I've been a musician for about 13 years now, a composer for 6, and a music snob for many years beyond that, and I can safely say that I think they have succeeded at failing to create a lasting startup sound.
For the era, The windows 95 startup sound was good - especially in stereo. While it was somewhat obtrusive, I think it was the best out of all the startup sounds MS has bundled with a Windows OS.
The 4 note progression, if trying to follow the syllables of "Win-dows Vis-ta", should (disclaimer: in my opinion, mind you), be quite different. The ascension progression should (disclaimer: more opinion) hang on the last note (Think "I want my M-T-Veeeeeeeeeeeeee"). Just dropping the progression and sinking into the background chords in the manner they have chosen rubs me the wrong way.
Now, if they had chosen a progression that doesn't continue to ascend, such as the tradmark NBC sound, I think they would have it. When that "C" is struck, it creates a musical sense of relief and completion (disclaimer: my brain says so).
The ascension feels like it is choking, to me. Almost like the way a person would ask a short question - "Windows Vista?"
Oh well. I disable all startup sounds on computers anyway, as they take up RAM, and tend to not blend with whatever music I'm listening to at the time.:)
I work for a somewhat small newspaper with a few windows machines (most of our boxes are Macs) - there is NO WAY we could afford to upgrade all our Windows machines with Vista AND get the latest office at the same time. I'm guessing that most small-to-medium sized shops are going to be the same - Especially given the huge hardware requirements for Vista.
Give us a cheap pro version of Vista, OEM (XP Pro OEM is only around 130 bucks), and we might consider it. Otherwise, no thanks. Too costly.
I tried it out in a store once. I am a classical guitar player, and have been a musician for over 13 years now. Picked the thing up, and discovered that I sucked:P
There aren't too many similarities to actually playing guitar, though. I'm used to working with scale patterns spanning the entire fretboard, using techniques such as sweep picking, finger picking, etc. Kinda hard to do that with the few buttons the thing has plus a switch/lever/whatever it is for picking:)
I myself am an independent composer/musician, and occasionally do soundtrack work for game mods (plus a brief stint on a commercial game doomed from the start). That alone has been enough to really boost the popularity of my music - My TES IV: Industrial Oblivion soundtrack project has really pushed the bandwidth of my hosting plan for my music sites (link withheld for bandwidth reasons:P). I have also received requests to go play live more often now that I started producing it - and heck, the music isn't even that good!
So, uh.. Does it actually do anything interesting besides rot?
Case mods are cool and all, but I'd want something with a little more "cool" factor with an organic (and potentially hardware-damaging) case. Maybe put it on a controlled rotating platform so you can watch people? Or remotely connect to it and have it speak to unwary guests?
Honestly, I think we all let ourselves get too comfortable. While I was in in my last year of college, I found people were completely unwilling to give up comforts such as pop music, television, movies, or anything, to support a cause. I was blown away. Boycotting, protesting, and the like take too much effort, it seems. For instance, I had friends who agreed with me that the RIAA's stranglehold on the music industry was killing it, but none were willing to stop buying CDs, because they couldn't live without their (in my opinion, crappy) music.
At best, you may find a few vegetarians now. The younger generation's involvement in politics only goes as far as making fun of the Bush administration (without knowing the details of why they are making fun of it).
Active participation is dead if it doesn't seem to have a direct effect on the individual. Apathy and lack of interest are king today.
The whole CSS and standards response felt like one big runaround to me.
I'm a professional web designer + developer, and my biggest problem isn't debugging my PHP, or wondering if the users will appreciate the effort I put into the accessibility of a clients' site - It's wondering if IE will even work when I build the first draft of the page templates. I know well in advance that I'm going to have to AT LEAST specify a second stylesheet just for IE, and sometimes, even more than that.
The jab at other browsers about not being 100% compliant either isn't the issue - the issue is that IE 7 isn't even close to the other major browsers.
