[...] one of the multiple reasons is passenger attention.
That's what a pilot told me too. If passengers are listening to music, for example, they won't hear announcements made on the speakers.
It's not that the inability to hear announcements is a direct threat to the safety of passengers. But it's one of those cases where you want to eliminate anything that can potentially make a bad situation become worse.
Most plane crashes, it seems to me, are caused by a combination of small incidents that—combined together—create a deadly situation. When reviewing those incidents, they never seem so serious if considered separately.
In the table, see the row "Multiple Currency Transactions". It says, "Exchange rate includes a 2.5% fee**".
Also: "** If your transaction involves a currency conversion, it will be completed at a retail foreign exchange rate determined by PayPal, which is adjusted regularly based on market conditions." (My emphasis)
What I understand: We decide what the exchange rate is, then we add 2.5%.
Notice that there is also a link: "Fees for cross border payments". It goes to another page that mentions a 3.9% rate. I am not sure, but I think this is a fee that applies to all transactions through PayPal.
This definitely isn't good. However, I certainly believe it is fast.
There is debate about double spaces only among the people who don't know about typography. None of my teachers knew anything about typography.
Those who know typography, who typeset books, and newspapers, never discuss this problem.
Who would you rather believe? Typesetters or teachers?
Many mistakes in the use of typography are caused by the limitations of technology. Today, almost every limitation is fixed, but the legacy mistakes remain.
The article said "the new Flash Player will be available later today" and the article is dated August 20. So I assumed the new player would be available this morning, August 21.
Apparently, the press release mentions "later today" as well, but is dated August 21.
I guess I'll have to be patient.
For the sake of the demonstration, I'll pick smaller numbers. Send 2 messages to 5 persons, A, B, C, D, E.
1) Send message #1 to A, B, C.
2) Send message #2 to C, D, E.
It is not said that all 1.5M people received each of the 50k messages.
In spam emails, the From: and To: fields are often erroneous. In that case, the actual recipients are in the Bcc field. So, several people receive a same message that seems addressed to only one.
I understand: 50.000 distinct pieces of email destined to a total of 1.5 Million people. Each email message is sent to several persons at the same time.
50.000 distinct emails seems a lot, but I'm assuming that spammers have tools that automatically generate new email messages, slightly different from each other -- to fool spam filters.
Thanks for your comment. You know a lot more about Linux installers than I do.
"You need to qualify what is an installer."
I mentioned "desktop application", but I actually meant desktop application for the consumer market. So, by extension, I was referring to installers that verify system requirement, let you choose installation options, install the application on your hard-disk, create icons, etc.
I really wish computers were easier to use. I agree that Swing performs pretty well given the constraints it put on itself (non-native widgets, pure-Java rendering). However, there are glitches that programmers must deal with if they are targeting the consumer market. Here are more detailed examples:
The Java API for fonts under Windows is unfinished. I have Myriad and Myriad Pro installed (very popular fonts, one is TrueType, the other is OpenType), but the Java Environment v5.0 won't see those fonts. Also, some wide-spread PostScript fonts make the JVM crash.
Say you want your application to launch Acrobat Reader to view a PDF. Is Acrobat installed? The registry will tell you under Windows. You will need some platform-specific code to find if Acrobat Reader is installed.
Often, it is important that users find a familiar environment when using their applications. I find Swing's color chooser and open/save dialogs too different from their native versions. (In the Swing UI on which I work, the Open/Save dialogs are actually SWT, therefore they look completely familiar to the user.)
Too often I'm in conflict with other programmers who won't see the importance of small details in the user interface. They will choose a technology assuming that it will have no effect on the user experience.
You are right in saying that "You really need to ship a JRE with your app and make sure it is used"
Actually, I have seen very few programmers recognize that.
That supports my point that there isn't such a thing as a fully portable desktop application.
In addition to the problem of JRE that you mentioned:
Every application needs an installer.
Many applications need to access system settings that are not accessible from a Java API (may it be Swing, SWT, or Foundation Classes).
There are things that no Java UI toolkit handles properly, and you will have to write native code to do it yourself. (For example, Swing is bad at application icons, Fonts, Open/Save dialogs, and some of the handling of Unicode.)
Since you mentioned "bundling the necessary libraries with your app", I'm assuming that we're talking about a desktop application, as opposed to a Java client applet.
