The problem with that idea is that some of the most important aspects of a search engine are for it to be simple and fast. I don't know how many users would prefer to click through a whole series of pages to get to what they are looking for, rather than just looking at several results and filtering them mentally.
Although, Google does have an experimental project that allows you to create a profile of your interests and filter results accordingly, if that's your cup of tea.
I agree that an office without paper will never happen. But offices today use far more paper than is needed
I work in an office that decided that they wanted to do "paperless" faxes a few years ago. Their solution was to receive faxes on paper, scan them into the computer, and then shred the paper copies. A realistic goal would be to eliminate that kind of egregious waste of paper -- not to eliminate paper entirely.
This kind of device is going about it all wrong. We should not be trying to replace post-it notes and legal pads -- but we can (and should) stop using paper for things existing technology already does.
Re:I hereby crown this woman "Queen of the Idiots"
on
20,000 Zombie PCs -- $3000
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· Score: 3, Insightful
"Gee, I hate to break it to you, sweetheart, but it WAS your fault. YOU were the gullible one who clicked on the wrong link and gave thieves your username, password and account number!"
WHAT THE HELL???
It was NOT the woman's fault!
The fault rest solely with the theif. If somebody steals money from my bank account, it doesn't matter if they got it at gunpoint or with a fraudulent email, it is not my fault, it is not the bank's fault, it is the theif's fault.
But of course it's so much easier to blame the unsuspecting user. That's the way to get the problem solved -- get rid of the victims!
I hereby advocate the death penalty for assault victims.
"FoxNews goes to both liberal and conservative think tanks - thats what makes them fair and balanced."
On some issues, it is literally impossible to be both fair and balanced. Pure balance as you describe it (i.e. reporting information from liberal think tanks and conservative think tanks equally) creates a huge bias towards anybody, liberal or conservative, that propagates bullshit.
Now, imagine that we have two points of view, call them A and B. A creates a logical argument backed up by facts. B makes shit up. A fair report would look into the facts and give more credence to the more factual argument. A "balanced" argument would present the two viewpoints on equal footing -- giving a significant advantage to whichever side uses more dubious arguments (i.e. quotes of quotes, misattributing sources, and occasionally bald-face lies, just for some examples of dubious arguments).
Neither party always falls on the same side as far as making dubious claims, but people who just want to know the truth always lose when factual and made-up arguments are presented as fact.
The ACLU fights for a specific cause (individual rights) regardless of whose rights. So, naturally, whether the ACLU looks like "good guys" or "bad guys" depends on whose rights are in question. When they defend the rights of unpopular groups (i.e. neo-nazis, flag burning) they look like bad guys, but when they defend the rights of ordinary people (i.e. patriot act) they look like good guys.
It's the same rights they're defending in both cases.
I develop with Cocoa on OS X, and while it's is remarkably easy to program in once you're used to it, it's more than a little, shall we say, messy.
The classes contain endless numbers of "convenience" functions that don't really belong where they are. Witness that the STRING class has methods like stringByAppendingPathComponent, and similar other functions that should be in a separate class for paths. Meanwhile, Attributed strings do not respond to any of the standard string methods, although they do respond to methods to do things like load RTF files.
The problem is that Cocoa is not straightforward enough to be easy to program in without an intimate familiarity with the API. It's just too different from anything else out there. Now that I'm used to programming in it, I can develop an application faster than I ever could with windows APIs, but the learning curve makes it difficult.
The other thing about Cocoa, which the article doesn't quite get to saying explicitly, is that the design of the API itself actually makes it very difficult to get apps to the mac from other platforms.
Cocoa is designed to be easy for porting applications to other platforms. But you can't port applications to other platforms because Cocoa isn't available for other platforms. What Apple needs for their existing strategy to work is an API that is easy to port existing programs to. They sort of have this with carbon (hence why most applications that get ported from windows are written using carbon APIs), but they don't take advantage of a lot of features (like system services, and automatic spell checking) that only work with Cocoa programs.
