Microsoft is getting tens of thousands of dollars' worth of development time out of it though, and last time I checked an XBox 360 + 34" HDTV wouldn't even crack the 10k mark. My initial reaction was "it's not as good as Google's $4500" but frankly "feh" to that too!
Note that "Development Time" includes design and R&D and all those other expenses involved in delivering a good bit of software. Microsoft are getting around doing that by using your basic "Million Monkeys" approach.
There are still plenty of people I know who will type "www.google.com" into the MSN search on the default IE page to get to google. I set the home page on a couple of users' PCs to our corporate page, which has no web search function, and they were lost.
Perhaps a patent about issueing patents then taking the patent office to court for infringment and see them sort out this common sence/prior art monkey-fooing.
You know I wouldn't be surprised if a competent lawyer could pull that off. They're obviously not paying much attention.
Exactly. It's something to get disappointed about maybe, that Lucas doesn't seem to see things quite the way his fans do, but it's nothing to get angry about.
If one is going to get worked up when someone else's art isn't good enough they should try doing it themselves!
That's a bitchin' idea, and it'll work because it's intuitive, and "Format" being the default button will only hammer home the point.
You know how you see an ellipsis (...) after some menu options?
That's meant to mean the menu item will open a dialog. It's been an Apple Interface Guideline for years I think, and it seems to be fairly consistent now across platforms. I wonder how many people notice it?
Did you see the CBS election coverage? They had a guy in the "Data Room" with this awesome touch-screen interface. He could navigate it really quickly too, and it looked natural.
I've been asked a few questions about voice-recognition too.
People have latched onto the whole 9-key typing of SMSs pretty well. But you're right, people only want to learn things once.
If you have the choice between a normal bike or one that will take a little while to get used to, which one you gonna choose?
On the other hand, if the other one has a motor, people will see the benefit and make the effort to switch.
There's a sort of friction thing going on. Once you overcome static friction the resistive force isn't so much...
Every time I attempt this sort of education with my users their eyes glaze over and they want me to go away. Often they'll say "Oh, I don't care about computers", to which I'll reply "They're the tools of the trade, you should know how to use them".
I know if I got a job as a carpenter I wouldn't go around saying "Oh, I don't care about circular saws". Sure, you don't need to know how to build one or fix one, but you should know how to use it.
I've always liked the idea of the Apple Interface Guidelines.
I haven't actually read any of them, but I like the idea.:)
There are some pretty clear points you can make about user interfaces that I never did a specific course on, and therefore never learned.
For instance, people nowadays know to look for "OK" and "Cancel", so you don't go changing that to "Proceed" and "Retreat". Tab order is really important. Borders and colours to break up the screen are really useful. This is the kind of thing all UI programmers should know (and really any public API should follow a similar set of guidelines).
I think open source developers working on funky projects that all the geeks love are probably more likely to break the rules, too, because a lot of geeks have a similar way of thinking and they can probably get away with it and still end up with popular software.
The technology to build the interfaces is one thing, actually building them in a way end-users can understand is quite another.
I've written a document library that uses keywords to classify documents. You have one master document record and attach as many keywords as you like in multiple categories. The library's interface gives some fairly powerful searching abilities, but it doesn't seem to be intuitive to anyone but me, and nobody, as far as I can tell, has read ANY part of the manual. (It's a family business, "We've been doing it this way for 20 years" sort of thing.)
You can lead a horse to water, but there's no way in hell you'll teach him to grow potatoes with it when he can't hold a shovel.
OK We have a 256kbps DSL link. If we turned on Automatic updates and had every PC downloading an update every time there was one released our net connection would be maxxed out a hell of a lot of the time.
THAT is why it is unfeasible.
Actually I'd be interested to hear from other sysadmins who do this successfully. What's the best way to keep a network of about 20 Wintel PCs updated off a 256kbps pipe?
OK, so it's not an airtight legal defense, and the page is hardly reputable. My point is that stranger things have happened. Finding credible examples of stranger things that have happened is left as an exercise for the reader.
...and if you think the goverment (federal, state or local) will ever pass a law granting law enforcement power to arrest someone for saying they speed, you are an idiot.
Javascript and HTML are very very capable. It's not hard at all to do complex things with them, as long as you can encapsulate everything into the one file. Accessing the file system, or databases, can pose a security risk. That's probably why as far as I can tell there are no good standards-based ways of doing these with just HTML, CSS asnd JS. (Of course it's easy with Java or ActiveX.)
I'm working on some GUI widgets that I intend to use to replace my MS Access apps with a nice HTML based standards-compliant interface. Firefox, IE and Opera are pretty good at running things quickly (on my Athlon XP 1600+).
This is a well implemented app, too. S5 could easily have dodgied up a slide show program by relying on the server quite easily.
I mean when I went on holiday I wrote a simple slide-show page with CSS and JavaScript when I realised my laptop pretty much only had Windows and IE on it. It took about half an hour. Now, it wasn't standards based, and it wasn't as felxible as this thing, but I only ever intended it for use on pages of photos with captions on them, for the 10 days I was on holiday.
My girlfriend was ever so impressed. (I wish.)
Just seems to me there are hundreds of more interesting projects that deserve a slashdot post. Perhaps one of the admins needed a slide show program?
Slashdot Mirror
"This perpetual motion machine she made is a joke! It just keeps going faster and faster!"
Truer words never spoken. *applause*
Microsoft is getting tens of thousands of dollars' worth of development time out of it though, and last time I checked an XBox 360 + 34" HDTV wouldn't even crack the 10k mark. My initial reaction was "it's not as good as Google's $4500" but frankly "feh" to that too!
Note that "Development Time" includes design and R&D and all those other expenses involved in delivering a good bit of software. Microsoft are getting around doing that by using your basic "Million Monkeys" approach.
