He has some of it online. Scroll down to "Tog invented the concept of the mile high menu bar...".
Thanks for that. This particular bit has something I'd actually forgotten about, which is the whole "edge of the screen" deal- it's easier to get to the menu bar since it's along a screen edge, you just 'slam' your pointer towards the top of the screen 'then you just have to position it left or right'. I guess I have issues with the left or right part... I was remembering a more detailed 'muscle memory' target-aquisition rant from somewhere related, I'm almost sure in the same text. Really, that's my smallest complaint about the menu bar- it's large enough, and would be pretty easy to hit even without being along a screen edge, I think. Power users use keyboard shortcuts anyway, I guess.
All the same, a bunch of the stuff I said still applies- I think there are location and consistency issues with the menu items themselves, and "not near the data" is generally a bad place to put controls. Users look at visible windows, not the menu bar, to see what application is available.
I find it interesting, and perhaps telling, that with a really good application design, you almost never end up using the menu, because there are more intuitive and easier to use controls in the window...
Again, like I said, I don't expect the menu bar to change or go away or anything... it's just that it seems to me that the Finder's problems are perhaps not as large as issues I've seen users have with this. I mean, really, why is a user switching back and forth between the two types of Finder views? Nobody does that, so, as odd as it seems to have both brushed metal and aqua views of 'the same' Finder window, I don't see it as a problem that the chicklet button moves a little as a result. Users pick one view or another and that's what they like, so they run with just that- no problem. It's a dumb design that should be changed ( they need to pick one ), but it doesn't require throwing out the app. The File menu moves, too. Users can't control the length of an application name ( thus, the position of 'standard' menus ) or if a window looks like it has focus when it doesn't, thus there really are serious interface issues presented by the current menu bar. The menu bar issues are as serious or worse than the Finder issues, IMHO, that's all I am trying to say...
Re:great read for developers
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Hacking Mac OS X
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· Score: 3, Interesting
There you'd learn about "Acquiring Target" and how the top menu bar is actually a Good Thing (tm)
Sigh. I guess I knew I'd draw that response. And I agree with everything said in Joel's take on muscle memory, etc ( yes, I'd seen it before ). Really, I really, really do. Until just over a year ago, I was a big, big supporter of the Macintosh-style application menu bar. I was glad to see it ( along with a few other Mac OS ideas ) added to what is essentially otherwise NeXTStep. Muscle memory is huge. Things that are always there and used frequently should always be in the same place. To a large extent, the desktop-based application menu bar does all of that and fits the "Aquiring Target" idiom.
Except for one problem. It's application-specific, not system-wide. It's contents and menu placement varies from application to application. In that it's an application-specific menu, not a system menu, it actually -fails- the "Target" design you mention in many ways. Is the "File" menu for "Safari" and "Activity Monitor" in the same location on the screen? No! The second has a longer title, and thus the "File" menu is shifted significantly to the right as a result. And that's the most consitent menu item- the Window and Help menus are almost never in the same location. The menu bar is never really the same between two apps- how many apps don't even _have_ a file menu? How many apps have a "File" is rarely used, or would be better named something different? Actually, you'll have a hard time thinking of an app without a File menu, and that's the idiom's saving grace- that application developers do tend to actually follow Apple's HUI guidelines, because they don't totally suck and do actually help users find their way around. I'm not totally anti-separate-menu-bar, don't get me wrong. It took a lot to get me to think it's not all it's cracked up to be.
The menu bar also is supposed to serve as a visual clue as to what the current application is. This is where it fails the hardest, and it's not really it's fault or the designer's fault, it's the user's fault. The user just doesn't pay attention to it. They're focused on the window they're looking at. They're looking for the little blue line around the dialog box, the flashing cursor, their input point, whatever is visible. Not the menu bar.
Ever watch a novice or new Macintosh user try to figure out what's going on when an application that is not the desktop is running but has no open windows? How many users keep apps running because they think, windows-style, that once the last window is gone, they've quit the app? When no windows are showing except a finder window, why would you need an extra click to make that finder window active? Worse- and it would be bug-related- god forbid if you have some app that shows an insertion point or other sign of focus when it doesn't actually have focus. Watching users confronted with an app like this is what convinced me that the menu bar really doesn't work to ID the current app - it doesn't matter one lick what application title is showing in the menu bar, the users aren't looking there, and literally can't see it on their 19" monitor when they're looking at an app window.
The observation that users don't key on the application name in the menu bar, the fact that the menus aren't always in the same place for different apps, plus the ( often ) long spatial distance placed between data ( the window ) and control ( the menu ), and lots of time watching users fight with confusion and productivity issues due to these things... that all led me to quite reluctantly decide that the application menu bar, while it was perfect for a small Mac Classic sceen, doesn't really provide the big win that it should. I realize that nobody is going to listen to that complaint and that lots of people love that UI design and it's not going anywhere. I'm just saying that if you're going to pick on the Finder, which is arguably not entirely broken and could be fixed instead of thrown away, I'd like to talk about the Application Menu. Maybe there's a way to fix it, too, but... there are definite problems there, and it doesn't solve even some of the issues it's supposed to address as currently implemented.
great read for developers
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Hacking Mac OS X
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· Score: 3, Interesting
This is a great read for OS X developers. Actual discussion of EOF ( Enterprise Objects Framework ) and how Core Data is really different; Objective-C, Cocoa and threading; Objective-C code injection and dynamic override; WebOjects Java vs Objective-C; a small bit of talk about Mac programming jobs and reasons for corporate resistance to Apple stuff; all of this with a sense of history and a balanced, insightful view of Apple's corporate policy and history.
