we will develop a completely rewritten version of the application
Obviously I don't know the details of your situation, but in general it's a bad idea to start from scratch again. It almost always looks like the best solution to the developers (myself included), because we always like working on new projects, new ideas, etc., but when you really sort out the risks and costs it's often hard to make the case.
First of all, time estimate: version 2 -- especially since you're adding new features -- will probably take as long as version 1 did to reach a useable level. Don't forget the common estimating pitfalls (like, "a year feels like an awfully long time") just because you're looking forward to working on fresh code. If version one took "the second half of the 90s" version 2 may not be stable (let alone feature-complete) before 2006.
Given that, do you really know what the needs of your customer base will be over the next few years while your application remains static? All of your new code will be useless in business terms until it reaches the functionality and stability level of the old version.
And because I am the one who does the main design and coding, I will make sure that all output is nice and valid HTML 4 with CSS. If browsers can't display it, it's not my fault.
Heh... of course by definition it *would* be your fault. Remember those "cludges for Netscape 4 and other workarounds"? Well, you still gotta do browser-compatibility testing (check your server logs to see what browsers are most important), and you might even have to break standards to work around bugs -- mostly bugs in IE, I'm guessing, since it looks like IE6 is going to be out there for a very long time.
My point: usually the better solution is to make your upgrades and improvements step by step -- even if you end up replacing ALL of the code when you're done! You don't have to release every step (especially since many of them won't change the user experience at all) but you do have to keep the whole thing working.
If you can automate testing you can start really tearing into stuff. Once you've wrapped good interfaces around some of those chunks of ugly crufty code, you can sit down and write a replacement component from scratch. At the end of the day, drop in the replacement, run the tests, fix bugs, and go home. Once you have the mess tidied up nicely (and still working) you can start changing functionality.
I don't know what language you're working with, but obviously a good IDE or editor will help immensely with this stuff.
Using the "built-in" zoom and big magnifying glasses is the *current* solution. The poster is looking for something better.
And honestly, just getting closer can be embarrassing and doesn't always work. You can't climb up on the counter at McDonalds to peer at the menu overhead. And say the store shelf labels are 6" off the ground but you have to be less than 1 foot away to see (with your magnifying glass), plus you're 75 years, arthritic, and there are people waiting behind you.
I don't have macular degenaration, but I do have some vision problems (floaters, cataracts in both eyes.. and I'm still legal to drive, so watch out!) so I have some sense of this. My wife helps me pick out my meal at candlelit restaurants, because I can't read the menu in low light. Sometimes I use binoculars at airports and places like that where far-away signs are important. No big deal, but I can imagine how tough it would be for people worse off than I am.
It would be beautiful to have something like this -- a PDA attachment with a directional, zoomable camera lens. My example above could stay standing by the grocery cart, tilting the PDA with camera at 4x zoom down at the bottom row of labels. Even if people around notice the function of the PDA, it's a cool modern device -- not some ridiculous old person crouching like some kind of comic private detective among the condensed soup cans. Same situation at airports or restaurants -- I could be just checking my email to the casual observer. Binoculars make airport personnel nervous (only a terrorist would need to scope out an airport like that), and setting a napkin on fire for a little more light on the menu might be effective, but it sure would be nicer to just check the well-lit LCD screen.
On to the question at hand -- the tech is obviously possible -- a good digital camera with good zoom would actually do much of this, and some PDAs now have camera functionality in them (though it's mostly not very good, and won't be able to do the zooming well enough). Oh, and some airports don't let you take photos inside (Paris CDG doesn't, for one -- I found this out just a few weeks ago).
So we need mid-range camera tech mated to a bigger LCD screen then a camera normally has (someone with macular degeneration would probably need at least the size of a large PDA screen, probably a little bigger). If there were a large demand, this thing would probably cost $200. As is, if they exist I'd expect a pricetag more like $2000, simply because that's how these things seem to work.
The best bet I think is to get a camera with a good analog zoom and large LCD, and make it a "holster" with one of those magnifying sheets over the LCD and a hole for the power and zoom buttons (simplify the interface... you aren't using it as a camera anyway).
This should all get easier as time passes -- cameras are getting better and cheaper, and the LCD screens on them are getting larger and higher quality every day.
No need for Sun to do anything. Java's compiler is completely available programatically -- you could write a "compiler" that would just convert the input stream from the file into lower-case (avoiding strings and char definitions, or course) and pass it on to the regular compiler.
No one who knows enough Java to do it has ever *wanted* it, though, which should be a pretty big hint to newbies looking for case-insensitivity in Java.
Personally, I've seen arguments against case-sensitivity, but I haven't seen any good ones yet.
-- Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. - Albert Einstein
English is case-sensitive. Letter cases have meaning. Are Democratic principles the same as democratic priciples to you? Why in the world would you want your programming language to be kluged into being case-insensitive? You lose a whole layer of meaning, in a domain where you need MORE precision than you do in spoken communications.
Visual Basic takes the approach of PHP and some other scripting languages that aren't really intended for complex programming. It's probably okay to be case-insensitive
Java is designed to facilitate "real" programming, though, so case-sensitivity is a must.
I think this argument tends to just go away once you start a serious programming project; you need to start following standards for case-usage, which allows stuff like this to make sense:// define Client instance as default (constant) Client client = CLIENT;
You may have seen code out there with "warts" on the beginning of variables (id_variance, xas_serverNames and so on). Those are there because some programmers want MORE information about what they're seeing, besides what they can get from letter-case. Trust me, they don't want to hear that they'll be getting LESS info than even basic ASCII offers then.
I think most of my other arguments have been explained clearly in other posts... so I'll just second those. Basically, case-insensitivity is a kind of shortcut to help quick-and-dirty scripting with small namespaces. Personally I don't even like that (because you still need to spell the damned variables right - what are you gaining?), but it makes sense in that domain... but that's it.
You're quite right, phpBB isn't lightweight. But there's no need to resort to half-coded forums, either (but best of luck to parent on your continuing development).
Try PunBB or Phorum, for good examples of lighter-weight BBs.
On the other hand, the original poster needs a 3rd party forum provider. Hmm. You can get this sort of thing as part of massively expensive "portal" services from companies who also want to manage your email, VOIP, etc., etc., though many of these have now gone out of business simply because it was mostly hot air.
Alternatively, you might consider just asking your web host. They're a 3rd party. They may be willing to set up a PHP-based forum for you with your company logo and limited access, and then maintain it for a small additional monthly fee (or maybe just tell you how to maintain it). If they offer web development at all, they'll probably be more than willing; I used to work for a company that offered webhosting (plus custom development) and I remember at least one client who wanted a forum set up (I think phpBB was used).
I see it has no back seat. Obviously the guy was smart enough to realise that he wouldn't be needing one.
Apparently he's married (see other posts), but I'd also like to point out that there's more than one answer to "why no back seat?" besides "no woman will have me".
For example, "I don't live with my parents, so we can use an actual BED" comes to mind.
How can they call that "usability" news? Sure, like the/. editor said, this info can "may be useful for developers wanting to make their pages more usable" but that sure isn't the point of the article.
Usability is about helping the user make USE of the website, isn't it? Well, it seems those pesky users are getting too smart for their own good (somehow they're jumping directly to the useful parts!) -- quick, let's figure out how to stop this nonsense!
Seriously, I know that online advertising plays an important role in funding freely available sites. But on a website that's purportedly all about usability, it blows my mind that they don't even mention the negative impact that an advertising method that *really* catches the users' eyes will have. Those ads are *detracting* from the usefulness of the site; the slashdot ad box right under the story is a little annoying, because you have to scroll past it to get to what you want (the fr0st p1st, of course). Designers need to keep the balance in mind (and it shouldn't be left out of the discussion).
Personally, when I have to use IE for some reason, I suddenly remember what it's like using the an internet saturated in popup windows and manically-flashing ads... and I can't get through it. I can't concentrate enough to read an article when there's something that simply won't stop flashing right in the middle of the text.
Sure it gets my attention. My eyes can't stop jumping back to that flashing thing. Sometimes I even go to the advertised website, and submit their domain registrant's info into all available forms. Funny, that probably shows up on their statistics as another big win.
Google's text links are okay (which is a good thing, since Mozilla won't block those for me!) -- I'll even click one if it looks relevant. That's the future of web advertising, I think.
I was on a useability mailing list for awhile, and one of the curious tidbits that came out in research was that scrollbars themselves would have been better suited to the LEFT side of the screen.
Think about it -- most text is left justified; titles and headings start at the left (we read left-to-right, after all)... there's just more data over there if you're skimming. Technically, it would make more sense to have the navigation over there too... but again we're stuck with a standard that can't be changed now without a lot of pain.
Regarding your actual post... It think you have no idea how many users do not have scroll wheels, or don't use them. Sure, most people you know don't use their scrollbars, but believe me, the unwashed masses are using them all the time.
I'm assuming the pre-releases were free, and permitted burning/ripping.
Yeah, yeah, I could just pay, but I already have software that burns & rips; it would be nice to have it all in one package, but not worth much money to me at the moment.
