WRONG. It most certainly does help. I would guess that DIALING and CONNECTING to your party is the most visually distracting part of initiating a call. Or on the other side- retrieving, looking and and ANSWERING a call. Those are mostly eliminated with handsfree systems using voice recognition and steering wheel controls.
And when you are HOLDING the phone, you have only one hand free to operate the vehicle. It will add precious milliseconds more to the time needed to get your hand on the wheel if it is needed, over if it were just in your lap or on the arm rest or otherwise "ready to go".
And also while HOLDING a phone, there is the real possibility of DROPPING it, then having to retrieve it from somewhere in the car, which is extremely dangerous.
For many (but not all) people, a phone conversation is no more (or less) distracting than holding a conversation with someone in the car. It doesn't matter that the party you are talking to is not in the car and can't see what is going on... you can simply IGNORE THEM when necessary. And that is exactly what I do (although I rarely use the phone in the car) and tell them sorry but please repeat. *I* know that driving is my #1 priority and *I* am able to place driving at a higher priority than the call (or someone in the seat next to me). And I am certainly not alone in this.
And the studies about being on a phone is as dangerous as being drunk are just plain junk science. Sorry.
Regardless of the motives on the part of Adblock Plus or conspiracy theories in other postings- the whole reason I started blocking ads was EXACTLY because of ads that:
1) Contain animation (of ANY type) 2) Contain sound 3) Use Mouseovers or now page floating/etc 4) Are unreasonable numerous or large 5) Delay page loading
If I could use Adblock to stop only the above and allow reasonably sized and fast loading, relevant, text based, or static image based ads, I would do so. I have said that for years.
I am actually just as distressed now by things that are NOT ads, but contain constant or time delayed scrolling and other animations on sites. It is EXTREMELY IRRITATING while trying to read something (not to mention battery draining). But web designers seem to think it is cool and mandatory now. Used to be easy- turn off Flash and animated GIF. But since they are all Javascript now, there is no effective way to stop them without breaking the needed parts of pages (and don't EVEN suggest greasemonkey or the like... far to complex and/or time consuming). I wish there was a Firefox plugin that could auto detect Javascript animation or loops and just stop them.
>"'Combining Microsoft's open, interoperable health platforms"
Open? Sorry, that just doesn't quite fit for me. Maybe it is more open than ancient mainframe based stuff, but that is still not the word I would pick. "Interoperable" isn't much better- so they will support non-MS-Windows-based servers or clients?
Dell doesn't know what they are doing, aren't making the KINDS of Android devices that people want, and not at the prices people want.
Sorry, but that doesn't make "failure of the Android device to catch on with consumers" an accurate statement. The correct statement is "Dell fails at figuring out how to make compelling Android devices that people want". Big difference.
I got home from work and my Firefox had crashed again:( Had 8 tabs open: Slashdot, hotmail, 4 different forum sites, my tomato router screen, and my cable modem diag screen.
I will play around with it. I only have a few extensions:
Adblock Plus (hard to believe that would be a problem) Flash Killer (doesn't do anything unless I click on it to stop flash) JS Switch (again, doesn't do anything unless I click on it) Nuke Anything Enhanced
That and Flash 11.0 r1 (updated recently- no change in FF crashing). Just now disabled everything except Adblock (can't live without that).
I even have the browser crash when I come back to the computer after a while of not even touching it! But usually, it is happens immediately or shortly after a click on a link.
Might also try switching back to 64bit Firefox and use 64 bit Flash. Hasn't been quite annoying to force me into action. Although yesterday, it pulled one of those crashing many times in a row, recover, crash, recover, crash, recover, crash, recover, works fine.
The other projects are not as high profile, but many are quite important. Plus, parts of those (and firefox) are used in many other projects not managed by Mozilla.
Email is not supposed to be a file repository. Although, it seems like every day I find people who treat it just like that. When I get attachments that matter and need to last (such as nice/important pictures), I save them off and put them in an appropriate directory structure. Then I KNOW where all my pictures are located. They can be backed up appropriately. They can be viewed logically.
