You've obviously never tried to show Anything-But-Microsoft to a typical management type. I once had a boss tell me she wanted to use a "normal computer" when I offered to let her use my browser... which was Netscape.
Why is it that it's suddenly perfectly acceptable to be unable to write English, and pedants like me who care about correctness get downmodded? Is it really that cool to be ignorant?
Oh, and that doesn't solve the problem. Either way, it produces a meaningless graph. I STILL cannot find a way to have it graph column A against column B.
See here for my response to you. (Disregard the first bit about "it's" versus "its"... that was just a response to some apostrophe abuse by another poster.)
First of all, you meant "when its development model has changed to open source" (not "it's"!).
Secondly, the reason why people blame useability issues on open-source/free software is because the open-source/free software world has a deficient model for quality assurance. That model is "it works for me!" If it works for the coders, and if THEY can grok it, the critical QA step of software development is considered complete, and the software is released, warts and all. The problem is that to the coders (who are usually highly geeky individuals and ridiculously left-brained), there are no warts, so they think you're insane when you tell them there are.
Yes, it's all a matter of perspective, but Jesus Fucking Christ, even I have some major useability problems with OSS/FS, and I'm a fucking National Merit Scholar. I got 1540 on the SAT. Should I really have so much difficulty doing a simple task in a spreadsheet-- a task that they teach fifth-graders how to do by hand, or in Excel (where it's right there in your face and impossible to miss-- the way it should be?) I think not.
Yeah... right. I LOVE free software, and I HATE Microsoft (crap, I run Debian and OpenBSD _ONLY_), but let's be freaking realistic here. If free software is so easy to use, then why did I have to send THIS email to the OpenOffice users' mailing list this morning:
Subject: scalc: How do you select WHICH row or column is the X or Y axis???
Yes, I have viewed Help.
Yes, I have Googled for more information.
Yes, I have searched the FAQ.
But for the life of me, I cannot figure out-- and this sounds really dumb,
I know-- how to tell scalc "Use column A, 'Amount', as the Y-axis, and
column B, 'Date/Time', as the X-axis'.
I am trying to have OOo do a very SIMPLE line graph here-- how much money
is in my account, graphed against time. Very very basic stuff, the kind
of thing they teach to fifth graders. I cannot manage to convince scalc
to do it.
And God help me if I wanted to keep 'Date' and 'Time' in separate columns,
and have the software know to parse a single row's 'Date' and 'Time' cells
as one date/time object...
Can someone please, please, please tell me how to do this? In M$ Excel,
it's really really easy. You just tell it which column to use as which
axis. It's so simple even a 10-year-old could understand it. IN
OPENOFFICE.ORG YOU ARE NOT EVEN GIVEN THAT OPTION! You ARE given
a billion different choices as to how you want the chart to LOOK, and by
diddling with the chart object once it's in the 'sheet, you can give it a
spiffly gradient effect, or change the labels on the axes...
But nowhere can you actually tell it what variables (read: columns) the
axes should be bound to????
Just as an aside, I am really going nuts here, and pondering just going
to Microsloth Office (running in CrossOver, as I run Debian). I appreciate
the effort thot everyone has put into OOo, but seeing as how I CAN figure
out how to insert a 3D rainbow-coloured torus into my spreadsheet, but I
CANNOT figure out how to do a simple line graph, I'm kind of miffed at the
moment. It would seem that the people who handle 'useability' had their
priorities hat on backwards?;) I mean, are rainbow-coloured tori really
more important than line graphing?;)
What the heck does that mean? Is that a fancy way of saying "Compiled languages"? (I somehow doubt it) What precisely is meant here? Is a dynamic language "a language that can be either compiled or interpreted"?
That was a typo. I typed that when I was half-asleep. Why in the hell would I randomly pluralize a word? Even the idiots who cant (sic) use's (sic) apostrophe's (sic) correctly' (sic) don't make that mistake.
95% of morons^H^H^H^H^H^Hend-users still use IE (for Windows), and probably will indefinitely, even if it's shown that long-term use of IE shrinks one's penis and testicles, causes cancer of the spleen, and makes baby Jesus cry.
Film at eleven.
Seriously: Why don't they devote one day a week on FOX NEWS to talking about this crap? Then, the Sheeple might actually get the message...
I'm sorry, but better a "wanker" than a moronic troglodyte. I'm still wondering when the English language will completely devolve into caveman-talk, e.g. "UNGA BUNGA, GROG LIKE GIRL, GROG FUCK GIRL!" Of course, things being as they are, it will probably end up (A) in all lowercase, (B) with lots of stupid AOLish abbreviations, and (C) with five metric shitloads worth of unnecessary apostrophes. (e.g. "un'bun grog lk grl', grog fucks' girl!")