It would be nice if Apple would port their APIs (or at least support something like GNUStep), but if they won't, then they need to make their "strong" API something that can easily be ported to. There are oddities in Cocoa that make incorporating code from anywhere else almost impossible.
In short, Apple's programming tools and their corporate strategy are incompatible. The article frames this as a problem with Apple's strategy, but it could just as easily be seen as the tools not fit for the job. Apple started out with Rhapsody to try and make the mac the premier program for development but somewhere in between changed their focus to getting existing software to the mac. Unfortunately, they didn't change the tools to match.
The ads that show up at the top of the page still have the background color to distinguish them from actual search results. They took the color off of the ads on the side, and now instead use a line to separate sponsored results.
Either way, it's extremely clear which links are sponsored and which links aren't.
Most mail clients have an option to delete mail, say, a week after you check it. So if you use each of your computers at least once a week (or month, or whatever you have your email client set for) you can pretty effectively store your email on each computer separately. If you have an email client with a sync feature, it gets even easier.
That's not to say that there are no uses for webmail, and having webmail to accompany a POP account is certainly useful. I'm only saying that for most people, the advantages that GMail provides (i.e. an archive of your emails, lots of storage space, searchability) are things that POP users have been taking advantage of for years.
GMail has a very nice interface and is very usable compared to Hotmail and Yahoo. But even with 3 computers, I don't think there's anything compelling enough to give up POP access. If GMail provided the webmail it does and POP access, I'd be more open to it. But I'll still take POP access over webmail interface and server space any day.
Seriously, where is the adavntage of 1GB of server space? If you store your email on your own HD, you can search, index, and store any email you've ever recieved, even without an active connection to the internet (and without the google ads), and never need more than 10 megs or so of server space.
There are limited uses for server side storage among people who regularly use several different computers. But I doubt most of those people are in the market for webmail -- most probably have corporate or academic accounts, and are far more likely to use IMAP.
Tracking can be a good thing. I like the fact that Amazon "Tracks" me when I buy stuff, because they can make it easier to find stuff when I want it. I like the fact that they remember my name address and credit card because I don't have to type it in every time. I do most of my online shopping with Amazon, not because they are a wonderful company, but because they make it fast and easy. And they do that by "tracking" me.
Likewise, I prefer the "targeted" Google ads to the pre-tracking "catch the flying monkey" banners. The google ads are actually useful -- because they show me stuff I'm actually interested in. They can do that because they track me. Targeted advertising makes the internet interesting. I'll point out that Slashdot ads are the same way. Slashdot shows ads about web hosting and server sales, and so forth, because they "target" slashdot readers. I'd be willing to bet those ads are more useful to you than "Win a trip for two to Hawaii", it which case targeted advertising actually helped you
If A9.com can show me search results that are more likely to be useful, that's a good thing. If they have to track my browsing to do that, that's fine. Yeah, they'll make money off of me. But if they didn't, they wouldn't be there at all. It's not an invasion of my privacy to collect information about me. If they use it to track me down and beat me, that's an invasion of my privacy. If they use it to make their web sites easier to use (as, in my experience, Amazon has -- see first paragraph of this post) I not only don't mind, I want them to do it
I like A9 so far. It's almost (although not quite) as clean an interface as Google, but I like their site reviews features, and their integration with Alexa/Internet Archive (Amazon owns Alexa, so this is no surprise, but it's still useful).
Keyboard control is practically nonexistant.
Not nonexistent -- it's just not on by default. You can turn on "full keyboard access" in preferences, which lets you navigate the entire GUI with the keyboard, and define your own keyboard shortcuts.
It should be on by default, but since full keyboard navigation is something that is generally only used by power users who are custom-configuring all of the preferences anyway, I don't see it as a problem.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with that idea is that some of the most important aspects of a search engine are for it to be simple and fast. I don't know how many users would prefer to click through a whole series of pages to get to what they are looking for, rather than just looking at several results and filtering them mentally.
