I guess they just felt their paper wasn't differentiated enough from generic Office Depot brand paper. Before that, once you removed it from the bag, it looked just like any other paper.
This way, the slightly-richer kids can lord it over the rest... "Where's the logo on your paper?"
Well let's think about this for a minute. Spam e-mail is directly related to the Internet, so an INTERNET search would of course the e-mail definition would be far more prevalent online. If you looked up occurrences of the word SPAM in grocery stores, SPAM the meat would occur much more frequently.
And what is it with you people who go on constantly with SPAM jokes? Are you like five years old or something? Look at the frikkin' can, that should satisfy you. Ingredients: - Chopped pork shoulder meat with ham meat added. - Salt (for binding, flavour, and firmness) - Water - Sugar - Sodium Nitrite (for colour and as a preservative)
WTF is so wrong with that?
Personally, I cube and pan-fry SPAM and throw it in a batch of Macaroni and Cheese. It's tasty. I don't know what the problem is with you people, there is a lot of food at McDonalds that's less appetizing than SPAM.
they don't HAVE a directory of each zip code's appropriate 911 center. The phone companies are fighting them by not giving them this info.
EXACTLY.
Last time this came up on/. I remember someone said each 911 point-of-presence has an actual NPA-NXXX (normal 7-digit number) that SBC etc could just f**king make available to all VOIP providers and this would all be over already. The stupid "federal regulators" should give the damn Bells a deadline and if they don't open up the 911 system they should be sued out of business by every VOIP company.
Oh, but they won't do that because they're on the Bells' payroll! Oops! I mean "campaign contribution list." F**king weasels.
That's not a problem. I have NO DESIRE to receive any e-mail from third-world countries--they don't have to use the system. I would actually like to be able to personally blackhole all IP traffic, e-mail or otherwise, coming from the entire continent of Africa, and I'd like to only allow outbound connections on port 80 to all Asian IPs. That would fix at least a third of the spam problem for me--I realize some people can't afford to blacklist that much of the Internet.
Russia I would whitelist. Allofmp3, etc. Allow. Anything I haven't heard of in Russia I don't need.
If you're an "illegal alien," you are probably working in this country. That's what most of the fuss is around them. They're "Not Authorized To Work In The United States," the little checkbox on any job application. So right off, they're paying payroll taxes, including federal income tax, and social security and medicare tax--which they'll never be able to collect on with their fake SSN's, and they won't be able to file a tax return to get part of that money back. Then they go out and buy things (like $800 apiece rims) and pay 7-10% sales tax on them. Ditto for all the tons of taxes on cars, on gas, on cigarettes, on phone service...
So who are you trying to kid that these people aren't contributing their fair share?? Yeah, their kids are going to school. So are every trailerpark welfare mother's kids in Podunk, Oklahoma. I don't see anyone trying to deport them. Everyone's paying taxes. You can be sure of that. (Oh, except the rich...They always manage to avoid paying their fair share by keeping a team of lawyers researching loopholes, and offshore accounts in the Caymans.)
And if you want to draw a correlation between illegal immigrants and increased lawbreaking, I dare you to show a statistic that shows that they are any more likely to commit crimes than US-born citizens with white skin, of equal economic status.
So, somebody remind me, do we hate Verizon now, for their CEO hating municipal wifi? Or do we love them for being the first behemoth telco to offer naked DSL in a big way? What's the Slashdot party line now?
Perhaps this post will encourage Dell to pay more attention in the future.
keen, Dell appreciates your constructive criticism. Your Slashdot post has inspired a full-scale probe, from Bombay to New Delhi, into our technical support practices, and we plan to roll out new training methods to avoid situations like yours from happening again.
However, are you sure you have installed the latest Internet Explorer Hotfix? The version number is 6.1.2800.3.43.xpsp2.93.9.
Sincerely, Michael Dell -- Michael Dell CEO and Founder (and avid Slashdot reader!) Dell Computers Inc.
It means to cut (not attend) school. It's kind of a cheesy term from a hundred years ago, and now it's mostly just used as a jokey way to say "to not go to work/school/whatever for a day, without a virtuous excuse."