I'm still trying to figure out how it was posted on/. It's sure to just confuse a bunch of people who read the summary and think it's all about how 'the finder sux'... which is the shortest section in there. What's weird is I'd never noticed that hiding the Finder toolbar and sidebar changed the window from bushed metal to aqua look! While I have to admit that's stupid, I'm not sure it's a reason to toss the whole thing ( just make it all one or the other... I hate brushed metal, so I'd make it aqua, but just pick one, Apple! ).
Of course, I'm in the 'why the hell would you want to hide the toolbar and sidebar' camp, and thus don't often see the aqua-look windows unless I'm undoing something some old-time can't-learn-anything-new all-this-useful-file-navigation-stuff-confuses-me OS 9 user did. I guess that just shows my NeXT vs. Mac OS bias. For me, the Finder is not the biggest problem in OS X. It's the Menu bar. I've realized that it's not so great on larger screens. It's perfect for the Mac Classic screen, but it's not what people look at to figure out what the active application is. I promise, if there's a flashing cursor in a text field, the user is _sure_ that's the active application, they're not looking at the menu bar... it's a broken interface designed for a 9-inch screen. I'd say that's my NeXT bias, but I've spent a lot of time watching people use OS X, and they do _not_ pay attention to the menu bar, which ultimately makes it just a bit of lost screen real estate. Too bad that's the one thing that's not likely to change about Mac OS. Otherwise, OS X is the best thing _ever_.
She only needs it for web/word processing, but it often runs slower than my Win98 PII w/96mb of ram.
It would be an interesting and enlightening exercise to run Activity Monitor and er... I'm trying to remember the Win98 equivalent, but anyway... it'd be interesting to run both of those while doing equivalent websurfing and word processing functions.
Are you running Win98 with virtual memory on? Is it using it? I definitely have to wonder if your subjective guess at comparative performance there is right or not. But you shouldn't compare OS X to Win98... try putting XP on that PII and see what happens... my mother-in-law uses OS X on a 333Mhz G3, I kid you not. Of course, it does have more than 256MB and she's comparing it's performance to Win98 on her previous machine, a 486... so it's all relative...
I promise, your wife's machine is slow because it's waiting for disk I/O to swap memory in and out. OS X is very agressive about using memory, and 512MB is a real sweet spot for it as far as performance goes. I do wish Apple understood how bad their default memory configuration makes their system look. 512MB default is the next big business improvement I'm hoping to see from them.
Word X is also real pig memory-wise, if that's the word processor she's using... I don't know if a more bloated app exists.
Until you get more memory, if she hides ( cmd-h ) the app(s) she's not using, they pretty effectively shut down and shouldn't suck up much of the machine's bandwidth after the initial swapping. Safari in the background with spinning baloney and a full, large cache and Word X in the foreground with auto-everything-check ( like it's default preferences setup ) and 256MB on a less than 1GHz G4 with a slow laptop hard drive *is* the kind of thing that got people thinking Macs are slow in the first place... that said, I have a lowly 800Mhz G4 iMac that cooks right along with 512MB, so you really should poke around with Activity Monitor if you think you're seeing problems. It could be a third-party driver ( you don't have an HP all-in-one printer/fax/scanner, do you? God HP's OS X drivers suck... )
Safari is a CPU and memory hog. Try Firefox to see if it's any better. That said, I'm going to bet along with everyone else responding to your post that she has the default 256MB memory in that thing... for which Apple should be flogged, but you had to know that was the _minimum_ memory configuration, right?
Seriously, though, she can figure out what's slow herself : Activity Monitor is a nice GUI 'top', find it under Applications/Utilities.
I don't suppose she's going to some lame-ass flash-advert-heavy discussion website where everyone has their own animated icon?? I've noticed those suckers really make Safari crawl... or any other browser, for that matter...
Don't let this line fool you - it doesn't necessarily mean that OS X is inherently more secure than Windows, or Linux, or whatever.
No, it's not that line. It's the BSD core, the built-in firewall, the good default install account setup, and ( largely ) the lack of Outlook and IIS. Those are the things, along with frequent and timely security updates, that make OS X inherently much more secure than windows.
OS X doesn't run on security through obscurity, it's really just another *nix, and actually, there's no proof of a security problem here, just proof of Symantec marketing and a growing Apple user base.
That said, if someone sells you a machine where they say "yea, you can double-click any email attachment or download every executable you ever find, no worries about security", don't buy what they are selling...
You mean Vorbis, since "Ogg is just a container file", right ? A.ogg could as easily contain FLAC-encoded audio, or is that something they say and probably support or that nobody would ever do ?