I can't believe the world has reached a point where we are essentially suing people for making stuff that is too awesome.
My guess is that the reason you're upset about bnetd is that you or somebody you know was trying to avoid giving them money in the first place!
Aha! But if the number of people who can access
the site has been decreased, has the site not been slashdotted?
Hahahaha that's awesome. Mod parent up!
There are still plenty of people I know who will type "www.google.com" into the MSN search on the default IE page to get to google. I set the home page on a couple of users' PCs to our corporate page, which has no web search function, and they were lost.
A beowulf cluster of 8-way XBox clusters!
Perhaps a patent about issueing patents then taking the patent office to court for infringment and see them sort out this common sence/prior art monkey-fooing.
You know I wouldn't be surprised if a competent lawyer could pull that off. They're obviously not paying much attention.
Exactly. It's something to get disappointed about maybe, that Lucas doesn't seem to see things quite the way his fans do, but it's nothing to get angry about.
If one is going to get worked up when someone else's art isn't good enough they should try doing it themselves!
By picking upsidedown_duck as your ID are you saying you personally identifty with upside-down ducks? :)
I'd wouldn't be surprised if both versions exist already and are just waiting for some exclusive deal from Sony to expire.
That's a bitchin' idea, and it'll work because it's intuitive, and "Format" being the default button will only hammer home the point.
You know how you see an ellipsis (...) after some menu options?
That's meant to mean the menu item will open a dialog. It's been an Apple Interface Guideline for years I think, and it seems to be fairly consistent now across platforms. I wonder how many people notice it?
Did you see the CBS election coverage? They had a guy in the "Data Room" with this awesome touch-screen interface. He could navigate it really quickly too, and it looked natural.
I've been asked a few questions about voice-recognition too.
People have latched onto the whole 9-key typing of SMSs pretty well. But you're right, people only want to learn things once.
If you have the choice between a normal bike or one that will take a little while to get used to, which one you gonna choose?
On the other hand, if the other one has a motor, people will see the benefit and make the effort to switch.
There's a sort of friction thing going on. Once you overcome static friction the resistive force isn't so much...
Every time I attempt this sort of education with my users their eyes glaze over and they want me to go away. Often they'll say "Oh, I don't care about computers", to which I'll reply "They're the tools of the trade, you should know how to use them".
I know if I got a job as a carpenter I wouldn't go around saying "Oh, I don't care about circular saws". Sure, you don't need to know how to build one or fix one, but you should know how to use it.
I've always liked the idea of the Apple Interface Guidelines.
:)
I haven't actually read any of them, but I like the idea.
There are some pretty clear points you can make about user interfaces that I never did a specific course on, and therefore never learned.
For instance, people nowadays know to look for "OK" and "Cancel", so you don't go changing that to "Proceed" and "Retreat". Tab order is really important. Borders and colours to break up the screen are really useful. This is the kind of thing all UI programmers should know (and really any public API should follow a similar set of guidelines).
I think open source developers working on funky projects that all the geeks love are probably more likely to break the rules, too, because a lot of geeks have a similar way of thinking and they can probably get away with it and still end up with popular software.
The technology to build the interfaces is one thing, actually building them in a way end-users can understand is quite another.
I've written a document library that uses keywords to classify documents. You have one master document record and attach as many keywords as you like in multiple categories. The library's interface gives some fairly powerful searching abilities, but it doesn't seem to be intuitive to anyone but me, and nobody, as far as I can tell, has read ANY part of the manual. (It's a family business, "We've been doing it this way for 20 years" sort of thing.)
You can lead a horse to water, but there's no way in hell you'll teach him to grow potatoes with it when he can't hold a shovel.
OK We have a 256kbps DSL link. If we turned on Automatic updates and had every PC downloading an update every time there was one released our net connection would be maxxed out a hell of a lot of the time.
THAT is why it is unfeasible.
Actually I'd be interested to hear from other sysadmins who do this successfully. What's the best way to keep a network of about 20 Wintel PCs updated off a 256kbps pipe?
+1 Funny
+2 Insightful
Wish I had mod points. Nice.
Shhh.
I'm trying to slashdot geocities.
OK, so it's not an airtight legal defense, and the page is hardly reputable. My point is that stranger things have happened. Finding credible examples of stranger things that have happened is left as an exercise for the reader.
...and if you think the goverment (federal, state or local) will ever pass a law granting law enforcement power to arrest someone for saying they speed, you are an idiot.
Stranger things have happened
In Sarasota, it is illegal to sing in a public place while attired in a swimsuit.
Did you ignore the part where I said "It took about half an hour"?
That was a fairly important bit I think.
Javascript and HTML are very very capable. It's not hard at all to do complex things with them, as long as you can encapsulate everything into the one file. Accessing the file system, or databases, can pose a security risk. That's probably why as far as I can tell there are no good standards-based ways of doing these with just HTML, CSS asnd JS. (Of course it's easy with Java or ActiveX.) I'm working on some GUI widgets that I intend to use to replace my MS Access apps with a nice HTML based standards-compliant interface. Firefox, IE and Opera are pretty good at running things quickly (on my Athlon XP 1600+). This is a well implemented app, too. S5 could easily have dodgied up a slide show program by relying on the server quite easily.
I mean when I went on holiday I wrote a simple slide-show page with CSS and JavaScript when I realised my laptop pretty much only had Windows and IE on it. It took about half an hour. Now, it wasn't standards based, and it wasn't as felxible as this thing, but I only ever intended it for use on pages of photos with captions on them, for the 10 days I was on holiday.
My girlfriend was ever so impressed. (I wish.)
Just seems to me there are hundreds of more interesting projects that deserve a slashdot post. Perhaps one of the admins needed a slide show program?