Real-life kids today usually just say "ditch"--as in "I'm gonna ditch tomorrow." "Oh cool. I'll ditch too and we'll go smoke weed." "Cool."
Seriously, though...I think it's obvious from the Copyright Act of 1976 plus the Bono act, that Congress will let the likes of Disney buy a new copyright term extension act every twenty years. Most of the public are such sheep they won't even notice what's going on...watching the news would interfere with watching "American Idol" or "MTV's Cribs."
> That's through some serious emulation. Don't you need a "classic" install (or large parts of one) on an OSX box to have true backwards compatability?
In order to run non-Carbon* OS 9 and previous apps, yes, you do need to have Classic installed. It's installed by default, but by default it's not resident in memory until you fire up a Classic app. It takes about 10 seconds to "boot" and then you can forget about it. Even though I never use it, I kept the Classic install (although I moved it) and the Classic "system folder" is 155 MB on disk. When running a Classic app, the appearance of its windows and menu bar are as they are in OS 9 (as would be expected). Many people run Classic apps all the time, although I avoid it because I would rather use a native app, so I can take advantage of some of the more useful newer features of OS X such as Exposé and Services.
I've noticed on Windows the experience is not much different, with the exception that all the legacy code seems to be loaded all the time as part of the OS (since parts of the OS itself are still legacy anyway, for example, chkdsk). Also, the visual appearance of an old app on Windows isn't predictable. An example: A "Monopoly" CD-ROM game my dad has looks mostly like Windows 3.1 on Windows 95 (dialogs, button shapes, etc.) but under Windows 98 it looked like Windows 95 in those respects. It was strange.
__ * because many developers used Apple's CarbonLib to create "hybrid" versions of their applications around the time OS 9 was showing its age, so some apps that still run in OS 9 also run natively in OS X from the same executable.
Right, but think about this: Just use a USB-keyboard-to-PS/2-port adapter. The kind Microsoft or Logitech include with every keyboard and mouse. Plug it into the PS/2 port on your keylogger, plug your keyboard into the adapter, then plug the whole thing into the PS/2 port. This will work for almost ANY PC since even today, almost every PC made still has these legacy ports, even if the keyboards they end up connected to are USB native. I'm sure a little hunting will find you a PS/2-keyboard-to-USB-port adapter (I have one with 2 PS/2 ports, for keyboard and mouse, to one USB port) so you could then use the keylogger even on a Mac or a "legacy-free" PC.
USB Keyboard->"Microsoft" adapter->keylogger->PS/2 port or... USB Keyboard->"Microsoft" adapter->keylogger->PS/2->PS/2-to-USB adapter->USB port
Side note: Computers that sit on top of desks are harder to do this to undetected, especially when you start needing more "adapters." Someone will wonder, "How come the teacher's computer has so many little adapters attached to that one plug?" The kind that sit in little cubbies underneath the desk, with the back enclosed, are perfect targets.
When I was 17-18, I worked at Jack In The Box. It was my first job. I ate there all the time, and so did most of my coworkers. Everyone was very good about food handling there, so we weren't to. We got a 50% discount if we were working that day, and 20% discount on our day off. So on days I worked, I usually ate during work on my lunchbreak, and after or before work. If I was feeling broke, I just bought a 99-cent item like a Jumbo Jack or two tacos, so it was only 54 cents. Since I made $6.75/hour, a buck a day wasn't an unaffordable price.
In 2003, though, I worked at a McDonald's in Massachusetts. I never once ate there, because of the "OMG the way they handle food here is so disgusting" factor.
And as a final note, Disney doesn't give any of its theme-park employees any break on its ridiculously-priced, low-quality theme-park fast food. So considering the slave wages they pay, their employees literally can't afford the food. One meal would cost about two hours' pay. (this also from experience.)
Besides, they probably make as much if not more money from Apple users than they do from Windows users because of the price of MSO:Mac and VPC
Do you know how to count?