I think that in the desktop world, there isn't such a thing as a portable application. Programming in Java helps writing for multiple platforms, but there is a huge amount of work that will have to be platform-specific.
Even if you are programming in Swing or even in SWT, you will to write native code or handle native code. Here are some examples:
You will need an installer.
Your application may need to inspect the system or read system settings. You will use different native APIs for each platform your application runs on.
You may need to verify that a font is installed. (The AWT API is wrong about Font names -- it doesn't know how to read them properly.)
The Swing API doesn't allow setting an application icon in several different sizes -- you may want to do that yourself. There are native APIs for that.
If you do mean to build an app that runs on a Mac, you will need a Mac.
I think that Push-to-talk (PTT) more or less turns a cellphone into a walkie-talkie. You have to keep a button pushed as you speak.
What I don't know is if PTT uses local network equipment or if only the cellphones suffice (which would be useful where there is no network). I have seen people use PTT in ski resorts -- it would help them get together down the slopes.
Arguably, the design of new IP set-top box are very close to PCs. However, the boxes on which most of Microsoft's partners are working will never be used as PCs. They won't even host a hard-drive.
I've seen Microsoft TV run on a box that for sure was not a regular PC. It was slow, but it was acceptable.
A large IPTV deployment is hundreds of thousands of set-top boxes. It is important to bring the cost of the boxes down, not too much above $100. (That means already tens of millions of dollars, solely for the price of the boxes!) There is no IPTV without cheap set-top boxes.
The problem facing Microsoft today is that noone wants a proprietary solution. Microsoft also seems to have problems with scaling their nice features to work for a very large amount of users. Make sure you read: MS's IPTV strategy in tatters
Note that last time I noticed a stall, my hard drive became very busy. Also, most of the times, stalls occur when restoring focus to the code editing area.
You're right, it's confusing. The message on Eclipse.org is totally unclear.
They call the Eclipse Platform what we like to call the IDE; and the SWT toolkit is hidden in the Eclipse Platform binaries.
Plus, I don't remember any marketing of the JFace API, a nice high-level toolkit on top of SWT. The Eclipse IDE uses JFace, or directly SWT for its GUI.
You mentioned that Eclipse occasionally stalls. It happens for me too, and I find it annoying. Do you know what's happening?
I'm particularly interested in knowing if SWT -- the GUI toolkit underneath Eclipse -- is the cause (in which case I will reconsider using it for my apps), or if instead the problem is a sudden heavy garbage collection.
Heavy garbage collection can be avoided if helping the garbage collector by:
Making less objects, re-using objects
Setting all members of an object to null when the object is not longer used.
An excellent collection of data:
on
Cubicle Privacy
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Authors of Peopleware gathered excellent information about disruptive work environments. It is a good book to make circulate when workers begin to complain about bad office space. I believe the book was written in 1987.
I don't think there is more to say in 2005, except the following question: Why is the debate not over? Are the crazy managers that powerful?
Managers often become totally illogical when discussing the possibility that people work from home, because they try to hide their fear of losing control over their workers.
I think that Adobe is killing FrameMaker because the code has gone out of control. It has become extremely costly to maintain and add features to FrameMaker.
Microsoft Word's code was also close to go out of control. For example, according to a Microsoft employee in his article Anatomy of a Software Bug, Word's architecture was really not made for multiple undo/redo. Reading the article restored my belief that there are good programmers at Microsoft, after all. Apparently adding multiple undo/redo was a sort of design stunt that few programmers could have performed. Microsoft spent a huge amount of effort to maintain Word.
It is interesting to look at the progress made by Photoshop and Illustrator over the years. It very much seems that Illustrator is taking the same path as FrameMaker did. Illustrator is not receiving enough care. Curve editing is a pain in Illustrator, it doesn't have the level of usability of Photoshop. Consistency between the two products is broken in many places. Photoshop feels way ahead of Illustrator.
Eventually, the list of features to be fixed or re-designed in Illustrator will grow so big that Illustrator will come to a dead-end, also.
Maybe this hasn't been mentioned because there is no email client supporting an SQL database already. I think that Thunderbird should show the way and offer the possibility to store emails as an SQL database.