Real-world feedback? Who did you listen to, the 14 year old who is trying to pimp out his MySpace? I'm sorry, but that line feels like complete BS to me. I participate in NUMEROUS web development communities, and those of us who have been in the industry for a while all have the same mantra - "IE sucks." It didn't change with the release of IE7, and I don't see it changing much even by IE 9 or 10, if you keep up that attitude.
Or, perhaps the real world feedback you speak of is the apathy that started forming a year or so ago regarding IE's standards compliance. We (web designers/developers) know that we have to work to fix it, and it has become commonplace. Many of us have accepted that you (the MS IE dev team) will not be fixing it any time soon, so we just plain don't care.
My first thought when I heard that a new IE was coming out wasn't, "I wonder what cool new features they'll have" - it was "I wonder if they'll make the rendering engine any worse."
I can't stand IE. Any chance I get, I convert people to alternative browsers. Thank Jesus I'm also a local techie; Every time someone brings me a spyware infested machine (no, I'm not intending to jab at MS for that; it's a well debated topic as is), I wipe it, reload it, slap new browsers on it, and give the users instructions on why they should check them out. Sometimes I even walk them through the other browsers in person. The only time I tell them they should use IE is when a site requires it.
And, since many of my support callers are on dialup, they love the fact that a standards compliant site will typically load faster for them (if done correctly).
They aren't even planning on reaching 60% compliance any time soon - and who knows what new rendering problems will be discovered over the course of a few weeks after developers start playing with IE7's updated rendering engine.
The damage was done a long time ago, and any chance of making life easier for developers any time soon is pretty slim. Most web developers/designers I know don't even come close to adhering to web standards - mainly because they don't want to make any effort to fix things in IE. MS and the IE team knows this - I'm willing to wager a small sum that they aren't too interested in making things right for us (web) developers.
Reminds me of the classic Ballmer developer speech - Sometimes I wonder if he says "except for web developers" under his breath after his initial energetic vocal ejaculation.
I myself am a wine drinker, but I have never sat and had a glass of wine with a coworker. I do socialize a fair amount with my coworkers while at work, and some of us go out to lunch as a group, but no alcohol is served (mainly because it is against policy).
Then again, I work in advertising (I'm a graphic artist/web developer). I hang out with sales people a fair amount, and we all know sales people tend to be a bit off the statistical rocker..:P
I always thought Star Trek would make a great MMO - why? When the ensign dies, he can respawn and nobody will question it, because nobody cares about poor little ensign Ricky.
If my buttons are too small, then they can use the alt tags and bump up the font size. Or, they can use Opera (which will enlarge the buttons, as well as text, when zooming).
I've been making a huge push for standards compliance - and it looks like those of us who still fight for it might finally have their voices heard. I just finished up a design contract for a hospital, recently - one where their current (soon to be old) website was all but easily usable by the blind.
For those of you who think that the blind don't surf, they do; Do you think TTS readers are just so you can make your computer say naughty words? There are numerous blind users on the web.
While transitioning from crap to standards compliance is a pain in the butt to do, once you are there, it is usually smooth sailing (assuming you have an experienced designer do the site). I can't even begin to imagine what it would be like to manage some of my current web projects while using tables for layout, and whatnot.
Now, if only IE would catch up on the standards game..
I've been put under some pretty inane password policies in my (limited) years on this planet. Names in reverse, 1337-variations on password, numerical addendums to dictionary words, just plain dictonary words ("nochance" was popular at one place I frequented).. Oh, and I heard from a friend who worked at Radioshack that most of the important passwords were something very, very, VERY easy. I'll leave you to figure it out.
You know what I have been recommending recently as a password policy? Fake inventory ID tags. Put a fake inventory ID tag on each device (keyboard, mouse, monitor, tower), with a portion of the ID on one of the items at each station being the actual password. Set a login attempt limiter, which will discourage trial and error. Not only do you need physical access, you need to know the general policy to discover the password from the "inventory tags". Heck, it could just be 8 letters out of a 24-character alphanumeric. Too bad it got shot down for something "simpler" the last place I suggested it to.. ugh.