Don't get me wrong, I really like the idea of Ogg Vorbis and, better, non-proprietary file formats in general... but... uh, well... these MP3 things seem to work pretty well and i can play them all over the place... at the risk of pissing off someone really emotionally committed to Ogg Vorbis...
Isn't saying that a given audio device doesn't support.ogg a pretty safe bet???
This is not a Samsung model. In fact it is made by several Chinese factories as fakes of Samsung, SENAO, etc.
That would explain the results you get when entering "Samsung Super Long Range Phone" into google. It's really a shame we can't convince/. editors to google the subjects of stories before submitting them. I guess that's our job.
They normally use HAM radio frequencies or comercial VHF/UHF. Due to the fact that they are only certified in China it is illegal to use in most countries.
This explains why you don't see these for sale in the US anywhere... it's clearly not a new product, and if someone did come up with a way to do this legally ( and in a manner that would allow everyone in town to have such a phone- say a wide-spectrum mesh network device or something ), it'd be big, big news. Too bad this isn't something like that- instead, it's just more crap to clutter HAM frequencies and/or screw up over-the-air broadcasts. Only the stupid and extremely anti-social would even consider purchasing such a thing in most developed countries...
Me, I'm not to afraid of low-level RF emissions- I think my cell phone probably won't give me cancer... but you do have to wonder what sort of radiation *this* sucker puts out...
The good news is, it's still easier to make an indie game than an indie movie.
With the declining price and high quality of HD video cameras, alongside the increasing complexity of 3D video game phsyics and graphics, not to mention the gameplay complexity people have come to expect, that's actually a debatable point...
What's easier, creating a less-than-2-hour story and getting a few actors to do the dialog while you point a camera at them, or creating a fully imersive game world offering 40+ hours of semi-scripted gameplay ?
I'm sure plenty of 'indie' games took a lot more resources to put together than even 'Clerks' and 'Blair Witch Project', and those indie flicks were shot on pricey film stock with you-must-rent-them expenseive cameras, which you wouldn't have to use today.
That said, producing a movie is completely different from producing a game, and which is 'easier' depends on what you're trying to do in either field. Also, both fields have changed for indie producers - Kevin Smith himself has said that 'Clerks' would never, ever make it today. The audience has changed. Of course, he was shocked anyone wanted to see it originally as well... but somehow I think he's right. 'Clerks' released today would be just another odd little flick also-ran at some film festival, and the basic tech is so different today that it's hard to even think of what game you'd compare to 'Clerks'...
The parent's real point is valid, though. Movie studios and game publishers are similar in that they are in a very, very strong distribution-controlling role... not unlike the music distributors... all industries where a small number of companies control the distribution channel. See the problem?
And by "equally good" you mean HD based media players that can play music in non-DRM encumbered formats, right? I'd consider that better, not equally good.
Quick, name a non-DRM format the iPod does not play. Hmmm... oh! I know! It doesn't support FLAC, I think... though, you could convert that FLAC to an AIFF or WAV and you'd be in business, i guess...
Just curious, why do you think iPods play only DRM formats??? Only Sony would try to do something so crazy as make a player that doesn't support at least MP3... and even they would figure it out after the it failed to sell...
I know seeing my sigfile makes this post look like irony, but it's on topic, and I'm posting cause I think this program is exactly as descibed in the article. Having said that, anyone who thinks their personal information *isn't* being passed around for $ right now by different 'marketing' companies is naive. Yes, if you sign up you get spam, but guess what? If you don't signup you get spam! Yes, it's a fact of life now, and is why we're all hopping from free email to free email; after time they become unuseable.
To paraphrase:
I know I'm an asshole, but guess what, the world is full of assholes just like me ! Get used to it!
To be fair, your pyramid marketing scheme ( Gratis ) is not the one lambasted in TFA, and I, for whatever reason, am actually not convinced you're an asshole, I think you're just very annoying and sort of sad. I say sad because if you're being truthful, you don't have 5 friends or family members who you can organize to do what it appears some others have done with the Gratis offer- sign up for AOL and cancel after 2 weeks.
But you are very annoying because you're spamming us all with your sig. Based on what I can gather from your user info you just opened this account today and have posted in 4 different stories. How many/. accounts do you have, and why are you so anti-social ? Gee, you don't have a domain name registered for your URL? I wonder why?!!
I'd say you're one step from a spammer, but... are you different from a spammer at all?? Since we all know what you're about, do you want to share with us how many free iPods you've managed to scam, er, earn?? Maybe we should have have these links in our sigs... NOT!!! I'd go on about how uncool you are, but why keep talking about what we all agree on?
The bottom looks a bit different, so it's not directly what they show on the Segway RMP page. The robot also looks to have a left/right tilt feature which would be independant of the base... though it doesn't lean too much, so it might not be a significant difference.
Are there any other english-language references to this thing? It must actually be news for a change, there appear to be only a handful of references to this thing in Google's cache, all on news websites.
in some awkward motion your supposed to click with the whole forward half of the mouse.
Dude, honestly, I'm not trying to slight you when I say this, but my son learned to use the mouse you're talking about by the time he turned two years old. Your characterization of it's clicking action is such that I can only guess you tried to use it once, if ever. If you tap it with your index finger ( much like you would your logitech mouse ), it clicks. What's so hard?
