No offense to the creators (well, maybe some offense) but why the heck would you want to put MySQL in where PostgreSQL already was? That's like taking out your star quarterback and putting in, well, me!
Just out of total curiosity, how's that work? I have the 15" MBP with the glossy screen that kills babies, and I'd like to reduce its homicidal tendencies in bright environments.
All sarcasm aside, I actually do own one, and I'm curious how you like the matte screen protector.
Amen. I hate how everyone who complains about the glossy screen neither owns one or uses one frequently (could be correlation or causation, but still lack of experience either way). The screen is fully functional and the machine works great, there's nothing to complain about. I am a semi-pro photographer and the color and performance of the screen have been more than acceptable. The reflections are a non-issue, and I can't believe people are still up in arms over this. Get over it.
1) At the age of 11, fervently desiring a WinBook that was shown in all those awesome computer ads in PC Magazine. It had interchangeable CD-drive bays and a floppy drive built in (very, very important). I continued to be frustrated with my parents' 486-33 instead.
2) Graduating high school, received gift of IBM ThinkPad R31 - PIII 1.13GHz. Lasted 6 years, then power supply died last year. It was a workhorse.
3) Hand-me-down 17" 9-pound Dell Centrino 1.4 GHz with 2GB RAM. It was a clunky brick.
4) Last week, bought new-version MacBook Pro 15". 2.4GHz Core2 Duo, 4GB RAM, etc. etc. Rumors of shiny screens killing babies are greatly exaggerated. Finally consolidating 3 computers into one, getting rid of the rest. This is the ideal computer at this time, from a guaranteed non-fanboy, having only owned this computer for a week. It's just quality.
The laptop is finally doing everything! Go miniaturization.
Perhaps you'd like to tell us whether a GB is base 2 or base 10 then.
It's a disambiguation, and no programmer/engineer/nerd worth their salt argues for less specific information for the sole reason of being socially favorable.
Yes, of course we can all tell the difference, it's just that the difference in the experience of watching a movie in DVD vs. HD isn't worth the price of upgrading to Blu-ray, at least not for those who have chimed in thus far in agreement...
Bingo. Agreed completely. The quality difference just isn't there, DVD has reached 99% of the acceptable perceived quality for what a consumer expects to see from a movie. Even me, a technologically-minded consumer who even owns a 32" HDTV, *still* thinks that DVD is pretty darn good and sees no reason to upgrade to an excessively high priced player and discs for no added benefit to the movie watching experience.
Besides, those few times I want an HD movie, I rent one on my Apple TV or xbox 360:-P
Amen! The reality is that the codecs mainly in use in the world today were developed under proprietary licenses and are not free, despite the fact that so many people would wish and hope they were. A moderate price for some proprietary codecs that keep everyone happy - both the owners of the IP and the users alike - is a win-win.
Yeah, this article is silly. "My flash crashes and I don't know what the problem is, therefore Flash must suck." Classic flame about Flash, not backed, and anecdotal evidence. Garbage.
"Silverlight's only competitor, Flash, is relatively difficult to develop for because it is a thing in itself."
What does that even mean? Have you even tried developing for Flash, or are you stuck with you're knowledge of MS languages? If you're talking about animations, the tools are great and the language (ActionScript3) is gorgeous. If you're talking full-blown applications, then you've got Flex which is also great to develop for and very powerful. I don't see any reason to knock it compared to Silverlight or any other framework I know of.
I don't understand why "monoculture is bad" necessarily. It does lead to more possible security breaches, but it also leads to a coherent support network, familiar UI standards across most desktops, and a larger developer and user base with which to improve/test the software.
I myself see no need to switch away from the distro that gives me everything I need and has the most active community. This idea that users will switch to other distros once they see the "choice" is missing the point - 1: users don't want too much choice, and 2: given the choice, users will usually choose either what's familiar to them or what everyone else chooses. This is how Windows achieved and kept popularity! It simply became the standard. Linux needs this.
The other misconception is that this is bad -- it is not. It creates underlying standards and consistency across the board, which will confuse users less and help them adapt to the change faster and easier. It's also a lot easier to support a single distro than a dozen.
So it may not *always* be ubuntu, but it very likely will. I think Ubuntu has reached the tipping point where its momentum will support its growth. More power to it, in my opinion.
Frankly I think of it as a compliment to the operating system that it can support a user who has 20-30 programs open and his biggest problem is finding out which one of them is playing the music....
If I remember correctly, when you have that many apps open in Windows the problem is finding out which one of them is making the music a) Skip, b) Freeze the entire system, or c) emanate from popup ads in spyware.