If you can convince them to, have them sign printed copies of you explaining exactly what they are passing up on. Could be a potential "Fire Me", though, so get another job lined up.
I know exactly how you feel. I'm not the sys/net admin at my workplace, but I always chime in with advise, since I'm the only other person there with a degree in computers, and I've been studying computer and network security for a number of years now (my official title is graphic artist/web developer). Most of my security related advise just gets brushed off as paranoia - the classic "We are such and such, why would anybody want to compromise us?" - I try to explain that it isn't always people intentionally targeting specific organizations, but they don't care. When discussing pricing and the deadline for a large scale project with my boss, I mentioned I'd need plenty of time for security auditing, and might bring in some out of house help for pen testing. They stopped me mid sentence and said - "Is this what real people consider good security practices, or YOUR paranoia?" - Feh. I bit my tongue at that point, but I wanted to scream. These people aren't used to having to care - heck, having to use any sort of password is too much for most of them. I'm just waiting for the day we get a network intruder, and have thousands upon thousands of clients information in the wrong hands.
It's a good thing I'm valuable to my workplace, otherwise they'd probably fire me because of my belligerant attitude towards their apathy for security.
I'm sorry, but I don't see much in the way of commercial application for this thing - we know standard wireless networking encryption isn't secure. We know it can be cracked, and it can be cracked with just 2 cheap laptops to capture the data. There isn't much more of a need for proof-of-concept anymore.
I prefer skills because I love to micromanage and create out-of-this-world combinations; Take Asheron's Call, for example. Any players of that game will probably remember the extreme templates, where they would create a character with maxed stats for their primary skills, and have minimum endurance/everything else. Starting out was rough, but when you got to later levels in the game, it worked out fine.
Of course, I also played ADnD (3rd ed), and Shadowrun (2nd & 3rd). ADnD was my favorite; It's class based system worked because of multiclassing, and supplemental material (Eldrich Warriors were just too cool). Most games based on the ADnD ruleset neglected to include any sort of supplemental material, and just relied on the mage/warrior/rogue/ranger/priest/paladin/sorcerer basics. Feh. Not enough. Not enough "cool" factor. Where are my blood mages? My eldrich warriors? I want to micromanage. I want to plan out a character class that is going to be wildly unique.
I just use an SSH-based SOCKS proxy for my secure wireless surfing needs. I've got a Linksys router set up back at home that I loaded with Linux.
You can read a guide I wrote a while back on how to do this here. FF, Thunderbird, and GAIM all support SOCKS proxies, so it works out great for me. Only problem is your DNS traffic goes out unencrypted, but that isn't necessarily a big deal, unless you are visiting something along the lines of www.penisland.net.
Start a blog. Link to it from/. (just post a comment). Get worldwide exposure. Post the IP address and whatever information you can find on the user (without resorting to illegal means). Get people interested in your cause, and get your local paper to publish something. It may piss the police off, but they'll actually do something by then, hopefully.
I try to please them as much as I can without giving them oral. If that doesn't work, then I point them to a piece I did just recently, explicating how they make me feel.
Seriously though, sometimes you just have to guage how much you value that customer. I work in the newspaper industry (art, advertising, and new media), and when a print product doesn't come out like they wanted, we'll determine if it's our fault or theirs. Usually, we'll give them a free run in the paper, sometimes even if it is their fault (for instance, not catching something in the proof we sent them). If the customer becomes belligerent, or refuses to pay their bill, we cut them off and tell them to find another place to advertise until they grow up. Mistakes happen in any industry - while it does suck, we can only compensate a customer so much.
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I've been a musician for about 13 years now, a composer for 6, and a music snob for many years beyond that, and I can safely say that I think they have succeeded at failing to create a lasting startup sound.
For the era, The windows 95 startup sound was good - especially in stereo. While it was somewhat obtrusive, I think it was the best out of all the startup sounds MS has bundled with a Windows OS.
