Wait, Apple declines approval to competitive browsers on iOS?
Does Opera, Skyfire, Cyberspace and Sleipnir know about this? http://www.google.com/search?gcx=w&ix=c1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=ios+web+browsers
Still, you're right -- they're all subject to approval. But if they're not allowing plug-ins, that probably has something to do with mobile app architecture and permissions/sandboxing than whether or not they think it's 'cool,' so other browsers probably won't be able to shoehorn in something along those lines at all.
Which explains the popularity of Apple's iPod, Google's gMail, Windows Mobile devices, etc.
I just can't agree with the logic that states 'get it out the door. worry about the bugs later.'
sorry.
Return of the Jedi, walking into Jabba's palace. He choke holds the guards and slams them into the walls -- something Darth Vader was very famous for, but you don't see Jedi doing.
Also, just because the emperor and Vader are dead doen't mean that all of the Sith are.
Actually, it pretty much does, because there's only supposed to be two Sith at a time.
Interesting. I always interpreted Yoda's statement about two Sith to mean "You'll never just find one wandering around killing people, there's always a master and an apprentice working as a team."
NOT that there are only two in existence at any one given time...
Also, that the Jedi wiped out the Sith much the same way that the Sith in turn wiped out the Jedi, so the Sith are in hiding, just like Yoda and Ben in the original trilogy.
I was 8 when I saw the Empire Strikes Back for the first time in the theatre.
I watched Bambi's mom bite it with no real problems. Ol' Yeller? Please, someone shut that dog up! You got a gun? GREAT!
But my 8 year old mind could not grasp the fact that Han Solo, my idol, my hero, was simply frozen and was not dead, and I lost it! I missed the part about "Yes, he's alive. And in perfect hibernation." because my father had to drag me out of the theater as I screamed my lungs out.
To this day, this is the only movie I've ever cried in, (you heartless bastard!).
So I'd like to go on record and take this moment to apologize to everyone for that lapse in reason and self-control on my father's part when he chose to bring me along to the crowded movie theater those many years ago.
Southeast Asian cinema is releasing a stream of great movies. Looking back on the last dozen movies I bought half were in Cantonese. They'll never see widespread North American acceptance because of resistance to subtitles, entirely non-European casts and embarassingly bad voice-over actors.
I try to skip voice-overs, anyways, even in films I can't understand (like Japanese films, for instance...). Cantonese movies on DVD usually have Mandarin voice overs so that more people in China, Taiwan, Malaysia, etc. can follow along without subtitles, and even then the acting generally pales in comparison. And there are pretty much subtitles on everything(even on tv shows) in every Chinese-speaking country.
Unless they go for skilled voice actors (like some of the Japanese animated films re-released in the States in the last several years -- Princess Mononoke (sp?) springs to mind), I just never understand why they do it.
resistance to subtitles -- I just really don't get it. Reading is so much better than tolerating bad acting.
Chalk up another victory to Ritalin kids. Less sugar in the diet, people. Less sugar.
Not to be too nitpicky, but the race is the zerg, and the fastest low-cost creatures you can spawn in the game very quickly are the tiny little zerglings.
A good (and ANNOYING) strategy was called a "zergling rush" where you basically spawned these guys and sent them over in droves to your enemies' camps where they were (hopefully) still mining crystals and hadn't spawned anything yet...
Using a GUI to "draw" a layout is much more intuitive, and easier to do (providing that your motor skills are up to the challenge...). There's a reason we don't write postscript files by hand and use WYSIWYG vector drawing tools instead -- it's easier, and simplifies a potentially complex process.
Of course, if you are getting your content generated dynamically, things change.
Building your table in a while loop, for example. Then all your control happens in the markup. Not as easy, but you have just as much control.
I'm not really arguing with you. I agree, it's way easier and convenient...er to use a tool like Dreamweaver or Nvu to slam out content. It's just not always possible or practical.