Even worse, most Windows users I know have about 50 icons in their taskbar that slow the system down incredibly. Frankly, the only reason my Windows system works as well as it does is because I AM anal retentive and I keep everything so damn clean. I am not a mac user, but if I were I imagine I'd do the same and it wouldn't be much different. From what I've used (and I have, extensively), OSX tends to lend itself to easier organization. YMMV.
But the Point is: the system works as well as the user lets it. If someone wants to have 50 programs open and disorganize everything to pieces, they can do that in any OS they want. The difference is that OSX generally lets them and the biggest consequence is drowning in their own confusion (well deserved), whilst Windows lets them and the consequence is an entirely unusable system (equally well deserved). You decide which OS you want to do that in. Yet, the root: PEBKAC.
"Apple are marketing an overly expensive hyped up product that is at best comparable to other products in the market"
Well, if you compare the entire user experience and not just individual features, it's pretty clear Apple has more of a chance in the market than you think. Incredible, everyone here's still thinking about feature comparison. Ha ha ha. It doesn't even matter once you transcend that and think of how the features work together to make the whole much more than its parts...
That's what everyone's missing in this discussion, and a common fallacy... everyone always forgets to look at the bigger picture. Those who can are buying AAPL.
1. Does it get everything right with the UI in harmony with its features in harmony with high quality, in harmony with beauty and great design, balanced with good customer service, marketability, fashion, desirability, user needs and usability, all understood and designed-in from the start?
Oh right, it's the balance of everything together, not individual features, that people want... ohhhh we are so closed minded in the technology world..... but Apple's not.
(There should be light bulbs going on in the parts of your brain that connect combinations of different discrete fields and views right now, if they're not then you didn't get a good enough liberal arts education (probably a one-track engineering student right?), and should enroll in the nearest university).
2 - Don't think they've thought of that maybe? Nah, they're just going to release it with a crappy touch-screen keyboard even though the rest of it is well designed. This touch screen isn't a PetSmart kiosk touch screen, I promise you.
good UI design. That's all this is folks, it's a phone with no buttons and what seems to be a very well thought-out and useful user interface.
You people (none of you, especially not the software developers) understand how important that is. Get a clue.
What was the iPod anyway? It was "just an mp3 player" when it was first announced, and everyone thought it would flop. You could get the "same thing" for half the price with even more features! Why would anyone buy it? Oh, right, it had an amazing user interface and was beautifully designed. Oh, that.
What were Apple stores anyway? They were just another niche computer store, when they were first announced they were predicted to flop just like every other company's foray into that market. You could get the same thing for cheaper online, or from a big name like Best Buy, why would you go to the branded store? Oh, right, they have incredible customer service and are beautifully designed, essentially a great store UI. Right. Forgot about that.
So what's the iPhone anyway? It's just a phone, you can get the same thing for half the price with even more features! Why would anyone buy it? Pssh.
That's exactly what's being echoed back and forth in the technical crowd about this thing, but look at the market -- Slashdot readers are not who they're targeting. They're aiming for real people, specifically iPod users, and if you have any idea how big that market is... well...
No one here gets it. You people are all caught up on features and specs and parts and price, but it's the whole picture that makes an amazing product. None of the cell phone companies get it either, no one's nailed a cell phone UI yet, every interface is confusing as heck and looks like a Super Nintendo's running the graphics.
Apple gets it. If that's not obvious by the success of the iPod, the apple stores, the Mac laptops, OSX, their entire image in the US market... they have everything from product design to quality to marketing to customer service down, and that is why they work. They get it.
You don't get it. Look at the big picture. You all will look back on your stupid one-track criticisms in two to three years and wish you had bought Apple stock, and threads like these will be linked to like "LOL Thread about the reaction to the iPhone announcement... look how dumb they were."
Nah, he's right, the characteristics of the imaging sensors are mostly what hold the camera phones back. They're tiny, pack a ton of pixels in a very small area, and therefore have a very low SNR, so they capture lots of noise and not much light (hence, they're not the best at being "cameras"). This is probably because the sensors themselves are so small, and the photosites on the CCDs are proportionally smaller. In that case, packing 2 million pixels into an equal space as 5 million will give you more than twice as many photons per photosite and should increase the SNR accordingly, giving higher quality images regardless of the optics.
Lens quality being equal, the 2 MP sensor will probably be better (unless of course you really need the extra resolution, which is highly unlikely when using a telephone as a camera...).
Wow, I thought slimness was a bit obvious. When you get your head too far in statistics I can see how you might lose the obvious... but man.
