Woah... everyone is judging this company prematurely. All the evidence is for one side right now and since the company cannot speak their side (thanks to the litigation), we don't have the full picture.
Yea, it's so tempting to just blame it on the company since it is a company and companies are the root of all evil. But if it turns out that these judgments are wrong, we're ruining the reputation of a company unnecessarily. (And no, saying "I take that back" months down the line doesn't fix anything)
I totally agree that this is too restrictive. But perhaps we can take some of the ideas and build your own chair to your needs?
I would like to have: Access to a normal desk and a smaller, movable desk Suspended LCD screens slightly above horizontal A chair that tilts back slightly Footrest Places to mount computers Cup holders!! =)
Perhaps there's a cheaper way to get this by assembling it from common office furniture. Anyone have experience in this area?
I totally agree with you. But I think this is a symptom of a larger and more important problem with OSS, the lack of a total experience design.
Look at how companies with a decent R&D budget often go at a problem. They build parts of the solution and then put it together in many different configurations and test them. They pay real users (not just geeks) to use the systems and find problems. They have designers concerned with the total experience suggest improvements to the software and the developers implement them.
Contrast this with your typical OSS project. We build software in a similar way, but the testing and evaluation is typically lacking. We have little resources and few test machines beyond our own computers. We don't pay users to test our stuff. We have no lead designer with 10+ years of experience driving the features.
Thus the quality of OSS software varies greatly and has so many different little features that often it doesn't add up to the full experience of a commercial solution. If you're a geek like me, you can deal with it (but often with much frustration). Unfortunately, not everyone is a programmer:)
Email *should*: -be spamproof (extensible mechanism for integrating CAPTCHAs) -require a digital signature (so everyone on the network has some degree of digital identity instead of the just trust me model. Solving the distributed digital identity problem probably wont happen in any way we want, so I suggest a simple peer-to-peer identity mechanism much like the one ssh uses. It's good enough for now) -provide a receipt on delivery (no more your mail has been sitting on a server for a day and you don't know it) -autonegotiate formatting/language options (your mail server tells the sender to use HTML vs plain text, english vs spanish) -use ssl in all negotiations (client-server-server-client)
Is this going to happen? Probably not. There's too much stuff built around SMTP that it'll take a decade at least.
Yea, I agree. And it was a pretty half assed specilization. All it did was bring the concept of file sharing to the masses through marketing it as a source of free mp3s and proceeding to piss off the RIAA. Most people knew it could be done but didn't do so because of the moral and legal problems.
Napster frightened the RIAA and started a wave of corporate paranoia towards digital media that persists today. Thanks shawn!
First, what types of loads are you using to get these numbers? Whats the ratio of memory to total disk size?
Second, where can I buy battery-backed up RAM? Battery backed up ram is probably a hell of a lot cheaper and faster than SSDs.
The Tragically Hip is an excellent band. They probably would have made it on their own anyways. It's too bad Canadians stations are prevented from playing 100% crap.
If you want to listen to oldies, you probably have the CDs anyways.
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Woah... everyone is judging this company prematurely. All the evidence is for one side right now and since the company cannot speak their side (thanks to the litigation), we don't have the full picture.
Yea, it's so tempting to just blame it on the company since it is a company and companies are the root of all evil. But if it turns out that these judgments are wrong, we're ruining the reputation of a company unnecessarily. (And no, saying "I take that back" months down the line doesn't fix anything)
I totally agree that this is too restrictive. But perhaps we can take some of the ideas and build your own chair to your needs?
I would like to have:
Access to a normal desk and a smaller, movable desk
Suspended LCD screens slightly above horizontal
A chair that tilts back slightly
Footrest
Places to mount computers
Cup holders!! =)
Perhaps there's a cheaper way to get this by assembling it from common office furniture. Anyone have experience in this area?
I totally agree with you. But I think this is a symptom of a larger and more important problem with OSS, the lack of a total experience design.
:)
Look at how companies with a decent R&D budget often go at a problem. They build parts of the solution and then put it together in many different configurations and test them. They pay real users (not just geeks) to use the systems and find problems. They have designers concerned with the total experience suggest improvements to the software and the developers implement them.
Contrast this with your typical OSS project. We build software in a similar way, but the testing and evaluation is typically lacking. We have little resources and few test machines beyond our own computers. We don't pay users to test our stuff. We have no lead designer with 10+ years of experience driving the features.
Thus the quality of OSS software varies greatly and has so many different little features that often it doesn't add up to the full experience of a commercial solution. If you're a geek like me, you can deal with it (but often with much frustration). Unfortunately, not everyone is a programmer
This is typical /. misreading of the article. It's designed as a server... something that provides background services to the user.
Now combined with various IO devices it may match the functionality of a handheld. Here is the ubicomp 2002 paper about it.
Well, linux had one just like that. It took us quite a while to figure out as well.
I don't care to defend MS, but we should really spend less time flaming and instead focus on doing *better* than them.
Email *should*:
-be spamproof (extensible mechanism for integrating CAPTCHAs)
-require a digital signature (so everyone on the network has some degree of digital identity instead of the just trust me model. Solving the distributed digital identity problem probably wont happen in any way we want, so I suggest a simple peer-to-peer identity mechanism much like the one ssh uses. It's good enough for now)
-provide a receipt on delivery (no more your mail has been sitting on a server for a day and you don't know it)
-autonegotiate formatting/language options (your mail server tells the sender to use HTML vs plain text, english vs spanish)
-use ssl in all negotiations (client-server-server-client)
Is this going to happen? Probably not. There's too much stuff built around SMTP that it'll take a decade at least.
Yea, I agree. And it was a pretty half assed specilization. All it did was bring the concept of file sharing to the masses through marketing it as a source of free mp3s and proceeding to piss off the RIAA. Most people knew it could be done but didn't do so because of the moral and legal problems.
Napster frightened the RIAA and started a wave of corporate paranoia towards digital media that persists today. Thanks shawn!
First, what types of loads are you using to get these numbers? Whats the ratio of memory to total disk size? Second, where can I buy battery-backed up RAM? Battery backed up ram is probably a hell of a lot cheaper and faster than SSDs.
The Tragically Hip is an excellent band. They probably would have made it on their own anyways. It's too bad Canadians stations are prevented from playing 100% crap.
If you want to listen to oldies, you probably have the CDs anyways.