I find it hard to believe that our gov't...can't get their shit together enough to start arresting people for the avalanche of fraud online.
They've started:
The Federal Trade Commission has filed suit against Sanford Wallace, and U.S. District Court Judge Joseph DiClerico Jr. granted a temporary restraining order - ruling that Wallace and his businesses must refrain from exploiting Internet security vulnerabilities.
Yeah - I've always wondered about things like this. In a company as large as Microsoft, they must have *many* security experts, in turn with many different views. I imagine they have a lot of infighting when decisions like this are made.
Ben Smith has had the same kind of problems with buy-in at Microsoft that you'd expect at any very large company. As with Windows, Office, IE code, etc. - just because they have some of the best security experts in the world working there doesn't mean that all of their recommendations are actually implemented.
And, conversely, just because Ben works for Microsoft doesn't mean he isn't a brilliant security researcher.
Honestly we have had to reboot our NT systems once a month just so they don't get flakey
Then the people maintaining them are incompetent. They need to get some training, do some reasearch, and determine the root cause of the instability.
If they have no time or budget because upper management is incompetent, then they have my sympathy.
A properly configured and maintained NT system can be as stable as any other NOS. I have run NT systems with no unscheduled downtime for years.
CAVEAT: If you're really talking about NT systems, they're rapidly approaching end of Extended Support, which means you could be bent over if another worm exploits an undiscovered vulnerability. You should have a migration strategy in place, and be in the process of implementing it.
Personally, the older I get, the less crap I want to carry around with me - much less on me. I stopped wearing a watch years ago. One really good, small PDA/cell phone is all I want or need - and I don't want to have to work to dig the thing out from some hidden pocket.
The folks at the CTD filed a complaint [warning: PDF] with the FTC that explains pretty clearly how the crapware can be installed without explicit user approval, and how difficult it is to remove.
Unlike viruses, the user has to actually install them (though that may involve just clicking "yes" in IE)
They might not even have to click 'yes.' If they're not fully patched, someone can sent them a 'cute' e-greeting card which hijacks their home page, and the hijacked page can start installing all kinds of mayhem. No explicit approval by the user is necessary. I recently cleaned up a machine that had been compromised in just that way. Don't Click That!
I've been pleasantly surprised by how well McAfee's consumer software works at keeping crapware off of the machines I've seen using it.
And Trend's PC-Cillin 2005 is in beta test until September 30th - you might still be able to participate.
Sorry , but you can't have the whole planet in winter.
You could if there was no tilt to its axis of rotation relative to its orbital plane.
Mars, though, tilts about the same as Earth - 25 degrees or so. But its orbital eccentricity has a 19% variance, versus Earth's 2%. The 'Southern Winter' is much longer and colder than the 'Northern Winter,' and the whole planet is colder. The Martian Southern hemisphere experiences much greater temperature variance than any point on Earth.
I was with you until the last paragraph. Peoplesoft?!
Peoplesoft is a fantastically expensive, inflexible, convoluted and hated piece of crap at every company where I've seen it deployed - including at least one where they spent $millions and more than a year on a failed deployment before scrapping the whole thing. Sure, it scales - so you can have 100,000 users on your b0rken system.
But it's free, resource-light, does what it's supposed to do, doesn't do anything else, and it goes away when you tell it to. Not bad for a Windows program, eh?
Yes, I know if you don't use Windows you don't need it in the first place.
Re:It's not just the shady companies
on
The Spyware Inferno
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
...TSRs only leave a piece of themselves in memory...
Aaaand as you probably know, TSRs are real-mode DOS giblets that wouldn't run under NT and NT-derived Windows in any case.
Thus the amusement. But we knew what he meant, no need to beat him up, eh?
Re:It's not just the shady companies
on
The Spyware Inferno
·
· Score: 5, Informative
I had to grin when you referred to the tray programs as TSRs. You've been doing this awhile, eh?