Now what you need is a "live preview" editable wysiwig browser/editor that could grab content from a db or external link, preview and render with CSS and still be "editable." I tried Amaya thinking it might work that way, and couldn't even get it to render positioned divs correctly. Dreamweaver has "Live preview" but you can't really edit the generated stuff that well...
It ain't perfect, but it's free, multi-platform, and made by the guys that invented the standard.
It takes a little getting used to, as there are some powerful text-level commands you can use, as well, but the basic layout and viewing of the DOM are nifty.
CANNOT give you the same control is a strong phrase to use about a tool that is basically giving you a front end to... um.... create markup. Which is text. That you can control. In a text editor. Or in wysiwyg html editor of choice.
That being said, I've always found that even if I use a wysiwyg html "layout tool" I've had to go in and manually tweak the markup by hand. In the end I just figured out what i wanted and let my fingers do the walking...
But, with table layouts going the way of the dodo, why bother?
Try to pretend that you're managing 2 or 3 or more major projects that can change or be passed along to someone else every few months with mails, im's, files, reports you don't look at, media submitted by other people in different countries, to-do lists and other project management data...
Now imagine someone asks you, the project manager (or just the last person still around) on a project from 3 years ago, what the initial proposal from that guy in japan who did the Flash files was versus what we paid him and what the VP's said about that....
People *will* have copies of these files still floating around *somewhere* in e-mail or im history, at least. You may not, I may not, but that's where this will come in handy.
A few years ago, hd space was not large enough to think that you'd keep all that data around, but gmail's new 1Gb e-mail storage just showcases the lack of a need to dump all that crap off your media if you can just organize it well, and who needs that when you can keyword search, anyway?
Penny Arcade, IIRC, uses a tablet PC for all the artwork now.
Actually, Mike (Gabe) Krahulik (the guy that draws Penny Arcade) gives a nice little html tutorial here on using Alias Sketchbook Pro, which comes bundled (at least with Acer Tablets) and is a perfect compliment for tablet pc's I would assume.
I've been using it for a while now with a Wacom drawing tablet and for the first time can see the use for a tablet PC. Drawing in a horizontal square which has to be perpendicular to the screen is not as intuitive as it should be. I'd much prefer to be able to draw while holding the pad at an angle.
And the alternative is a Cintiq. Look at THAT price!!!! The tablet PC's in listed above do more (apparently) and cost less than these behemoths, so for the graphic artist who needs to draw, this is DEFINITELY the way to go. I understand that Wacom does some special treatment to the Cintiq screens to avoid wear, tear, and distortion as the pen touches the screen constantly, but yikes that is a pricey sketchbook.
It's strange -- Apple has always been regarded as being the machine of choice for the designer or visual artist, but it seems that they may be missing the boat on this one... Niche market, perhaps, but could be a strong one.
The conversation is about people stealing software over P2P, and you seem to be explaining a valid reason why
Sorry - I was under the impression that it wasn't a discussion about whether it was right or wrong, but rather whether P2P was to blame for the software industry's losses doubling.
Piracy in Hong Kong used to absolutely rape the movie industry. So, what did they do? The lowered prices on the legitimate copies to compete with the pirated versions. You know what happened? They made money back.
Face it, piracy in the digital age is not necessarily right, but it is decidedly easy, so it's not going to go away because people get on their moral high horse. It goes away when you look at why it's attractive to people to use p2p as opposed to paying, and offer up a solution.
I'm not offering the solution, I'm just not convinced that the mere fact that it's out there to steal on p2p makes people steal.
I'll bring up games again: I don't download games that are readily available for the grabbing, I purchase them because the price is right. I could maybe even tolerate a slight increase in price. The point is, I don't even think about it.
The reason the software industry is losing millions is their price point. I mean - come ON. The Operating System people run this software on doesn't cost half as much as the software itself. If you purchased all your software, you would have bought your computer 3 times by the time you were done. Prices for Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Maya, Office, or are just high. Some, such as Maya, which creates its own OS almost once you are inside it, are targetted at mostly professionals in an industry that just has to spend tons of money, anyway. But the rest?