You should turn off directory listings if you don't want people wandering around.
Thanks for the mirror, anyway.
AOL and hotmail don't gain?
on
SPF Design Frozen
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Imagine how this might increase AOL's or hotmail's network traffic, while they gain nothing from it.
Well, they do gain, actually -- if the plan works, it will blot out quite a lot of spam. AOL and Hotmail spend an astronomical amount of money dealing with spam in the current situation (it doesn't help that lots of spammers forge AOL or hotmail return addresses... I'm sure those bounces crank out the bandwidth required). If they need to pay for more bandwidth and more servers to support SPF, I have to imagine that will be much cheaper than the manpower they have to support to fight the problem now.
Besides, how much extra bandwidth is really involved? Wouldn't it work like other DNS records, and be cached all over the place?
I don't know enough about the technology to properly address your second point... but I think because we're dealing with DNS servers here (instead of needing to contact the mail servers) this may actually work out. Sure, some people run mail servers from home, etc., but DNS is usually provided free by an ISP; there are also free DNS hosts.
Either way, I'm rooting for it. Spam is killing email.
I've paranoid about my bills, too (and I save my paper bills, in a stack, for years and years, after paying them online and marking them with the date, amount paid, and payment id). It's useful now and again, like when I look at my phone bill and wonder if it's always been that high.
And once I got a credit card company to reduce my APR again when I had an extremely valid complaint that the notification sucked (there was no text in any actual bill mentioning the change).
But I've never dealt with an error. Once my bank screwed something up, but they noticed it themselves and fixed it before I even complained.
The thing is, I can't quite move to the paperless bills just because they seem so easy to abuse. Even if I save a copy of the email or webpage, an HTML file is child's play to alter, even for a layman; forging or altering a paper bill is tougher.
I think what we need is electronic bills, with a way to archive a verifiable copy locally. I.e., if it's signed by the company's private key, etc. etc., you can prove you didn't tinker with it.
We also need a format for bills such that they can be plugged into the standard money management programs directly.
Is anyone doing this? It would be nice to get rid of those stacks of old bills.
There were a couple of companies that tried this. I got a free computer through FreePC.com back in '99.
I had just gotten out of college and had no computer at the time (and was pretty broke)... plus I had a strong suspicion that the company would go out of business... so I signed up on FreePC.com and got a free Compaq Presario.
Not a great computer, mind you -- 32 meg ram, 2 gig harddrive (I think.. maybe 1.5), 333 mhz cyrix processor, win 98, dial-up internet access included. But I added another 56mb RAM to make it useable and used a shareware tool called WinSniper to hide the ad windows (which were in a border around the screen, at all times). I still didn't have the whole screen to work on, which was unfortunate, but I didn't want to disable the software altogether, since it reported back to their site when I logged onto the internet.
So it was a subpar experience... but after a few months the company folded (as I had expected), I removed their software, and that was my computer for a year or two. Now it's retired. I keep meaning to install some variant of Linux on it, but never quite get around to it.
Anyway, this British program sounds like a similar scheme... I'm hoping they did a lot of research into why their predecessors failed so miserably before they launched this company. Yes, computers are cheap, but you need to get a lot of ad revenue to cover salaries for all the *support* personnel you will need. Plus, the demographics they're hitting are all bass-ackwards; advertisers want to pitch to people who are ready to *spend* money on new stuff... NOT people who are willing to suffer just so they can *avoid* paying a few hundred bucks for an inexpensive computer. Think about it.
When the editors post an "Ask Slashdot" question, they aren't doing it to help the person asking the question. They post it because they think it might be a problem shared by lots of people. You, the original questioner, are not the primary audience of these posts. You're just one of hundreds of thousands of readers, some of whom are just looking for the funny responses, some of whom have similar problems, some who's curiosity is piqued (because hey, I've never seen a silent mouse... let's see what people say) and some of whom just want to get a frist pr0st out there.
Slashdot's moderation system is designed to keep the content as helpful as possible to the general readership (which includes you, but also includes lots of other people).
Lots of the posts that you are slamming in your response were good posts -- they just weren't useful to your specific situation. Well, they're still good posts. Someone buying a new computer might like to know that they can get s silent Mac mouse. Someone with a yen for taking stuff apart might like to read how they can mod their mouse to silence it. Personally, I was sorry to see that there doesn't seem to be a standard-but-silent mouse (and I think you knew that already, since you've been searching for a while), but I might get one of those TouchStream keyboards on ThinkGeek to try it out... it looks cool. I thought the "learn how to avoid using the mouse" is a decent solution to your actual problem, which is noise. There are plenty of silent keyboards, some with touchpads (which would also help). If you know all the key combinations, you can certainly reduce the need for the mouse.