One little utility I find helpful is Mike Lin's StartupMonitor. It hollers at you whenever something (AIM, Real, Quicktime, etc.) attempts to register an executable to run at startup, and allows you to approve (or more to the point, deny) the attempt. Useful and educational!
Ah, thank you for missing the main point of my post. My aim was to simply discuss the single-menu Macintosh interface and Microsofts MDI.
Umm, I was discussing the single-menu Macintosh interface. You made a guess as to why Apple did it that way, concluded that it was no longer necessary, and implied that it only persists because some people like the "style."
I posted a link to an article which includes the reason why Apple did it that way, and why it's arguably and measurably superior to the way Windows does it - even with the MDI - written by the original lead Mac UI designer and researcher. Your "NSHO" is wrong, and I'm telling you why, and pointing you towards a resource which might just teach you something useful.
Instead you seemed to have reacted to my little $0.02 comment at the end and have even quoted parts of my post out of context.
Nope, the first half of my post would have been identical even without your "little $0.02 comment at the end."
And as for "out of context," the bulk of your reply was a rant on something you yourself admit that I didn't even say! Guess what - I agree with your rant about "intuitive" interfaces!
The irony here is that your ownintuition sucks. Apple didn't make their UI design decision for the reason you think they did; and I didn't say anything about, imply, or even glance in the direction of "intuitive" interfaces. Did you follow the link and read it? You should. Fitt's law is about speed. "Intuitive" is irrelevant.
But since you brought it up (really!), just because you can make a case that there's no such thing as an "intuitive" interface does not imply that a UI doesn't need to be logical. Tools for similar functions and tasks should be grouped together. Something I use all the time shouldn't be buried three dialog boxes deep. Those sorts of things appear to be consistent criticisms of The Gimp.
Can people be a little more constructive and descriptive in their criticisms of The Gimp?
Just so we're straight on this, I defy you to show me where I've criticized The Gimp - in this thread or in any other post anywhere. I was criticizing you.
If you demonstrate your ignorance of well-known UI principles in a thread where people are criticizing an application for having a deficient UI, and then go on to claim credit as a programmer for that application, you need to be a little less thin-skinned when reading a reply which is intended to help enlighten you.
Unfortunately, it is clear that you must have taken my Kudos comment as sarcasm, which is regrettable, because I was entirely sincere. I respect and appreciate the contributions made by people like you. But I don't believe that the fact that you're contributing work for free means that you are above criticism. It certainly doesn't work that way for any of the volunteer efforts I'm involved in.
I've never used The Gimp. I did use Photoshop on a daily basis starting from version 1.0 up until a couple of years ago, but that's not really relevant. What is relevant is that I use Open Source software on a daily basis that is as good as or superior to highly priced commercial applications, both in performance and feature sets. So it demonstrably can be done. But the the areas where Open Source software is consistently deficient are
in the UI - because most programmers have no UI design training, and/or don't think it's important, and because many of these projects begin as something that the programmers wrote for themselves. Naturally, it makes sense to them. To the larger audience, "intuitive" means "works like something I already know," exactly as you say. Certainly, ignore convention if you wish, or especially if you think you have a better idea, but don't be surprised when the great unwashed masses slam your "confusing" interface.
the documentation - most programmers are not writers, and even if they can wri
The fact that you teach design is clear to me, as you don't know the first thing about production. I have lost track of the die cuts I have made with Illustrator. You can make die cuts with fucking Quark if you need to. Man, I would hate to be one of your students.
Preach it, brother! I could always tell when our design studio clients got a new intern from our local design school, because they'd start sending beautiful-looking files that couldn't image properly on any imagesetter, were constructed as though a concious effort had been made to impair and obstruct any attempts to fix or even revise them, and would be impossible to reproduce using four-color offset printing even if you did finally coax the artwork onto film. Save me from "teachers" like that!
Um, because my output device is a printing press?!
Gawd!
"Hi! I don't know jack squat about $profession or $industry, but I really like $openSourceTool that I occasionally use to do $diddly-crap, and so it's obviously better than $matureIndustryStandard for $revenue-generatingBusinessProcess.