From context, it appears the GP was indicating that Microsoft makes more on each Mac OS X user than on each Windows user. I base this on the fact that the conversation was on Apple stealing marketshare from Windows. Think about this: if the GP's thesis is true and each Mac OS X user gives MS more money than each Windows user, then increasing Apple marketshare, while surely still an ego problem, would result in greater revenue at MS. Now, is that thesis true? Perhaps. Assuming 0% piracy (and I would say piracy is far lower on the Mac platform than on Windows, so this is not a slanted assumption):
Home machines: XP home OEM: $65 (average Internet price, and you know HP/Dell/GW2k get a serious break on it) MS Works, or similar, software for each home machine: $10 (assuming the OEM even buys the MS offering rather than a cheaper one.) Total revenue per Windows user: $75
"Pro" machines: XP pro OEM: $100 (same disclaimer applies for real OEM pricing). Office OEM: $218 (this is the SBE, the cheapest that has Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and the extraneous Publisher. Basic, which excludes PowerPoint and Pub, can be had for $100 less.) Total revenue per Windows user: $318
Mac users that buy MSO, or MSO+VPC: Office for Mac OS X: $399 Virtual PC with Win2k: $249 (2k is more usable on emulation than $30-cheaper XP Home) Total revenue per Mac user: $400 with MSO; $650 with VPC
Well, you be the judge. It depends on piracy and on MSO's popularity on Mac OS X.
Thank you for one of the few insightful replies. I agree with you that a scroll-wheel would not be a bad idea for Apple. Actually, I think they should invent something cooler, or at least adopt some alternative technology, maybe like the Kensington touch-scrolling mouse does? They could flush-mount the scrolling-touchpad and you just differentiate it by a different texture. That would be cool. But if nothing else, a regular scroll-wheel would work fine for me.
> Now this could be because I am lazy or too stupid to organize my icons properly, but I really like the right click new file option in windows explorer...so much easier then dealing with a cluttered start menu, where every application has decied it want to be in the root programs folder, to just right click a new excell document and double click it.
It's not you. It's impossible to keep that Start Programs menu from becoming absolutely ridiculous. I don't use Windows enough to bother trying to solve that annoyance, but I use LaunchBar or QuickSilver on the Mac, so when I want to open Word at absolutely any time, I can just hit (Apple-Space) w o r d [Enter]. (Or if I choose, "wd" or any other substring--you don't need to configure it, it learns what you mean.) Check it out. Apple-Space is a perfect shortcut key for that because the Apple key is where "Alt" is on a PC keyboard. Flanks the spacebar on both sides.
I'm glad someone else sees the futility of maximizing a web browser or similar window on a large screen. Even on a 1024 screen, maximizing is sometimes overkill. Anything bigger is just silly thinking, left over from the Windows 3.1, 640x480 days. When I worked at the Apple Store, I was often sadly amused by people, obviously Windows veterans, who had forcibly dragged a web browser window (usually the piece of trash called IE for Mac, but that's another topic) to 1900 pixels wide on a 23-inch Cinema Display. Hunched over on the left, or center, depending on which clueless hard-coding Free Webmail site they were using, was a 640-pixel-wide strip of color with their e-mail. I always wanted to laugh. Of course, with the way some idiots keep Win IE's "Explorer Bar" open with their "Favorites" all the time, you need a 1900x1200 display just to fit in a whole webpage.
> who...decided there should be a browser popping up when I Apple-Click in a terminal window?
Uh, I think that would have to be you. No amount of Apple-clicking in Terminal on my part, not on URL's or anything else was able to produce any sort of browser. Never heard of that. Care to provide some reproducible steps?
As for wanting to disable all keyboard shortcuts, I think that's a problem you might be kind of in the minority in. I'm sure someone could whip up some software to do that pretty easily, though. Why don't you?
> good solutions to a dozen things I'd likly want to do within 3 inches of my pointer.
