I'm doing you a huge favor when I say that the ending just loops around to the beginning.
There are lots of little interesting moments interspersed with overly long passages of junk. I think that Hollywood might actually be doing us all a favor with this one.
SSD being soldered directly to a motherboard? I'm a bit torn about that idea...
ok, so you're saying my hard drive died. How much will that cost to replace?
Excuse me?
(they'd BETTER put it in a socket)
This is no different than if your PCIe controller died. You can't replace that. You don't want a socketed BGA. Trust me. If you want a "socketed" hard drive, just use a regular SSD. This is for hardware that needs large, fast storage and a small form-factor. Cameras, Video Cameras, Phones, iDouches, etc.
I'm surprised by the number of PC users who are reinforcing the desktop / laptop paradigm as if it is the only way things have ever been, and the only way things will ever be. Technology can be created and sell millions of units without ever being something that a traditional desktop PC would want or need.
If the robotic teaching of basic skills becomes commonplace it will be at the expense of human interaction.
We already have too many people who are dysfunctional in society and lacking in the basic human skills of communications, emotions and compassion. I do not see this as much of an advancement, it is just a means of reducing the "human" component of our educational system.
You're looking at this in a very short-sighted manner. An automated teaching system can also be programmed to teach both *in* a human manner and correct antisocial behavior.
Imagine that any system or process can be automated if enough time or energy (money) is thrown at it. You could essentially match one Automated Educator per pupil, as opposed to today where you have one teacher for 30 pupils. Which one encourages the better development of social skills.
In a class with 30 people, the teacher doesn't have the energy to reprimand the annoying know-it-all kid all of the time, or to get the shy people out of their shells. Instead of hiding and not absorbing the lecture as the rest of the class moves on, comprehension and participation would be mandatory and measured at a granular level.
As much as I hate to displace educators from their jobs, an automated teaching device would bring amazing benefits to humankind.
Whoa. Someone with common sense. Someone in charge with common sense! I need to get some people around my workplace to read this blog entry.
Based on a few years of observation, we noticed that there was little or no correlation between academic performance, as measured by grades [and] the type of college a person attended, and their real on-the-job performance....
While I'm sure that everyone's personal experience is different, this observation matches perfectly with what I've seen over the last 30 years or so in the field. On-the-job performance is the application of skills that are atually needed somewhere. Education in school is teaching something that may be needed at some future date. A new graduate still has to learn how to adapt their knowledge to the real world. Given what schools seem to be teaching these days, and the typical student's retention rate and enthusiasm, I'm not surprised that grads and non-grads are about equal in skill after working for awhile.
... That was a genuine surprise, particularly for me, as I grew up thinking grades really mattered.
Kudos for admitting that, Vembu. I hope others follow your example.
If you're talking about programming, someone with C grades could be a great worker, and someone with great grades can be a terrible employee.
If you're talking about some of the other disciplines like Electrical Engineering, failing to understand material and demonstrating that with A or B level work will become a problem when the technology specs of the system cross a threshold. Granted, the 4.0 Student might be a terrible worker, but a 2.0 student that is effective at designing a circuit on time might still get many of the subtle circuit interactions wrong, and wind up creating a quality nightmare.
The one that springs to mind is Comedy Central's censoring of South Park (twice!) because they were afraid of offending Muslims. The general PC belief seems to me to be that we need to avoid offending the poor Muslims at any cost, which is of course asinine.
Actually, Muslims don't care about graphic portrayals of Mohammad. It's just something they invented to troll Ethnocentric Jingoist Chest-Thumpers disguised as harbringers of sanity. Although there are people on Muslim chat boards that try and keep them from gathering up in large crowds where they burn flags and call for the death of Americans just to avoid offending the poor American Hicks at any cost, which is of course asinine.
He suffers from anxiety, depression and panic attacks? Exactly what people claim when they are suing for ridiculous amounts of money. Utterly impossible to prove or disprove, and plenty of doctors will probably accept a nice fee to testify either way.
I'm not saying that he doesn't suffer from these, but hearing it makes me roll my eyes and wonder if it's not just a sympathy act.