Why the diatribe? The single-button mouse design isn't for you, it's for novice/casual users who have traditionally been Apple's target market. Those users never use the extra buttons.
What's the big deal? Sell your Apple Pro mouse on ebay. You'll find they typically go for near the full retail value, which should give you some indication as to the value of the design, regardless of what you think of it due to your previous habits learned from years with multi-button mice.
Moral of the story, folks: Never include any code or content subject to outside license restrictions (whether GPL or otherwise) in something done for your boss without getting the boss' informed consent! {Professor Jonathan Ezor, Director, Touro Law Center Institute for Business, Law and Technology}
Extremely relevant point here, folks. Did Daimou include the license agreement with the derivitive work? If not, it's largely his screw-up here, although that doesn't allow anyone to violate the original license agreement ( GPL or otherwise ).
Does his employer really want to risk taking on IBM and the FSF ? Might they want someone to go back and re-write the code Daimou is concerned about cleanroom-style instead, and smack him and his manager upside the head for creating this problem in a product they obviously want to market without using the GPL ?
Did Daimou for some reason think his work would be used only in a GPL-friendly manner? Did he communicate that to other parties involved?
I don't know anybody that owns a console that doesn't pirate games.
Am I like the only person who hasn't modded his PS2 then ?? Seriously, what's the point? Is it really that easy to burn a PS2 DVD? I buy games that are like 20-30 bucks and don't have time to play them all anyway... why take a chance at screwing up my $250+ system ?
Seriously, I don't get it, feel free to fill me on on what I'm missing... I've actually looked at mod kits and am pretty handy with a soldering iron, but it seems like a lot of effort for nothing much...
Seriously, if it was leaked intentionally, it's a brilliant move. Think of the buzz it's generated, with all the news stories about it and internet user chatter. I live in the states and would probably not have even known there was a new series, and now I'm looking forward to seeing it eventuallly... you can't buy that kind of PR.
We have an eMac at home and two of my three kids are preschoolers. They have a very easy time using the zero (what I mean is that the entire mouse is one big button) button mouse from Apple. It is not too big too. At the library they have these two button plus scroll wheel Microsoft ergonomic mice connected to the computers for the kids. First of all those mice are way too big and there is this big hump at the base of the mouse that makes it very difficult for my kids to use. Since they have to hold the mouse near the top, very often the mouse will turn to the side and then the motion is all wrong relative to what they expect the cursor to do on the screen. The fact that the scroll wheel is in the way and that there are two buttons also causes confusion. What happens is that they end-up just clicking repeatedly until they finally click on the left mouse button and if they click on the scroll wheel their hand rolls off.
THANK YOU !
This is my experience as well. My home iMac mouse died ( crimped a cable ) and I ran with a spare three-button mouse for a while- not a MS mouse, but a very vanilla, small, fairly standard one. It totally pissed off my then-two-year-old son. And yes, he at completely mastered use of the mouse before he turned two- he could hit the exact square he wanted on a color chooser panel with squares smaller than 1/8". By age two. But it turns out he would have found learning to use the computer much more difficult with the three-button scroll wheel mouse so popular among power users.
I suspect most folks who don't like 'no'-button mouse are just used to what they're used to- it's actually a great design, fits well in a wide range of hand sizes, tracks movement very precisely, has and adjustable click response, and is blindingly easy to use.
The three-button scrollwheel mouse is great for power users, but have you ever watched a novice to average computer user work? They never use those extra features. A small percentage of normal users eventually figure out when they can use the scroll wheel, which, be honest, is not always obvious, but even then they frequently won't use it when they could. The right-click? Unless your application ( or OS ) absolutely requires that you use it, it's not used. I'm not saying you don't use it, and maybe you find it productivity-enhancing, but you know what's more productivity-enhancing? Learning ( and having ) keyboard shortcuts so you don't have to take your hands off the keyboard.
I can not believe the attitude people have about mice- a multi-button mouse is not the ideal choice for everyone, probably not even for the majority of computer users. Apple for a long time has targeted the more casual user, and for them I think the single-button mouse makes a lot of sense.
Of course, with all things, I prefer companies to offer their customers options, and I hope you'll be able to order whichever type of mouse you want from Apple in the future. Of course, there's always the possiblity that they'll do what they've done with the Mac mini, and stop shipping you all these standard parts with every machine anyway, under the assumption that you either already have them or will want to order exactly the ones you want ( based on what some companies are selling I'm still unconvinced that's a good assumption ). I personally use a trackpad with extra buttons and a scrolling area ( on a contour keyboard ) at work... but at home, I've yet to find the one-button mouse a burden. It's far from the big deal people seem to want to make it.
Because the BSA hounds users, not developers. Everyone is free to use GPL'd software.
Really?? So if you had a commercial software library, and found a bunch of developers using it without a license, the BSA wouldn't help you??
Somehow I doubt that's actually the case. Of course, I also doubt you or I could get the BSA to do our bidding, unless you happen to have a large stack of cash...
It also fits perfectly in the mouth of a 3 year old. Then, it's peanut shapes keeps it stuck there as she runs around the room making screamy-gurgley noises with most of a Tivo remote sticking out of her face.