There, you just said it--there are maybe a dozen things most of us use the context menu for in Windows. Let's go through my list:
Windows// Mac equivalent// Keyboard shortcut Properties for a file.// Get Info// Cmd-I Create Shortcut// Make Alias// Cmd-L New... > Folder*// New Folder// Cmd-N Rename// Rename// [Return] ("Enter") key Display Control Panel// Desktop/Screensaver Pref Pane// None (use Apple menu) My Computer Properties, to get Device Manager// No equivalent (not necessary) Opening a Start Menu Programs folder in Explorer (Right-click->Open)// No equivalent
I can't think of many more, but my point is just that, for the few things there are that most of us actually use, we don't have to search through menus to find it. We just learn a couple keyboard shortcuts and be done with it.
The * above by "New > Folder" is what I hated most about Windows. On Mac OS X, to make a new folder, you hit Cmd-N. On Windows, you must use either the File menu or the Context menu, click "New," wait for the disk to churn for a while as it loads all the garbage document templates, then click "Folder." This, to me, is worth far more than the $25 mouse that settles your problem. There is no way that I have ever heard, in seven years of heavy Windows use, to create a folder without going through that mess, or opening up the command line.
The propietary MemoryStick? Do you really think Matshushita's SD-cards are less proprietary?
Yes, I do. Do you know why? Because last I checked, MS in any of its 8 yummy flavors, costs at least 150% of SD. Because it's only used in a precious few Sony and Konica cameras, and every one of Sony's devices (TV's, etc). Just because they were able to bribe others into using it in the last couple years, don't pretend it's some sort of open standard. SD is used by the rest of the industry. Canon, Nikon--they're the ones to watch in that market. What do they use? SD. Look at PocketPC and Palm: (Except Sony) Those manufacturers use SD too. How about portable audio? Once again, Except Sony, pretty much all removable storage there is SD too. Remind me now, why would I want to buy anything with MS in it? So I can be locked in to Sony's high prices, DRM, and a new, incompatible MS "standard" every six months?? As far as I'm concerned, MS, XD, and all their variants are no more of a "standard" for data storage than a Playstation memory card.
> I know (from experience) that it takes no more than five minutes to explain left- and right-clicking to a three-year-old child.
Okay, I'll bite. I know (from experience) that it takes at least six years to explain left- and right-clicking to my father, who was 57 in 1999 when he got his first Windows PC. Ever since he found the right button, he has insisted on using it for literally everything, all the time, for no reason at all. Everything that you or I would just click on, he right-clicks, moves the mouse the requisite six inches up to the top menu choice, "Open," and clicks. No amount of explaining will do. He just will not use the left button. Every time I give him instructions and use the verb "click," he asks me, "Right or left click?"
So don't pretend that just because you told your three-year-old, "Only use this button," that everyone else has the luxury of such obedience from users. Many users (yes, PC users) have asked me repeatedly, "Right or left click?" because to them, it's simply not self-explanatory. They don't really understand what a context menu is, let alone the rule that "the right button always makes a context menu appear." My father would waste a lot less of his time if I plugged in an Apple USB mouse to his PC (it works, I tried it.) Of course, it'd be impossible to do certain things, but it's poor software design that requires two mouse buttons. There's nothing wrong with having the option, though. When I'm at my desk, I use a Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer with five buttons. But the right-button is probably my least-used one. When I'm not at my desk (which is usually), I rarely reach for the control key to bring up a context menu. It just doesn't come up.
It's really a pretty unfair comparison to be making. Most cheap PC vendors (Dell, Gateway, etc) were still distributing mice with balls up until a year or two ago. No actual geek uses the mouse that came with his computer. (Heck, no real geek even buys a pre-built PC for that matter.) So why bitch about the Apple mouse? Even if the Apple mouse had two buttons, you'd replace it for the cool MS or Logitech one anyway, for gaming or whatever. The OS supports the context menu. But it also, as a rule, gives you another way to do anything you can do in a context menu. And that has to be a Good Thing.
ActiveX is the only real thing keeping anyone intelligent using IE *at all*! And let's face it, only someone who knows what they're doing even knows *how* to disable ActiveX.
Because some essential but stupidly-designed sites refuse to work without ActiveX.
So if you're going to run a browser that won't work with some sites, why not just switch to another browser altogether?
Slashdot Mirror
I guess they just felt their paper wasn't differentiated enough from generic Office Depot brand paper. Before that, once you removed it from the bag, it looked just like any other paper.