As someone who suffers from anxiety, depression, and panic attacks, I am glad you have educated me that there are people who are predisposed to believe that we are making it all up. Although I am well aware that people have problems accepting situations that have not happened to them personally, I will add this one to the list.
Actually, I live outside the US - I heard about the whole topic of caffeine "addiction" and "withdrawal" first when I spent a year in California. I am not trying to do some US bashing here - I seriously never heard anyone talking about the notion of "caffeine withdrawal" before getting there, and nowadays, I only hear about it on American forums. It is simply weird, and it interests me why this is so.
As someone who is going through caffeine withdrawal right now (notice that I don't use quotation marks because it's real), I have a really simple answer.
My splitting headache and lethargy are due to the the fact that I consume at least two pots of coffee a day until yesterday. If you've never heard of anyone getting caffeine withdrawal outside the US, then you've never met anyone who has consumed enough coffee on a regular basis to become addicted.
I realize that you are predisposed to believe that Americans make up trouble for themselves (and for good reason), but this one is backed up by facts.
Slate tablets running a regular, desktop OS have been around for almost 10 years now. And they still have yet to gain traction or become popular. Mainly because people don't want a desktop OS in a slate form factor. Part of the reason why these new phone OSes are making inroads in the tablet space is because they were designed from the ground up to work in low power conditions (ARM processors) and work with a finger based input. What's more, the app catalogs of these OSes are full of apps that are designed with these limitations taken into account from the beginning.
People say they want a slate running a desktop OS so they can use all their existing desktop OS apps. But what they fail to realize is that any slate tablet is going to have the internals of a netbook or worse, and the apps they're gonna try and run are going to be designed with a keyboard and mouse in mind, which will make finger usage difficult. Sure, you could carry around a keyboard and mouse with you in case you need it, but then you've kinda defeated the purpose of a slate tablet in the first place (portability), and might as well carry around a much more powerful laptop.
1) Something doesn't have to be popular (i.e. ubiquitous) to be purchased and make the manufacturer money.
2) The slate will have the internals of a netbook? Really? My slate has a core 2 duo and 8 gigs of ram.
3) I have a laptop that flips around to a slate. It would be worthless for drawing / video editing if it didn't have the full OS features.
Sure, there is a market for a computing device that is a slate. There is also a market for a slate with a full fledged OS.
Humans always admire those who stand up to injustice, especially if they succeed. Look at the founding fathers of the US, Civil War "heroes", etc. It makes no difference if you are 8 fighting the school bully or if you are 28 fighting against tyranny, or if you are 78 and fighting injustice in the legal system.
Humans *always* admire those who stand up to injustice? Except those who are inflicting the injustice. Americans despise Terrorists, but who are they, except those that practice asymmetrical resistance to their own perceived injustice? What are "activist judges"? Aren't they despised by half the country that wants to continue to persecute homosexuals? Same on the other side of the fence. Most on the left hate Sara Palin, even though those on the right consider her to be fighting against the injustice of big government and social programs.
For the love of $deity why would _anybody_ still be using the DNS server that their ISP provides?
Ignoring the multiple FREE DNS providers out there, it is trivally easy to setup your own caching DNS server regardless of the OS platform you use.
With the abundance of 'old' computers that most people upgrade from, it shold be standard practice to setup an old box as a firewall/dns server.
Really? You can set up a firewall/dns box, but you aren't familiar with laziness.
Also, for the majority of internet users, setting up a firewall / dns server is not trivial. For a majority of internet users, changing the desktop background is not trivial. This affects non-nerds....you know, most people.
What they need to do is remember why the project started and get back to that.
Themes in 3.6? WTF were they thinking?
Chrome and Safari both have excellent built in Web dev/javascript tools, I don't even miss Web Developer Toolbar.
The reason that Themes is a "good" feature: before the themes, a handful of people used Firefox at my workplace. The week after the feature came out we had 90% adoption. Why? People looked over the shoulder and said, "How do you have Homer Simpson on your "Internet Explorer"".
Never underestimate the draw of features that a professional IT person would consider useless and bloated.
Thank god at least one elected official has some sense of priorities...