I am not saying that the man hours put in, cost of distribution (online or shipping) and other costs don't justify a high price, but they do guarantee that most people will think twice or thrice before purchasing that software even when they reall really need it. Video game that I use 8 hours a day for months (Diablo 2 with expansion, anyone?) -- US$30-$50. And I would be willing to bet that it cost just as much to develop between writing, programming and developing the engine, sound, graphics, packaging, tech support, etc. than any version of Photoshop ever produced. Ok, I don't know that, but come on.
If your software only costs a small amount and people are willing to pay for it, don't you come out just as well (and with a larger user base, to boot) as the monster corporations that charge an arm, a leg, and a third extension and half less people buy it (but thanks to whatever method you use, just as many people using it?
I'm guessing you've never seen a Chinese Newspaper (or a Chinese portal site, for that matter... yikes!)
Seriously, turn on your Chinese Fonts and take a mozy over to check some of these out:
-- http://tw.yahoo.com
-- http://pchome.com.tw
-- http://www.appledaily.com.tw/template/twapple/inde x.cfm
(Just to see what a typical newspaper looks like...)
This is TYPICAL of the type of design happening in Chinese-speaking contries -- FILL IN EVERY SPACE AVAILABLE WITH TEXT OR IMAGE TO THE POINT THAT NOTHING SEEMS TO HAVE ANY PRIORITY. Blink tags often save the day, believe it or not... A typical TV news channel is a CNN-scrolling-banner-induced NIGHTMARE...
To say this happens in ALL Asian countries is a generalization and incorrect, but there is a definite preference and inclination toward simplicity and minimalism in Japan (and Korea to some extent...)
That isn't to say that sophisticated design is not happening in these places -- far from it. It's just that the cultural expectations placed upon design, especially one that is information-based (any media) is different in different cultures.
To me, clutter is confusing and makes the user experience difficult, at best. To others, it is expected and doesn't slow anything down.
So really, who's to say what's usable?
I've once attended a weekend seminar with Mr. Neilsen and other web-usability gurus (Tog comes to mind) and was impressed with what they had to say regarding testing and testing and testing again, so ultimately you could have a cluttered, to-my-own-eyes unorganized mess that could test positive for usability in the right market.
Slashdot Mirror
Wait, Apple declines approval to competitive browsers on iOS? Does Opera, Skyfire, Cyberspace and Sleipnir know about this? http://www.google.com/search?gcx=w&ix=c1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=ios+web+browsers Still, you're right -- they're all subject to approval. But if they're not allowing plug-ins, that probably has something to do with mobile app architecture and permissions/sandboxing than whether or not they think it's 'cool,' so other browsers probably won't be able to shoehorn in something along those lines at all.
Try holding the send button down for a couple seconds as you make or answer a phone call - speaker phone on.
Which explains the popularity of Apple's iPod, Google's gMail, Windows Mobile devices, etc. I just can't agree with the logic that states 'get it out the door. worry about the bugs later.' sorry.
and was bound to see massive growth when it IPOd.
Ahem. No, no... the 'i' and the 'o' are lowercase. I think you meant iPod.
Which is a very good idea --- slashdot bookmarking...
Return of the Jedi, walking into Jabba's palace. He choke holds the guards and slams them into the walls -- something Darth Vader was very famous for, but you don't see Jedi doing.
Mr. Lucas, is that you ?
Wait, what am I thinking? You make claims to know what great dialog is.
Interesting. I always interpreted Yoda's statement about two Sith to mean "You'll never just find one wandering around killing people, there's always a master and an apprentice working as a team."
NOT that there are only two in existence at any one given time...
Also, that the Jedi wiped out the Sith much the same way that the Sith in turn wiped out the Jedi, so the Sith are in hiding, just like Yoda and Ben in the original trilogy.
I watched Bambi's mom bite it with no real problems. Ol' Yeller? Please, someone shut that dog up! You got a gun? GREAT!
But my 8 year old mind could not grasp the fact that Han Solo, my idol, my hero, was simply frozen and was not dead, and I lost it! I missed the part about "Yes, he's alive. And in perfect hibernation." because my father had to drag me out of the theater as I screamed my lungs out.
