, including itunes. The storage-restricted business model is getting a bit old in the tooth.
Ah, ok, laptops. For a second there I thought we were talking about ipads. Upon reflection, that sounds silly. Replaceable memory in a non-laptop appliance... Jobs hasn't been dead *that* long.
Hmm. I thought Apple was against the whole concept of users being able to insert sd cards in their trendy white appliances. I guess Jobs really is dead.
I'm not familiar with the S3 or Apple's patent, but a difference might be that they can have one cable that actually plugs in 2 devices (so that both interfaces are in use at the same time), rather than a port that can be used for multiple things, but only one thing at a time.
...So, that really old computer under my desk, that has a PS2 mouse and a PS2 keyboard plugged into an adapter that plugs into one USB port... How is it that doesn't count?
I had to work at some conferences years ago. When it wasn't busy those girls took care of us, getting us hydrated and something to eat. This is rather important since you will be standing for 10-14 hours on such a day, and talking will also get you dehydrated rather quickly, and you forget to drink and eat.
Even more important one of the girls thought me how to stand up, so that your legs and feet tolerate standing for such a long time. Most people have their weight back, straight above their heels and balance on them, while you should have your weight distributed equally over your whole foot.
Of course I know what vi is. The machines I work on typically have cygwin installed because I can do things faster even in windows with Unix command line utilities. (For example, "find" "df" and "sort" are much more useful to figure out where all the disk space went to than anything I've seen in the Windows world.) I am not an EMACS user. This was a career decision made long ago. If it's Unix, it has vi. It almost certainly doesn't have EMACS. And I didn't feel like carrying a tape everywhere with me.
I've used ex to manage a Vax 11/780 (running BSD) on a Decwriter III. I'm pretty sure I could still do it. Or, there used to be a way to use vi in line mode, and I'm ok with that too.
I don't game. It's natural to assume that "I need Windows" means "I have resource intensive games that only run on Windows" but that's not always the case. In my particular case, I use certain (rather expensive) Adobe products intensively. I know there are open source products that run on Linux and purport to do the same thing, but they don't really, yet. (I check every now and then.) And no, I don't want to screw around with Wine just to be able to say that I'm Windows Free. Using Win7 is not exactly like a date with Kate Upton, (It's more like hammering a nail with a 55 gallon drum) but in certain areas it does get the job done.
I've often said that the moment certain products are ported natively to Android or Linux, I'll dump winders and never look back. I still stand by that.
I like looking at booth babes as much as the next guy, but c'mon. It's just unprofessional. And frankly, I don't want to talk to a hired salesmodel at an IT conference, either. I want to talk to a technical person who knows the freaking product and can answer detailed technical questions about it. If I wanted a brochure, I'd go to the website. It's a waste of my time and your money to have anyone in your booth that doesn't know the product inside and out.
...but there's generally only one or two of those, and they may be occupied. The babe can hand out literature, swag, or do smalltalk until the salescreature can see you. This is a valuable resource.
There are more roles in booth work than merely technical. In my experience, the babes (wish there was a better term) were there to manage the crowd, take business cards, hand out literature, funnel people to the sales crew in the right order, and keep them occupied until we were ready to talk to them. These tasks don't require knowledge of the product, they require knowledge of how to handle a crowd.
If you ask a booth babe a technical question, you should get something like "I can take you to someone who can answer that for you"....which is in her job description.
You might be surprised. For better or worse, a pretty woman is often seen as less threatening and more approachable than the stereotypical salesperson or "sales engineer" (booth geek) by all genders and sexual orientations. Not just straight men.
But it depends on the context. For instance, if the woman is wearing something appropriate for a trade show, or is merely there to show a lot of skin. Also how she carries herself -- is she really there to help, or merely there as eye candy.
Not sure I agree. There's always room for booth babes.
...ok did I say that out loud? Anyway, the market will decide. If booths with a couple of local models on deck do better business than booths without, they'd be crazy not to do it. On the other hand, if booth babes are neutral or a liability, they'll (eventually) disappear.