With my current phone I wish I had an electronics pancake maker press thingie so I could press it as thin as possible, I don't even care how wide or tall it gets as long as it's as thin as possible.... it's all about seamlessly fitting in the pocket and not sticking out and making you look stupid.
And besides, it's not like Apple actually STUDIED phone users or anything, like they would EVER ask people what they want, or look at statistics... I'm sure they did. If I were a designer, I'd have looked for a good balance between width and height and thickness, and I'm sure they did too. The phone looks both slim and not too wide, I think that could be a good combination.
Anyway, just because there are a lack of statistics about it doesn't mean they didn't design it well, or collect their own stats. I highly doubt it was just for the advertising emphasis.
Agreed:-) That is of course the ideal way to do it. I guess all I'm saying is that there are some amazing designers out there who can't code a bean out of a can, and no matter how much CSS and XHTML I understand my design still can't hold a candle to the art they can make. Of course, the web is at least half about the code and structure and content, and they need to learn that too. *shrug*
I love how every reply simply ignored "Don't get me wrong, I agree with you" as I said above-- Thanks very much for that. I was simply pointing out the importance of both design and code in the process, playing the devil's advocate. So let me say again, DON'T GET ME WRONG, I agree that the code is inseparable from the design in any good web design, but I also say that the design is inseparable from the code, and whichever they want to *learn* first is OK with me as long as they end up knowing the whole shebang in the end.
Sorry on that, I haven't really used Dreamweaver extensively for over four years. I thought it would be improved by now, but I agree after looking at it again that it's not very good. Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, and even Fireworks though are still pretty good.
The BMW drives in style and fast, gets full service for free (4 years of 50,000 miles), has touch-screen interfaces and 8-point surround audio that plays all the formats, and gets you where you need to go quickly and elegantly. Did I mention it's a brand new model, just out this year?
The Model T drives you places, but it takes 3 times longer and sometimes you have to go to the back and crank the handle, or even open the hood to fix that loose sprocket yourself. Plus the stereo is just a boombox and it's pretty hard to control and skips when you run over bumps. But hey, it goes. Practically the same!
Though there is still the question, would you take a free Model T over a BMW at full price?
Slashdot Mirror
No offense to the creators (well, maybe some offense) but why the heck would you want to put MySQL in where PostgreSQL already was? That's like taking out your star quarterback and putting in, well, me!
Just out of total curiosity, how's that work? I have the 15" MBP with the glossy screen that kills babies, and I'd like to reduce its homicidal tendencies in bright environments.
All sarcasm aside, I actually do own one, and I'm curious how you like the matte screen protector.
Amen. I hate how everyone who complains about the glossy screen neither owns one or uses one frequently (could be correlation or causation, but still lack of experience either way). The screen is fully functional and the machine works great, there's nothing to complain about. I am a semi-pro photographer and the color and performance of the screen have been more than acceptable. The reflections are a non-issue, and I can't believe people are still up in arms over this. Get over it.
My laptop history:
1) At the age of 11, fervently desiring a WinBook that was shown in all those awesome computer ads in PC Magazine. It had interchangeable CD-drive bays and a floppy drive built in (very, very important). I continued to be frustrated with my parents' 486-33 instead.
2) Graduating high school, received gift of IBM ThinkPad R31 - PIII 1.13GHz. Lasted 6 years, then power supply died last year. It was a workhorse.
3) Hand-me-down 17" 9-pound Dell Centrino 1.4 GHz with 2GB RAM. It was a clunky brick.
4) Last week, bought new-version MacBook Pro 15". 2.4GHz Core2 Duo, 4GB RAM, etc. etc. Rumors of shiny screens killing babies are greatly exaggerated. Finally consolidating 3 computers into one, getting rid of the rest. This is the ideal computer at this time, from a guaranteed non-fanboy, having only owned this computer for a week. It's just quality.
The laptop is finally doing everything! Go miniaturization.
Perhaps you'd like to tell us whether a GB is base 2 or base 10 then.
It's a disambiguation, and no programmer/engineer/nerd worth their salt argues for less specific information for the sole reason of being socially favorable.
Yes, of course we can all tell the difference, it's just that the difference in the experience of watching a movie in DVD vs. HD isn't worth the price of upgrading to Blu-ray, at least not for those who have chimed in thus far in agreement...
Bingo. Agreed completely. The quality difference just isn't there, DVD has reached 99% of the acceptable perceived quality for what a consumer expects to see from a movie. Even me, a technologically-minded consumer who even owns a 32" HDTV, *still* thinks that DVD is pretty darn good and sees no reason to upgrade to an excessively high priced player and discs for no added benefit to the movie watching experience.