To this day, this is the only movie I've ever cried in, (you heartless bastard!).
So I'd like to go on record and take this moment to apologize to everyone for that lapse in reason and self-control on my father's part when he chose to bring me along to the crowded movie theater those many years ago.
I'm sorry.
s/1\.0gb/1\.0tb/
but then, since we're just going to switch the g to a t, why not
s/g\(b\)/t\1/
I try to skip voice-overs, anyways, even in films I can't understand (like Japanese films, for instance...). Cantonese movies on DVD usually have Mandarin voice overs so that more people in China, Taiwan, Malaysia, etc. can follow along without subtitles, and even then the acting generally pales in comparison. And there are pretty much subtitles on everything(even on tv shows) in every Chinese-speaking country.
Unless they go for skilled voice actors (like some of the Japanese animated films re-released in the States in the last several years -- Princess Mononoke (sp?) springs to mind), I just never understand why they do it.
resistance to subtitles -- I just really don't get it. Reading is so much better than tolerating bad acting.
Chalk up another victory to Ritalin kids. Less sugar in the diet, people. Less sugar.
So why, praytell, did you put it at the bottom of said list?
;-)
heh - ok, given that you have wireless, you could just ssh into a server and run vim, emacs, whatever.
OR you could just download vimce here.
problem solved :)
if it were only *that* simple...
I hear that the software there schedules your appointments fo...
Oh, forget it.
Not to be too nitpicky, but the race is the zerg, and the fastest low-cost creatures you can spawn in the game very quickly are the tiny little zerglings. A good (and ANNOYING) strategy was called a "zergling rush" where you basically spawned these guys and sent them over in droves to your enemies' camps where they were (hopefully) still mining crystals and hadn't spawned anything yet...
And if I pay to get Opera, I'm paying for the OS and the browser...
Excellent point.
Using a GUI to "draw" a layout is much more intuitive, and easier to do (providing that your motor skills are up to the challenge...). There's a reason we don't write postscript files by hand and use WYSIWYG vector drawing tools instead -- it's easier, and simplifies a potentially complex process.
Of course, if you are getting your content generated dynamically, things change.
Building your table in a while loop, for example. Then all your control happens in the markup. Not as easy, but you have just as much control.
I'm not really arguing with you. I agree, it's way easier and convenient...er to use a tool like Dreamweaver or Nvu to slam out content. It's just not always possible or practical.
Now what you need is a "live preview" editable wysiwig browser/editor that could grab content from a db or external link, preview and render with CSS and still be "editable." I tried Amaya thinking it might work that way, and couldn't even get it to render positioned divs correctly. Dreamweaver has "Live preview" but you can't really edit the generated stuff that well...
Try this.
It ain't perfect, but it's free, multi-platform, and made by the guys that invented the standard.
It takes a little getting used to, as there are some powerful text-level commands you can use, as well, but the basic layout and viewing of the DOM are nifty.
CANNOT give you the same control is a strong phrase to use about a tool that is basically giving you a front end to... um.... create markup. Which is text. That you can control. In a text editor. Or in wysiwyg html editor of choice.
That being said, I've always found that even if I use a wysiwyg html "layout tool" I've had to go in and manually tweak the markup by hand. In the end I just figured out what i wanted and let my fingers do the walking...
But, with table layouts going the way of the dodo, why bother?
Try to pretend that you're managing 2 or 3 or more major projects that can change or be passed along to someone else every few months with mails, im's, files, reports you don't look at, media submitted by other people in different countries, to-do lists and other project management data...
Now imagine someone asks you, the project manager (or just the last person still around) on a project from 3 years ago, what the initial proposal from that guy in japan who did the Flash files was versus what we paid him and what the VP's said about that....
People *will* have copies of these files still floating around *somewhere* in e-mail or im history, at least. You may not, I may not, but that's where this will come in handy.