I guess my main point is that I was kind of shocked by your reaction to a decent discussion on an interesting question. If you didn't find what you wanted, maybe it's not out there at the moment... that's no reason to flame a bunch of people offering helpful advice for free.
We don't want to worry about the people who unthinkingly crumple, tear up, or swallow the "receipt" instead of putting it in the box.
Instead, we could just have the printed paper scroll into a visible, magnified window on the machine. The voter clicks "that's what I wanted", the record rolls out of sight into the locked box, and the curtain opens. If they click "Bush? WTF?" it trashes that receipt & vote and they try again.
The confirmation could be given simultaneously into a pair of headphones so that the blind could use the machine as well.
At the end of the voting, 3% of voting machines randomly selected, plus another 100 selected by each party, would be validated with a count of the paper receipts.
Any issues with that? Voter-verified paper trail, confirmation of intended vote, reliable and foolproof design, and accessibility. If the thing runs out of paper or ink, the voter wouldn't be able to verify, and would complain - and hopefully it would be simple to refill (or, better, let the thing hold enough supplies for double the expected voters! It doesn't have to be lightweight).
The article also mentions that the NYS Thruway has sensors to read the cards along the highway (not just at toll booths) but says the data is scrambled and not stored."
If they ever do start using that data, they'll be mighty confused by my driving. My car would disappear in between the toll booths. "I don't know, sir -- perhaps the car is driving through the woods, or flying, instead of using the thruway properly..."
I never wanted to put those velcro stickers on my windshield, so I keep the thing in its little protective sensor-blocking bag except when I'm using it.
There's a pretty big recent lawsuit from cleanroom workers a few decades back who were regularly exposed to known carcinogens. Any large corporation is going to screw up now and again, when employees get overzealous about the whole profit thing, and probably will be sued for it. If they are indeed at fault, they pay up, hopefully policies are changed to prevent a repeated error & costly lawsuit, and life goes on.
I think the real question is: who in their right mind sues IBM with such a flimsy, trumped-up case as SCO's?
This seems like a great idea to me, too - I like the idea of a company with Sun's resources handling a Linux distro - but I winced when I read the headline.
Based on what I've read about it, the new Java Desktop has a lot of promise, but it's still brand-new! In the long run they'll profit much better if they roll it out slowly, first to some companies who are willing to work with them on ironing out the wrinkles, before the general populace ever sees it. They need to build up a rep of relibility, security, and ease of use as soon as possible.
They already have to overcome the associations between "Java" and "bad GUI" (yes, the GUI is not really Java, but as shown in the article, the baggage comes with the name, and most people are understandably confused). I think it could be death to the new distro if they shine the spotlight on it before it's polished, has a consistent look & feel, etc. etc.
In this case, he's totally justified, though I think he might be wasting his time feeding a troll. The guy is suspiciously arrogant about a totally wrong-headed view of the GPL.
He's arguing that part of "use" of a GPL'd program includes making use of the source code, and to successfully make use of a header file, for example, he'd be forced to link it (with his non-GPL code). Therefore this usage couldn't be forbidden by the GPL.
Overactive immune systems generally tend to attack healthy tissue (your white blood cells and antibodies NEVER fix damage anyway -- that's not their job).
Let's see you taking over the world with systemic autoimmune disorders.
"Who dares stand against ME! You shall feel the wrath of my lupus, arthritis, blistered skin, depression, blood clots, floater-filled vision, thyroiditis, and myositis!"
Running away, are you?! Come back here, I'll bite your kneecaps off!"
Yeah, OT... but I always loved the story about how people generally assumed it wasn't humanly possible to run a mile in under 4 minutes until Roget Bannister did it in '56, in 15mph crosswinds no less.
He was an Oxford med student at the time, and used his med school training to test and optimize his training techniques.
Nowadays, of course, there are high schoolers running sub-four miles. Madness.
I'm investigating the CVS support (plus the more general Group stuff) that's built-in to Eclipse, to see if I can use it.
CS-RCS (what I'm integrating) uses GNU RCS under the covers, which is what's underlying CVS, too (I think). They do offer an add-on to support CVS, but only in the paid version, so I'm still investigating.
JBuilder actually has all kinds of concurrent development features as well, including MS SCC integration (which CS-RCS does support directly!), but it's only enabled in the Enterprise version, so I couldn't use it.
Slashdot Mirror
we will develop a completely rewritten version of the application
Obviously I don't know the details of your situation, but in general it's a bad idea to start from scratch again. It almost always looks like the best solution to the developers (myself included), because we always like working on new projects, new ideas, etc., but when you really sort out the risks and costs it's often hard to make the case.