That's really entertaining. I wish my kid was that much fun. You might want to get that girl evaluated, though. All our 3-year old does with our Tivo remote is (a) hit pause before he leaves the room, or (b) hit the 'list' button and demand his Noggin shows be played.
Luckily we don't let him have the thing on purpose, or he'd surely navigate the menus and watch South Park.
Upper bound, since nodes are not all equal... duh?
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Metcalfe's Law Refuted
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· Score: 1
Since when does anyone seriously assume that all nodes in a real-world network are of equal value?
Are there really people who look at basic graph theory stuff like this so-called "Metcalfe's law" and don't realize it's a theoretical upper bound?
I guess it's nice to see a better real-world approximation, which is, to me, the meat of the paper, but still... how is this a story again?
"Basically, the thesis is that not all the links in a network are equally valuable, so Metcalfe's argument that everyone can connect to everyone (n(n-1)/2 links, roughly n^2) is irrelevant. The authors propose nlog(n) instead, a much smaller increase."
On behalf on many slashdotters, let me say:
Huh?
That's kind of sad, you're saying 'Huh?' to very basic math stuff, but I guess maybe that's indicative of the/. crowd these days...
Really, this whole article is kind of a "duh", since, in what sort of network are all nodes of equal value?? I always assumed that everyone knew that this so-called "Metcalfe's law" thing was at best an upper bounds on the 'value of a network', whatever that's supposed to signify.
How seriously can anyone take the current Justice Department looking for abuses of the Patriot Act ?
If the administration didn't let Rumsfield resign over Abu Gharib, why should we think it's going to let the Justice Department give it's favorite roll-back of civil liberties a bad mark? It's just not going to happen.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for that. This particular bit has something I'd actually forgotten about, which is the whole "edge of the screen" deal- it's easier to get to the menu bar since it's along a screen edge, you just 'slam' your pointer towards the top of the screen 'then you just have to position it left or right'. I guess I have issues with the left or right part... I was remembering a more detailed 'muscle memory' target-aquisition rant from somewhere related, I'm almost sure in the same text. Really, that's my smallest complaint about the menu bar- it's large enough, and would be pretty easy to hit even without being along a screen edge, I think. Power users use keyboard shortcuts anyway, I guess.
All the same, a bunch of the stuff I said still applies- I think there are location and consistency issues with the menu items themselves, and "not near the data" is generally a bad place to put controls. Users look at visible windows, not the menu bar, to see what application is available.
I find it interesting, and perhaps telling, that with a really good application design, you almost never end up using the menu, because there are more intuitive and easier to use controls in the window...
Again, like I said, I don't expect the menu bar to change or go away or anything... it's just that it seems to me that the Finder's problems are perhaps not as large as issues I've seen users have with this. I mean, really, why is a user switching back and forth between the two types of Finder views? Nobody does that, so, as odd as it seems to have both brushed metal and aqua views of 'the same' Finder window, I don't see it as a problem that the chicklet button moves a little as a result. Users pick one view or another and that's what they like, so they run with just that- no problem. It's a dumb design that should be changed ( they need to pick one ), but it doesn't require throwing out the app. The File menu moves, too. Users can't control the length of an application name ( thus, the position of 'standard' menus ) or if a window looks like it has focus when it doesn't, thus there really are serious interface issues presented by the current menu bar. The menu bar issues are as serious or worse than the Finder issues, IMHO, that's all I am trying to say...
Sigh. I guess I knew I'd draw that response. And I agree with everything said in Joel's take on muscle memory, etc ( yes, I'd seen it before ). Really, I really, really do. Until just over a year ago, I was a big, big supporter of the Macintosh-style application menu bar. I was glad to see it ( along with a few other Mac OS ideas ) added to what is essentially otherwise NeXTStep. Muscle memory is huge. Things that are always there and used frequently should always be in the same place. To a large extent, the desktop-based application menu bar does all of that and fits the "Aquiring Target" idiom.
Except for one problem. It's application-specific, not system-wide. It's contents and menu placement varies from application to application. In that it's an application-specific menu, not a system menu, it actually -fails- the "Target" design you mention in many ways. Is the "File" menu for "Safari" and "Activity Monitor" in the same location on the screen? No! The second has a longer title, and thus the "File" menu is shifted significantly to the right as a result. And that's the most consitent menu item- the Window and Help menus are almost never in the same location. The menu bar is never really the same between two apps- how many apps don't even _have_ a file menu? How many apps have a "File" is rarely used, or would be better named something different? Actually, you'll have a hard time thinking of an app without a File menu, and that's the idiom's saving grace- that application developers do tend to actually follow Apple's HUI guidelines, because they don't totally suck and do actually help users find their way around. I'm not totally anti-separate-menu-bar, don't get me wrong. It took a lot to get me to think it's not all it's cracked up to be.
The menu bar also is supposed to serve as a visual clue as to what the current application is. This is where it fails the hardest, and it's not really it's fault or the designer's fault, it's the user's fault. The user just doesn't pay attention to it. They're focused on the window they're looking at. They're looking for the little blue line around the dialog box, the flashing cursor, their input point, whatever is visible. Not the menu bar.