The 4 note progression, if trying to follow the syllables of "Win-dows Vis-ta", should (disclaimer: in my opinion, mind you), be quite different. The ascension progression should (disclaimer: more opinion) hang on the last note (Think "I want my M-T-Veeeeeeeeeeeeee"). Just dropping the progression and sinking into the background chords in the manner they have chosen rubs me the wrong way.
Now, if they had chosen a progression that doesn't continue to ascend, such as the tradmark NBC sound, I think they would have it. When that "C" is struck, it creates a musical sense of relief and completion (disclaimer: my brain says so).
The ascension feels like it is choking, to me. Almost like the way a person would ask a short question - "Windows Vista?"
Oh well. I disable all startup sounds on computers anyway, as they take up RAM, and tend to not blend with whatever music I'm listening to at the time. :)
I work for a somewhat small newspaper with a few windows machines (most of our boxes are Macs) - there is NO WAY we could afford to upgrade all our Windows machines with Vista AND get the latest office at the same time. I'm guessing that most small-to-medium sized shops are going to be the same - Especially given the huge hardware requirements for Vista.
Give us a cheap pro version of Vista, OEM (XP Pro OEM is only around 130 bucks), and we might consider it. Otherwise, no thanks. Too costly.
I tried it out in a store once. I am a classical guitar player, and have been a musician for over 13 years now. Picked the thing up, and discovered that I sucked :P
There aren't too many similarities to actually playing guitar, though. I'm used to working with scale patterns spanning the entire fretboard, using techniques such as sweep picking, finger picking, etc. Kinda hard to do that with the few buttons the thing has plus a switch/lever/whatever it is for picking :)
I myself am an independent composer/musician, and occasionally do soundtrack work for game mods (plus a brief stint on a commercial game doomed from the start). That alone has been enough to really boost the popularity of my music - My TES IV: Industrial Oblivion soundtrack project has really pushed the bandwidth of my hosting plan for my music sites (link withheld for bandwidth reasons :P). I have also received requests to go play live more often now that I started producing it - and heck, the music isn't even that good!
So, uh.. Does it actually do anything interesting besides rot?
Case mods are cool and all, but I'd want something with a little more "cool" factor with an organic (and potentially hardware-damaging) case. Maybe put it on a controlled rotating platform so you can watch people? Or remotely connect to it and have it speak to unwary guests?
/. Comment System: -===>
You: O
>-<
|
/ \
Honestly, I think we all let ourselves get too comfortable. While I was in in my last year of college, I found people were completely unwilling to give up comforts such as pop music, television, movies, or anything, to support a cause. I was blown away. Boycotting, protesting, and the like take too much effort, it seems. For instance, I had friends who agreed with me that the RIAA's stranglehold on the music industry was killing it, but none were willing to stop buying CDs, because they couldn't live without their (in my opinion, crappy) music.
At best, you may find a few vegetarians now. The younger generation's involvement in politics only goes as far as making fun of the Bush administration (without knowing the details of why they are making fun of it).
Active participation is dead if it doesn't seem to have a direct effect on the individual. Apathy and lack of interest are king today.
The whole CSS and standards response felt like one big runaround to me.
I'm a professional web designer + developer, and my biggest problem isn't debugging my PHP, or wondering if the users will appreciate the effort I put into the accessibility of a clients' site - It's wondering if IE will even work when I build the first draft of the page templates. I know well in advance that I'm going to have to AT LEAST specify a second stylesheet just for IE, and sometimes, even more than that.
The jab at other browsers about not being 100% compliant either isn't the issue - the issue is that IE 7 isn't even close to the other major browsers.
Real-world feedback? Who did you listen to, the 14 year old who is trying to pimp out his MySpace? I'm sorry, but that line feels like complete BS to me. I participate in NUMEROUS web development communities, and those of us who have been in the industry for a while all have the same mantra - "IE sucks." It didn't change with the release of IE7, and I don't see it changing much even by IE 9 or 10, if you keep up that attitude.