First of all, time estimate: version 2 -- especially since you're adding new features -- will probably take as long as version 1 did to reach a useable level. Don't forget the common estimating pitfalls (like, "a year feels like an awfully long time") just because you're looking forward to working on fresh code. If version one took "the second half of the 90s" version 2 may not be stable (let alone feature-complete) before 2006.
Given that, do you really know what the needs of your customer base will be over the next few years while your application remains static? All of your new code will be useless in business terms until it reaches the functionality and stability level of the old version.
And because I am the one who does the main design and coding, I will make sure that all output is nice and valid HTML 4 with CSS. If browsers can't display it, it's not my fault.
Heh... of course by definition it *would* be your fault. Remember those "cludges for Netscape 4 and other workarounds"? Well, you still gotta do browser-compatibility testing (check your server logs to see what browsers are most important), and you might even have to break standards to work around bugs -- mostly bugs in IE, I'm guessing, since it looks like IE6 is going to be out there for a very long time.
My point: usually the better solution is to make your upgrades and improvements step by step -- even if you end up replacing ALL of the code when you're done! You don't have to release every step (especially since many of them won't change the user experience at all) but you do have to keep the whole thing working.
If you can automate testing you can start really tearing into stuff. Once you've wrapped good interfaces around some of those chunks of ugly crufty code, you can sit down and write a replacement component from scratch. At the end of the day, drop in the replacement, run the tests, fix bugs, and go home. Once you have the mess tidied up nicely (and still working) you can start changing functionality.
I don't know what language you're working with, but obviously a good IDE or editor will help immensely with this stuff.
Using the "built-in" zoom and big magnifying glasses is the *current* solution. The poster is looking for something better.
And honestly, just getting closer can be embarrassing and doesn't always work. You can't climb up on the counter at McDonalds to peer at the menu overhead. And say the store shelf labels are 6" off the ground but you have to be less than 1 foot away to see (with your magnifying glass), plus you're 75 years, arthritic, and there are people waiting behind you.
I don't have macular degenaration, but I do have some vision problems (floaters, cataracts in both eyes.. and I'm still legal to drive, so watch out!) so I have some sense of this. My wife helps me pick out my meal at candlelit restaurants, because I can't read the menu in low light. Sometimes I use binoculars at airports and places like that where far-away signs are important. No big deal, but I can imagine how tough it would be for people worse off than I am.
It would be beautiful to have something like this -- a PDA attachment with a directional, zoomable camera lens. My example above could stay standing by the grocery cart, tilting the PDA with camera at 4x zoom down at the bottom row of labels. Even if people around notice the function of the PDA, it's a cool modern device -- not some ridiculous old person crouching like some kind of comic private detective among the condensed soup cans. Same situation at airports or restaurants -- I could be just checking my email to the casual observer. Binoculars make airport personnel nervous (only a terrorist would need to scope out an airport like that), and setting a napkin on fire for a little more light on the menu might be effective, but it sure would be nicer to just check the well-lit LCD screen.
On to the question at hand -- the tech is obviously possible -- a good digital camera with good zoom would actually do much of this, and some PDAs now have camera functionality in them (though it's mostly not very good, and won't be able to do the zooming well enough). Oh, and some airports don't let you take photos inside (Paris CDG doesn't, for one -- I found this out just a few weeks ago).
So we need mid-range camera tech mated to a bigger LCD screen then a camera normally has (someone with macular degeneration would probably need at least the size of a large PDA screen, probably a little bigger). If there were a large demand, this thing would probably cost $200. As is, if they exist I'd expect a pricetag more like $2000, simply because that's how these things seem to work.
The best bet I think is to get a camera with a good analog zoom and large LCD, and make it a "holster" with one of those magnifying sheets over the LCD and a hole for the power and zoom buttons (simplify the interface... you aren't using it as a camera anyway).
This should all get easier as time passes -- cameras are getting better and cheaper, and the LCD screens on them are getting larger and higher quality every day.
No demo screenshots in the article... which is really too bad, because it would make an IDEAL Farq PhotoShopping candidate.
In english, the concept of upper and lower case is quite simple.
...
I think you mean:
In English, the concept
(Sorry, couldn't resist...)
No need for Sun to do anything. Java's compiler is completely available programatically -- you could write a "compiler" that would just convert the input stream from the file into lower-case (avoiding strings and char definitions, or course) and pass it on to the regular compiler.
No one who knows enough Java to do it has ever *wanted* it, though, which should be a pretty big hint to newbies looking for case-insensitivity in Java.