The last trade show I worked, (which was some time ago) the large company with whom I was employed at the time hired two local talent (show was in las vegas) to accompany us during the show. They didn't dress overly provocatively (safari getup, in keeping with the booth theme, no excessive cleavage or leg showing) and they did a good job managing the crowd, making sure we weren't overwhelmed, and taking prospective customer information. Don't get me wrong, they were drop dead gorgeous, but they also knew what they were doing and helped out a lot. "Booth Babe" is a somewhat disparaging term for what can be a difficult job. It's not all about standing in the aisle and doing the "vanna wave" towards the booth.
During a rare slow moment I got to talk to one of the girls, and asked her if she was an employee of our company. (There being a group in the company tasked with handling logistics for these shows, and I at first thought she might be with that group.) She looked shocked, and said no, she was from a local agency, and makes most of her living working booths at trade shows. (Which explains why she was good at it.)
Why not try Ubuntu? Unity was made for touch screens.
That's a good question. The answer is, because it's not about the operating system. I don't run a particular operating system because I like the operating system. I'm not in love with Android or OSX or IOS or NextStep (oops, showing my age) or Ubuntu. The OS is a collection of resources that support applications. The applications I need are (or soon will be) available for Android. Moreover, Android is a known quantity, as we already have devices running it. My daughter can administer Android. She's never touched Ubuntu.
It's a combination of application availability, experience, and resources. It is not, repeat not, about love of a particular OS and never was. Which is why I still run Win7 on my primary workstation. Not because I love it or love the company (quite the opposite). The applications I need are only ported to Win7 and (to some lesser extent) OSX. I don't like Apple's business model, and I save money by building my own machines. So Win7 it is.
In my garage are two rack mounted servers running CentOS. Because that's the best fit for the applications they are running.
If I was doing Linux development, you betcha I'd have a machine running Ubuntu. It's the best choice for Linux development. But I don't do that.
I've said this before, but the purpose of computers is *not* to run the OS. It's to run applications. The OS is not an application.
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> Nevermind that the single biggest complaint about the fanning windows 9x start menu was-- THAT IT TOOK UP THE WHOLE DAMNED SCREEN. Well, Now its replacement REALLY DOES take up the whole damned screen, with a task switch to boot.
It's perverse. It's almost like the "most often requested" list was swapped with the "most annoying feature" list during Win8 development. I expect Anonymous to claim responsibility any day now.
> The win7 start menu keeps track what what I launch from it frequently, and puts quick links in for those applications, waaaaaaaaaay above the demonized 'all programs' area. I DON'T HAVE TO MANAGE THIS LIST. It is simply populated with what I most frequently invoke. Thus, to start calulator, it is literally: START->Calculator.
This. The "most often used" feature is the greatest thing about Win7. It allows me to do the things I do most often with a minimum of gestures, and as he said, the self-population is the best thing about it. I don't have to screw around with shortcuts even if policy allowed me.
Now all I see is a big mess of icons, many of which I touch seldom, some (builtins) which I've never touched. It's insane.
> What exactly do you want the start menu back for?
Because the menus were hierarchically organized. There were categories, of which you could read the contents by hovering. You could have a very large number of applications represented in a very small space -- far smaller than any modern screen size. Going back to a flat representation of a huge number of icons is a definitive step backwards. It's a necessary simplification for smaller devices -- tablets, phones -- but is an absolutely unmitigated pain in the posterior on desktop machines.
What we've been saying over and over again is that if you want Metro on small touch devices, fine. Maybe it's appropriate there. But it sucks on the desktop. Allow desktop users with big screens to see a *real* desktop interface, with real walking menus, instead of trying to pretend that everything is a touch screen, and you might have something. As it is, it's a mess. And 8.1 is an insult.
We're giving away our Win8 laptop, and we will be sticking with Win7 until MSTR pulls head out of posterior, or something better comes along, whichever happens first.
