The discussion has no citations to support either contention. No quote from him, none from another author misquoting him. No quote from some other personaility making the comment which is then falsely attributed to Gates.
Not a lot of evidence to prove anything.
What makes me curious is that typicaly in these sorts of situations there is a trail of articles that one can follow.
Either one doesn't exist in this case or no-one has done any work to follow it up but posting a comment from Gates denying it isn't really compelling in and of itself.
-- But at the time of me writing this the title -- was instead " Could Google Be SCO's Next -- Big Target?" which clearly acknowledges that -- the whole point of the linked article -- is speculation.
Speculation in terms of news reporting is supposed to be, at least to me, based on verifiable comments that named sources make. A Microsoft exec says they are interested in a search engine...reporters specualte that it might mean that they want to buy Google.
Some unnamed source supposedly saying something is a rumour...and not even a good one.
-- Since the speculation seems reasonable -- and interesting, why the hell can't -- slashdot post it?
Even if this is true...and who is to say that it isn't, the idea that this sort of totally unattributed rumour-mongring is passing for news reporting is really quite worrisome.
-- It seems a little surreal that people are having to develop anti-spam weblog tools.
Welcome to the capitalist system.
People make money doing this and since there isn't any law prohibiting them (or even a law with a serious enough consequence to stop spammers) they will do this in whatever medium they can find.
It seems like its the obvious result of a system that places the pursuit of wealth (and just the pursuit and accumulation of wealth) as an ultimate goal.
-- people with money to spend on their products are precisely the people who don't want to watch stupid ads.
Well actually no-one wants to watch ads. I think poor people are just as inclinded to dislike them as richer folks.
The point being that the rich folks who can afford the HD TVs will be the ones who might not have a choice other than to watch ads on their new 50" HDTV if the broadcasters don't want them to.
One group that will love it are advertisers and the TV execs that whine about people who "steal" TV by not watching commercials.
If you can't record the show you can't skip the commercials. Want to watch the premiere of your favourite show? Well you'll probably soon have to either watch it "live" or wait for a rerun if you want to record it. Advertisers will push to have recording disabled on premium shows if only to gaurantee an audience for their commercials.
I assume that the same will be the case for some sports as well.
Photoshop is a bitmap editing application. XMLPdf is probably quit good at what it does but unless it allows you to work on multi-layer CMYK bitmap images then the comparison isn't all that apt.
But a HIG isn't the same as an application-specific UI.
The application can fit all the guidelines in the HIG but still be developed (and informed) by the way that the application is going to be used. If that model doesn't fit a second software development project (I don't want to say applciation to avoid confusion) then even though it still conforms to the HIG it won't work for the new development project simply because of the differences in the way each project is used or intended to be used.
If you developed a word processing package using the same UI structure as Outlook it would a disaster. Regardless of whether the UI conforms to some interface guidelines.
-- And your lame arguement that one project can't -- produce quality on more than one front doesn't -- hold water either.
And your supporting argument is?
Comparing Mozilla to Apple and MS isn't the same thing. Mozilla uses the same application framework and UI conventions for different applications. As crappy as an app like Outlook is it does use a UI that is different than Word.
That said, I think Office forces some ofg the some homogeneous UI conventions on apps like Excel adn word where they don't necessarily apply either so in the case of MS your comparison does have some merit.
I'm not saying that they can't do a good job, just that I can't see how a "one-size -fits-all" approach will be as good as a dedicated application that tailors its development to a single task.
We must have differing views on what a "family" needs for their PC as I can't see most families doing C++ development coding in EMacs on their family PC:-)
A little family get-together around the PC to do some kernel tweaking before bedtime?
If it wasn't for the presence of Lara Croft and Xena Warrior Princess, techies around the world would have posters of Torvalds on their walls.
Why do writers feel compelled to resort to ludicrous generalisations like this? Is it because they are rather poor writers and can't come up with anything more novel (or true) or does it make their target audience feel smuggly superior to the technical people that run their IT departments and office networks?