I think this style of screen layout is less justified. It's a style and some people like it, yes. There's just less of a reason to do things that way.
The reason to put the menu bar at the top of the screen hasn't changed. It's based on solid research, and a little principle called Fitt's Law.
...my name's (still) in The Gimp credits.
And a hefty helping of Kudos to you for contributing your time and skills to freeasinbeerandfreedom software, but if you think good interface design is "...a style and some people like it, yes - then you're part of the problem. The user interface matters and too many programmers - Open Source and commercial - treat it as though it's just a matter of personal preference, or worse, as though it doesn't matter at all. And I'm not just talking about GUIs.
I managed a graphic design shop for a couple of years, and my formally-trained graphic artists using Illustrator couldn't even begin to keep up with this self-taught geek using Corel Draw.
That says a lot more about the quality of your artists and or work, or lack thereof, than it does about any software tool.
I get the impression that your "graphic design shop" was more along the lines of a Kwik Kopy than a design studio. Or your artists just weren't that good. A decent technician will run circles around your average artist if all they're doing is layouts or applying color correction, but if your tech is doing better illustrations than your artists, you should fire your artists.
Just about every feature that Illustrator crows about when they first add it has already been in Draw for at least two years. Draw's print setups and dialogs *completely* blow Illustrator out of the water. Complex layouts can be done in seconds.
Oh, you MUST be trolling. Corel Draw sucks major ass, and it has for a long damned time. It has written exeptionally shitty PostScript from day one, and it used to choke the hell out of my imagesetters back when I ran a service bureau. Oooh, but look! It comes with a kajillion semi-professional clip-art images and some poorly kerned fonts! Bonus!
Complex layouts can be done in seconds.
Then they're not really complex, are they? If you're doing layout in Illustrator, you're using the wrong tool. Illustrator is for, um, illustrations.
As for Photoshop, yeah, it's OK, but Corel's PhotoPaint is its equal.
You really want to pump ion-laden air through the guts of your computer? I'm thinking your delicate CMOS-based computer doodads won't like that very much.
What I find more ironic is that this is coming up in the context of Free Software advocacy. Shucks, people freely share code that they spent hundreds of hours of their time on.... how about some artists doing the same?
Umm... the artist in question did exactly that. These images are free for non-commercial usage (Creative Commons License.) The artist requires permission for non-commercial useage - if you're using his work to make a buck, you should share part of that buck.
Slashdot Mirror
They've started: The Federal Trade Commission has filed suit against Sanford Wallace, and U.S. District Court Judge Joseph DiClerico Jr. granted a temporary restraining order - ruling that Wallace and his businesses must refrain from exploiting Internet security vulnerabilities.
Ben Smith has had the same kind of problems with buy-in at Microsoft that you'd expect at any very large company. As with Windows, Office, IE code, etc. - just because they have some of the best security experts in the world working there doesn't mean that all of their recommendations are actually implemented.
And, conversely, just because Ben works for Microsoft doesn't mean he isn't a brilliant security researcher.
Then the people maintaining them are incompetent. They need to get some training, do some reasearch, and determine the root cause of the instability.
If they have no time or budget because upper management is incompetent, then they have my sympathy.
A properly configured and maintained NT system can be as stable as any other NOS. I have run NT systems with no unscheduled downtime for years.
CAVEAT: If you're really talking about NT systems, they're rapidly approaching end of Extended Support, which means you could be bent over if another worm exploits an undiscovered vulnerability. You should have a migration strategy in place, and be in the process of implementing it.
It's not clear whether you're being sarcastic or not, because (depending on which blades you have in the Catalyst) you might be right.
Personally, the older I get, the less crap I want to carry around with me - much less on me. I stopped wearing a watch years ago. One really good, small PDA/cell phone is all I want or need - and I don't want to have to work to dig the thing out from some hidden pocket.
After having researched a spyware infection recently, I disagree.