Yeah, except for Mayor Daily had the Chicago Police arrest and detain protestors of the Afghan and Iraq wars. How about the priority of using your position to support your convictions.
The ipad will fade into obscurity and during that time your efforts could be better invested else where.
Yes, selling 300,000 units on the first day is a sure sign that the iPad will fade into obscurity any time soon.
Like it or not, the iPad is relevant. It obviously has a following and there will be devices that can imitate it and ride its coattails a bit. Perhaps these other devices can even improve on the design and become relevant in and of themselves. One thing is for certain, you completely ignore a popular device/platform at your own peril.
If you want to bandy about numbers, why not make your number bigger. The iPads were $500 each. That means that Apple grossed $150 million on opening day. I know readers can do math, but let's make it simple for them. A device that grosses $150 million on opening day, one year after the second worst economic disaster America has known, does not go away no matter how much you know it is an inferior device. People have been buying useless crap for years. Why does this surprise anyone? Boo Apple. Yay money!
Seriously, how could the design team at Adobe not realize there's a problem when they put all of their names on the splash screen, and each program loads slowly enough that the user can actually read them ALL?
I'll view it as substantial progress if Adobe ever just cleans-up the disaster that is their CS product to the degree that each app is no more than 10x the size of GIMP. It just never ceases to amaze me how a company can be so violently oblivious to the needs of its customers that it will say, "Go screw yourself!", when they complain about issues with a product. How long before people just start using Corel or GIMP instead of Photoshop? How much longer before PDFs fall by the wayside?
You know why I don't notice the wait time? Because three adobe programs are always loaded and running on my system. The needs of the customer who have the software open all of the time are met. As far as the application being 10x larger than gimp, I don't care how large this program is. My hard drive is huge. The tool does a lot so it's kind of worth it. I know that we both grew up trying to get as close to 640K of ram as possible, but those days are gone and the majority of people who use computers aren't nerds and couldn't give a hoot about half the crap that we care about. Once you pick up on this, you might be able to predict behavior and make some money from people you disagree with.
We're (hopefully) on the verge of seeing Flash, which has enjoyed unprecedented success as the primary web page interaction and video presentation engine, get kicked to the curb by HTML5. Why? Well, if it wasn't broken, it's not terribly likely anyone would be looking for a solution to replace it with. Maybe Adobe will take that as a cue to start looking at its other products and work on some optimization before it's too late.
FYI as frothing-at-the-mouth Flash Hater, you sound ridiculous. I always mentally use the Luke Skywalker "Toshi Station" voice whenever someone on slashdot complains about flash.
is Adobe continuing their trend of writing awful, inconsistent, ugly, usually-slow UIs?
This came up a while ago, on John Nack (PS product manager)'s blog.
Basically they think their custom UI stuff for CS is the beez knees, and you unlucky shmoes who "have to use" CS will be getting MORE not less of their crap in future (including CS5) versions.
To their UI credit: it is very easy to add / remove UI panels. It is easy to move them around. They have an icon for when you want them to be small, they have a small panel, and a large panel. You can save your workspaces and reload them at any time, so if you want a certain set of tools some of the time, you got it. In CS4 they added many more context sensitive commands at the top of the window. Also in CS4, they reduced a lot of bloat around the panel icons, removing visual flare in exchange for faster visual recognition. Finally they added tabs.
I take issue that the CS UI is bad and getting worse. That's a blanket statement. Some things are bad and getting better. Some things just work, like pressure sensitive pen devices. In every subsequent CS release, I swear less and less when I'm trying to get the frigging thing to do what I want.
That being said, the inverse kinematic "bone" tool in Flash CS4 was barely functioning, and caused me to scream bloody murder. After Effects CS4 had me screaming every time a new panel went somewhere unexpected, or wouldn't drag to the correct location. The UI for vectors is different in Illustrator, Photoshop, Flash, Fireworks, After Effects, and probably any other tool they make. I really wish that you could pick another program's UI (i.e. have the pen tool work in Flash the way it works in Illustrator).
Oh, and for all the anti-Flash fanatics out there, you sound ridiculous. No one has personally injured you. Don't froth at the mouth because someone figured out how to make the internet move around and flash. Don't be angry that people with money like to spend it at websites with pretty pictures that move around. No one is forcing you to look at rendered HTML.