Personally, I've seen arguments against case-sensitivity, but I haven't seen any good ones yet.
--
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. - Albert Einstein
English is case-sensitive. Letter cases have meaning. Are Democratic principles the same as democratic priciples to you? Why in the world would you want your programming language to be kluged into being case-insensitive? You lose a whole layer of meaning, in a domain where you need MORE precision than you do in spoken communications.
// define Client instance as default (constant)
Visual Basic takes the approach of PHP and some other scripting languages that aren't really intended for complex programming. It's probably okay to be case-insensitive
Java is designed to facilitate "real" programming, though, so case-sensitivity is a must.
I think this argument tends to just go away once you start a serious programming project; you need to start following standards for case-usage, which allows stuff like this to make sense:
Client client = CLIENT;
You may have seen code out there with "warts" on the beginning of variables (id_variance, xas_serverNames and so on). Those are there because some programmers want MORE information about what they're seeing, besides what they can get from letter-case. Trust me, they don't want to hear that they'll be getting LESS info than even basic ASCII offers then.
I think most of my other arguments have been explained clearly in other posts... so I'll just second those. Basically, case-insensitivity is a kind of shortcut to help quick-and-dirty scripting with small namespaces. Personally I don't even like that (because you still need to spell the damned variables right - what are you gaining?), but it makes sense in that domain... but that's it.
You're quite right, phpBB isn't lightweight. But there's no need to resort to half-coded forums, either (but best of luck to parent on your continuing development).
Try PunBB or Phorum, for good examples of lighter-weight BBs.
On the other hand, the original poster needs a 3rd party forum provider. Hmm. You can get this sort of thing as part of massively expensive "portal" services from companies who also want to manage your email, VOIP, etc., etc., though many of these have now gone out of business simply because it was mostly hot air.
Alternatively, you might consider just asking your web host. They're a 3rd party. They may be willing to set up a PHP-based forum for you with your company logo and limited access, and then maintain it for a small additional monthly fee (or maybe just tell you how to maintain it). If they offer web development at all, they'll probably be more than willing; I used to work for a company that offered webhosting (plus custom development) and I remember at least one client who wanted a forum set up (I think phpBB was used).
I see it has no back seat. Obviously the guy was smart enough to realise that he wouldn't be needing one.
Apparently he's married (see other posts), but I'd also like to point out that there's more than one answer to "why no back seat?" besides "no woman will have me".
For example, "I don't live with my parents, so we can use an actual BED" comes to mind.
How can they call that "usability" news? /. editor said, this info can "may be useful for developers wanting to make their pages more usable" but that sure isn't the point of the article.
Sure, like the
Usability is about helping the user make USE of the website, isn't it? Well, it seems those pesky users are getting too smart for their own good (somehow they're jumping directly to the useful parts!) -- quick, let's figure out how to stop this nonsense!
Seriously, I know that online advertising plays an important role in funding freely available sites. But on a website that's purportedly all about usability, it blows my mind that they don't even mention the negative impact that an advertising method that *really* catches the users' eyes will have. Those ads are *detracting* from the usefulness of the site; the slashdot ad box right under the story is a little annoying, because you have to scroll past it to get to what you want (the fr0st p1st, of course). Designers need to keep the balance in mind (and it shouldn't be left out of the discussion).
Personally, when I have to use IE for some reason, I suddenly remember what it's like using the an internet saturated in popup windows and manically-flashing ads... and I can't get through it. I can't concentrate enough to read an article when there's something that simply won't stop flashing right in the middle of the text.
Sure it gets my attention. My eyes can't stop jumping back to that flashing thing. Sometimes I even go to the advertised website, and submit their domain registrant's info into all available forms. Funny, that probably shows up on their statistics as another big win.
Google's text links are okay (which is a good thing, since Mozilla won't block those for me!) -- I'll even click one if it looks relevant. That's the future of web advertising, I think.
I was on a useability mailing list for awhile, and one of the curious tidbits that came out in research was that scrollbars themselves would have been better suited to the LEFT side of the screen.
Think about it -- most text is left justified; titles and headings start at the left (we read left-to-right, after all)... there's just more data over there if you're skimming. Technically, it would make more sense to have the navigation over there too... but again we're stuck with a standard that can't be changed now without a lot of pain.
Regarding your actual post... It think you have no idea how many users do not have scroll wheels, or don't use them. Sure, most people you know don't use their scrollbars, but believe me, the unwashed masses are using them all the time.
I'm assuming the pre-releases were free, and permitted burning/ripping.
Yeah, yeah, I could just pay, but I already have software that burns & rips; it would be nice to have it all in one package, but not worth much money to me at the moment.