Yet another example of piss-poor writing that seems to typify most publications these days. People more concerned with meeting a word count and hitting a deadline than actual quality content.
The fact that people are used to an inferior product isn't, to my mind, a good enough reason to be copying it.
-- It isn't about making anything better - it's about providing an alternative with zero strings attached.
I don't see the point behind this then. You are saying that the developers are choosing to write bad software so they can give people an OS option?
Why not give people an OS option that isn't a copy of unusable bloatware?
This really does seem to segue nicely into the discussion or user inferiority and UI design in an earlier topic.
Is it that developers think that users are too stupid to see that a superior product is a better alternative or is it that they don't have the UI chops to actually provide users with that better experience?
Why does "Office Compatibilty" appear to mean that you need to reduplicated the same horrid Office UI and build the same sort of bloated functionality?
Why could OS developers not take the opportunity to write a series of applications that work better, are more streamlined, have a better UI and just happen to open and save files in Office formats?
Why make people have to suffer with the same usability and UI gaffs that MS has foisted on Windows users?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm saying no such thing.
The discussion has no citations to support either contention. No quote from him, none from another author misquoting him. No quote from some other personaility making the comment which is then falsely attributed to Gates.
Not a lot of evidence to prove anything.
What makes me curious is that typicaly in these sorts of situations there is a trail of articles that one can follow.
Either one doesn't exist in this case or no-one has done any work to follow it up but posting a comment from Gates denying it isn't really compelling in and of itself.
Frankly Gates' denial leaves me a little unsatisifed.
If he didn't say it then who did? And how did the quote get attributed to him?
Or who wrote the original article attributing this to Gates.
Currently, AFAICT, there is only Gates' comment that he didin't say anything that moronic as "proff" that he never made the quote in the first place.
Hardly a compelling rebuttal.
-- But at the time of me writing this the title
-- was instead " Could Google Be SCO's Next
-- Big Target?" which clearly acknowledges that
-- the whole point of the linked article
-- is speculation.
Speculation in terms of news reporting is supposed to be, at least to me, based on verifiable comments that named sources make. A Microsoft exec says they are interested in a search engine...reporters specualte that it might mean that they want to buy Google.
Some unnamed source supposedly saying something is a rumour...and not even a good one.
-- Since the speculation seems reasonable
-- and interesting, why the hell can't
-- slashdot post it?
Didn't say they couldn't nor shouldn't.
Even if this is true...and who is to say that it isn't, the idea that this sort of totally unattributed rumour-mongring is passing for news reporting is really quite worrisome.
A source claiming to be in the know says that the SCO Group is going to sue Google for not paying its Linux taxes.
An unnamed source who claims to know this?
Could this article be more speculative? How does something like this even get considered news?
He is being subpoened not sued. Big difference
>> for us europeans, the US legal system is like
/. given the previous comment about Stallman picking fleas from his beard.
>> a free TV channel : mostly crap, but sometimes
>> a true gem is broadcasted.
Which I think is an unintentional comment on
-- It seems a little surreal that people are having to develop anti-spam weblog tools.
Welcome to the capitalist system.
People make money doing this and since there isn't any law prohibiting them (or even a law with a serious enough consequence to stop spammers) they will do this in whatever medium they can find.
It seems like its the obvious result of a system that places the pursuit of wealth (and just the pursuit and accumulation of wealth) as an ultimate goal.
-- people with money to spend on their products are precisely the people who don't want to watch stupid ads.
Well actually no-one wants to watch ads. I think poor people are just as inclinded to dislike them as richer folks.
The point being that the rich folks who can afford the HD TVs will be the ones who might not have a choice other than to watch ads on their new 50" HDTV if the broadcasters don't want them to.
One group that will love it are advertisers and the TV execs that whine about people who "steal" TV by not watching commercials.
If you can't record the show you can't skip the commercials. Want to watch the premiere of your favourite show? Well you'll probably soon have to either watch it "live" or wait for a rerun if you want to record it. Advertisers will push to have recording disabled on premium shows if only to gaurantee an audience for their commercials.