But then I would have to draw more people in my editorial cartoons. Gee, why does making a political comic's life harder always involve doing the right thing.
Example of political cartoon that doesn't need another four characters in it: http://www.postmodernsideshow.com/obamaride
Today: If you're driving through a suspicious neighbourhood, or look suspicious, you can expect to get pulled over regardless of color. Tomorrow: If you congregate with suspicious people, you can expect to get zapped with the pain ray.
How can a neighborhood be suspicious? I think this shows a predisposition on your part for misusing the very technology we are debating.
Many policemen are alright. I'm glad they are doing their jobs. There are also quite a few Officer Dickheads that I would not want in charge of this kind of technology. Lot's of these Officer Dickheads are on ego trips. There are people like this in the military too. Why worry just about our own police abusing this power. What about the military using this on innocents? Why not worry about breeding a new round of terrorists? We, as a nation, and as humans are going to deserve what happens to us.
Sorry for the awkward sentences. I can't figure out what is tripping the "lameness filter"
In 6 months, we'll see thousands of "JOIN MY RAD MMO ITS SUPER COOL KTHX" posts and such. Everybody will have their OWN VIRTUAL WORLD with noboby playing them.
Close. For the intents and purposes of a MMOG, yes nobody will be playing them, except for a handful of people. But if millions of people are each playing around in virtual spaces with handfuls of people, that's still millions of people. Look at myspace. It's crap, only a handful of people visit any individual site, but it's still immensely popular and draws lots of advertising traffic.
Also, looking at the website and graphics, it's gonna be: Cute ponies, glitter, anime-style characters, pastel pink... This is game development for 12-years old kids. Well, except for the flying penises.
Again, look at myspace. Who has more free time, a software developer or a 12-year old girl? Granted the 12-year old girl doesn't have the disposable income, but she does have influence over her parents, and she will be generating free content. Even if it's something stupid like a heart shaped unicorn couch that other people can add to their hangout spaces.
I cannot vouch for this particular software company to live up to even 10% of their hype, but when somebody does, no matter how sparsely populated, nor crappy and glittery, it will still mean lots of dollars for somebody.
Okay, I lied. I think a glittery, heart-shaped unicorn couch would be awesome.
The difference being, a LIEberal will look at the freedom pedestal of patriotism surrounded by flames and say to herself "Gee, maybe standing on the freedom pedestal isn't important enough to immolate my trousers".
The conservative will froth at the mouth in hysteria and rush through the flames to prove his love for his country, climb the pedestal, cry in pain comparing the flames licking his clothes to Pearl Harbor, and then declare a war on pants.
Sillyness aside, the subtext of the argument is that Bush had a conviction to a lie that he concocted. John Kerry (who I hate, by the way) believed the lie, realized it was a lie, and changed his mind once he realized that the President manipulated CIA intelligence in order for an elite sect of uber-conservatives to realize an insane Middle East Strategy.
So, all said and done, if you admit that the lie was indeed a lie, then you admit that you were wrong, so it makes sense for the conservatives to continue to stand behind their war lies. Liberals on the other hand make themselves look bad because they were gullible and spineless in the run-up to war. The entire country looses. Hooray for our team.
Try this simple test: I have wrist pain within 2 minutes of using a "regular" mouse. I use the evoluent vertical mouse. My wrist pain has yet to come back.
According to your logic, the most ergonomic position is for my body to be lying in a heap on the floor, because that's what happens when I relax ALL of the muscles in my body. Bruised and effluent, because I accidentally released my sphincter too.
Actually, if I could use the computer while lying in a random heap on the floor, I think I would.
You don't have to certify the phone, you have to certify the equipment on the plane.
Who is going to pay to have equipment on the plane recertified, and how much is that cost?
Is that cost even remotely recoverable?
How much is that cost going to add to future certification of hardware?
It's just prohibitively expensive. The hardest part about designing avionics is not the physical complexity, the electrical complexity, or the software complexity. It's testing, certification, and red tape.