That searches give instantaneous results would make a part of my job way easier. It seems to me that many email programs fail at that. There is Spotlight from Apple, but it's a feature of the OS. I like the way iTunes lets me navigate through MP3/AAC files. The whole interface of iTunes is built around the idea that you're going to look for a tune. Much more often than search a tune, what I find important is to quickly find what my friends and co-workers told me, and what I told them.
There are many big limitations in email programs, but they often are subtle in that they leave the responsability to the user. For example, Thunderbird with the default options puts the cursor at the end of the text when replying to an email. So I often receive an email response starting with a whole page of the very message I wrote! Only at the end do I read: "Agreed. John." Some might say it's the fault of whoever wrote the response; I think the email program is flawed. Another example is the discouraging difficulty of create filtering rules. I don't know many people who have filters programmed. I think that 1% of email users is a realistic figure.
A good email program should make it easy to write good emails, not just tons of emails. All email programs are archaic. As, I said, they make searches a hassle.
A possible explanation for the very little sophistication of email programs is that typically, people that design software (1) are not the best communicators, (2) are not very good at improving their own tools.
For those interesting in the design of Social Software, Joel Spolsky wrote an interesting article on his blog. Recommended reading.
When I first read the article, I was shocked. I was shocked that someone could get in trouble for writing about something he knows about Apple, whereas absolutely no contract ties him to Apple.
Then I realized how what happened could be seen as a criminal offense. Someone was a possession of stolen information and used it. Being in possession of stolen goods is punished by the law. In this particular case, information certainly carries a value, and the fact that it was disclosed impacted its value.
That said, I don't know what to think. Is it reasonable to qualify a company's marketing plans as intellectual property?
If I had written, "I heard that Microsoft is going to release a new version of Internet Explorer" before it became a well-known fact, would have I put myself at risk?
I use Firefox and Thunderbird, and I wish that Mozilla.org concentrate on those programs. I find the user interface of Mozilla not as usable as the one of other products. Also, I prefer processes to be independent. (So that crashes don't bring everything down.)
Slashdot Mirror
[...] one of the multiple reasons is passenger attention.
That's what a pilot told me too. If passengers are listening to music, for example, they won't hear announcements made on the speakers.
It's not that the inability to hear announcements is a direct threat to the safety of passengers. But it's one of those cases where you want to eliminate anything that can potentially make a bad situation become worse.
Most plane crashes, it seems to me, are caused by a combination of small incidents that—combined together—create a deadly situation. When reviewing those incidents, they never seem so serious if considered separately.
PayPal fees:
https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_display-fees-outside&countries=ROW
In the table, see the row "Multiple Currency Transactions". It says, "Exchange rate includes a 2.5% fee**".
Also: "** If your transaction involves a currency conversion, it will be completed at a retail foreign exchange rate determined by PayPal, which is adjusted regularly based on market conditions." (My emphasis)
What I understand: We decide what the exchange rate is, then we add 2.5%.
Notice that there is also a link: "Fees for cross border payments". It goes to another page that mentions a 3.9% rate. I am not sure, but I think this is a fee that applies to all transactions through PayPal.
This definitely isn't good. However, I certainly believe it is fast.
There is debate about double spaces only among the people who don't know about typography. None of my teachers knew anything about typography.
Those who know typography, who typeset books, and newspapers, never discuss this problem.
Who would you rather believe? Typesetters or teachers? Many mistakes in the use of typography are caused by the limitations of technology. Today, almost every limitation is fixed, but the legacy mistakes remain.
I never have mod points when I need them.
Thanks for the link.
The article said "the new Flash Player will be available later today" and the article is dated August 20. So I assumed the new player would be available this morning, August 21.
Apparently, the press release mentions "later today" as well, but is dated August 21.
I guess I'll have to be patient.
Has anyone found the download link?
The version of Flash from this page: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer9 seems to be a beta version from June 11.
The average people don't think about protecting their data, or wouldn't know how to do it.
From the point of view of a user who is not an expert, all programs shipped with an operating system are part of the operating system.
This discussion should ultimately benefit those who are the least technically knowledgeable, since they are those who suffer most.
Today, a big majority of computers users are not experts.
Loosely implementing (allowing mistakes in) a standard hurts the standard.
CSS and HTML are hurt by the fact that browsers are so buggy, especially Internet Explorer.
Allowing syntax errors in HTML makes it much harder to detect nasty layout bugs.
When debugging difficult layout bugs, at some point you will need to understand the corrections that IE's HTML parser implicitely makes. That's crazy.