I assume that the same will be the case for some sports as well.
Think about how many mislabeled, poorly compressed tracks they have downloaded if and when they could actually get a download to finish.
Photoshop is a bitmap editing application. XMLPdf is probably quit good at what it does but unless it allows you to work on multi-layer CMYK bitmap images then the comparison isn't all that apt.
MacDonalds doesn't flame broil their patties they are fried.
-- Its a bit slow and files that play perfectly on low end Macs can play like crap on fairly high-end PC's.
Maybe its Windows?
My PC can't seem to handle any movie files without coughing and gagging like an ashmatic mormoset.
-- NO DRM
N0 DRM == no service
There is no way the RIAA is going to allow a system to exist that does not have some form of DRM.
But a HIG isn't the same as an application-specific UI.
The application can fit all the guidelines in the HIG but still be developed (and informed) by the way that the application is going to be used. If that model doesn't fit a second software development project (I don't want to say applciation to avoid confusion) then even though it still conforms to the HIG it won't work for the new development project simply because of the differences in the way each project is used or intended to be used.
If you developed a word processing package using the same UI structure as Outlook it would a disaster. Regardless of whether the UI conforms to some interface guidelines.
-- kinda the same domain as ms office.
;-)
Sorry. Is that comment supporting your argument or mine?
-- And your lame arguement that one project can't
-- produce quality on more than one front doesn't
-- hold water either.
And your supporting argument is?
Comparing Mozilla to Apple and MS isn't the same thing. Mozilla uses the same application framework and UI conventions for different applications. As crappy as an app like Outlook is it does use a UI that is different than Word.
That said, I think Office forces some ofg the some homogeneous UI conventions on apps like Excel adn word where they don't necessarily apply either so in the case of MS your comparison does have some merit.
I'm not saying that they can't do a good job, just that I can't see how a "one-size -fits-all" approach will be as good as a dedicated application that tailors its development to a single task.
I am of the impression that if you try to do everything then you'll just manage to do a poor job at a large series of tasks.
I'd much rather have dedicated apps that focus on performing one task very well than one app that tries a Swiss Army Knife approach.
We must have differing views on what a "family" needs for their PC as I can't see most families doing C++ development coding in EMacs on their family PC :-)
A little family get-together around the PC to do some kernel tweaking before bedtime?
-- Does calendar too, need an irc client? yep mozilla
Hmmmmmm...bloatware.
Why do writers feel compelled to resort to ludicrous generalisations like this? Is it because they are rather poor writers and can't come up with anything more novel (or true) or does it make their target audience feel smuggly superior to the technical people that run their IT departments and office networks?
Yet another example of piss-poor writing that seems to typify most publications these days. People more concerned with meeting a word count and hitting a deadline than actual quality content.
-- Because that's what people are used to.
The fact that people are used to an inferior product isn't, to my mind, a good enough reason to be copying it.
-- It isn't about making anything better - it's about providing an alternative with zero strings attached.
I don't see the point behind this then. You are saying that the developers are choosing to write bad software so they can give people an OS option?
Why not give people an OS option that isn't a copy of unusable bloatware?
This really does seem to segue nicely into the discussion or user inferiority and UI design in an earlier topic.
Is it that developers think that users are too stupid to see that a superior product is a better alternative or is it that they don't have the UI chops to actually provide users with that better experience?
Why does "Office Compatibilty" appear to mean that you need to reduplicated the same horrid Office UI and build the same sort of bloated functionality?
Why could OS developers not take the opportunity to write a series of applications that work better, are more streamlined, have a better UI and just happen to open and save files in Office formats?
Why make people have to suffer with the same usability and UI gaffs that MS has foisted on Windows users?
Well this is hardly news for those of us suffering from dyslexia. I've been telling people this for years.
Perhaps its only apparent that this is how we read and process words when you have to spend so much more time trying to read the darned things.