Ever watch a novice or new Macintosh user try to figure out what's going on when an application that is not the desktop is running but has no open windows? How many users keep apps running because they think, windows-style, that once the last window is gone, they've quit the app? When no windows are showing except a finder window, why would you need an extra click to make that finder window active? Worse- and it would be bug-related- god forbid if you have some app that shows an insertion point or other sign of focus when it doesn't actually have focus. Watching users confronted with an app like this is what convinced me that the menu bar really doesn't work to ID the current app - it doesn't matter one lick what application title is showing in the menu bar, the users aren't looking there, and literally can't see it on their 19" monitor when they're looking at an app window.
The observation that users don't key on the application name in the menu bar, the fact that the menus aren't always in the same place for different apps, plus the ( often ) long spatial distance placed between data ( the window ) and control ( the menu ), and lots of time watching users fight with confusion and productivity issues due to these things... that all led me to quite reluctantly decide that the application menu bar, while it was perfect for a small Mac Classic sceen, doesn't really provide the big win that it should. I realize that nobody is going to listen to that complaint and that lots of people love that UI design and it's not going anywhere. I'm just saying that if you're going to pick on the Finder, which is arguably not entirely broken and could be fixed instead of thrown away, I'd like to talk about the Application Menu. Maybe there's a way to fix it, too, but... there are definite problems there, and it doesn't solve even some of the issues it's supposed to address as currently implemented.
I'm still trying to figure out how it was posted on /. It's sure to just confuse a bunch of people who read the summary and think it's all about how 'the finder sux'... which is the shortest section in there. What's weird is I'd never noticed that hiding the Finder toolbar and sidebar changed the window from bushed metal to aqua look! While I have to admit that's stupid, I'm not sure it's a reason to toss the whole thing ( just make it all one or the other... I hate brushed metal, so I'd make it aqua, but just pick one, Apple! ).
Of course, I'm in the 'why the hell would you want to hide the toolbar and sidebar' camp, and thus don't often see the aqua-look windows unless I'm undoing something some old-time can't-learn-anything-new all-this-useful-file-navigation-stuff-confuses-me OS 9 user did. I guess that just shows my NeXT vs. Mac OS bias. For me, the Finder is not the biggest problem in OS X. It's the Menu bar. I've realized that it's not so great on larger screens. It's perfect for the Mac Classic screen, but it's not what people look at to figure out what the active application is. I promise, if there's a flashing cursor in a text field, the user is _sure_ that's the active application, they're not looking at the menu bar... it's a broken interface designed for a 9-inch screen. I'd say that's my NeXT bias, but I've spent a lot of time watching people use OS X, and they do _not_ pay attention to the menu bar, which ultimately makes it just a bit of lost screen real estate. Too bad that's the one thing that's not likely to change about Mac OS. Otherwise, OS X is the best thing _ever_.
It sounds like their kind of show.
I've got to give the guy credit. I thought it would take at least a couple of days. But to get it out there the same day? wow.
It would be an interesting and enlightening exercise to run Activity Monitor and er... I'm trying to remember the Win98 equivalent, but anyway... it'd be interesting to run both of those while doing equivalent websurfing and word processing functions.
Are you running Win98 with virtual memory on? Is it using it? I definitely have to wonder if your subjective guess at comparative performance there is right or not. But you shouldn't compare OS X to Win98... try putting XP on that PII and see what happens... my mother-in-law uses OS X on a 333Mhz G3, I kid you not. Of course, it does have more than 256MB and she's comparing it's performance to Win98 on her previous machine, a 486... so it's all relative...
I promise, your wife's machine is slow because it's waiting for disk I/O to swap memory in and out. OS X is very agressive about using memory, and 512MB is a real sweet spot for it as far as performance goes. I do wish Apple understood how bad their default memory configuration makes their system look. 512MB default is the next big business improvement I'm hoping to see from them.
Word X is also real pig memory-wise, if that's the word processor she's using... I don't know if a more bloated app exists.
Until you get more memory, if she hides ( cmd-h ) the app(s) she's not using, they pretty effectively shut down and shouldn't suck up much of the machine's bandwidth after the initial swapping. Safari in the background with spinning baloney and a full, large cache and Word X in the foreground with auto-everything-check ( like it's default preferences setup ) and 256MB on a less than 1GHz G4 with a slow laptop hard drive *is* the kind of thing that got people thinking Macs are slow in the first place... that said, I have a lowly 800Mhz G4 iMac that cooks right along with 512MB, so you really should poke around with Activity Monitor if you think you're seeing problems. It could be a third-party driver ( you don't have an HP all-in-one printer/fax/scanner, do you? God HP's OS X drivers suck... )
Seriously, though, she can figure out what's slow herself : Activity Monitor is a nice GUI 'top', find it under Applications/Utilities.
I don't suppose she's going to some lame-ass flash-advert-heavy discussion website where everyone has their own animated icon?? I've noticed those suckers really make Safari crawl... or any other browser, for that matter...
No, it's not that line. It's the BSD core, the built-in firewall, the good default install account setup, and ( largely ) the lack of Outlook and IIS. Those are the things, along with frequent and timely security updates, that make OS X inherently much more secure than windows.