:-P
Besides, those few times I want an HD movie, I rent one on my Apple TV or xbox 360
Amen! The reality is that the codecs mainly in use in the world today were developed under proprietary licenses and are not free, despite the fact that so many people would wish and hope they were. A moderate price for some proprietary codecs that keep everyone happy - both the owners of the IP and the users alike - is a win-win.
Yeah, this article is silly. "My flash crashes and I don't know what the problem is, therefore Flash must suck." Classic flame about Flash, not backed, and anecdotal evidence. Garbage.
"Silverlight's only competitor, Flash, is relatively difficult to develop for because it is a thing in itself."
What does that even mean? Have you even tried developing for Flash, or are you stuck with you're knowledge of MS languages? If you're talking about animations, the tools are great and the language (ActionScript3) is gorgeous. If you're talking full-blown applications, then you've got Flex which is also great to develop for and very powerful. I don't see any reason to knock it compared to Silverlight or any other framework I know of.
Try before you cry.
Darn, I knew I should have used a lowercase G.
Just the fact that such information exists and is stored is scary.
Thank God for "Don't be evil." They better not be.
I don't understand why "monoculture is bad" necessarily. It does lead to more possible security breaches, but it also leads to a coherent support network, familiar UI standards across most desktops, and a larger developer and user base with which to improve/test the software.
I myself see no need to switch away from the distro that gives me everything I need and has the most active community. This idea that users will switch to other distros once they see the "choice" is missing the point - 1: users don't want too much choice, and 2: given the choice, users will usually choose either what's familiar to them or what everyone else chooses. This is how Windows achieved and kept popularity! It simply became the standard. Linux needs this.
The other misconception is that this is bad -- it is not. It creates underlying standards and consistency across the board, which will confuse users less and help them adapt to the change faster and easier. It's also a lot easier to support a single distro than a dozen.
So it may not *always* be ubuntu, but it very likely will. I think Ubuntu has reached the tipping point where its momentum will support its growth. More power to it, in my opinion.
Frankly I think of it as a compliment to the operating system that it can support a user who has 20-30 programs open and his biggest problem is finding out which one of them is playing the music....
If I remember correctly, when you have that many apps open in Windows the problem is finding out which one of them is making the music a) Skip, b) Freeze the entire system, or c) emanate from popup ads in spyware.
Even worse, most Windows users I know have about 50 icons in their taskbar that slow the system down incredibly. Frankly, the only reason my Windows system works as well as it does is because I AM anal retentive and I keep everything so damn clean. I am not a mac user, but if I were I imagine I'd do the same and it wouldn't be much different. From what I've used (and I have, extensively), OSX tends to lend itself to easier organization. YMMV.
But the Point is: the system works as well as the user lets it. If someone wants to have 50 programs open and disorganize everything to pieces, they can do that in any OS they want. The difference is that OSX generally lets them and the biggest consequence is drowning in their own confusion (well deserved), whilst Windows lets them and the consequence is an entirely unusable system (equally well deserved). You decide which OS you want to do that in. Yet, the root: PEBKAC.
"Apple are marketing an overly expensive hyped up product that is at best comparable to other products in the market"
Well, if you compare the entire user experience and not just individual features, it's pretty clear Apple has more of a chance in the market than you think. Incredible, everyone here's still thinking about feature comparison. Ha ha ha. It doesn't even matter once you transcend that and think of how the features work together to make the whole much more than its parts...
That's what everyone's missing in this discussion, and a common fallacy... everyone always forgets to look at the bigger picture. Those who can are buying AAPL.
Eh, everyone's comparing on the wrong points...
1. Does it get everything right with the UI in harmony with its features in harmony with high quality, in harmony with beauty and great design, balanced with good customer service, marketability, fashion, desirability, user needs and usability, all understood and designed-in from the start?
Oh right, it's the balance of everything together, not individual features, that people want... ohhhh we are so closed minded in the technology world..... but Apple's not.
(There should be light bulbs going on in the parts of your brain that connect combinations of different discrete fields and views right now, if they're not then you didn't get a good enough liberal arts education (probably a one-track engineering student right?), and should enroll in the nearest university).
2 - Don't think they've thought of that maybe? Nah, they're just going to release it with a crappy touch-screen keyboard even though the rest of it is well designed. This touch screen isn't a PetSmart kiosk touch screen, I promise you.
good UI design. That's all this is folks, it's a phone with no buttons and what seems to be a very well thought-out and useful user interface.
You people (none of you, especially not the software developers) understand how important that is. Get a clue.