That is exactly what I do. I have been using Hotmail way before it was Microsoft. I use that address for all vendor junk, netflix stuff, registrations, autoreplies, notifications, etc. I save my real Email address for stuff that matters more. Even still, that gets cluttered and huge pretty quickly (and I do spend time maintaining it and don't bother with archives).
Not even counting stupid 100 Megapixel images people feel compelled to Email without resizing and other attachments, Email sizes are still dozens of times larger than they used to be.... Ten times as many headers. Stupid, wasteful HTML parts. Insanely large signatures. Clueless users who can't learn to trim and inline reply, so they just quote the entire thing and say "yes" at the top every time. Etc, etc.
Still, I can't imagine a world without Email... it is a HUGE productivity booster for me. I could certainly live without all the damn spam, though.
>"The problem is that that's not how people get rewarded in an organization"
Bingo. Like I said in my original post, it is a LONG TERM payoff. But most organizations are short-term driven. They don't care about long-term things that matter, because they can't see past next year, or next month.
There is little short-term reward for good documentation, other than the satisfaction that you are doing the right thing. And in the I.T. industry, tenure is typically measured in single years, not multiple years or decades.
My situation is different, yet similar. I just have so much responsibility for so many things at work, I simply can't remember how everything works. At times it is frightening, especially since year after year there are more things happening and I get older, so it is already inherently more difficult.
I also find myself "protecting" my sanity by almost intentionally forgetting how some things operate, especially those things I don't like.
I think as a manager, one of the most important things to do is learn to effectively document everything. I always knew documentation was important, to the point that I have a log of everything I do at work, every day, that spans 23 years! But those are just "reminders", not proper documentation. It helps to jog memory or memorialize certain facts for reference. Nothing replaces *proper* documentation, though- the kind that is well thought-out, has great detail, and is organized properly. Further, it will have insights into defining the problem and the solution and WHY you selected certain paths and not others.
Proper documentation takes considerable time, and many people think it is a waste of time, especially when one is drowning in projects and deadlines. When you reach the point that you can't handle the load without continuing to document properly, you know you are in trouble. In the short-term, you can "win" by getting more things done. But in the LONG TERM, you are basically screwed, because you will spend a tremendous amount of wasted time later trying to relearn what you did and why. Or worse, trying to defend your decisions and can't because you can't find the information, it doesn't make sense, or it just doesn't exist.
Amazing that there is still no way to private message on Slashdot! As you can see in my other comments, I am running the Mozilla-supplied binaries. I have dozens of crash links with date and time submitted. However, all but three result in "We couldn't find the OOID you're after. If you recently submitted this crash, it may still be in the queue." (they are not recent). Here are the three that actually work:
Well, I didn't say it was getting worse after 5. I just have not seen much improvement in stability or memory. I did notice the speed improvements, though.
I haven't had 8 long enough to be confident about memory usage having not improved. It seems to be a bit less than 7, but I can't really tell yet.
Firefox 8 crashed on me yesterday, and then crashed on recovery, three times in a row after that, before it stopped and just started working again (and the recovery was successful).
There are a LOT of factors to consider, of course. Which Linux? Which compile of Firefox? Provide by whom? 64/32 bit? What plugins? What extensions? What sites? Etc. In my case, I am using the same Mandriva distro across FF 5/6/7/8, 64 bit Linux, and using the 32 bit plain-vanilla, Mozilla-supplied FF binaries. Same version of 32 bit Flash, and just four extensions- Adblock Plus, JS Switch, Nuke Anything Enhanced, and Flash Killer.
Yeah. I saw the mistake right after I pressed "submit". I hate that there is no way to edit mistakes after submitting. Of course, if people COULD edit, then things would get really strange:)
I *never* used to have crashes in Firefox in Linux until version 5 came out. And there has been ZERO improvement with 6, 7, and now 8, as far as crashing goes. Sometimes I can go for days, other times, it can have a fit and crash several times in a day, even in a row.
I think memory usage was silly high in 3 and 4 and hasn't changed much with 5/6/7/8. It is not a problem if you start the browser every day, but on systems where you leave it running for days, it can get crazy (if it doesn't crash first).
I wish Firefox developers would work ONLY on speed, memory usage, and stability, and stop trying to make Firefox LOOK and FEEL like Chrome! I know it is not as exciting, but it is what we need more than anything else.
