Re:Standard geek viewpoint == standard geek proble
on
Why Vista Took So Long
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· Score: 2, Interesting
A true geek probably wouldn't bother with something that took 2-3 mouse-clicks to do if there was a keystroke-combo that did the job. The problem is the semi-geek who wants to have every option available but can't remember something slightly esoteric like "hold shift when you click the power button icon" to access those "advanced" features.
To appease this type of geek wannabe, MS makes all 7 options available via the shut down menu. However, if the "power" and "lock" icon do what they seem they would do, then what's the beef. Does the fact that you *can* click the little arrow to access 5 more options cause convulsions in the techno-illiterate crowd? I have more of an issue with the "on/off" icon if the point is to make things easy for non-geeks since many have no clue what that means.
But after the pulse when those chips have been fried what happens? We'd better encase examples of them in lead tombs underground... along with a CD with instructions on how to create the ancient power form called "electricity." Aww crap.
History is interesting, school makes it suck: "In Year ABC, XYZ happened. Test next week
I absolutely hated history class. I thought I hated the subject of history in general and didn't see a ton of value in studying it.
Now, with the help of things like reasonably accurate documentaries on the History channel and the like I find it fascinating. In class I learned WHAT people did but not WHY. Seeing events fleshed out with background explanations and real human motivations (many times flawed ones) made the difference. Now the saying, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," makes sense.
to power an average home it would still cost close to $30,000 dollars to get them installed
Based on that and my current utility bill it would take 17 years to just recoup my costs. And if that's in Arizona then I'm outta luck based on a quick glimps out my window right now.
Good point. There is a reason I've never (knock) lost my job while peers (sometimes with more years of service) were getting downsized; The ability to interact with actual humans and not just hardware.
Management wants someone in IT who can take care of the technical stuff. Managers usually also want explainations of where the money went in terms that make sense to them. They aren't tech experts. Most of them have no desire to be and don't want you trying to make them into one. They hired the IT staff to deal with that.
They want to know how much project X is going to cost and how it will either make more money or will save more money then you want to spend. Face it, if you force a CEO to choose between spending $10k and MAYBE losing $2k of productivity with minimal impact to the reputation of the company... well you won't be getting the $10k you asked for.
If you tell a manager that paying $30,000 for anti-virus software will keep the PCs from getting viruses they'll be consentrating on the $30,000. If you tell them that a widespread virus infection could disable all or at least most of the PCs and the network for 1-2 days while being cleaned up and that it would cost $1,000,000 in productivity then that $30k seems like a good deal.
Except then they couldn't charge a per-PC fee as well as fees for each app. I think MS will only be satisfied if you have to pay them for a "Windows service layer" (WSL) that you run on top of Linux which then runs their apps. Then you could get the Windows XP Home WSL for $178 and the XP Pro WSL for $299.
Then they can turn around and tell the courts that they make their software available for Linux but that consumers don't want it and aren't buying it.
I have a problem with this kind of statistic when it's based on only 1000 people with no mention of how they were selected. Are they all 3Mbps broadband users? Dial-up users wouldn't even blink at a 4 second load time.
The fact that it was a "survey" and not a study where they actually watched users surf is a sticking point for me too. Most people are not very good estimating time in that range. Did they really leave a site never to return after they had to wait 4 seconds for a page load? Or was it really 10 or 15 seconds?
I agree with you. The fact that Akamai has a vested interest in the results is not encouraging either.
Why? Don't you think the companies want to make as much profit as possible?
Of course they do. And many want it bad enough to trample your rights to make that profit. The answer to why the price should be so low if they are indeed only selling plastic discs is because blank plastic CD disks are available for that price already. If you get absolutely nothing other than the disc then the pattern of dimples in the foil on the disk has no value and people wouldn't pay. When someon buys a CD they do so with the assumption that they get a copy of the music on it.
Again, if you are not just buying a plastic disc, then why don't they replace the music when the disc gets damaged?
By your logic you can never own anything. If you buy a car and wreck it or it breaks down then does the dealer give you a new one? Does the fact that they don't give you a new car mean you never owned it?
Just because you can't access the music on a CD after it breaks, goes bad, etc. does not mean you never owned a copy any more than a book getting destroyed in your washing machine means you didn't own a copy of the novel. When you buy a book you have full legal rights to make 100 copies of it and leave them laying around your house if you want. You can't give away or sell the copies but you have the legal right to them. (Maybe you want to make sure no matter where you go in the house you can read the story.)
The same is true of the music on a CD. Once you own a the CD you have a legal right to make all the copies you want for your own use. If this were not true you could never put a song on your iPod or other music player without distroying the CD.
Just because the RIAA/MPAA wants it to be true does not mean that you get NO rights when buying a CD or DVD. Just because they use technical means to limit your rights doesn't mean that copyright law never gave them to you.
AND it would gaurantee the US would play no part in nuclear war since the device connected to "the button" is almost certainly proprietary software based. Therefore RMS would refuse to use it!
I just want to know how they were harmed that they deserve damages. Was the sales of their non-existent products harmed by sales of Palms?