Or, perhaps the real world feedback you speak of is the apathy that started forming a year or so ago regarding IE's standards compliance. We (web designers/developers) know that we have to work to fix it, and it has become commonplace. Many of us have accepted that you (the MS IE dev team) will not be fixing it any time soon, so we just plain don't care.
My first thought when I heard that a new IE was coming out wasn't, "I wonder what cool new features they'll have" - it was "I wonder if they'll make the rendering engine any worse."
I can't stand IE. Any chance I get, I convert people to alternative browsers. Thank Jesus I'm also a local techie; Every time someone brings me a spyware infested machine (no, I'm not intending to jab at MS for that; it's a well debated topic as is), I wipe it, reload it, slap new browsers on it, and give the users instructions on why they should check them out. Sometimes I even walk them through the other browsers in person. The only time I tell them they should use IE is when a site requires it.
And, since many of my support callers are on dialup, they love the fact that a standards compliant site will typically load faster for them (if done correctly).
As a web developer, I have to say.. "Uhh, no."
They aren't even planning on reaching 60% compliance any time soon - and who knows what new rendering problems will be discovered over the course of a few weeks after developers start playing with IE7's updated rendering engine.
The damage was done a long time ago, and any chance of making life easier for developers any time soon is pretty slim. Most web developers/designers I know don't even come close to adhering to web standards - mainly because they don't want to make any effort to fix things in IE. MS and the IE team knows this - I'm willing to wager a small sum that they aren't too interested in making things right for us (web) developers.
Reminds me of the classic Ballmer developer speech - Sometimes I wonder if he says "except for web developers" under his breath after his initial energetic vocal ejaculation.
I wonder how easy the transition will be for them to leave Linux behind in favor of a sun powered setup.
Oh yes. I went there.
I myself am a wine drinker, but I have never sat and had a glass of wine with a coworker. I do socialize a fair amount with my coworkers while at work, and some of us go out to lunch as a group, but no alcohol is served (mainly because it is against policy).
Then again, I work in advertising (I'm a graphic artist/web developer). I hang out with sales people a fair amount, and we all know sales people tend to be a bit off the statistical rocker.. :P
Here come the Slashdot Spelling and Grammar Police..
"I am there to even things out. Halo 2 is beginning to get old, us modders are just making it more funner."
I always thought Star Trek would make a great MMO - why? When the ensign dies, he can respawn and nobody will question it, because nobody cares about poor little ensign Ricky.
... KHAAAAAAAN!
If my buttons are too small, then they can use the alt tags and bump up the font size. Or, they can use Opera (which will enlarge the buttons, as well as text, when zooming).
I've been making a huge push for standards compliance - and it looks like those of us who still fight for it might finally have their voices heard. I just finished up a design contract for a hospital, recently - one where their current (soon to be old) website was all but easily usable by the blind.
For those of you who think that the blind don't surf, they do; Do you think TTS readers are just so you can make your computer say naughty words? There are numerous blind users on the web.
While transitioning from crap to standards compliance is a pain in the butt to do, once you are there, it is usually smooth sailing (assuming you have an experienced designer do the site). I can't even begin to imagine what it would be like to manage some of my current web projects while using tables for layout, and whatnot.
Now, if only IE would catch up on the standards game..
I've been put under some pretty inane password policies in my (limited) years on this planet. Names in reverse, 1337-variations on password, numerical addendums to dictionary words, just plain dictonary words ("nochance" was popular at one place I frequented).. Oh, and I heard from a friend who worked at Radioshack that most of the important passwords were something very, very, VERY easy. I'll leave you to figure it out.
You know what I have been recommending recently as a password policy? Fake inventory ID tags. Put a fake inventory ID tag on each device (keyboard, mouse, monitor, tower), with a portion of the ID on one of the items at each station being the actual password. Set a login attempt limiter, which will discourage trial and error. Not only do you need physical access, you need to know the general policy to discover the password from the "inventory tags". Heck, it could just be 8 letters out of a 24-character alphanumeric. Too bad it got shot down for something "simpler" the last place I suggested it to.. ugh.