Although, Google does have an experimental project that allows you to create a profile of your interests and filter results accordingly, if that's your cup of tea.
I agree that an office without paper will never happen. But offices today use far more paper than is needed
I work in an office that decided that they wanted to do "paperless" faxes a few years ago. Their solution was to receive faxes on paper, scan them into the computer, and then shred the paper copies. A realistic goal would be to eliminate that kind of egregious waste of paper -- not to eliminate paper entirely.
This kind of device is going about it all wrong. We should not be trying to replace post-it notes and legal pads -- but we can (and should) stop using paper for things existing technology already does.
"Gee, I hate to break it to you, sweetheart, but it WAS your fault. YOU were the gullible one who clicked on the wrong link and gave thieves your username, password and account number!"
WHAT THE HELL???
It was NOT the woman's fault!
The fault rest solely with the theif. If somebody steals money from my bank account, it doesn't matter if they got it at gunpoint or with a fraudulent email, it is not my fault, it is not the bank's fault, it is the theif's fault.
But of course it's so much easier to blame the unsuspecting user. That's the way to get the problem solved -- get rid of the victims!
I hereby advocate the death penalty for assault victims.
(End of Rant)
"FoxNews goes to both liberal and conservative think tanks - thats what makes them fair and balanced."
On some issues, it is literally impossible to be both fair and balanced. Pure balance as you describe it (i.e. reporting information from liberal think tanks and conservative think tanks equally) creates a huge bias towards anybody, liberal or conservative, that propagates bullshit.
Now, imagine that we have two points of view, call them A and B. A creates a logical argument backed up by facts. B makes shit up. A fair report would look into the facts and give more credence to the more factual argument. A "balanced" argument would present the two viewpoints on equal footing -- giving a significant advantage to whichever side uses more dubious arguments (i.e. quotes of quotes, misattributing sources, and occasionally bald-face lies, just for some examples of dubious arguments).
Neither party always falls on the same side as far as making dubious claims, but people who just want to know the truth always lose when factual and made-up arguments are presented as fact.
That is why I don't watch Fox News.
The article is not so much against internet explorer, but *for* not using it...
wait...
The ACLU fights for a specific cause (individual rights) regardless of whose rights. So, naturally, whether the ACLU looks like "good guys" or "bad guys" depends on whose rights are in question. When they defend the rights of unpopular groups (i.e. neo-nazis, flag burning) they look like bad guys, but when they defend the rights of ordinary people (i.e. patriot act) they look like good guys.
It's the same rights they're defending in both cases.
What? Saying what the government can do under the patriot act is illegal?
Given that the act itself is made publicly available by the justice department itself(warning: PDF), can we expect the DOJ to take action against itself in the near future?
Plus auctioning beta software is against eBay's TOS. http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/items-ov.html
Contract Violation.
Contractual law actually is law, just very difficult to enforce in most cases.
I develop with Cocoa on OS X, and while it's is remarkably easy to program in once you're used to it, it's more than a little, shall we say, messy.
The classes contain endless numbers of "convenience" functions that don't really belong where they are. Witness that the STRING class has methods like stringByAppendingPathComponent, and similar other functions that should be in a separate class for paths. Meanwhile, Attributed strings do not respond to any of the standard string methods, although they do respond to methods to do things like load RTF files.
The problem is that Cocoa is not straightforward enough to be easy to program in without an intimate familiarity with the API. It's just too different from anything else out there. Now that I'm used to programming in it, I can develop an application faster than I ever could with windows APIs, but the learning curve makes it difficult.
The other thing about Cocoa, which the article doesn't quite get to saying explicitly, is that the design of the API itself actually makes it very difficult to get apps to the mac from other platforms.