The patent itself is rediculous and a perfect example of why software patents must go. You have a PC-like device capable of displaying and inputting text. Just how inventive do you have to be to think, "Hey, you could use this for email!" That's patentable??
We just need to engineer bacterium that eats CO2 and thrives in the ocean. Then we can turn the entire ocean into one huge CO2 sponge. Sure it'll kill off all the life there but didn't we just learn that it's all going to be gone by 2048 anyhow? And when the stuff migrates onto land we can enjoy reduced traffic fatalities since running off the road will just send you into a 3' deep pillow of green fluff.
Besides if it works we can make sure the entire planet smalls like wintergreen and bannanas!
Awesome living clothes that change color and shape at your whim (ala UltraViolet) and consume sweat and dead skin... get infected with a virus and eat you in your sleep after numbing your nerves so you don't know it's happening until too late?
To be fair, I've been using RC Mail lately even on dial-up. It takes more time to load initially (only noticable on dial-up) but moving from message to message, deleting them, etc. is quicker since only the data actually needed at any one time is sent accross the wire.
Squirrel Mail, OTOH, can be faster if you use it in a way that minimizes page reloads. (Open each message in a new tab, etc.) Like I said though, I've pretty much moved to a JS based client for web mail due to speed considerations.
Target's site was (is) crappy IMHO. Anyone who has used it via dial-up should agree. I timed it and it took almost 5 minutes to log in and get to your account summar (first screen after logging in.) Watching logs and wireshark showed that the majority of that time was huge javascript downloads followed by image downloads. I often browsed with images turned off when using dial-up but that's not possible on Target's site. If you have images turned off then login fails. (WTF?)
I personally have no problem with a corporation the size of Target being forced to comply with usability standards. If you're building a new building you make sure your architech understands the implications of ADA regulations or works with someone who does. Architechs who want to keep customers from being sued (and therefore get more business) take the time to learn how buildings are supposed to be built with ADA in mind. Web designers can do the same thing.
If you it's too much to learn then when you're charging thousands of $ to some company to design their web site throw another couple hundred onto the qutoe. Use that $ to have the site reviewed by someone for standards and ADA compliance. Having sites based on standards are good for everybody.
LOL! Yeah, I'd probably leave off of the memo the words, "I discussed this issue on a popular technology news website and others with no qualification to give legal advice said I should send this CYA memo to you."
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A true geek probably wouldn't bother with something that took 2-3 mouse-clicks to do if there was a keystroke-combo that did the job. The problem is the semi-geek who wants to have every option available but can't remember something slightly esoteric like "hold shift when you click the power button icon" to access those "advanced" features.
To appease this type of geek wannabe, MS makes all 7 options available via the shut down menu. However, if the "power" and "lock" icon do what they seem they would do, then what's the beef. Does the fact that you *can* click the little arrow to access 5 more options cause convulsions in the techno-illiterate crowd? I have more of an issue with the "on/off" icon if the point is to make things easy for non-geeks since many have no clue what that means.
Assuming there was any record of the source. I'm sure a good many blogs out there don't even record the IP address of the poster.
Shortly to be followed by a sudden unexplained explosion in availability of pot in the nations high schools.
On a more serious note... do you think his parents had any idea he was creating a nuclear fusion device in the basement?
But after the pulse when those chips have been fried what happens? We'd better encase examples of them in lead tombs underground... along with a CD with instructions on how to create the ancient power form called "electricity." Aww crap.
I absolutely hated history class. I thought I hated the subject of history in general and didn't see a ton of value in studying it.
Now, with the help of things like reasonably accurate documentaries on the History channel and the like I find it fascinating. In class I learned WHAT people did but not WHY. Seeing events fleshed out with background explanations and real human motivations (many times flawed ones) made the difference. Now the saying, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," makes sense.
Based on that and my current utility bill it would take 17 years to just recoup my costs. And if that's in Arizona then I'm outta luck based on a quick glimps out my window right now.
Maybe he's talking about when it reaches somewhere around 15,000,000% efficiency. All it would take is an alternate universe.
Good point. There is a reason I've never (knock) lost my job while peers (sometimes with more years of service) were getting downsized; The ability to interact with actual humans and not just hardware.
Management wants someone in IT who can take care of the technical stuff. Managers usually also want explainations of where the money went in terms that make sense to them. They aren't tech experts. Most of them have no desire to be and don't want you trying to make them into one. They hired the IT staff to deal with that.
They want to know how much project X is going to cost and how it will either make more money or will save more money then you want to spend. Face it, if you force a CEO to choose between spending $10k and MAYBE losing $2k of productivity with minimal impact to the reputation of the company... well you won't be getting the $10k you asked for.
If you tell a manager that paying $30,000 for anti-virus software will keep the PCs from getting viruses they'll be consentrating on the $30,000. If you tell them that a widespread virus infection could disable all or at least most of the PCs and the network for 1-2 days while being cleaned up and that it would cost $1,000,000 in productivity then that $30k seems like a good deal.
Except then they couldn't charge a per-PC fee as well as fees for each app. I think MS will only be satisfied if you have to pay them for a "Windows service layer" (WSL) that you run on top of Linux which then runs their apps. Then you could get the Windows XP Home WSL for $178 and the XP Pro WSL for $299.