You hit it right on the head. I have zero interest in Chrome, mostly because I simply don't trust it. Google has WAY too much access to stuff already. At least with Chromium, it is open.
But Chrome/Chromium follow a design that is exactly what I don't want- dumbed down, minimalist, single-user oriented. The more Firefox because like Chrome, the more angry I get.
I wonder what happens when the thing runs out of space? If you can't set how much it uses, then how are we to know that it handles running out of space "gracefully"?
Also, you (presumably) and I are Linux users- so quotas, separate file systems, loopbacks, space checking, or whatever, are not rocket science. But that could be a lot more challenging for the people doing this on MS-Windows. Some users might be thinking they are "helping the world" by installing that app, then months later not understand why their computers are crashing with "no space left" type problems.
Seems the geeky crowd still doesn't understand that marketing DOES play a critical role in the popularity of any type of project. "YaCy" really does suck- it is impossible to say, isn't a word, introduces strange capitalization, and it is not even easy to remember.
This whole concept seems quite fascinating/interesting. Ironically, two questions came to my mind immediately:
1) How much bandwidth does this take? 2) How much disk space does this take?
Neither question is answered on their FAQ ( http://www.yacy-websuche.de/wiki/index.php/En:FAQ ), although they addressed the disk space issue thus: "Can I limit the size of the indexes on my hard-drive? For the moment no. Automatically limiting that size would mean having to delete stored indexes, which is not suitable. "
Yikes! I am not sure how many people will want to run a local YaCy client when there is no control over how much disk space it uses (or, apparently, bandwidth). It still has a lot of promise, though.
Slashdot Mirror
>"Hands free kits do not help"
WRONG. It most certainly does help. I would guess that DIALING and CONNECTING to your party is the most visually distracting part of initiating a call. Or on the other side- retrieving, looking and and ANSWERING a call. Those are mostly eliminated with handsfree systems using voice recognition and steering wheel controls.
And when you are HOLDING the phone, you have only one hand free to operate the vehicle. It will add precious milliseconds more to the time needed to get your hand on the wheel if it is needed, over if it were just in your lap or on the arm rest or otherwise "ready to go".
And also while HOLDING a phone, there is the real possibility of DROPPING it, then having to retrieve it from somewhere in the car, which is extremely dangerous.
For many (but not all) people, a phone conversation is no more (or less) distracting than holding a conversation with someone in the car. It doesn't matter that the party you are talking to is not in the car and can't see what is going on... you can simply IGNORE THEM when necessary. And that is exactly what I do (although I rarely use the phone in the car) and tell them sorry but please repeat. *I* know that driving is my #1 priority and *I* am able to place driving at a higher priority than the call (or someone in the seat next to me). And I am certainly not alone in this.
And the studies about being on a phone is as dangerous as being drunk are just plain junk science. Sorry.
Regardless of the motives on the part of Adblock Plus or conspiracy theories in other postings- the whole reason I started blocking ads was EXACTLY because of ads that:
1) Contain animation (of ANY type)
2) Contain sound
3) Use Mouseovers or now page floating/etc
4) Are unreasonable numerous or large
5) Delay page loading
If I could use Adblock to stop only the above and allow reasonably sized and fast loading, relevant, text based, or static image based ads, I would do so. I have said that for years.
I am actually just as distressed now by things that are NOT ads, but contain constant or time delayed scrolling and other animations on sites. It is EXTREMELY IRRITATING while trying to read something (not to mention battery draining). But web designers seem to think it is cool and mandatory now. Used to be easy- turn off Flash and animated GIF. But since they are all Javascript now, there is no effective way to stop them without breaking the needed parts of pages (and don't EVEN suggest greasemonkey or the like... far to complex and/or time consuming). I wish there was a Firefox plugin that could auto detect Javascript animation or loops and just stop them.
>"'Combining Microsoft's open, interoperable health platforms"
Open? Sorry, that just doesn't quite fit for me. Maybe it is more open than ancient mainframe based stuff, but that is still not the word I would pick. "Interoperable" isn't much better- so they will support non-MS-Windows-based servers or clients?
Android is Linux. I use Linux at work, at home, in my car, on my tablet, etc, etc.