A few years ago, hd space was not large enough to think that you'd keep all that data around, but gmail's new 1Gb e-mail storage just showcases the lack of a need to dump all that crap off your media if you can just organize it well, and who needs that when you can keyword search, anyway?
Actually, Mike (Gabe) Krahulik (the guy that draws Penny Arcade) gives a nice little html tutorial here on using Alias Sketchbook Pro, which comes bundled (at least with Acer Tablets) and is a perfect compliment for tablet pc's I would assume.
I've been using it for a while now with a Wacom drawing tablet and for the first time can see the use for a tablet PC. Drawing in a horizontal square which has to be perpendicular to the screen is not as intuitive as it should be. I'd much prefer to be able to draw while holding the pad at an angle.
And the alternative is a Cintiq. Look at THAT price!!!! The tablet PC's in listed above do more (apparently) and cost less than these behemoths, so for the graphic artist who needs to draw, this is DEFINITELY the way to go. I understand that Wacom does some special treatment to the Cintiq screens to avoid wear, tear, and distortion as the pen touches the screen constantly, but yikes that is a pricey sketchbook.
It's strange -- Apple has always been regarded as being the machine of choice for the designer or visual artist, but it seems that they may be missing the boat on this one... Niche market, perhaps, but could be a strong one.
Piracy in Hong Kong used to absolutely rape the movie industry. So, what did they do? The lowered prices on the legitimate copies to compete with the pirated versions. You know what happened? They made money back.
Face it, piracy in the digital age is not necessarily right, but it is decidedly easy, so it's not going to go away because people get on their moral high horse. It goes away when you look at why it's attractive to people to use p2p as opposed to paying, and offer up a solution.
I'm not offering the solution, I'm just not convinced that the mere fact that it's out there to steal on p2p makes people steal.
I'll bring up games again: I don't download games that are readily available for the grabbing, I purchase them because the price is right. I could maybe even tolerate a slight increase in price. The point is, I don't even think about it.
I am not saying that the man hours put in, cost of distribution (online or shipping) and other costs don't justify a high price, but they do guarantee that most people will think twice or thrice before purchasing that software even when they reall really need it. Video game that I use 8 hours a day for months (Diablo 2 with expansion, anyone?) -- US$30-$50. And I would be willing to bet that it cost just as much to develop between writing, programming and developing the engine, sound, graphics, packaging, tech support, etc. than any version of Photoshop ever produced. Ok, I don't know that, but come on.
If your software only costs a small amount and people are willing to pay for it, don't you come out just as well (and with a larger user base, to boot) as the monster corporations that charge an arm, a leg, and a third extension and half less people buy it (but thanks to whatever method you use, just as many people using it?
Seriously, turn on your Chinese Fonts and take a mozy over to check some of these out:
-- http://tw.yahoo.come x.cfm
(Just to see what a typical newspaper looks like...)
-- http://pchome.com.tw
-- http://www.appledaily.com.tw/template/twapple/ind
This is TYPICAL of the type of design happening in Chinese-speaking contries -- FILL IN EVERY SPACE AVAILABLE WITH TEXT OR IMAGE TO THE POINT THAT NOTHING SEEMS TO HAVE ANY PRIORITY. Blink tags often save the day, believe it or not... A typical TV news channel is a CNN-scrolling-banner-induced NIGHTMARE... To say this happens in ALL Asian countries is a generalization and incorrect, but there is a definite preference and inclination toward simplicity and minimalism in Japan (and Korea to some extent...)
That isn't to say that sophisticated design is not happening in these places -- far from it. It's just that the cultural expectations placed upon design, especially one that is information-based (any media) is different in different cultures.
To me, clutter is confusing and makes the user experience difficult, at best. To others, it is expected and doesn't slow anything down.
So really, who's to say what's usable?
I've once attended a weekend seminar with Mr. Neilsen and other web-usability gurus (Tog comes to mind) and was impressed with what they had to say regarding testing and testing and testing again, so ultimately you could have a cluttered, to-my-own-eyes unorganized mess that could test positive for usability in the right market.
Go figure..