OS X doesn't run on security through obscurity, it's really just another *nix, and actually, there's no proof of a security problem here, just proof of Symantec marketing and a growing Apple user base.
That said, if someone sells you a machine where they say "yea, you can double-click any email attachment or download every executable you ever find, no worries about security", don't buy what they are selling...
Don't get me wrong, I really like the idea of Ogg Vorbis and, better, non-proprietary file formats in general... but... uh, well... these MP3 things seem to work pretty well and i can play them all over the place... at the risk of pissing off someone really emotionally committed to Ogg Vorbis...
Isn't saying that a given audio device doesn't support .ogg a pretty safe bet???
har har
non-ionizing as well, one would hope.
Ok, ok, we all know I meant how much, not what sort. Damn literal-minded people on tech news websites...
That would explain the results you get when entering "Samsung Super Long Range Phone" into google. It's really a shame we can't convince /. editors to google the subjects of stories before submitting them. I guess that's our job.
They normally use HAM radio frequencies or comercial VHF/UHF. Due to the fact that they are only certified in China it is illegal to use in most countries.
This explains why you don't see these for sale in the US anywhere... it's clearly not a new product, and if someone did come up with a way to do this legally ( and in a manner that would allow everyone in town to have such a phone- say a wide-spectrum mesh network device or something ), it'd be big, big news. Too bad this isn't something like that- instead, it's just more crap to clutter HAM frequencies and/or screw up over-the-air broadcasts. Only the stupid and extremely anti-social would even consider purchasing such a thing in most developed countries...
Me, I'm not to afraid of low-level RF emissions- I think my cell phone probably won't give me cancer... but you do have to wonder what sort of radiation *this* sucker puts out...
Nothing to look at here, folks, move along...
With the declining price and high quality of HD video cameras, alongside the increasing complexity of 3D video game phsyics and graphics, not to mention the gameplay complexity people have come to expect, that's actually a debatable point...
What's easier, creating a less-than-2-hour story and getting a few actors to do the dialog while you point a camera at them, or creating a fully imersive game world offering 40+ hours of semi-scripted gameplay ?
I'm sure plenty of 'indie' games took a lot more resources to put together than even 'Clerks' and 'Blair Witch Project', and those indie flicks were shot on pricey film stock with you-must-rent-them expenseive cameras, which you wouldn't have to use today.
That said, producing a movie is completely different from producing a game, and which is 'easier' depends on what you're trying to do in either field. Also, both fields have changed for indie producers - Kevin Smith himself has said that 'Clerks' would never, ever make it today. The audience has changed. Of course, he was shocked anyone wanted to see it originally as well... but somehow I think he's right. 'Clerks' released today would be just another odd little flick also-ran at some film festival, and the basic tech is so different today that it's hard to even think of what game you'd compare to 'Clerks'...
The parent's real point is valid, though. Movie studios and game publishers are similar in that they are in a very, very strong distribution-controlling role... not unlike the music distributors... all industries where a small number of companies control the distribution channel. See the problem?
Quick, name a non-DRM format the iPod does not play. Hmmm... oh! I know! It doesn't support FLAC, I think... though, you could convert that FLAC to an AIFF or WAV and you'd be in business, i guess...
Just curious, why do you think iPods play only DRM formats??? Only Sony would try to do something so crazy as make a player that doesn't support at least MP3... and even they would figure it out after the it failed to sell...
To paraphrase :
To be fair, your pyramid marketing scheme ( Gratis ) is not the one lambasted in TFA, and I, for whatever reason, am actually not convinced you're an asshole, I think you're just very annoying and sort of sad. I say sad because if you're being truthful, you don't have 5 friends or family members who you can organize to do what it appears some others have done with the Gratis offer- sign up for AOL and cancel after 2 weeks.
But you are very annoying because you're spamming us all with your sig. Based on what I can gather from your user info you just opened this account today and have posted in 4 different stories. How many /. accounts do you have, and why are you so anti-social ? Gee, you don't have a domain name registered for your URL? I wonder why?!!
I'd say you're one step from a spammer, but ... are you different from a spammer at all?? Since we all know what you're about, do you want to share with us how many free iPods you've managed to scam, er, earn?? Maybe we should have have these links in our sigs... NOT!!! I'd go on about how uncool you are, but why keep talking about what we all agree on?
The bottom looks a bit different, so it's not directly what they show on the Segway RMP page. The robot also looks to have a left/right tilt feature which would be independant of the base... though it doesn't lean too much, so it might not be a significant difference.
Are there any other english-language references to this thing? It must actually be news for a change, there appear to be only a handful of references to this thing in Google's cache, all on news websites.
Dude, honestly, I'm not trying to slight you when I say this, but my son learned to use the mouse you're talking about by the time he turned two years old. Your characterization of it's clicking action is such that I can only guess you tried to use it once, if ever. If you tap it with your index finger ( much like you would your logitech mouse ), it clicks. What's so hard?
Why the diatribe? The single-button mouse design isn't for you, it's for novice/casual users who have traditionally been Apple's target market. Those users never use the extra buttons.