HTMLKit has a lot of great options for developers, and a good plugin system.
If you can convince them to, have them sign printed copies of you explaining exactly what they are passing up on. Could be a potential "Fire Me", though, so get another job lined up.
I know exactly how you feel. I'm not the sys/net admin at my workplace, but I always chime in with advise, since I'm the only other person there with a degree in computers, and I've been studying computer and network security for a number of years now (my official title is graphic artist/web developer). Most of my security related advise just gets brushed off as paranoia - the classic "We are such and such, why would anybody want to compromise us?" - I try to explain that it isn't always people intentionally targeting specific organizations, but they don't care. When discussing pricing and the deadline for a large scale project with my boss, I mentioned I'd need plenty of time for security auditing, and might bring in some out of house help for pen testing. They stopped me mid sentence and said - "Is this what real people consider good security practices, or YOUR paranoia?" - Feh. I bit my tongue at that point, but I wanted to scream. These people aren't used to having to care - heck, having to use any sort of password is too much for most of them. I'm just waiting for the day we get a network intruder, and have thousands upon thousands of clients information in the wrong hands.
It's a good thing I'm valuable to my workplace, otherwise they'd probably fire me because of my belligerant attitude towards their apathy for security.
Technically, no, but it is much more efficient (in my experience) to use two.
I'm sorry, but I don't see much in the way of commercial application for this thing - we know standard wireless networking encryption isn't secure. We know it can be cracked, and it can be cracked with just 2 cheap laptops to capture the data. There isn't much more of a need for proof-of-concept anymore.
"Windows Vista: Cramming junk into your RAM like you crammed yourself and 10 friends into a VW beetle."
I prefer skills because I love to micromanage and create out-of-this-world combinations; Take Asheron's Call, for example. Any players of that game will probably remember the extreme templates, where they would create a character with maxed stats for their primary skills, and have minimum endurance/everything else. Starting out was rough, but when you got to later levels in the game, it worked out fine.
Of course, I also played ADnD (3rd ed), and Shadowrun (2nd & 3rd). ADnD was my favorite; It's class based system worked because of multiclassing, and supplemental material (Eldrich Warriors were just too cool). Most games based on the ADnD ruleset neglected to include any sort of supplemental material, and just relied on the mage/warrior/rogue/ranger/priest/paladin/sorcerer basics. Feh. Not enough. Not enough "cool" factor. Where are my blood mages? My eldrich warriors? I want to micromanage. I want to plan out a character class that is going to be wildly unique.
I just use an SSH-based SOCKS proxy for my secure wireless surfing needs. I've got a Linksys router set up back at home that I loaded with Linux.
You can read a guide I wrote a while back on how to do this here. FF, Thunderbird, and GAIM all support SOCKS proxies, so it works out great for me. Only problem is your DNS traffic goes out unencrypted, but that isn't necessarily a big deal, unless you are visiting something along the lines of www.penisland.net.
Start a blog. Link to it from /. (just post a comment). Get worldwide exposure. Post the IP address and whatever information you can find on the user (without resorting to illegal means). Get people interested in your cause, and get your local paper to publish something. It may piss the police off, but they'll actually do something by then, hopefully.
I try to please them as much as I can without giving them oral. If that doesn't work, then I point them to a piece I did just recently, explicating how they make me feel.
Seriously though, sometimes you just have to guage how much you value that customer. I work in the newspaper industry (art, advertising, and new media), and when a print product doesn't come out like they wanted, we'll determine if it's our fault or theirs. Usually, we'll give them a free run in the paper, sometimes even if it is their fault (for instance, not catching something in the proof we sent them). If the customer becomes belligerent, or refuses to pay their bill, we cut them off and tell them to find another place to advertise until they grow up. Mistakes happen in any industry - while it does suck, we can only compensate a customer so much.