Slashdot Mirror
There are lots of little interesting moments interspersed with overly long passages of junk. I think that Hollywood might actually be doing us all a favor with this one.
SSD being soldered directly to a motherboard? I'm a bit torn about that idea...
ok, so you're saying my hard drive died. How much will that cost to replace?
Excuse me?
(they'd BETTER put it in a socket)
This is no different than if your PCIe controller died. You can't replace that. You don't want a socketed BGA. Trust me. If you want a "socketed" hard drive, just use a regular SSD. This is for hardware that needs large, fast storage and a small form-factor. Cameras, Video Cameras, Phones, iDouches, etc.
I'm surprised by the number of PC users who are reinforcing the desktop / laptop paradigm as if it is the only way things have ever been, and the only way things will ever be. Technology can be created and sell millions of units without ever being something that a traditional desktop PC would want or need.
If the robotic teaching of basic skills becomes commonplace it will be at the expense of human interaction.
We already have too many people who are dysfunctional in society and lacking in the basic human skills of communications, emotions and compassion. I do not see this as much of an advancement, it is just a means of reducing the "human" component of our educational system.
You're looking at this in a very short-sighted manner. An automated teaching system can also be programmed to teach both *in* a human manner and correct antisocial behavior.
Imagine that any system or process can be automated if enough time or energy (money) is thrown at it. You could essentially match one Automated Educator per pupil, as opposed to today where you have one teacher for 30 pupils. Which one encourages the better development of social skills.
In a class with 30 people, the teacher doesn't have the energy to reprimand the annoying know-it-all kid all of the time, or to get the shy people out of their shells. Instead of hiding and not absorbing the lecture as the rest of the class moves on, comprehension and participation would be mandatory and measured at a granular level.
As much as I hate to displace educators from their jobs, an automated teaching device would bring amazing benefits to humankind.
Whoa. Someone with common sense. Someone in charge with common sense! I need to get some people around my workplace to read this blog entry.
While I'm sure that everyone's personal experience is different, this observation matches perfectly with what I've seen over the last 30 years or so in the field. On-the-job performance is the application of skills that are atually needed somewhere. Education in school is teaching something that may be needed at some future date. A new graduate still has to learn how to adapt their knowledge to the real world. Given what schools seem to be teaching these days, and the typical student's retention rate and enthusiasm, I'm not surprised that grads and non-grads are about equal in skill after working for awhile.
Kudos for admitting that, Vembu. I hope others follow your example.
If you're talking about programming, someone with C grades could be a great worker, and someone with great grades can be a terrible employee.
If you're talking about some of the other disciplines like Electrical Engineering, failing to understand material and demonstrating that with A or B level work will become a problem when the technology specs of the system cross a threshold. Granted, the 4.0 Student might be a terrible worker, but a 2.0 student that is effective at designing a circuit on time might still get many of the subtle circuit interactions wrong, and wind up creating a quality nightmare.
The one that springs to mind is Comedy Central's censoring of South Park (twice!) because they were afraid of offending Muslims. The general PC belief seems to me to be that we need to avoid offending the poor Muslims at any cost, which is of course asinine.
Actually, Muslims don't care about graphic portrayals of Mohammad. It's just something they invented to troll Ethnocentric Jingoist Chest-Thumpers disguised as harbringers of sanity. Although there are people on Muslim chat boards that try and keep them from gathering up in large crowds where they burn flags and call for the death of Americans just to avoid offending the poor American Hicks at any cost, which is of course asinine.
He suffers from anxiety, depression and panic attacks? Exactly what people claim when they are suing for ridiculous amounts of money. Utterly impossible to prove or disprove, and plenty of doctors will probably accept a nice fee to testify either way.
I'm not saying that he doesn't suffer from these, but hearing it makes me roll my eyes and wonder if it's not just a sympathy act.
As someone who suffers from anxiety, depression, and panic attacks, I am glad you have educated me that there are people who are predisposed to believe that we are making it all up. Although I am well aware that people have problems accepting situations that have not happened to them personally, I will add this one to the list.