Excuse me, but just when in the fuck did it become chic to pepper language with inappropriate and meaningless apostrophes? Lately, I've seen apostrophes misused in:
The infamous "it's" instead of "its" (to show possessive, as in "the animal defended its home"-- most people nowadays would write "the animal defended it's (sic) home", which means "the animal defended it is home", which makes no sense)
At the end of "its" (bizarrely)-- i.e. its' (sic), which is not a word at all and probably never was
...And now, I see you using it as part of a verb. "See's"? WTF up with that? "See is"?
God, am I getting fucking sick of idiocy like this. Why the fuck do I even bother writing proper English any more, when even relatively intelligent people like you mangle the language like cheese through a grater? And if you're from a non-English-speaking nation: I apologize. Actually, you're probably American, since the WORST and MOST BIZARRE manglings of English seem to originate from America, and in fact from people born in America, who have been learning English all their lives. Go figure.
Anyhow, I'm fucking sick of this. Who the fuck started this "when in doubt, throw apostrophes at it" shit?
The thing only works with Pocket PCs? How ironic is that? Apple's latest brainchild, co-opted by Windows CE hackers, to do something so geeky that only Unix nerds would want to do it... my head is spinning. Part of me says "Wow, this is cool", but an equally large part says "EW, Windows!"... I'm so lost and confused.
Not trolling; I'm serious. A friend of mine told me that he lost a lot of respect for Mitnick when he found out that he (Mitnick) is just a Windows user lately.
Why did you represent the word "architectures" as "ARCHs" (with the funky capitalization)? Why do people seem to treat any three-to-five-letter-computer-related-term as an acronym? (e.g. "MAC" instead of "Mac" (as in Macintosh, not MAC address), "LINUX" instead of "Linux", etc. etc.)?
I love Mozilla as much as the next geek-- and I hate hate hate hate hate Microsoft-- but one percentage point is simply not statistically significant. It could be a glitch. It could simply be a single large-scale corporate migration to Mozilla, plus a glitch. It could be a totally random thing. Wake me when IE is down to 60% usage.
Pardonez-moi, pour ma francais n'est pas bien. Vous etes dans un nacion francophonique; je suis (malheureusement) dans les etats-unis. Ici, les citoyens a besoin d'ecriver dans anglais, mais pour quelque raison stupide, ils avent une grande probleme. Je pense que cette raison est stupidite.
Alors, pour moi, je suis un francophile, mais je ne suis pas un francophone. Mais le > pense que ma francais est, si mal, comprenable.
Err. I actually meant to say "speak or write", then I tried to delete "speak or". For some reason (exhaustion?) I only deleted "or". The reason I wished to delete the "speak" part is that many Americans seem to speak English fairly well-- they just can't write it worth a damn.
Slashdot Mirror
You've obviously never tried to show Anything-But-Microsoft to a typical management type. I once had a boss tell me she wanted to use a "normal computer" when I offered to let her use my browser... which was Netscape.
As I've said in the past, the most egregious errors in English writing come from native English speakers-- notably Americans.
Palimerary evidence? What is that?
Oh, you mean preliminary.
Why is it that it's suddenly perfectly acceptable to be unable to write English, and pedants like me who care about correctness get downmodded? Is it really that cool to be ignorant?
Sound to good to be true?
No. It sounds too good to be true.
Oh, and that doesn't solve the problem. Either way, it produces a meaningless graph. I STILL cannot find a way to have it graph column A against column B.
See here for my response to you. (Disregard the first bit about "it's" versus "its"... that was just a response to some apostrophe abuse by another poster.)
First of all, you meant "when its development model has changed to open source" (not "it's"!).
Secondly, the reason why people blame useability issues on open-source/free software is because the open-source/free software world has a deficient model for quality assurance. That model is "it works for me!" If it works for the coders, and if THEY can grok it, the critical QA step of software development is considered complete, and the software is released, warts and all. The problem is that to the coders (who are usually highly geeky individuals and ridiculously left-brained), there are no warts, so they think you're insane when you tell them there are.
Yes, it's all a matter of perspective, but Jesus Fucking Christ, even I have some major useability problems with OSS/FS, and I'm a fucking National Merit Scholar. I got 1540 on the SAT. Should I really have so much difficulty doing a simple task in a spreadsheet-- a task that they teach fifth-graders how to do by hand, or in Excel (where it's right there in your face and impossible to miss-- the way it should be?) I think not.
