I strongly, strongly disagree with using friends or family or anyone you know, frankly, to judge any of your written works. It causes negative emotions from contempt to feelings of betrayal.
People either give you glowing reviews and pick something basically at random to recommend that you change, like a character's outfit in a scene something equally foolish; or people are utterly ignorant of literature and pick apart your work by disagreeing with characters' personalities or actions.
If that's what you think, you have never encountered good beta-readers. Either that, or you're a "twenty-something" who still judges everybody by their own experiences. I, OTOH am a mature adult, and pick beta-readers not because they're my buddies, but because I trust them to be honest and objective. And, of course, when I read what they have to say, I leave my ego outside. I will agree with you on one thing, however: if you can't trust your friends and family to tell the truth, a stranger (professor or whatever) is better. I disagree, however, with your opinion that you can never get good writing advice from a friend. I know, because I've finished three novels (Not published yet, I'll admit, but I've gotten good feedback from a few agents.) and used trusted friends for help on all of them. Please note: the word "trusted" is hte key here. If you can't trust them to be honest, don't even ask them.
I just don't see how a browser can cause such mayhem to the OS
It's easy when you consider that Internet Explorer and Windows Explorer are the same program. I remember back when IE 5 came out. If the upgrade program failed in just the right way you would reboot to a blank desktop with no icons, no task bar, no way out except the power switch or reset button. You had to reboot in DOS, edit win.ini to use progman instead of explorer, enter Windows and revert to the previous version of IE. (Sometimes progman didn't even work right. I found it much easier to use control.exe as the shell, because that brought up control panel, which was exactly what was needed.) Then, you had to restart in MS-DOS mode, undo the change to win.ini so that you could go back into Windows and try again. That is, if the tech support person you called knew what the problem was and how to fix it. If not, you were pretty much hosed until you re-installed Windows.
Yes. You can get a great replacement for free, right here. Just download their software and install it. I guarantee that you'll never have to worry about a virus, trojan or other malware again.
The fact that it was *supposed* to be an annoying piece of crap that didn't really help with security only makes it worse.
Well, I guess it just goes to show that Microsoft can't win. for years they've been criticized because their software doesn't do what they intended it to, and now that they've written something that does exactly what they intended we're complaining about that!
As a matter of fact, I did. I read both. There was very little substance in the article, at least about the developer's idea. However, I do find it hard to believe that you can mechanize the study of good writing and come up with anything original.
This is just another pointless project that's going to waste the time and skull-sweat of a good but unrealistic programmer. All he's going to have when he's done is the solution to a problem that doesn't, for all practical purposes, exist. Good writers won't need it because they know what to do and how to do it, so they won't use it. It will only be used by poor writers, who won't know how to put the suggestions into effect properly. It may, possibly, tell a writer where their book needs work, or where it's not interesting enough, but I doubt it. Most likely, all it will do is tell it where it's not like other successful books because it won't be able to recognize or take into account any originality. Even if its recommendations are right, a poor writer is highly unlikely to profit from them, because by definition a poor writer won't know which suggestions are good or the skills to take advantage of them properly. No, what a poor writer who wants to get better needs is either a good critique group or some friends who will act as beta-readers, telling him not only what doesn't work but why (Something, I might add, that I find it hard to believe this program could ever do.) and discuss things with the author until they understand each other. Mechanical criticism of literature can only result in mechanical literature, not good writing.
Secondly, Reagans escalation, drove the country into bankruptcy.
That it did! And, I might add, that was exactly what it was expected to do. Star Wars might not have worked (We'll never know for sure, will we?) but it was plausible, and it was something the US could afford to do. Thus, the USSR had to try to copy us and their creaky, over-managed, barely-adequate economy collapsed under the strain of trying to produce both guns and butter, something the US had no difficulty in doing. Reagan didn't come up with the idea of taking the battle to a front where we had all the advantages, but he did have the sense to recognize a good idea when he saw it.
Long version: it's easier for most people to fudge through something they vaguely remember doing by pictures than it is for them to memorize a set of arcane terminal they vaguely remember.
I've even run across a few people who are unwilling to use a terminal for a one-time job, with me dictating everything to them and having them read it back (That's because I'm doing it over the phone.) before hitting Enter. There are many computer users out there who simply find a CLI intimidating and are afraid to use it, even with a (to them) guru holding their hand every step of the way.