Actually, I live outside the US - I heard about the whole topic of caffeine "addiction" and "withdrawal" first when I spent a year in California. I am not trying to do some US bashing here - I seriously never heard anyone talking about the notion of "caffeine withdrawal" before getting there, and nowadays, I only hear about it on American forums. It is simply weird, and it interests me why this is so.
As someone who is going through caffeine withdrawal right now (notice that I don't use quotation marks because it's real), I have a really simple answer.
My splitting headache and lethargy are due to the the fact that I consume at least two pots of coffee a day until yesterday. If you've never heard of anyone getting caffeine withdrawal outside the US, then you've never met anyone who has consumed enough coffee on a regular basis to become addicted.
I realize that you are predisposed to believe that Americans make up trouble for themselves (and for good reason), but this one is backed up by facts.
Slate tablets running a regular, desktop OS have been around for almost 10 years now. And they still have yet to gain traction or become popular. Mainly because people don't want a desktop OS in a slate form factor. Part of the reason why these new phone OSes are making inroads in the tablet space is because they were designed from the ground up to work in low power conditions (ARM processors) and work with a finger based input. What's more, the app catalogs of these OSes are full of apps that are designed with these limitations taken into account from the beginning.
People say they want a slate running a desktop OS so they can use all their existing desktop OS apps. But what they fail to realize is that any slate tablet is going to have the internals of a netbook or worse, and the apps they're gonna try and run are going to be designed with a keyboard and mouse in mind, which will make finger usage difficult. Sure, you could carry around a keyboard and mouse with you in case you need it, but then you've kinda defeated the purpose of a slate tablet in the first place (portability), and might as well carry around a much more powerful laptop.
1) Something doesn't have to be popular (i.e. ubiquitous) to be purchased and make the manufacturer money.
2) The slate will have the internals of a netbook? Really? My slate has a core 2 duo and 8 gigs of ram.
3) I have a laptop that flips around to a slate. It would be worthless for drawing / video editing if it didn't have the full OS features.
Sure, there is a market for a computing device that is a slate. There is also a market for a slate with a full fledged OS.
Humans always admire those who stand up to injustice, especially if they succeed. Look at the founding fathers of the US, Civil War "heroes", etc. It makes no difference if you are 8 fighting the school bully or if you are 28 fighting against tyranny, or if you are 78 and fighting injustice in the legal system.
Humans *always* admire those who stand up to injustice? Except those who are inflicting the injustice. Americans despise Terrorists, but who are they, except those that practice asymmetrical resistance to their own perceived injustice? What are "activist judges"? Aren't they despised by half the country that wants to continue to persecute homosexuals? Same on the other side of the fence. Most on the left hate Sara Palin, even though those on the right consider her to be fighting against the injustice of big government and social programs.
For the love of $deity why would _anybody_ still be using the DNS server that their ISP provides? Ignoring the multiple FREE DNS providers out there, it is trivally easy to setup your own caching DNS server regardless of the OS platform you use.
With the abundance of 'old' computers that most people upgrade from, it shold be standard practice to setup an old box as a firewall/dns server.
Really? You can set up a firewall/dns box, but you aren't familiar with laziness. Also, for the majority of internet users, setting up a firewall / dns server is not trivial. For a majority of internet users, changing the desktop background is not trivial. This affects non-nerds....you know, most people.
Yep. Comcast is the worst. They also:
- kick off users for exceeding undefined GB download limits
- sell 25 Mbit/s lines that are actually only 5 Mbit/s - no better than DSL but twice as costly.
- force users to switch to Digital Cable which is incompatible with VCRs or DVRs
- And even if said boxes were compatible, the Digital boxes don't allow the user to tape one show while watching another live.
- Hold a Monopoly and bribe politicians to keep out competitors
- Bought out NBC Universal, so Comcast can censor any anti-comcast dissent from NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, USA, Bravo, Syfy, Telemundo, and so on.
Worst. Company. Ever.
Worst company ever? What about the East India Trading Company? Slavery, imperialism, despotism.
What they need to do is remember why the project started and get back to that.
Themes in 3.6? WTF were they thinking?
Chrome and Safari both have excellent built in Web dev/javascript tools, I don't even miss Web Developer Toolbar.