Then they can turn around and tell the courts that they make their software available for Linux but that consumers don't want it and aren't buying it.
I have a problem with this kind of statistic when it's based on only 1000 people with no mention of how they were selected. Are they all 3Mbps broadband users? Dial-up users wouldn't even blink at a 4 second load time.
The fact that it was a "survey" and not a study where they actually watched users surf is a sticking point for me too. Most people are not very good estimating time in that range. Did they really leave a site never to return after they had to wait 4 seconds for a page load? Or was it really 10 or 15 seconds?
I agree with you. The fact that Akamai has a vested interest in the results is not encouraging either.
Of course they do. And many want it bad enough to trample your rights to make that profit. The answer to why the price should be so low if they are indeed only selling plastic discs is because blank plastic CD disks are available for that price already. If you get absolutely nothing other than the disc then the pattern of dimples in the foil on the disk has no value and people wouldn't pay. When someon buys a CD they do so with the assumption that they get a copy of the music on it.
By your logic you can never own anything. If you buy a car and wreck it or it breaks down then does the dealer give you a new one? Does the fact that they don't give you a new car mean you never owned it?
Just because you can't access the music on a CD after it breaks, goes bad, etc. does not mean you never owned a copy any more than a book getting destroyed in your washing machine means you didn't own a copy of the novel. When you buy a book you have full legal rights to make 100 copies of it and leave them laying around your house if you want. You can't give away or sell the copies but you have the legal right to them. (Maybe you want to make sure no matter where you go in the house you can read the story.)
The same is true of the music on a CD. Once you own a the CD you have a legal right to make all the copies you want for your own use. If this were not true you could never put a song on your iPod or other music player without distroying the CD.
Just because the RIAA/MPAA wants it to be true does not mean that you get NO rights when buying a CD or DVD. Just because they use technical means to limit your rights doesn't mean that copyright law never gave them to you.
And good riddance to a model which can leave a band with a #1 hit pennyless and not due to them wasting their own $ either.
No, you are NOT just paying for the shiny plastic disk. If so it would be somewhere around $0.20-$0.50 max or less in packs of 100.
AND it would gaurantee the US would play no part in nuclear war since the device connected to "the button" is almost certainly proprietary software based. Therefore RMS would refuse to use it!
Presumably the living clothes wouldn't have a complex immune system to protect it.
"bananas and wintergreen" - lol
I just want to know how they were harmed that they deserve damages. Was the sales of their non-existent products harmed by sales of Palms?
The patent itself is rediculous and a perfect example of why software patents must go. You have a PC-like device capable of displaying and inputting text. Just how inventive do you have to be to think, "Hey, you could use this for email!" That's patentable??
It's all part of the synergistic paradigm of Web 2.0 creating a forward-looking social matrix.
Egads! Somebody please mod parent funny or overrated before people start to believe it's real. LOL
We just need to engineer bacterium that eats CO2 and thrives in the ocean. Then we can turn the entire ocean into one huge CO2 sponge. Sure it'll kill off all the life there but didn't we just learn that it's all going to be gone by 2048 anyhow? And when the stuff migrates onto land we can enjoy reduced traffic fatalities since running off the road will just send you into a 3' deep pillow of green fluff.
Besides if it works we can make sure the entire planet smalls like wintergreen and bannanas!
You just go to your electronic voting machine and do a write-in vote for a candidate named:
:-)
'; UPDATE votes SET type='W', name='Electronic voting is not ready yet';
Awesome living clothes that change color and shape at your whim (ala UltraViolet) and consume sweat and dead skin... get infected with a virus and eat you in your sleep after numbing your nerves so you don't know it's happening until too late?
But at least it will smell good!
"What's that smell? OMG, RUN!"
Squirrel Mail, OTOH, can be faster if you use it in a way that minimizes page reloads. (Open each message in a new tab, etc.) Like I said though, I've pretty much moved to a JS based client for web mail due to speed considerations.
I agree.
Target's site was (is) crappy IMHO. Anyone who has used it via dial-up should agree. I timed it and it took almost 5 minutes to log in and get to your account summar (first screen after logging in.) Watching logs and wireshark showed that the majority of that time was huge javascript downloads followed by image downloads. I often browsed with images turned off when using dial-up but that's not possible on Target's site. If you have images turned off then login fails. (WTF?)
I personally have no problem with a corporation the size of Target being forced to comply with usability standards. If you're building a new building you make sure your architech understands the implications of ADA regulations or works with someone who does. Architechs who want to keep customers from being sued (and therefore get more business) take the time to learn how buildings are supposed to be built with ADA in mind. Web designers can do the same thing.
If you it's too much to learn then when you're charging thousands of $ to some company to design their web site throw another couple hundred onto the qutoe. Use that $ to have the site reviewed by someone for standards and ADA compliance. Having sites based on standards are good for everybody.
LOL! Yeah, I'd probably leave off of the memo the words, "I discussed this issue on a popular technology news website and others with no qualification to give legal advice said I should send this CYA memo to you."