What was the iPod anyway? It was "just an mp3 player" when it was first announced, and everyone thought it would flop. You could get the "same thing" for half the price with even more features! Why would anyone buy it? Oh, right, it had an amazing user interface and was beautifully designed. Oh, that.
What were Apple stores anyway? They were just another niche computer store, when they were first announced they were predicted to flop just like every other company's foray into that market. You could get the same thing for cheaper online, or from a big name like Best Buy, why would you go to the branded store? Oh, right, they have incredible customer service and are beautifully designed, essentially a great store UI. Right. Forgot about that.
So what's the iPhone anyway? It's just a phone, you can get the same thing for half the price with even more features! Why would anyone buy it? Pssh.
That's exactly what's being echoed back and forth in the technical crowd about this thing, but look at the market -- Slashdot readers are not who they're targeting. They're aiming for real people, specifically iPod users, and if you have any idea how big that market is... well...
No one here gets it. You people are all caught up on features and specs and parts and price, but it's the whole picture that makes an amazing product. None of the cell phone companies get it either, no one's nailed a cell phone UI yet, every interface is confusing as heck and looks like a Super Nintendo's running the graphics.
Apple gets it. If that's not obvious by the success of the iPod, the apple stores, the Mac laptops, OSX, their entire image in the US market... they have everything from product design to quality to marketing to customer service down, and that is why they work. They get it.
You don't get it. Look at the big picture. You all will look back on your stupid one-track criticisms in two to three years and wish you had bought Apple stock, and threads like these will be linked to like "LOL Thread about the reaction to the iPhone announcement... look how dumb they were."
Nah, he's right, the characteristics of the imaging sensors are mostly what hold the camera phones back. They're tiny, pack a ton of pixels in a very small area, and therefore have a very low SNR, so they capture lots of noise and not much light (hence, they're not the best at being "cameras"). This is probably because the sensors themselves are so small, and the photosites on the CCDs are proportionally smaller. In that case, packing 2 million pixels into an equal space as 5 million will give you more than twice as many photons per photosite and should increase the SNR accordingly, giving higher quality images regardless of the optics.
Lens quality being equal, the 2 MP sensor will probably be better (unless of course you really need the extra resolution, which is highly unlikely when using a telephone as a camera...).
Wow, I thought slimness was a bit obvious. When you get your head too far in statistics I can see how you might lose the obvious... but man.
With my current phone I wish I had an electronics pancake maker press thingie so I could press it as thin as possible, I don't even care how wide or tall it gets as long as it's as thin as possible.... it's all about seamlessly fitting in the pocket and not sticking out and making you look stupid.
And besides, it's not like Apple actually STUDIED phone users or anything, like they would EVER ask people what they want, or look at statistics... I'm sure they did. If I were a designer, I'd have looked for a good balance between width and height and thickness, and I'm sure they did too. The phone looks both slim and not too wide, I think that could be a good combination.
Anyway, just because there are a lack of statistics about it doesn't mean they didn't design it well, or collect their own stats. I highly doubt it was just for the advertising emphasis.
Agreed :-) That is of course the ideal way to do it. I guess all I'm saying is that there are some amazing designers out there who can't code a bean out of a can, and no matter how much CSS and XHTML I understand my design still can't hold a candle to the art they can make. Of course, the web is at least half about the code and structure and content, and they need to learn that too. *shrug*
I love how every reply simply ignored "Don't get me wrong, I agree with you" as I said above-- Thanks very much for that. I was simply pointing out the importance of both design and code in the process, playing the devil's advocate. So let me say again, DON'T GET ME WRONG, I agree that the code is inseparable from the design in any good web design, but I also say that the design is inseparable from the code, and whichever they want to *learn* first is OK with me as long as they end up knowing the whole shebang in the end.
Sorry on that, I haven't really used Dreamweaver extensively for over four years. I thought it would be improved by now, but I agree after looking at it again that it's not very good. Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, and even Fireworks though are still pretty good.
More like a Model T to a 2007 BMW M5.
The BMW drives in style and fast, gets full service for free (4 years of 50,000 miles), has touch-screen interfaces and 8-point surround audio that plays all the formats, and gets you where you need to go quickly and elegantly. Did I mention it's a brand new model, just out this year?
The Model T drives you places, but it takes 3 times longer and sometimes you have to go to the back and crank the handle, or even open the hood to fix that loose sprocket yourself. Plus the stereo is just a boombox and it's pretty hard to control and skips when you run over bumps. But hey, it goes. Practically the same!
Though there is still the question, would you take a free Model T over a BMW at full price?
Let's add jEdit (http://www.jedit.org/) to the list... my current favorite editor.