What's the big deal? Sell your Apple Pro mouse on ebay. You'll find they typically go for near the full retail value, which should give you some indication as to the value of the design, regardless of what you think of it due to your previous habits learned from years with multi-button mice.
Extremely relevant point here, folks. Did Daimou include the license agreement with the derivitive work? If not, it's largely his screw-up here, although that doesn't allow anyone to violate the original license agreement ( GPL or otherwise ).
Does his employer really want to risk taking on IBM and the FSF ? Might they want someone to go back and re-write the code Daimou is concerned about cleanroom-style instead, and smack him and his manager upside the head for creating this problem in a product they obviously want to market without using the GPL ?
Did Daimou for some reason think his work would be used only in a GPL-friendly manner? Did he communicate that to other parties involved?
Am I like the only person who hasn't modded his PS2 then ?? Seriously, what's the point? Is it really that easy to burn a PS2 DVD? I buy games that are like 20-30 bucks and don't have time to play them all anyway... why take a chance at screwing up my $250+ system ?
Seriously, I don't get it, feel free to fill me on on what I'm missing... I've actually looked at mod kits and am pretty handy with a soldering iron, but it seems like a lot of effort for nothing much...
Seriously, if it was leaked intentionally, it's a brilliant move. Think of the buzz it's generated, with all the news stories about it and internet user chatter. I live in the states and would probably not have even known there was a new series, and now I'm looking forward to seeing it eventuallly... you can't buy that kind of PR.
THANK YOU !
This is my experience as well. My home iMac mouse died ( crimped a cable ) and I ran with a spare three-button mouse for a while- not a MS mouse, but a very vanilla, small, fairly standard one. It totally pissed off my then-two-year-old son. And yes, he at completely mastered use of the mouse before he turned two- he could hit the exact square he wanted on a color chooser panel with squares smaller than 1/8". By age two. But it turns out he would have found learning to use the computer much more difficult with the three-button scroll wheel mouse so popular among power users.
I suspect most folks who don't like 'no'-button mouse are just used to what they're used to- it's actually a great design, fits well in a wide range of hand sizes, tracks movement very precisely, has and adjustable click response, and is blindingly easy to use.
The three-button scrollwheel mouse is great for power users, but have you ever watched a novice to average computer user work? They never use those extra features. A small percentage of normal users eventually figure out when they can use the scroll wheel, which, be honest, is not always obvious, but even then they frequently won't use it when they could. The right-click? Unless your application ( or OS ) absolutely requires that you use it, it's not used. I'm not saying you don't use it, and maybe you find it productivity-enhancing, but you know what's more productivity-enhancing? Learning ( and having ) keyboard shortcuts so you don't have to take your hands off the keyboard.
I can not believe the attitude people have about mice- a multi-button mouse is not the ideal choice for everyone, probably not even for the majority of computer users. Apple for a long time has targeted the more casual user, and for them I think the single-button mouse makes a lot of sense.
Of course, with all things, I prefer companies to offer their customers options, and I hope you'll be able to order whichever type of mouse you want from Apple in the future. Of course, there's always the possiblity that they'll do what they've done with the Mac mini, and stop shipping you all these standard parts with every machine anyway, under the assumption that you either already have them or will want to order exactly the ones you want ( based on what some companies are selling I'm still unconvinced that's a good assumption ). I personally use a trackpad with extra buttons and a scrolling area ( on a contour keyboard ) at work... but at home, I've yet to find the one-button mouse a burden. It's far from the big deal people seem to want to make it.
Really?? So if you had a commercial software library, and found a bunch of developers using it without a license, the BSA wouldn't help you??
Somehow I doubt that's actually the case. Of course, I also doubt you or I could get the BSA to do our bidding, unless you happen to have a large stack of cash...
That's really entertaining. I wish my kid was that much fun. You might want to get that girl evaluated, though. All our 3-year old does with our Tivo remote is (a) hit pause before he leaves the room, or (b) hit the 'list' button and demand his Noggin shows be played.
Luckily we don't let him have the thing on purpose, or he'd surely navigate the menus and watch South Park.
Are there really people who look at basic graph theory stuff like this so-called "Metcalfe's law" and don't realize it's a theoretical upper bound?
I guess it's nice to see a better real-world approximation, which is, to me, the meat of the paper, but still... how is this a story again?
On behalf on many slashdotters, let me say: Huh?
That's kind of sad, you're saying 'Huh?' to very basic math stuff, but I guess maybe that's indicative of the /. crowd these days...
Really, this whole article is kind of a "duh", since, in what sort of network are all nodes of equal value?? I always assumed that everyone knew that this so-called "Metcalfe's law" thing was at best an upper bounds on the 'value of a network', whatever that's supposed to signify.
If the administration didn't let Rumsfield resign over Abu Gharib, why should we think it's going to let the Justice Department give it's favorite roll-back of civil liberties a bad mark? It's just not going to happen.
We're producing propaganda pieces and selling them to TV stations as news stories, and we're going to come clean about Patriot Act abuses? Not a chance.
I mean, what do you think the Chinese government is going to conclude if they set up a task force to look into their possible human rights abuses??