The situation is the same with compilers. Sloppy or absent compiler error messages allow introduction of very nasty bugs in your code.
There is no need to study the article so seriously.
Why would someone design a sophisticated electronic device with an unnecessarily-archaic interface such as a knock at the door?
Answer: To dishonestly draw interest from those who don't understand technology.
For the sake of the demonstration, I'll pick smaller numbers. Send 2 messages to 5 persons, A, B, C, D, E.
1) Send message #1 to A, B, C.
2) Send message #2 to C, D, E.
It is not said that all 1.5M people received each of the 50k messages.
In spam emails, the From: and To: fields are often erroneous. In that case, the actual recipients are in the Bcc field. So, several people receive a same message that seems addressed to only one.
Other comment:
50k distinct emails to a total of 1.5M people
I understand: 50.000 distinct pieces of email destined to a total of 1.5 Million people. Each email message is sent to several persons at the same time.
50.000 distinct emails seems a lot, but I'm assuming that spammers have tools that automatically generate new email messages, slightly different from each other -- to fool spam filters.
Thanks for your comment. You know a lot more about Linux installers than I do.
"You need to qualify what is an installer."
I mentioned "desktop application", but I actually meant desktop application for the consumer market. So, by extension, I was referring to installers that verify system requirement, let you choose installation options, install the application on your hard-disk, create icons, etc. I really wish computers were easier to use. I agree that Swing performs pretty well given the constraints it put on itself (non-native widgets, pure-Java rendering). However, there are glitches that programmers must deal with if they are targeting the consumer market. Here are more detailed examples:
The Java API for fonts under Windows is unfinished. I have Myriad and Myriad Pro installed (very popular fonts, one is TrueType, the other is OpenType), but the Java Environment v5.0 won't see those fonts. Also, some wide-spread PostScript fonts make the JVM crash.
Say you want your application to launch Acrobat Reader to view a PDF. Is Acrobat installed? The registry will tell you under Windows. You will need some platform-specific code to find if Acrobat Reader is installed.
Often, it is important that users find a familiar environment when using their applications. I find Swing's color chooser and open/save dialogs too different from their native versions. (In the Swing UI on which I work, the Open/Save dialogs are actually SWT, therefore they look completely familiar to the user.)
Too often I'm in conflict with other programmers who won't see the importance of small details in the user interface. They will choose a technology assuming that it will have no effect on the user experience.
You are right in saying that "You really need to ship a JRE with your app and make sure it is used"
Actually, I have seen very few programmers recognize that. That supports my point that there isn't such a thing as a fully portable desktop application.
In addition to the problem of JRE that you mentioned:
I think that in the desktop world, there isn't such a thing as a portable application. Programming in Java helps writing for multiple platforms, but there is a huge amount of work that will have to be platform-specific.
Even if you are programming in Swing or even in SWT, you will to write native code or handle native code. Here are some examples:
If you do mean to build an app that runs on a Mac, you will need a Mac.
I think that Push-to-talk (PTT) more or less turns a cellphone into a walkie-talkie. You have to keep a button pushed as you speak.
What I don't know is if PTT uses local network equipment or if only the cellphones suffice (which would be useful where there is no network). I have seen people use PTT in ski resorts -- it would help them get together down the slopes.
Read "Current Use in Mobile Telephony" on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push_to_talk
Arguably, the design of new IP set-top box are very close to PCs. However, the boxes on which most of Microsoft's partners are working will never be used as PCs. They won't even host a hard-drive.
During the last IBC convention this September in Amsterdam, Microsoft revealed their relationship with set-top box manufacturers.
I've seen Microsoft TV run on a box that for sure was not a regular PC. It was slow, but it was acceptable.
A large IPTV deployment is hundreds of thousands of set-top boxes. It is important to bring the cost of the boxes down, not too much above $100. (That means already tens of millions of dollars, solely for the price of the boxes!) There is no IPTV without cheap set-top boxes.
The problem facing Microsoft today is that noone wants a proprietary solution. Microsoft also seems to have problems with scaling their nice features to work for a very large amount of users. Make sure you read: MS's IPTV strategy in tatters
Thanks, I'll look at the plugin.
Note that last time I noticed a stall, my hard drive became very busy. Also, most of the times, stalls occur when restoring focus to the code editing area.