Cocoa is designed to be easy for porting applications to other platforms. But you can't port applications to other platforms because Cocoa isn't available for other platforms. What Apple needs for their existing strategy to work is an API that is easy to port existing programs to. They sort of have this with carbon (hence why most applications that get ported from windows are written using carbon APIs), but they don't take advantage of a lot of features (like system services, and automatic spell checking) that only work with Cocoa programs.
It would be nice if Apple would port their APIs (or at least support something like GNUStep), but if they won't, then they need to make their "strong" API something that can easily be ported to. There are oddities in Cocoa that make incorporating code from anywhere else almost impossible.
In short, Apple's programming tools and their corporate strategy are incompatible. The article frames this as a problem with Apple's strategy, but it could just as easily be seen as the tools not fit for the job. Apple started out with Rhapsody to try and make the mac the premier program for development but somewhere in between changed their focus to getting existing software to the mac. Unfortunately, they didn't change the tools to match.
The ads that show up at the top of the page still have the background color to distinguish them from actual search results. They took the color off of the ads on the side, and now instead use a line to separate sponsored results.
Either way, it's extremely clear which links are sponsored and which links aren't.
Most mail clients have an option to delete mail, say, a week after you check it. So if you use each of your computers at least once a week (or month, or whatever you have your email client set for) you can pretty effectively store your email on each computer separately. If you have an email client with a sync feature, it gets even easier.
That's not to say that there are no uses for webmail, and having webmail to accompany a POP account is certainly useful. I'm only saying that for most people, the advantages that GMail provides (i.e. an archive of your emails, lots of storage space, searchability) are things that POP users have been taking advantage of for years.
GMail has a very nice interface and is very usable compared to Hotmail and Yahoo. But even with 3 computers, I don't think there's anything compelling enough to give up POP access. If GMail provided the webmail it does and POP access, I'd be more open to it. But I'll still take POP access over webmail interface and server space any day.
Seriously, where is the adavntage of 1GB of server space? If you store your email on your own HD, you can search, index, and store any email you've ever recieved, even without an active connection to the internet (and without the google ads), and never need more than 10 megs or so of server space. There are limited uses for server side storage among people who regularly use several different computers. But I doubt most of those people are in the market for webmail -- most probably have corporate or academic accounts, and are far more likely to use IMAP.
Tracking can be a good thing. I like the fact that Amazon "Tracks" me when I buy stuff, because they can make it easier to find stuff when I want it. I like the fact that they remember my name address and credit card because I don't have to type it in every time. I do most of my online shopping with Amazon, not because they are a wonderful company, but because they make it fast and easy. And they do that by "tracking" me.
Likewise, I prefer the "targeted" Google ads to the pre-tracking "catch the flying monkey" banners. The google ads are actually useful -- because they show me stuff I'm actually interested in. They can do that because they track me. Targeted advertising makes the internet interesting. I'll point out that Slashdot ads are the same way. Slashdot shows ads about web hosting and server sales, and so forth, because they "target" slashdot readers. I'd be willing to bet those ads are more useful to you than "Win a trip for two to Hawaii", it which case targeted advertising actually helped you
If A9.com can show me search results that are more likely to be useful, that's a good thing. If they have to track my browsing to do that, that's fine. Yeah, they'll make money off of me. But if they didn't, they wouldn't be there at all. It's not an invasion of my privacy to collect information about me. If they use it to track me down and beat me, that's an invasion of my privacy. If they use it to make their web sites easier to use (as, in my experience, Amazon has -- see first paragraph of this post) I not only don't mind, I want them to do it
I like A9 so far. It's almost (although not quite) as clean an interface as Google, but I like their site reviews features, and their integration with Alexa/Internet Archive (Amazon owns Alexa, so this is no surprise, but it's still useful).
Keyboard control is practically nonexistant. Not nonexistent -- it's just not on by default. You can turn on "full keyboard access" in preferences, which lets you navigate the entire GUI with the keyboard, and define your own keyboard shortcuts. It should be on by default, but since full keyboard navigation is something that is generally only used by power users who are custom-configuring all of the preferences anyway, I don't see it as a problem.