My sister is about half-way inbetween. As we live in the same house, I can do proper "over the shoulder" support, but if it's more than one or two commands in a terminal, she asks me to do it. Not because she's afraid, but because it's just easier to let me at the keyboard and watch. And, it it's going to take a bit of looking around and testing, I'd rather do it that way anyway.
But they were not due to us designing them out, it was due to the fact that they did not get ported over in time.
So, would it be fair to say that you haven't removed any features, you just haven't gotten them all working yet? If so, that would give KDE users something to look forward to, instead of something to complain about.
The mullahs want kill their own people for posting things to the internet
The mullahs want to kill people for using the Internet because they understand that Jerry Pournelle is right: the Internet, western style entertainment and fashions are all weapons of cultural mass destruction and they don't want their people westernized. They know that if that ever happens, the mullahs will be out on their ears.
given there is no realistic potential for a monetary return on investment.
Tax write-offs for charitable donations. Every year, big corporations and wealthy individuals give billions of dollars to charity in order to lower their taxes. As long as this is run by a non-profit organization, donations are eligible for this. All that's needed now, is a little publicity in the right places and the donations will start rolling in.
Those of you who think INTERCAL or some of the other languages mentioned here are weird have never run across the weirdest OS ever conceived: PutriDOS. Among other things, the Clear Screen command blew all the phosphors off the inside of the CRT so that it could be examined, it had a "pretty printer" for its assembly language that reformatted the output into stars, flowers and other images, and an "upgrade" of FORTRAN called 4.1TRAN. It was supported by three companies, PutriDOS, PutridDOS and Putritech, who tended to forget which company wrote which program and upgrade each other's products in incompatible ways. Generally, your best bet was to find a user's group and request a hex patch.
That was AOL 5, IIRC. Gave us a lot of trouble, too, because even after you'd uninstalled it, you still couldn't resolve DNS. One of our techs finally found a way to fix it: you not only had to remove/reinstall DUN, you had to hand remove a number of the.386 files involved, and make sure that when you reinstalled, you did not keep the newer versions. From what I understand, the AOL techs warned that it wasn't ready for release, but the marketdroids insisted. As I said, AOL is constantly shooting itself in the foot.
It's interesting that you should use that phrase. Back in the day, I'd explain that if you were using AOL, it was like being in a big building. You could use anything in the building, and there were windows in the walls so that you could see what was outside, but you had to stay inside. With a real ISP, you were out on the streets and could go wherever you felt like and do anything you wanted instead of just what we thought you should do.
I was doing tech support for an ISP back when AOL started its "Bring your own interet" program, where you could use AOL through other providers. I remember getting a call from a woman who complained that "Once I log on and start AOL, all I get is AOL. What do I need you for?"
I explained to her how once she'd opened AOL she was just using us to get to them and that if she wanted all of the Internet, uncensored, unfiiltered, all she had to do was not connect to AOL, just open her browser and have fun. She decided to cancel her service with us.
Years ago I got the impression that AOL was walking around carrying a pair of hand guns pointing at their own feet. At random intervals, they pull one of the triggers and shoot themselves in the foot. Once in a while, they pull both at once. AFAIC, this new policy is just AOL running true to form and shooting themselves in the feet.
I've always thought that there should be a book in that series called Bourne Again, so that the protagonist would have the excuse to bash anybody he wanted.
I'm sure it's possible, but pointless. Decades ago, astronomers mapped proper motion and showed that all the stars were streaming away from a single point in the constellation Hercules. Presumably, that's where we're headed.
I would add a third possibility as to why the company failed. The product didn't provide the functionality the company intended to deliver to their targeted market.
The real problem was that at the time (mid to late '80s) not enough people understood what we were doing and how much time we could save. (You might say that we were solving a problem that our market didn't preceive as yet.) The program was similar to a document generator, but instead of a long, difficult proceedure for creating a template, the program walked you through the process with some simple, but impressive looking AI. (You'd be surprised how smart a program looks if it remembers what you did last time and suggests the same thing.) Back then, most law firms were using computers like glorified typewriters. That is, instead of using a document generator or mail merge program to produce filings from boiler plate, the secretaries were either retyping them or hand modifying an old one. We might have had a chance to carve out a niche for ourselves, but the problem with the commissions ate the capital before we had time to establish ourselves.
So they're scum for selling the products you created?
No. They're scum for selling the products I make to the wrong people to solve the wrong problems. I worked, once, doing programming and support for a little software company making a specialized program for law firms. The company finally failed because of two things. The first one was that we had so many returns because the program didn't do what the salesdroids claimed it would, or couldn't be used to do what they'd led the customer to expect. The other was that there was no provision for deducting returns from their commissions. That meant that they had no reason to be honest because even if we refunded the price, they got paid. Clearly, neither the founder nor the venture capitalists he worked with understood how Sales works!