The folks at the CTD filed a complaint [warning: PDF] with the FTC that explains pretty clearly how the crapware can be installed without explicit user approval, and how difficult it is to remove.
And Tom Liston might make a nice expert witness: Follow the Bouncing Malware
They might not even have to click 'yes.' If they're not fully patched, someone can sent them a 'cute' e-greeting card which hijacks their home page, and the hijacked page can start installing all kinds of mayhem. No explicit approval by the user is necessary. I recently cleaned up a machine that had been compromised in just that way. Don't Click That!
I've been pleasantly surprised by how well McAfee's consumer software works at keeping crapware off of the machines I've seen using it.
And Trend's PC-Cillin 2005 is in beta test until September 30th - you might still be able to participate.
You are George Lucas' bitch.
You could if there was no tilt to its axis of rotation relative to its orbital plane.
Mars, though, tilts about the same as Earth - 25 degrees or so. But its orbital eccentricity has a 19% variance, versus Earth's 2%. The 'Southern Winter' is much longer and colder than the 'Northern Winter,' and the whole planet is colder. The Martian Southern hemisphere experiences much greater temperature variance than any point on Earth.
Seasons on Mars
Which would be, um, today.
Peoplesoft is a fantastically expensive, inflexible, convoluted and hated piece of crap at every company where I've seen it deployed - including at least one where they spent $millions and more than a year on a failed deployment before scrapping the whole thing. Sure, it scales - so you can have 100,000 users on your b0rken system.
I wouldn't use it as my standard of comparison.
But it's free, resource-light, does what it's supposed to do, doesn't do anything else, and it goes away when you tell it to. Not bad for a Windows program, eh?
Yes, I know if you don't use Windows you don't need it in the first place.
Aaaand as you probably know, TSRs are real-mode DOS giblets that wouldn't run under NT and NT-derived Windows in any case.
Thus the amusement. But we knew what he meant, no need to beat him up, eh?
One little utility I find helpful is Mike Lin's StartupMonitor. It hollers at you whenever something (AIM, Real, Quicktime, etc.) attempts to register an executable to run at startup, and allows you to approve (or more to the point, deny) the attempt. Useful and educational!
It's a bit disingenuous to say, "The Register is reporting..." and "Groklaw also has the story," when in fact Groklaw had the scoop on Monday.
Andrew S. Tanenbaum, Computer Networks, 2nd ed, p.254
One of my favorite quotes as well, and applicable to so many things.
Umm, I was discussing the single-menu Macintosh interface. You made a guess as to why Apple did it that way, concluded that it was no longer necessary, and implied that it only persists because some people like the "style."
I posted a link to an article which includes the reason why Apple did it that way, and why it's arguably and measurably superior to the way Windows does it - even with the MDI - written by the original lead Mac UI designer and researcher. Your "NSHO" is wrong, and I'm telling you why, and pointing you towards a resource which might just teach you something useful.
Instead you seemed to have reacted to my little $0.02 comment at the end and have even quoted parts of my post out of context.
Nope, the first half of my post would have been identical even without your "little $0.02 comment at the end." And as for "out of context," the bulk of your reply was a rant on something you yourself admit that I didn't even say! Guess what - I agree with your rant about "intuitive" interfaces!
The irony here is that your own intuition sucks. Apple didn't make their UI design decision for the reason you think they did; and I didn't say anything about, imply, or even glance in the direction of "intuitive" interfaces. Did you follow the link and read it? You should. Fitt's law is about speed. "Intuitive" is irrelevant.
But since you brought it up (really!), just because you can make a case that there's no such thing as an "intuitive" interface does not imply that a UI doesn't need to be logical. Tools for similar functions and tasks should be grouped together. Something I use all the time shouldn't be buried three dialog boxes deep. Those sorts of things appear to be consistent criticisms of The Gimp.
Can people be a little more constructive and descriptive in their criticisms of The Gimp?
Just so we're straight on this, I defy you to show me where I've criticized The Gimp - in this thread or in any other post anywhere. I was criticizing you.