It would be really nice if Android had CUPS support. That would make printing really easy for me :)
You are probably correct. But it was in there a looong time, and pretty quickly from release.
And WebOS was/is also "rooted" on all devices. You just clicked on developer mode. Done.
It had been that day from day one.
Dell doesn't know what they are doing, aren't making the KINDS of Android devices that people want, and not at the prices people want.
Sorry, but that doesn't make "failure of the Android device to catch on with consumers" an accurate statement. The correct statement is "Dell fails at figuring out how to make compelling Android devices that people want". Big difference.
I got home from work and my Firefox had crashed again :(
Had 8 tabs open: Slashdot, hotmail, 4 different forum sites, my tomato router screen, and my cable modem diag screen.
I will play around with it. I only have a few extensions:
Adblock Plus (hard to believe that would be a problem)
Flash Killer (doesn't do anything unless I click on it to stop flash)
JS Switch (again, doesn't do anything unless I click on it)
Nuke Anything Enhanced
That and Flash 11.0 r1 (updated recently- no change in FF crashing). Just now disabled everything except Adblock (can't live without that).
I even have the browser crash when I come back to the computer after a while of not even touching it! But usually, it is happens immediately or shortly after a click on a link.
Might also try switching back to 64bit Firefox and use 64 bit Flash. Hasn't been quite annoying to force me into action. Although yesterday, it pulled one of those crashing many times in a row, recover, crash, recover, crash, recover, crash, recover, works fine.
The other projects are not as high profile, but many are quite important. Plus, parts of those (and firefox) are used in many other projects not managed by Mozilla.
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/
What people are forgetting is that Mozilla is much more than JUST Firefox! There are dozens of Mozilla projects.
Email is not supposed to be a file repository. Although, it seems like every day I find people who treat it just like that. When I get attachments that matter and need to last (such as nice/important pictures), I save them off and put them in an appropriate directory structure. Then I KNOW where all my pictures are located. They can be backed up appropriately. They can be viewed logically.
That is exactly what I do. I have been using Hotmail way before it was Microsoft. I use that address for all vendor junk, netflix stuff, registrations, autoreplies, notifications, etc. I save my real Email address for stuff that matters more. Even still, that gets cluttered and huge pretty quickly (and I do spend time maintaining it and don't bother with archives).
Not even counting stupid 100 Megapixel images people feel compelled to Email without resizing and other attachments, Email sizes are still dozens of times larger than they used to be.... Ten times as many headers. Stupid, wasteful HTML parts. Insanely large signatures. Clueless users who can't learn to trim and inline reply, so they just quote the entire thing and say "yes" at the top every time. Etc, etc.
Still, I can't imagine a world without Email... it is a HUGE productivity booster for me. I could certainly live without all the damn spam, though.
>"The problem is that that's not how people get rewarded in an organization"
Bingo. Like I said in my original post, it is a LONG TERM payoff. But most organizations are short-term driven. They don't care about long-term things that matter, because they can't see past next year, or next month.
There is little short-term reward for good documentation, other than the satisfaction that you are doing the right thing. And in the I.T. industry, tenure is typically measured in single years, not multiple years or decades.
My situation is different, yet similar. I just have so much responsibility for so many things at work, I simply can't remember how everything works. At times it is frightening, especially since year after year there are more things happening and I get older, so it is already inherently more difficult.
I also find myself "protecting" my sanity by almost intentionally forgetting how some things operate, especially those things I don't like.
I think as a manager, one of the most important things to do is learn to effectively document everything. I always knew documentation was important, to the point that I have a log of everything I do at work, every day, that spans 23 years! But those are just "reminders", not proper documentation. It helps to jog memory or memorialize certain facts for reference. Nothing replaces *proper* documentation, though- the kind that is well thought-out, has great detail, and is organized properly. Further, it will have insights into defining the problem and the solution and WHY you selected certain paths and not others.
Proper documentation takes considerable time, and many people think it is a waste of time, especially when one is drowning in projects and deadlines. When you reach the point that you can't handle the load without continuing to document properly, you know you are in trouble. In the short-term, you can "win" by getting more things done. But in the LONG TERM, you are basically screwed, because you will spend a tremendous amount of wasted time later trying to relearn what you did and why. Or worse, trying to defend your decisions and can't because you can't find the information, it doesn't make sense, or it just doesn't exist.