The reason that Themes is a "good" feature: before the themes, a handful of people used Firefox at my workplace. The week after the feature came out we had 90% adoption. Why? People looked over the shoulder and said, "How do you have Homer Simpson on your "Internet Explorer"".
Never underestimate the draw of features that a professional IT person would consider useless and bloated.
Thank god at least one elected official has some sense of priorities...
Yeah, except for Mayor Daily had the Chicago Police arrest and detain protestors of the Afghan and Iraq wars. How about the priority of using your position to support your convictions.
The ipad will fade into obscurity and during that time your efforts could be better invested else where.
Yes, selling 300,000 units on the first day is a sure sign that the iPad will fade into obscurity any time soon.
Like it or not, the iPad is relevant. It obviously has a following and there will be devices that can imitate it and ride its coattails a bit. Perhaps these other devices can even improve on the design and become relevant in and of themselves. One thing is for certain, you completely ignore a popular device/platform at your own peril.
If you want to bandy about numbers, why not make your number bigger. The iPads were $500 each. That means that Apple grossed $150 million on opening day. I know readers can do math, but let's make it simple for them. A device that grosses $150 million on opening day, one year after the second worst economic disaster America has known, does not go away no matter how much you know it is an inferior device. People have been buying useless crap for years. Why does this surprise anyone? Boo Apple. Yay money!
Seriously, how could the design team at Adobe not realize there's a problem when they put all of their names on the splash screen, and each program loads slowly enough that the user can actually read them ALL?
I'll view it as substantial progress if Adobe ever just cleans-up the disaster that is their CS product to the degree that each app is no more than 10x the size of GIMP. It just never ceases to amaze me how a company can be so violently oblivious to the needs of its customers that it will say, "Go screw yourself!", when they complain about issues with a product. How long before people just start using Corel or GIMP instead of Photoshop? How much longer before PDFs fall by the wayside?
You know why I don't notice the wait time? Because three adobe programs are always loaded and running on my system. The needs of the customer who have the software open all of the time are met. As far as the application being 10x larger than gimp, I don't care how large this program is. My hard drive is huge. The tool does a lot so it's kind of worth it. I know that we both grew up trying to get as close to 640K of ram as possible, but those days are gone and the majority of people who use computers aren't nerds and couldn't give a hoot about half the crap that we care about. Once you pick up on this, you might be able to predict behavior and make some money from people you disagree with.
We're (hopefully) on the verge of seeing Flash, which has enjoyed unprecedented success as the primary web page interaction and video presentation engine, get kicked to the curb by HTML5. Why? Well, if it wasn't broken, it's not terribly likely anyone would be looking for a solution to replace it with. Maybe Adobe will take that as a cue to start looking at its other products and work on some optimization before it's too late.
FYI as frothing-at-the-mouth Flash Hater, you sound ridiculous. I always mentally use the Luke Skywalker "Toshi Station" voice whenever someone on slashdot complains about flash.
I'm really confused as to why I would want to use fireworks. No seriously, somebody fill me in.
This came up a while ago, on John Nack (PS product manager)'s blog. Basically they think their custom UI stuff for CS is the beez knees, and you unlucky shmoes who "have to use" CS will be getting MORE not less of their crap in future (including CS5) versions.
To their UI credit: it is very easy to add / remove UI panels. It is easy to move them around. They have an icon for when you want them to be small, they have a small panel, and a large panel. You can save your workspaces and reload them at any time, so if you want a certain set of tools some of the time, you got it. In CS4 they added many more context sensitive commands at the top of the window. Also in CS4, they reduced a lot of bloat around the panel icons, removing visual flare in exchange for faster visual recognition. Finally they added tabs.
I take issue that the CS UI is bad and getting worse. That's a blanket statement. Some things are bad and getting better. Some things just work, like pressure sensitive pen devices. In every subsequent CS release, I swear less and less when I'm trying to get the frigging thing to do what I want.
That being said, the inverse kinematic "bone" tool in Flash CS4 was barely functioning, and caused me to scream bloody murder. After Effects CS4 had me screaming every time a new panel went somewhere unexpected, or wouldn't drag to the correct location. The UI for vectors is different in Illustrator, Photoshop, Flash, Fireworks, After Effects, and probably any other tool they make. I really wish that you could pick another program's UI (i.e. have the pen tool work in Flash the way it works in Illustrator).