Also, the OMFG crowd didn't come about until sometime in the mid 90s.
Trust me, the kids of the 90s didn't invent that type of person. They just gave them their own name. You'll find people like that in every generation. What else do you think bobby-soxers or teenyboppers were?
Slashdot Mirror
People either give you glowing reviews and pick something basically at random to recommend that you change, like a character's outfit in a scene something equally foolish; or people are utterly ignorant of literature and pick apart your work by disagreeing with characters' personalities or actions.
If that's what you think, you have never encountered good beta-readers. Either that, or you're a "twenty-something" who still judges everybody by their own experiences. I, OTOH am a mature adult, and pick beta-readers not because they're my buddies, but because I trust them to be honest and objective. And, of course, when I read what they have to say, I leave my ego outside. I will agree with you on one thing, however: if you can't trust your friends and family to tell the truth, a stranger (professor or whatever) is better. I disagree, however, with your opinion that you can never get good writing advice from a friend. I know, because I've finished three novels (Not published yet, I'll admit, but I've gotten good feedback from a few agents.) and used trusted friends for help on all of them. Please note: the word "trusted" is hte key here. If you can't trust them to be honest, don't even ask them.
It's easy when you consider that Internet Explorer and Windows Explorer are the same program. I remember back when IE 5 came out. If the upgrade program failed in just the right way you would reboot to a blank desktop with no icons, no task bar, no way out except the power switch or reset button. You had to reboot in DOS, edit win.ini to use progman instead of explorer, enter Windows and revert to the previous version of IE. (Sometimes progman didn't even work right. I found it much easier to use control.exe as the shell, because that brought up control panel, which was exactly what was needed.) Then, you had to restart in MS-DOS mode, undo the change to win.ini so that you could go back into Windows and try again. That is, if the tech support person you called knew what the problem was and how to fix it. If not, you were pretty much hosed until you re-installed Windows.
Yes. You can get a great replacement for free, right here. Just download their software and install it. I guarantee that you'll never have to worry about a virus, trojan or other malware again.
Well, I guess it just goes to show that Microsoft can't win. for years they've been criticized because their software doesn't do what they intended it to, and now that they've written something that does exactly what they intended we're complaining about that!
Of course you need to leave in Danielle Steele. Harald Robbins too. After all, you can't neglect the classics, can you?
As a matter of fact, I did. I read both. There was very little substance in the article, at least about the developer's idea. However, I do find it hard to believe that you can mechanize the study of good writing and come up with anything original.
This is just another pointless project that's going to waste the time and skull-sweat of a good but unrealistic programmer. All he's going to have when he's done is the solution to a problem that doesn't, for all practical purposes, exist. Good writers won't need it because they know what to do and how to do it, so they won't use it. It will only be used by poor writers, who won't know how to put the suggestions into effect properly. It may, possibly, tell a writer where their book needs work, or where it's not interesting enough, but I doubt it. Most likely, all it will do is tell it where it's not like other successful books because it won't be able to recognize or take into account any originality. Even if its recommendations are right, a poor writer is highly unlikely to profit from them, because by definition a poor writer won't know which suggestions are good or the skills to take advantage of them properly. No, what a poor writer who wants to get better needs is either a good critique group or some friends who will act as beta-readers, telling him not only what doesn't work but why (Something, I might add, that I find it hard to believe this program could ever do.) and discuss things with the author until they understand each other. Mechanical criticism of literature can only result in mechanical literature, not good writing.
That it did! And, I might add, that was exactly what it was expected to do. Star Wars might not have worked (We'll never know for sure, will we?) but it was plausible, and it was something the US could afford to do. Thus, the USSR had to try to copy us and their creaky, over-managed, barely-adequate economy collapsed under the strain of trying to produce both guns and butter, something the US had no difficulty in doing. Reagan didn't come up with the idea of taking the battle to a front where we had all the advantages, but he did have the sense to recognize a good idea when he saw it.
I've even run across a few people who are unwilling to use a terminal for a one-time job, with me dictating everything to them and having them read it back (That's because I'm doing it over the phone.) before hitting Enter. There are many computer users out there who simply find a CLI intimidating and are afraid to use it, even with a (to them) guru holding their hand every step of the way.