This way, the slightly-richer kids can lord it over the rest... "Where's the logo on your paper?"
Well let's think about this for a minute. Spam e-mail is directly related to the Internet, so an INTERNET search would of course the e-mail definition would be far more prevalent online. If you looked up occurrences of the word SPAM in grocery stores, SPAM the meat would occur much more frequently.
And what is it with you people who go on constantly with SPAM jokes? Are you like five years old or something? Look at the frikkin' can, that should satisfy you. Ingredients:
- Chopped pork shoulder meat with ham meat added.
- Salt (for binding, flavour, and firmness)
- Water
- Sugar
- Sodium Nitrite (for colour and as a preservative)
WTF is so wrong with that?
Personally, I cube and pan-fry SPAM and throw it in a batch of Macaroni and Cheese. It's tasty. I don't know what the problem is with you people, there is a lot of food at McDonalds that's less appetizing than SPAM.
they don't HAVE a directory of each zip code's appropriate 911 center. The phone companies are fighting them by not giving them this info.
/. I remember someone said each 911 point-of-presence has an actual NPA-NXXX (normal 7-digit number) that SBC etc could just f**king make available to all VOIP providers and this would all be over already. The stupid "federal regulators" should give the damn Bells a deadline and if they don't open up the 911 system they should be sued out of business by every VOIP company.
EXACTLY.
Last time this came up on
Oh, but they won't do that because they're on the Bells' payroll! Oops! I mean "campaign contribution list." F**king weasels.
That's not a problem. I have NO DESIRE to receive any e-mail from third-world countries--they don't have to use the system. I would actually like to be able to personally blackhole all IP traffic, e-mail or otherwise, coming from the entire continent of Africa, and I'd like to only allow outbound connections on port 80 to all Asian IPs. That would fix at least a third of the spam problem for me--I realize some people can't afford to blacklist that much of the Internet.
Russia I would whitelist. Allofmp3, etc. Allow. Anything I haven't heard of in Russia I don't need.
Anyone know an easy way to do this?
Gee, let's examine your brilliant comment here:
If you're an "illegal alien," you are probably working in this country. That's what most of the fuss is around them. They're "Not Authorized To Work In The United States," the little checkbox on any job application. So right off, they're paying payroll taxes, including federal income tax, and social security and medicare tax--which they'll never be able to collect on with their fake SSN's, and they won't be able to file a tax return to get part of that money back. Then they go out and buy things (like $800 apiece rims) and pay 7-10% sales tax on them. Ditto for all the tons of taxes on cars, on gas, on cigarettes, on phone service...
So who are you trying to kid that these people aren't contributing their fair share?? Yeah, their kids are going to school. So are every trailerpark welfare mother's kids in Podunk, Oklahoma. I don't see anyone trying to deport them. Everyone's paying taxes. You can be sure of that. (Oh, except the rich...They always manage to avoid paying their fair share by keeping a team of lawyers researching loopholes, and offshore accounts in the Caymans.)
And if you want to draw a correlation between illegal immigrants and increased lawbreaking, I dare you to show a statistic that shows that they are any more likely to commit crimes than US-born citizens with white skin, of equal economic status.
It's not patronizing if that's how they were talking!
-(not the original poster)
So, somebody remind me, do we hate Verizon now, for their CEO hating municipal wifi? Or do we love them for being the first behemoth telco to offer naked DSL in a big way? What's the Slashdot party line now?
Perhaps this post will encourage Dell to pay more attention in the future.
keen, Dell appreciates your constructive criticism. Your Slashdot post has inspired a full-scale probe, from Bombay to New Delhi, into our technical support practices, and we plan to roll out new training methods to avoid situations like yours from happening again.
However, are you sure you have installed the latest Internet Explorer Hotfix? The version number is 6.1.2800.3.43.xpsp2.93.9.
Sincerely,
Michael Dell
--
Michael Dell
CEO and Founder (and avid Slashdot reader!)
Dell Computers Inc.