Is that a server of yours?
You should turn off directory listings if you don't want people wandering around.
Thanks for the mirror, anyway.
Imagine how this might increase AOL's or hotmail's network traffic, while they gain nothing from it.
Well, they do gain, actually -- if the plan works, it will blot out quite a lot of spam. AOL and Hotmail spend an astronomical amount of money dealing with spam in the current situation (it doesn't help that lots of spammers forge AOL or hotmail return addresses... I'm sure those bounces crank out the bandwidth required). If they need to pay for more bandwidth and more servers to support SPF, I have to imagine that will be much cheaper than the manpower they have to support to fight the problem now.
Besides, how much extra bandwidth is really involved? Wouldn't it work like other DNS records, and be cached all over the place?
I don't know enough about the technology to properly address your second point... but I think because we're dealing with DNS servers here (instead of needing to contact the mail servers) this may actually work out. Sure, some people run mail servers from home, etc., but DNS is usually provided free by an ISP; there are also free DNS hosts.
Either way, I'm rooting for it. Spam is killing email.
I've paranoid about my bills, too (and I save my paper bills, in a stack, for years and years, after paying them online and marking them with the date, amount paid, and payment id). It's useful now and again, like when I look at my phone bill and wonder if it's always been that high.
And once I got a credit card company to reduce my APR again when I had an extremely valid complaint that the notification sucked (there was no text in any actual bill mentioning the change).
But I've never dealt with an error. Once my bank screwed something up, but they noticed it themselves and fixed it before I even complained.
The thing is, I can't quite move to the paperless bills just because they seem so easy to abuse. Even if I save a copy of the email or webpage, an HTML file is child's play to alter, even for a layman; forging or altering a paper bill is tougher.
I think what we need is electronic bills, with a way to archive a verifiable copy locally. I.e., if it's signed by the company's private key, etc. etc., you can prove you didn't tinker with it.
We also need a format for bills such that they can be plugged into the standard money management programs directly.
Is anyone doing this? It would be nice to get rid of those stacks of old bills.
There were a couple of companies that tried this. I got a free computer through FreePC.com back in '99.
I had just gotten out of college and had no computer at the time (and was pretty broke)... plus I had a strong suspicion that the company would go out of business... so I signed up on FreePC.com and got a free Compaq Presario.
Not a great computer, mind you -- 32 meg ram, 2 gig harddrive (I think.. maybe 1.5), 333 mhz cyrix processor, win 98, dial-up internet access included. But I added another 56mb RAM to make it useable and used a shareware tool called WinSniper to hide the ad windows (which were in a border around the screen, at all times). I still didn't have the whole screen to work on, which was unfortunate, but I didn't want to disable the software altogether, since it reported back to their site when I logged onto the internet.
So it was a subpar experience... but after a few months the company folded (as I had expected), I removed their software, and that was my computer for a year or two. Now it's retired. I keep meaning to install some variant of Linux on it, but never quite get around to it.
Anyway, this British program sounds like a similar scheme... I'm hoping they did a lot of research into why their predecessors failed so miserably before they launched this company. Yes, computers are cheap, but you need to get a lot of ad revenue to cover salaries for all the *support* personnel you will need. Plus, the demographics they're hitting are all bass-ackwards; advertisers want to pitch to people who are ready to *spend* money on new stuff... NOT people who are willing to suffer just so they can *avoid* paying a few hundred bucks for an inexpensive computer. Think about it.
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When the editors post an "Ask Slashdot" question, they aren't doing it to help the person asking the question. They post it because they think it might be a problem shared by lots of people. You, the original questioner, are not the primary audience of these posts. You're just one of hundreds of thousands of readers, some of whom are just looking for the funny responses, some of whom have similar problems, some who's curiosity is piqued (because hey, I've never seen a silent mouse... let's see what people say) and some of whom just want to get a frist pr0st out there.
Slashdot's moderation system is designed to keep the content as helpful as possible to the general readership (which includes you, but also includes lots of other people).
Lots of the posts that you are slamming in your response were good posts -- they just weren't useful to your specific situation. Well, they're still good posts. Someone buying a new computer might like to know that they can get s silent Mac mouse. Someone with a yen for taking stuff apart might like to read how they can mod their mouse to silence it. Personally, I was sorry to see that there doesn't seem to be a standard-but-silent mouse (and I think you knew that already, since you've been searching for a while), but I might get one of those TouchStream keyboards on ThinkGeek to try it out... it looks cool. I thought the "learn how to avoid using the mouse" is a decent solution to your actual problem, which is noise. There are plenty of silent keyboards, some with touchpads (which would also help). If you know all the key combinations, you can certainly reduce the need for the mouse.