What the heck does that mean? Is that a fancy way of saying "Compiled languages"? (I somehow doubt it) What precisely is meant here? Is a dynamic language "a language that can be either compiled or interpreted"?
That was a typo. I typed that when I was half-asleep. Why in the hell would I randomly pluralize a word? Even the idiots who cant (sic) use's (sic) apostrophe's (sic) correctly' (sic) don't make that mistake.
95% of morons^H^H^H^H^H^Hend-users still use IE (for Windows), and probably will indefinitely, even if it's shown that long-term use of IE shrinks one's penis and testicles, causes cancer of the spleen, and makes baby Jesus cry.
Film at eleven.
Seriously: Why don't they devote one day a week on FOX NEWS to talking about this crap? Then, the Sheeple might actually get the message...
"Heaven's! (sic) What a noise!" Oh, the irony...
I'm sorry, but better a "wanker" than a moronic troglodyte. I'm still wondering when the English language will completely devolve into caveman-talk, e.g. "UNGA BUNGA, GROG LIKE GIRL, GROG FUCK GIRL!" Of course, things being as they are, it will probably end up (A) in all lowercase, (B) with lots of stupid AOLish abbreviations, and (C) with five metric shitloads worth of unnecessary apostrophes. (e.g. "un'bun grog lk grl', grog fucks' girl!")
I don't think it's a typo. "Teh" is a common typo; "it's" is due to ignorance/stupidity.
Windows still top desktop distro.
;)
All this proves is that the old maxim "there's no accounting for taste" is truly universal in its applicability.
Excuse me, but just when in the fuck did it become chic to pepper language with inappropriate and meaningless apostrophes? Lately, I've seen apostrophes misused in:
The infamous "it's" instead of "its" (to show possessive, as in "the animal defended its home"-- most people nowadays would write "the animal defended it's (sic) home", which means "the animal defended it is home", which makes no sense)
Plurals ("sunglass'" (sic), "pizza's" (sic), etc.)
At the end of "its" (bizarrely)-- i.e. its' (sic), which is not a word at all and probably never was
...And now, I see you using it as part of a verb. "See's"? WTF up with that? "See is"?
God, am I getting fucking sick of idiocy like this. Why the fuck do I even bother writing proper English any more, when even relatively intelligent people like you mangle the language like cheese through a grater? And if you're from a non-English-speaking nation: I apologize. Actually, you're probably American, since the WORST and MOST BIZARRE manglings of English seem to originate from America, and in fact from people born in America, who have been learning English all their lives. Go figure.
Anyhow, I'm fucking sick of this. Who the fuck started this "when in doubt, throw apostrophes at it" shit?
"There's know (sic) way of telling how many lives were saved"
What is it with people like you who don't no (sic) how to right (sic) English?
The thing only works with Pocket PCs? How ironic is that? Apple's latest brainchild, co-opted by Windows CE hackers, to do something so geeky that only Unix nerds would want to do it... my head is spinning. Part of me says "Wow, this is cool", but an equally large part says "EW, Windows!"... I'm so lost and confused.
Not trolling; I'm serious. A friend of mine told me that he lost a lot of respect for Mitnick when he found out that he (Mitnick) is just a Windows user lately.
You guys have a funny definition of 'redundant'. This was actually the first post on this thread. Idiots.
Why did you represent the word "architectures" as "ARCHs" (with the funky capitalization)? Why do people seem to treat any three-to-five-letter-computer-related-term as an acronym? (e.g. "MAC" instead of "Mac" (as in Macintosh, not MAC address), "LINUX" instead of "Linux", etc. etc.)?
I love Mozilla as much as the next geek-- and I hate hate hate hate hate Microsoft-- but one percentage point is simply not statistically significant. It could be a glitch. It could simply be a single large-scale corporate migration to Mozilla, plus a glitch. It could be a totally random thing. Wake me when IE is down to 60% usage.
Pardon. Le "Babelfish" pense que (etc. etc.)
Pardonez-moi, pour ma francais n'est pas bien. Vous etes dans un nacion francophonique; je suis (malheureusement) dans les etats-unis. Ici, les citoyens a besoin d'ecriver dans anglais, mais pour quelque raison stupide, ils avent une grande probleme. Je pense que cette raison est stupidite.
Alors, pour moi, je suis un francophile, mais je ne suis pas un francophone. Mais le > pense que ma francais est, si mal, comprenable.
Err. I actually meant to say "speak or write", then I tried to delete "speak or". For some reason (exhaustion?) I only deleted "or". The reason I wished to delete the "speak" part is that many Americans seem to speak English fairly well-- they just can't write it worth a damn.