Reminds me of a song.
This.
With Android, iOS, and Web development taking center stage these days, that decrease in Microsoft development is already well under way.
Exactly. So this would be a perfect time to eliminate your cheap, unlimited development stack.
If you were trying to commit corporate suicide.
> Unfortunately, the days of a cheap, unlimited Microsoft development stack are coming to an end.
> Sometimes class is not the only thing in my life with an emotional impact.
Man, no kidding. Two years ago I got a text from my daughter "man with gun school in lockdown". I wonder what facial recognition would have made of that.
(It turned out ok; the person in question was fleeing a robbery and there were reports he had crossed school property.)
Rather than dealing with the privacy issues and with the inevitable plethora of false positives, wouldn't it make more sense to have a button called "Raise Hand" or "Express Confusion" or "I'm lost"? In fact, very much like the buttons that already exist on distance learning interfaces?
Is this supposed to handle the case where users are confused but can't make themselves ask for help? Or is this setting up a framework to later require that all distance learning students have a camera trained on them? I was going to preface that with "tinfoil hat time" but constant surveillance seems to be less and less the stuff of conspiracy theories and more and more the stuff of daily life.
It's ok so long as it's not a device restricted to only content from iTunes.
Understood. Which includes basically any appliance that isn't a laptop. So this SD card thingy is for laptops only. Got it.
Parenthetically, this DRM-enforcement-by-forbidding-replaceable-storage thing was so last decade, with DRM-unencumbered music available from so many sources, including itunes. The storage-restricted business model is getting a bit old in the tooth.
Ah, ok, laptops. For a second there I thought we were talking about ipads. Upon reflection, that sounds silly. Replaceable memory in a non-laptop appliance... Jobs hasn't been dead *that* long.
Hmm. I thought Apple was against the whole concept of users being able to insert sd cards in their trendy white appliances. I guess Jobs really is dead.
> When you acknowledge more than your single pet brand, you have a broader perspective on things.
You are my new favorite person.
I'm not familiar with the S3 or Apple's patent, but a difference might be that they can have one cable that actually plugs in 2 devices (so that both interfaces are in use at the same time), rather than a port that can be used for multiple things, but only one thing at a time.
> I don't work for HP directly, nor indirectly, nor have ever, but I am engaged with them in a way that limits my ability to discuss this openly.
Same here. I guess we will see.
I had to work at some conferences years ago. When it wasn't busy those girls took care of us, getting us hydrated and something to eat. This is rather important since you will be standing for 10-14 hours on such a day, and talking will also get you dehydrated rather quickly, and you forget to drink and eat.
Even more important one of the girls thought me how to stand up, so that your legs and feet tolerate standing for such a long time. Most people have their weight back, straight above their heels and balance on them, while you should have your weight distributed equally over your whole foot.
Good points. Yes, and your knees slightly bent.
Of course I know what vi is. The machines I work on typically have cygwin installed because I can do things faster even in windows with Unix command line utilities. (For example, "find" "df" and "sort" are much more useful to figure out where all the disk space went to than anything I've seen in the Windows world.) I am not an EMACS user. This was a career decision made long ago. If it's Unix, it has vi. It almost certainly doesn't have EMACS. And I didn't feel like carrying a tape everywhere with me.
I've used ex to manage a Vax 11/780 (running BSD) on a Decwriter III. I'm pretty sure I could still do it. Or, there used to be a way to use vi in line mode, and I'm ok with that too.
I don't game. It's natural to assume that "I need Windows" means "I have resource intensive games that only run on Windows" but that's not always the case. In my particular case, I use certain (rather expensive) Adobe products intensively. I know there are open source products that run on Linux and purport to do the same thing, but they don't really, yet. (I check every now and then.) And no, I don't want to screw around with Wine just to be able to say that I'm Windows Free. Using Win7 is not exactly like a date with Kate Upton, (It's more like hammering a nail with a 55 gallon drum) but in certain areas it does get the job done.