My sister is about half-way inbetween. As we live in the same house, I can do proper "over the shoulder" support, but if it's more than one or two commands in a terminal, she asks me to do it. Not because she's afraid, but because it's just easier to let me at the keyboard and watch. And, it it's going to take a bit of looking around and testing, I'd rather do it that way anyway.
So, would it be fair to say that you haven't removed any features, you just haven't gotten them all working yet? If so, that would give KDE users something to look forward to, instead of something to complain about.
The mullahs want to kill people for using the Internet because they understand that Jerry Pournelle is right: the Internet, western style entertainment and fashions are all weapons of cultural mass destruction and they don't want their people westernized. They know that if that ever happens, the mullahs will be out on their ears.
All of them.
Tax write-offs for charitable donations. Every year, big corporations and wealthy individuals give billions of dollars to charity in order to lower their taxes. As long as this is run by a non-profit organization, donations are eligible for this. All that's needed now, is a little publicity in the right places and the donations will start rolling in.
Those of you who think INTERCAL or some of the other languages mentioned here are weird have never run across the weirdest OS ever conceived: PutriDOS. Among other things, the Clear Screen command blew all the phosphors off the inside of the CRT so that it could be examined, it had a "pretty printer" for its assembly language that reformatted the output into stars, flowers and other images, and an "upgrade" of FORTRAN called 4.1TRAN. It was supported by three companies, PutriDOS, PutridDOS and Putritech, who tended to forget which company wrote which program and upgrade each other's products in incompatible ways. Generally, your best bet was to find a user's group and request a hex patch.
That was AOL 5, IIRC. Gave us a lot of trouble, too, because even after you'd uninstalled it, you still couldn't resolve DNS. One of our techs finally found a way to fix it: you not only had to remove/reinstall DUN, you had to hand remove a number of the .386 files involved, and make sure that when you reinstalled, you did not keep the newer versions. From what I understand, the AOL techs warned that it wasn't ready for release, but the marketdroids insisted. As I said, AOL is constantly shooting itself in the foot.
It's interesting that you should use that phrase. Back in the day, I'd explain that if you were using AOL, it was like being in a big building. You could use anything in the building, and there were windows in the walls so that you could see what was outside, but you had to stay inside. With a real ISP, you were out on the streets and could go wherever you felt like and do anything you wanted instead of just what we thought you should do.
I explained to her how once she'd opened AOL she was just using us to get to them and that if she wanted all of the Internet, uncensored, unfiiltered, all she had to do was not connect to AOL, just open her browser and have fun. She decided to cancel her service with us.
Years ago I got the impression that AOL was walking around carrying a pair of hand guns pointing at their own feet. At random intervals, they pull one of the triggers and shoot themselves in the foot. Once in a while, they pull both at once. AFAIC, this new policy is just AOL running true to form and shooting themselves in the feet.
I've always thought that there should be a book in that series called Bourne Again, so that the protagonist would have the excuse to bash anybody he wanted.
I'm sure it's possible, but pointless. Decades ago, astronomers mapped proper motion and showed that all the stars were streaming away from a single point in the constellation Hercules. Presumably, that's where we're headed.
The real problem was that at the time (mid to late '80s) not enough people understood what we were doing and how much time we could save. (You might say that we were solving a problem that our market didn't preceive as yet.) The program was similar to a document generator, but instead of a long, difficult proceedure for creating a template, the program walked you through the process with some simple, but impressive looking AI. (You'd be surprised how smart a program looks if it remembers what you did last time and suggests the same thing.) Back then, most law firms were using computers like glorified typewriters. That is, instead of using a document generator or mail merge program to produce filings from boiler plate, the secretaries were either retyping them or hand modifying an old one. We might have had a chance to carve out a niche for ourselves, but the problem with the commissions ate the capital before we had time to establish ourselves.
Yes, but does it run Linux?
No. They're scum for selling the products I make to the wrong people to solve the wrong problems. I worked, once, doing programming and support for a little software company making a specialized program for law firms. The company finally failed because of two things. The first one was that we had so many returns because the program didn't do what the salesdroids claimed it would, or couldn't be used to do what they'd led the customer to expect. The other was that there was no provision for deducting returns from their commissions. That meant that they had no reason to be honest because even if we refunded the price, they got paid. Clearly, neither the founder nor the venture capitalists he worked with understood how Sales works!
It's chained to my desk, and nobody in the office has access to a pair of bolt cutters.
Trust me, the kids of the 90s didn't invent that type of person. They just gave them their own name. You'll find people like that in every generation. What else do you think bobby-soxers or teenyboppers were?