It means to cut (not attend) school. It's kind of a cheesy term from a hundred years ago, and now it's mostly just used as a jokey way to say "to not go to work/school/whatever for a day, without a virtuous excuse."
Real-life kids today usually just say "ditch"--as in "I'm gonna ditch tomorrow." "Oh cool. I'll ditch too and we'll go smoke weed." "Cool."
Copyright lapsing?? That's silly! Everyone knows copyright lasts forever!
Seriously, though...I think it's obvious from the Copyright Act of 1976 plus the Bono act, that Congress will let the likes of Disney buy a new copyright term extension act every twenty years. Most of the public are such sheep they won't even notice what's going on...watching the news would interfere with watching "American Idol" or "MTV's Cribs."
He said the prototype had a case. And apparently he was there, so he should know.
> That's through some serious emulation. Don't you need a "classic" install (or large parts of one) on an OSX box to have true backwards compatability?
In order to run non-Carbon* OS 9 and previous apps, yes, you do need to have Classic installed. It's installed by default, but by default it's not resident in memory until you fire up a Classic app. It takes about 10 seconds to "boot" and then you can forget about it. Even though I never use it, I kept the Classic install (although I moved it) and the Classic "system folder" is 155 MB on disk. When running a Classic app, the appearance of its windows and menu bar are as they are in OS 9 (as would be expected). Many people run Classic apps all the time, although I avoid it because I would rather use a native app, so I can take advantage of some of the more useful newer features of OS X such as Exposé and Services.
I've noticed on Windows the experience is not much different, with the exception that all the legacy code seems to be loaded all the time as part of the OS (since parts of the OS itself are still legacy anyway, for example, chkdsk). Also, the visual appearance of an old app on Windows isn't predictable. An example: A "Monopoly" CD-ROM game my dad has looks mostly like Windows 3.1 on Windows 95 (dialogs, button shapes, etc.) but under Windows 98 it looked like Windows 95 in those respects. It was strange.
__
* because many developers used Apple's CarbonLib to create "hybrid" versions of their applications around the time OS 9 was showing its age, so some apps that still run in OS 9 also run natively in OS X from the same executable.
Right, but think about this: Just use a USB-keyboard-to-PS/2-port adapter. The kind Microsoft or Logitech include with every keyboard and mouse. Plug it into the PS/2 port on your keylogger, plug your keyboard into the adapter, then plug the whole thing into the PS/2 port. This will work for almost ANY PC since even today, almost every PC made still has these legacy ports, even if the keyboards they end up connected to are USB native. I'm sure a little hunting will find you a PS/2-keyboard-to-USB-port adapter (I have one with 2 PS/2 ports, for keyboard and mouse, to one USB port) so you could then use the keylogger even on a Mac or a "legacy-free" PC.
USB Keyboard->"Microsoft" adapter->keylogger->PS/2 port or...
USB Keyboard->"Microsoft" adapter->keylogger->PS/2->PS/2-to-USB adapter->USB port
Side note: Computers that sit on top of desks are harder to do this to undetected, especially when you start needing more "adapters." Someone will wonder, "How come the teacher's computer has so many little adapters attached to that one plug?" The kind that sit in little cubbies underneath the desk, with the back enclosed, are perfect targets.
> What would you have liked them to learn ?
I think "Watch out for keyloggers!" would be the appropriate one here.
> we couldn't afford the food.
When I was 17-18, I worked at Jack In The Box. It was my first job. I ate there all the time, and so did most of my coworkers. Everyone was very good about food handling there, so we weren't to. We got a 50% discount if we were working that day, and 20% discount on our day off. So on days I worked, I usually ate during work on my lunchbreak, and after or before work. If I was feeling broke, I just bought a 99-cent item like a Jumbo Jack or two tacos, so it was only 54 cents. Since I made $6.75/hour, a buck a day wasn't an unaffordable price.
In 2003, though, I worked at a McDonald's in Massachusetts. I never once ate there, because of the "OMG the way they handle food here is so disgusting" factor.