I've often said that the moment certain products are ported natively to Android or Linux, I'll dump winders and never look back. I still stand by that.
I like looking at booth babes as much as the next guy, but c'mon. It's just unprofessional. And frankly, I don't want to talk to a hired salesmodel at an IT conference, either. I want to talk to a technical person who knows the freaking product and can answer detailed technical questions about it. If I wanted a brochure, I'd go to the website. It's a waste of my time and your money to have anyone in your booth that doesn't know the product inside and out.
There are more roles in booth work than merely technical. In my experience, the babes (wish there was a better term) were there to manage the crowd, take business cards, hand out literature, funnel people to the sales crew in the right order, and keep them occupied until we were ready to talk to them. These tasks don't require knowledge of the product, they require knowledge of how to handle a crowd.
If you ask a booth babe a technical question, you should get something like "I can take you to someone who can answer that for you". ...which is in her job description.
When you're $100k in debt with only a degree in Women's Studies to show for it.
Nod. And in that case, what makes her "scantily dressed" is not what she's actually wearing, but that she's there at all.
"Well dressed" doesn't really describe booth babes. Actually, "dressed" doesn't really describe booth babes.
Sometimes true, but it depends on the booth.
You might be surprised. For better or worse, a pretty woman is often seen as less threatening and more approachable than the stereotypical salesperson or "sales engineer" (booth geek) by all genders and sexual orientations. Not just straight men.
But it depends on the context. For instance, if the woman is wearing something appropriate for a trade show, or is merely there to show a lot of skin. Also how she carries herself -- is she really there to help, or merely there as eye candy.
Not sure I agree. There's always room for booth babes.
The last trade show I worked, (which was some time ago) the large company with whom I was employed at the time hired two local talent (show was in las vegas) to accompany us during the show. They didn't dress overly provocatively (safari getup, in keeping with the booth theme, no excessive cleavage or leg showing) and they did a good job managing the crowd, making sure we weren't overwhelmed, and taking prospective customer information. Don't get me wrong, they were drop dead gorgeous, but they also knew what they were doing and helped out a lot. "Booth Babe" is a somewhat disparaging term for what can be a difficult job. It's not all about standing in the aisle and doing the "vanna wave" towards the booth.
During a rare slow moment I got to talk to one of the girls, and asked her if she was an employee of our company. (There being a group in the company tasked with handling logistics for these shows, and I at first thought she might be with that group.) She looked shocked, and said no, she was from a local agency, and makes most of her living working booths at trade shows. (Which explains why she was good at it.)
This year the expo had more booth babes than last year, which raises the question "Are Booth Babes going away?".
Say what now?
Exactly. What I got out of this was that booth babes are returning. I see this as a sign that the economy is improving.
Why not try Ubuntu? Unity was made for touch screens.
That's a good question. The answer is, because it's not about the operating system. I don't run a particular operating system because I like the operating system. I'm not in love with Android or OSX or IOS or NextStep (oops, showing my age) or Ubuntu. The OS is a collection of resources that support applications. The applications I need are (or soon will be) available for Android. Moreover, Android is a known quantity, as we already have devices running it. My daughter can administer Android. She's never touched Ubuntu.
It's a combination of application availability, experience, and resources. It is not, repeat not, about love of a particular OS and never was. Which is why I still run Win7 on my primary workstation. Not because I love it or love the company (quite the opposite). The applications I need are only ported to Win7 and (to some lesser extent) OSX. I don't like Apple's business model, and I save money by building my own machines. So Win7 it is.
In my garage are two rack mounted servers running CentOS. Because that's the best fit for the applications they are running.
If I was doing Linux development, you betcha I'd have a machine running Ubuntu. It's the best choice for Linux development. But I don't do that.
I've said this before, but the purpose of computers is *not* to run the OS. It's to run applications. The OS is not an application.