I guess my main point is that I was kind of shocked by your reaction to a decent discussion on an interesting question. If you didn't find what you wanted, maybe it's not out there at the moment... that's no reason to flame a bunch of people offering helpful advice for free.
We don't want to worry about the people who unthinkingly crumple, tear up, or swallow the "receipt" instead of putting it in the box.
Instead, we could just have the printed paper scroll into a visible, magnified window on the machine. The voter clicks "that's what I wanted", the record rolls out of sight into the locked box, and the curtain opens. If they click "Bush? WTF?" it trashes that receipt & vote and they try again.
The confirmation could be given simultaneously into a pair of headphones so that the blind could use the machine as well.
At the end of the voting, 3% of voting machines randomly selected, plus another 100 selected by each party, would be validated with a count of the paper receipts.
Any issues with that? Voter-verified paper trail, confirmation of intended vote, reliable and foolproof design, and accessibility. If the thing runs out of paper or ink, the voter wouldn't be able to verify, and would complain - and hopefully it would be simple to refill (or, better, let the thing hold enough supplies for double the expected voters! It doesn't have to be lightweight).
The article also mentions that the NYS Thruway has sensors to read the cards along the highway (not just at toll booths) but says the data is scrambled and not stored."
If they ever do start using that data, they'll be mighty confused by my driving. My car would disappear in between the toll booths. "I don't know, sir -- perhaps the car is driving through the woods, or flying, instead of using the thruway properly..."
I never wanted to put those velcro stickers on my windshield, so I keep the thing in its little protective sensor-blocking bag except when I'm using it.
who in their right mind sues IBM???
Plenty of people sue IBM.
There's a pretty big recent lawsuit from cleanroom workers a few decades back who were regularly exposed to known carcinogens. Any large corporation is going to screw up now and again, when employees get overzealous about the whole profit thing, and probably will be sued for it. If they are indeed at fault, they pay up, hopefully policies are changed to prevent a repeated error & costly lawsuit, and life goes on.
I think the real question is: who in their right mind sues IBM with such a flimsy, trumped-up case as SCO's?
This seems like a great idea to me, too - I like the idea of a company with Sun's resources handling a Linux distro - but I winced when I read the headline.
Based on what I've read about it, the new Java Desktop has a lot of promise, but it's still brand-new! In the long run they'll profit much better if they roll it out slowly, first to some companies who are willing to work with them on ironing out the wrinkles, before the general populace ever sees it. They need to build up a rep of relibility, security, and ease of use as soon as possible.
They already have to overcome the associations between "Java" and "bad GUI" (yes, the GUI is not really Java, but as shown in the article, the baggage comes with the name, and most people are understandably confused). I think it could be death to the new distro if they shine the spotlight on it before it's polished, has a consistent look & feel, etc. etc.
Yeah, Linus doesn't suffer fools lightly.
In this case, he's totally justified, though I think he might be wasting his time feeding a troll. The guy is suspiciously arrogant about a totally wrong-headed view of the GPL.
He's arguing that part of "use" of a GPL'd program includes making use of the source code, and to successfully make use of a header file, for example, he'd be forced to link it (with his non-GPL code). Therefore this usage couldn't be forbidden by the GPL.
Huh.
Overactive immune systems generally tend to attack healthy tissue (your white blood cells and antibodies NEVER fix damage anyway -- that's not their job).
Let's see you taking over the world with systemic autoimmune disorders.
"Who dares stand against ME! You shall feel the wrath of my lupus, arthritis, blistered skin, depression, blood clots, floater-filled vision, thyroiditis, and myositis!"
Running away, are you?! Come back here, I'll bite your kneecaps off!"
Yeah, OT... but I always loved the story about how people generally assumed it wasn't humanly possible to run a mile in under 4 minutes until Roget Bannister did it in '56, in 15mph crosswinds no less.
He was an Oxford med student at the time, and used his med school training to test and optimize his training techniques.
Nowadays, of course, there are high schoolers running sub-four miles. Madness.
I'm investigating the CVS support (plus the more general Group stuff) that's built-in to Eclipse, to see if I can use it.
CS-RCS (what I'm integrating) uses GNU RCS under the covers, which is what's underlying CVS, too (I think). They do offer an add-on to support CVS, but only in the paid version, so I'm still investigating.
JBuilder actually has all kinds of concurrent development features as well, including MS SCC integration (which CS-RCS does support directly!), but it's only enabled in the Enterprise version, so I couldn't use it.
I think you're catching on to why Sun backed out...