You're right, it's confusing. The message on Eclipse.org is totally unclear.
They call the Eclipse Platform what we like to call the IDE; and the SWT toolkit is hidden in the Eclipse Platform binaries.
Plus, I don't remember any marketing of the JFace API, a nice high-level toolkit on top of SWT. The Eclipse IDE uses JFace, or directly SWT for its GUI.
You mentioned that Eclipse occasionally stalls. It happens for me too, and I find it annoying. Do you know what's happening?
I'm particularly interested in knowing if SWT -- the GUI toolkit underneath Eclipse -- is the cause (in which case I will reconsider using it for my apps), or if instead the problem is a sudden heavy garbage collection.
Heavy garbage collection can be avoided if helping the garbage collector by:
Authors of Peopleware gathered excellent information about disruptive work environments. It is a good book to make circulate when workers begin to complain about bad office space. I believe the book was written in 1987.
I don't think there is more to say in 2005, except the following question: Why is the debate not over? Are the crazy managers that powerful?
Managers often become totally illogical when discussing the possibility that people work from home, because they try to hide their fear of losing control over their workers.
I think that Adobe is killing FrameMaker because the code has gone out of control. It has become extremely costly to maintain and add features to FrameMaker.
Microsoft Word's code was also close to go out of control. For example, according to a Microsoft employee in his article Anatomy of a Software Bug, Word's architecture was really not made for multiple undo/redo. Reading the article restored my belief that there are good programmers at Microsoft, after all. Apparently adding multiple undo/redo was a sort of design stunt that few programmers could have performed. Microsoft spent a huge amount of effort to maintain Word.
It is interesting to look at the progress made by Photoshop and Illustrator over the years. It very much seems that Illustrator is taking the same path as FrameMaker did. Illustrator is not receiving enough care. Curve editing is a pain in Illustrator, it doesn't have the level of usability of Photoshop. Consistency between the two products is broken in many places. Photoshop feels way ahead of Illustrator.
Eventually, the list of features to be fixed or re-designed in Illustrator will grow so big that Illustrator will come to a dead-end, also.
Maybe this hasn't been mentioned because there is no email client supporting an SQL database already. I think that Thunderbird should show the way and offer the possibility to store emails as an SQL database.
That searches give instantaneous results would make a part of my job way easier. It seems to me that many email programs fail at that. There is Spotlight from Apple, but it's a feature of the OS. I like the way iTunes lets me navigate through MP3/AAC files. The whole interface of iTunes is built around the idea that you're going to look for a tune. Much more often than search a tune, what I find important is to quickly find what my friends and co-workers told me, and what I told them.
There are many big limitations in email programs, but they often are subtle in that they leave the responsability to the user. For example, Thunderbird with the default options puts the cursor at the end of the text when replying to an email. So I often receive an email response starting with a whole page of the very message I wrote! Only at the end do I read: "Agreed. John." Some might say it's the fault of whoever wrote the response; I think the email program is flawed.
Another example is the discouraging difficulty of create filtering rules. I don't know many people who have filters programmed. I think that 1% of email users is a realistic figure.
A good email program should make it easy to write good emails, not just tons of emails. All email programs are archaic. As, I said, they make searches a hassle.
A possible explanation for the very little sophistication of email programs is that typically, people that design software (1) are not the best communicators, (2) are not very good at improving their own tools.
For those interesting in the design of Social Software, Joel Spolsky wrote an interesting article on his blog. Recommended reading.
When I first read the article, I was shocked. I was shocked that someone could get in trouble for writing about something he knows about Apple, whereas absolutely no contract ties him to Apple.
Then I realized how what happened could be seen as a criminal offense. Someone was a possession of stolen information and used it. Being in possession of stolen goods is punished by the law. In this particular case, information certainly carries a value, and the fact that it was disclosed impacted its value.
That said, I don't know what to think. Is it reasonable to qualify a company's marketing plans as intellectual property?
If I had written, "I heard that Microsoft is going to release a new version of Internet Explorer" before it became a well-known fact, would have I put myself at risk?
I use Firefox and Thunderbird, and I wish that Mozilla.org concentrate on those programs. I find the user interface of Mozilla not as usable as the one of other products. Also, I prefer processes to be independent. (So that crashes don't bring everything down.)
What do you use Mozilla for?
Is it the HTML editor? The IRC client?