Yeah, 'cause, you know, the only way you can send information out of a country is through a country-specific, iphone-only app?
Amazing that there is still no way to private message on Slashdot! As you can see in my other comments, I am running the Mozilla-supplied binaries. I have dozens of crash links with date and time submitted. However, all but three result in "We couldn't find the OOID you're after. If you recently submitted this crash, it may still be in the queue." (they are not recent). Here are the three that actually work:
http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/bp-d7ad42bd-e605-4104-bea4-782712111130
http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/bp-c635334d-a688-46b5-95f4-c60d92111115
http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/bp-13648d6a-0e9f-47ef-a1cc-a72bc2111018
I have never used Firebug and it is not installed.
Well, I didn't say it was getting worse after 5. I just have not seen much improvement in stability or memory. I did notice the speed improvements, though.
I haven't had 8 long enough to be confident about memory usage having not improved. It seems to be a bit less than 7, but I can't really tell yet.
Firefox 8 crashed on me yesterday, and then crashed on recovery, three times in a row after that, before it stopped and just started working again (and the recovery was successful).
There are a LOT of factors to consider, of course. Which Linux? Which compile of Firefox? Provide by whom? 64/32 bit? What plugins? What extensions? What sites? Etc. In my case, I am using the same Mandriva distro across FF 5/6/7/8, 64 bit Linux, and using the 32 bit plain-vanilla, Mozilla-supplied FF binaries. Same version of 32 bit Flash, and just four extensions- Adblock Plus, JS Switch, Nuke Anything Enhanced, and Flash Killer.
Yeah. I saw the mistake right after I pressed "submit". I hate that there is no way to edit mistakes after submitting. Of course, if people COULD edit, then things would get really strange :)
I *never* used to have crashes in Firefox in Linux until version 5 came out. And there has been ZERO improvement with 6, 7, and now 8, as far as crashing goes. Sometimes I can go for days, other times, it can have a fit and crash several times in a day, even in a row.
I think memory usage was silly high in 3 and 4 and hasn't changed much with 5/6/7/8. It is not a problem if you start the browser every day, but on systems where you leave it running for days, it can get crazy (if it doesn't crash first).
I wish Firefox developers would work ONLY on speed, memory usage, and stability, and stop trying to make Firefox LOOK and FEEL like Chrome! I know it is not as exciting, but it is what we need more than anything else.
+1000
You hit it right on the head. I have zero interest in Chrome, mostly because I simply don't trust it. Google has WAY too much access to stuff already. At least with Chromium, it is open.
But Chrome/Chromium follow a design that is exactly what I don't want- dumbed down, minimalist, single-user oriented. The more Firefox because like Chrome, the more angry I get.
I wonder what happens when the thing runs out of space? If you can't set how much it uses, then how are we to know that it handles running out of space "gracefully"?
Also, you (presumably) and I are Linux users- so quotas, separate file systems, loopbacks, space checking, or whatever, are not rocket science. But that could be a lot more challenging for the people doing this on MS-Windows. Some users might be thinking they are "helping the world" by installing that app, then months later not understand why their computers are crashing with "no space left" type problems.
+1 Mod parent up.
Seems the geeky crowd still doesn't understand that marketing DOES play a critical role in the popularity of any type of project. "YaCy" really does suck- it is impossible to say, isn't a word, introduces strange capitalization, and it is not even easy to remember.
This whole concept seems quite fascinating/interesting. Ironically, two questions came to my mind immediately:
1) How much bandwidth does this take?
2) How much disk space does this take?
Neither question is answered on their FAQ ( http://www.yacy-websuche.de/wiki/index.php/En:FAQ ), although they addressed the disk space issue thus: "Can I limit the size of the indexes on my hard-drive? For the moment no. Automatically limiting that size would mean having to delete stored indexes, which is not suitable. "
Yikes! I am not sure how many people will want to run a local YaCy client when there is no control over how much disk space it uses (or, apparently, bandwidth). It still has a lot of promise, though.