And as a final note, Disney doesn't give any of its theme-park employees any break on its ridiculously-priced, low-quality theme-park fast food. So considering the slave wages they pay, their employees literally can't afford the food. One meal would cost about two hours' pay. (this also from experience.)
Home machines:
XP home OEM: $65 (average Internet price, and you know HP/Dell/GW2k get a serious break on it)
MS Works, or similar, software for each home machine: $10 (assuming the OEM even buys the MS offering rather than a cheaper one.)
Total revenue per Windows user: $75
"Pro" machines:
XP pro OEM: $100 (same disclaimer applies for real OEM pricing).
Office OEM: $218
(this is the SBE, the cheapest that has Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and the extraneous Publisher. Basic, which excludes PowerPoint and Pub, can be had for $100 less.)
Total revenue per Windows user: $318
Mac users that buy MSO, or MSO+VPC:
Office for Mac OS X: $399
Virtual PC with Win2k: $249
(2k is more usable on emulation than $30-cheaper XP Home)
Total revenue per Mac user: $400 with MSO; $650 with VPC
Well, you be the judge. It depends on piracy and on MSO's popularity on Mac OS X.
Sorry, can't view your PNG image...I'm using Internet Explorer.
heh, heh.
Thank you for one of the few insightful replies. I agree with you that a scroll-wheel would not be a bad idea for Apple. Actually, I think they should invent something cooler, or at least adopt some alternative technology, maybe like the Kensington touch-scrolling mouse does? They could flush-mount the scrolling-touchpad and you just differentiate it by a different texture. That would be cool. But if nothing else, a regular scroll-wheel would work fine for me.
> Now this could be because I am lazy or too stupid to organize my icons properly, but I really like the right click new file option in windows explorer...so much easier then dealing with a cluttered start menu, where every application has decied it want to be in the root programs folder, to just right click a new excell document and double click it.
It's not you. It's impossible to keep that Start Programs menu from becoming absolutely ridiculous. I don't use Windows enough to bother trying to solve that annoyance, but I use LaunchBar or QuickSilver on the Mac, so when I want to open Word at absolutely any time, I can just hit (Apple-Space) w o r d [Enter]. (Or if I choose, "wd" or any other substring--you don't need to configure it, it learns what you mean.) Check it out. Apple-Space is a perfect shortcut key for that because the Apple key is where "Alt" is on a PC keyboard. Flanks the spacebar on both sides.
I'm glad someone else sees the futility of maximizing a web browser or similar window on a large screen. Even on a 1024 screen, maximizing is sometimes overkill. Anything bigger is just silly thinking, left over from the Windows 3.1, 640x480 days. When I worked at the Apple Store, I was often sadly amused by people, obviously Windows veterans, who had forcibly dragged a web browser window (usually the piece of trash called IE for Mac, but that's another topic) to 1900 pixels wide on a 23-inch Cinema Display. Hunched over on the left, or center, depending on which clueless hard-coding Free Webmail site they were using, was a 640-pixel-wide strip of color with their e-mail. I always wanted to laugh. Of course, with the way some idiots keep Win IE's "Explorer Bar" open with their "Favorites" all the time, you need a 1900x1200 display just to fit in a whole webpage.
> who...decided there should be a browser popping up when I Apple-Click in a terminal window?
Uh, I think that would have to be you. No amount of Apple-clicking in Terminal on my part, not on URL's or anything else was able to produce any sort of browser. Never heard of that. Care to provide some reproducible steps?
As for wanting to disable all keyboard shortcuts, I think that's a problem you might be kind of in the minority in. I'm sure someone could whip up some software to do that pretty easily, though. Why don't you?
> It's no longer Command-N...something like Command-Option-N or similar
Oh, totally forgot. I used ReKey (do a Google search) to remap that back to the Right Way. It drove me crazy to have it otherwise.
> good solutions to a dozen things I'd likly want to do within 3 inches of my pointer.
// Mac equivalent // Keyboard shortcut // Get Info // Cmd-I // Make Alias // Cmd-L // New Folder // Cmd-N // Rename // [Return] ("Enter") key // Desktop/Screensaver Pref Pane // None (use Apple menu) // No equivalent (not necessary) // No equivalent
There, you just said it--there are maybe a dozen things most of us use the context menu for in Windows. Let's go through my list:
Windows
Properties for a file.