Oh, and for all the anti-Flash fanatics out there, you sound ridiculous. No one has personally injured you. Don't froth at the mouth because someone figured out how to make the internet move around and flash. Don't be angry that people with money like to spend it at websites with pretty pictures that move around. No one is forcing you to look at rendered HTML.
I did a comic up about this very subject in 2006 when Blizzard did a very similar thing in WOW.
But then I would have to draw more people in my editorial cartoons. Gee, why does making a political comic's life harder always involve doing the right thing. Example of political cartoon that doesn't need another four characters in it: http://www.postmodernsideshow.com/obamaride
It could be something like this: A comic about the whole silly affair.
Tomorrow: If you congregate with suspicious people, you can expect to get zapped with the pain ray.
How can a neighborhood be suspicious? I think this shows a predisposition on your part for misusing the very technology we are debating.
Many policemen are alright. I'm glad they are doing their jobs. There are also quite a few Officer Dickheads that I would not want in charge of this kind of technology. Lot's of these Officer Dickheads are on ego trips. There are people like this in the military too. Why worry just about our own police abusing this power. What about the military using this on innocents? Why not worry about breeding a new round of terrorists? We, as a nation, and as humans are going to deserve what happens to us.
Sorry for the awkward sentences. I can't figure out what is tripping the "lameness filter"
In 6 months, we'll see thousands of "JOIN MY RAD MMO ITS SUPER COOL KTHX" posts and such. Everybody will have their OWN VIRTUAL WORLD with noboby playing them.
Close. For the intents and purposes of a MMOG, yes nobody will be playing them, except for a handful of people. But if millions of people are each playing around in virtual spaces with handfuls of people, that's still millions of people. Look at myspace. It's crap, only a handful of people visit any individual site, but it's still immensely popular and draws lots of advertising traffic.
Also, looking at the website and graphics, it's gonna be: Cute ponies, glitter, anime-style characters, pastel pink... This is game development for 12-years old kids. Well, except for the flying penises.
Again, look at myspace. Who has more free time, a software developer or a 12-year old girl? Granted the 12-year old girl doesn't have the disposable income, but she does have influence over her parents, and she will be generating free content. Even if it's something stupid like a heart shaped unicorn couch that other people can add to their hangout spaces.
I cannot vouch for this particular software company to live up to even 10% of their hype, but when somebody does, no matter how sparsely populated, nor crappy and glittery, it will still mean lots of dollars for somebody.
Okay, I lied. I think a glittery, heart-shaped unicorn couch would be awesome.
The conservative will froth at the mouth in hysteria and rush through the flames to prove his love for his country, climb the pedestal, cry in pain comparing the flames licking his clothes to Pearl Harbor, and then declare a war on pants.
Sillyness aside, the subtext of the argument is that Bush had a conviction to a lie that he concocted. John Kerry (who I hate, by the way) believed the lie, realized it was a lie, and changed his mind once he realized that the President manipulated CIA intelligence in order for an elite sect of uber-conservatives to realize an insane Middle East Strategy.
So, all said and done, if you admit that the lie was indeed a lie, then you admit that you were wrong, so it makes sense for the conservatives to continue to stand behind their war lies. Liberals on the other hand make themselves look bad because they were gullible and spineless in the run-up to war. The entire country looses. Hooray for our team.
According to your logic, the most ergonomic position is for my body to be lying in a heap on the floor, because that's what happens when I relax ALL of the muscles in my body. Bruised and effluent, because I accidentally released my sphincter too.
Actually, if I could use the computer while lying in a random heap on the floor, I think I would.
You don't have to certify the phone, you have to certify the equipment on the plane.
Who is going to pay to have equipment on the plane recertified, and how much is that cost?
Is that cost even remotely recoverable?
How much is that cost going to add to future certification of hardware?
It's just prohibitively expensive. The hardest part about designing avionics is not the physical complexity, the electrical complexity, or the software complexity. It's testing, certification, and red tape.