If you demonstrate your ignorance of well-known UI principles in a thread where people are criticizing an application for having a deficient UI, and then go on to claim credit as a programmer for that application, you need to be a little less thin-skinned when reading a reply which is intended to help enlighten you.
Unfortunately, it is clear that you must have taken my Kudos comment as sarcasm, which is regrettable, because I was entirely sincere. I respect and appreciate the contributions made by people like you. But I don't believe that the fact that you're contributing work for free means that you are above criticism. It certainly doesn't work that way for any of the volunteer efforts I'm involved in.
I've never used The Gimp. I did use Photoshop on a daily basis starting from version 1.0 up until a couple of years ago, but that's not really relevant. What is relevant is that I use Open Source software on a daily basis that is as good as or superior to highly priced commercial applications, both in performance and feature sets. So it demonstrably can be done. But the the areas where Open Source software is consistently deficient are
in the UI - because most programmers have no UI design training, and/or don't think it's important, and because many of these projects begin as something that the programmers wrote for themselves. Naturally, it makes sense to them. To the larger audience, "intuitive" means "works like something I already know," exactly as you say. Certainly, ignore convention if you wish, or especially if you think you have a better idea, but don't be surprised when the great unwashed masses slam your "confusing" interface.
the documentation - most programmers are not writers, and even if they can wri
Preach it, brother! I could always tell when our design studio clients got a new intern from our local design school, because they'd start sending beautiful-looking files that couldn't image properly on any imagesetter, were constructed as though a concious effort had been made to impair and obstruct any attempts to fix or even revise them, and would be impossible to reproduce using four-color offset printing even if you did finally coax the artwork onto film. Save me from "teachers" like that!
Um, because my output device is a printing press?!
Gawd!
"Hi! I don't know jack squat about $profession or $industry, but I really like $openSourceTool that I occasionally use to do $diddly-crap, and so it's obviously better than $matureIndustryStandard for $revenue-generatingBusinessProcess.
- some Slashdotter, every couple of minutes.
The reason to put the menu bar at the top of the screen hasn't changed. It's based on solid research, and a little principle called Fitt's Law.
And a hefty helping of Kudos to you for contributing your time and skills to freeasinbeerandfreedom software, but if you think good interface design is "...a style and some people like it, yes - then you're part of the problem. The user interface matters and too many programmers - Open Source and commercial - treat it as though it's just a matter of personal preference, or worse, as though it doesn't matter at all. And I'm not just talking about GUIs.
That says a lot more about the quality of your artists and or work, or lack thereof, than it does about any software tool.
I get the impression that your "graphic design shop" was more along the lines of a Kwik Kopy than a design studio. Or your artists just weren't that good. A decent technician will run circles around your average artist if all they're doing is layouts or applying color correction, but if your tech is doing better illustrations than your artists, you should fire your artists.
Just about every feature that Illustrator crows about when they first add it has already been in Draw for at least two years. Draw's print setups and dialogs *completely* blow Illustrator out of the water. Complex layouts can be done in seconds.
Oh, you MUST be trolling. Corel Draw sucks major ass, and it has for a long damned time. It has written exeptionally shitty PostScript from day one, and it used to choke the hell out of my imagesetters back when I ran a service bureau. Oooh, but look! It comes with a kajillion semi-professional clip-art images and some poorly kerned fonts! Bonus!
Complex layouts can be done in seconds.
Then they're not really complex, are they? If you're doing layout in Illustrator, you're using the wrong tool. Illustrator is for, um, illustrations.
As for Photoshop, yeah, it's OK, but Corel's PhotoPaint is its equal.
Now I know this is a troll.
You really want to pump ion-laden air through the guts of your computer? I'm thinking your delicate CMOS-based computer doodads won't like that very much.
Duh. Of course I did. Thanks.
Umm... the artist in question did exactly that. These images are free for non-commercial usage (Creative Commons License.) The artist requires permission for non-commercial useage - if you're using his work to make a buck, you should share part of that buck.
Beats working, I guess.