Create Shortcut
New... > Folder*
Rename
Display Control Panel
My Computer Properties, to get Device Manager
Opening a Start Menu Programs folder in Explorer (Right-click->Open)
I can't think of many more, but my point is just that, for the few things there are that most of us actually use, we don't have to search through menus to find it. We just learn a couple keyboard shortcuts and be done with it.
The * above by "New > Folder" is what I hated most about Windows. On Mac OS X, to make a new folder, you hit Cmd-N. On Windows, you must use either the File menu or the Context menu, click "New," wait for the disk to churn for a while as it loads all the garbage document templates, then click "Folder." This, to me, is worth far more than the $25 mouse that settles your problem. There is no way that I have ever heard, in seven years of heavy Windows use, to create a folder without going through that mess, or opening up the command line.
> Is your dad left handed?
Nope.
The propietary MemoryStick? Do you really think Matshushita's SD-cards are less proprietary?
Yes, I do.
Do you know why? Because last I checked, MS in any of its 8 yummy flavors, costs at least 150% of SD. Because it's only used in a precious few Sony and Konica cameras, and every one of Sony's devices (TV's, etc). Just because they were able to bribe others into using it in the last couple years, don't pretend it's some sort of open standard. SD is used by the rest of the industry. Canon, Nikon--they're the ones to watch in that market. What do they use? SD. Look at PocketPC and Palm: (Except Sony) Those manufacturers use SD too. How about portable audio? Once again, Except Sony, pretty much all removable storage there is SD too. Remind me now, why would I want to buy anything with MS in it? So I can be locked in to Sony's high prices, DRM, and a new, incompatible MS "standard" every six months?? As far as I'm concerned, MS, XD, and all their variants are no more of a "standard" for data storage than a Playstation memory card.
> I know (from experience) that it takes no more than five minutes to explain left- and right-clicking to a three-year-old child.
Okay, I'll bite.
I know (from experience) that it takes at least six years to explain left- and right-clicking to my father, who was 57 in 1999 when he got his first Windows PC. Ever since he found the right button, he has insisted on using it for literally everything, all the time, for no reason at all. Everything that you or I would just click on, he right-clicks, moves the mouse the requisite six inches up to the top menu choice, "Open," and clicks. No amount of explaining will do. He just will not use the left button. Every time I give him instructions and use the verb "click," he asks me, "Right or left click?"
So don't pretend that just because you told your three-year-old, "Only use this button," that everyone else has the luxury of such obedience from users. Many users (yes, PC users) have asked me repeatedly, "Right or left click?" because to them, it's simply not self-explanatory. They don't really understand what a context menu is, let alone the rule that "the right button always makes a context menu appear." My father would waste a lot less of his time if I plugged in an Apple USB mouse to his PC (it works, I tried it.) Of course, it'd be impossible to do certain things, but it's poor software design that requires two mouse buttons. There's nothing wrong with having the option, though. When I'm at my desk, I use a Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer with five buttons. But the right-button is probably my least-used one. When I'm not at my desk (which is usually), I rarely reach for the control key to bring up a context menu. It just doesn't come up.
It's really a pretty unfair comparison to be making. Most cheap PC vendors (Dell, Gateway, etc) were still distributing mice with balls up until a year or two ago. No actual geek uses the mouse that came with his computer. (Heck, no real geek even buys a pre-built PC for that matter.) So why bitch about the Apple mouse? Even if the Apple mouse had two buttons, you'd replace it for the cool MS or Logitech one anyway, for gaming or whatever. The OS supports the context menu. But it also, as a rule, gives you another way to do anything you can do in a context menu. And that has to be a Good Thing.
ActiveX is the only real thing keeping anyone intelligent using IE *at all*! And let's face it, only someone who knows what they're doing even knows *how* to disable ActiveX.
Because some essential but stupidly-designed sites refuse to work without ActiveX.
So if you're going to run a browser that won't work with some sites, why not just switch to another browser altogether?