Amen - so much so that I voted with my cash by avoiding the 2011 Holden and buying a 2010 second hand instead. The 2011 model's greatest selling point (according to the ads) is the "iQ" touchscreen interface - making them Holden's "smartest" cars yet. I hired one for a few days and found it a grand step backwards. With no tactic feedback it was almost impossible to operate while driving. You basically had to have a passenger, or pull over to change the radio station.
The ideal user interface for car entertainment/information devices has already been invented. It's a button for binary operations and a knob for analog operations. It's incredibly clever because get this - you can feel it!
Just because a touchscreen is a wonderful interface for a mobile phone doesn't mean everything else in your life will get better with one.
Ah yes, I miss those days when the Mac OS didn't have to be dumbed down to appear less confusing to Windows users.
It appears Gnome is trying to rid itself of this lowest common denominator style too. One must keep in mind in UI design that familiarity sometimes feels a hell of a lot like superiority. In fact, there are often superior paradigms out there, but they can take quite a while to become familiar.
I see all the time people bringing their familiar "maximise" and "minimise" ideas to the Mac OS and it's frustrating. There are better ways. The "Zoom" button is one - it only made the window as big as necessary to show the contents, without needlessly obscuring other windows. The "Minimise" button on Mac OS was rarely used and only when one wanted to, literally, keep a miniaturised version of the window handy in the Dock. If you just wanted to hide it, hide it with Command-H. Better yet, leave it there and just switch to the window you're interested in.
I'm not familiar with Gnome's implementation, but I can well imagine a superior interface could be designed without the maximise and minimise buttons.
I read SMH regularly but it's articles like this that have me looking elsewhere. Some days it's like reading the Sensationalism Morning Herald. How "scathing" is this attack?
"Right now the closed platform has been successful for Apple because they've been so far ahead as thought leaders because of Steve Jobs," said Lo.
Oooo, bitter. Nope, it's another beat-up of a minor event.
The rest of the article (Apple is doomed, closed never works, blah, blah), is vacuous, unoriginal dribble. And yet this article gets published, and then to my shock, gets posted on/.!
Could I be so bold as to satisfy all your concerns with one word?
"wooooosh"
I thought it was all very amusing. I read it a week or so ago and when I saw it appear on Slashdot I thought, heh, that'll be some idle entertainment. But now I see indignant criticisms about veracity! The whole thing is a joke!.... right? If, by some gross miscomprehension I'm wrong, then wow, some pearlers have gone begging there.
To me, Usenet was the quintessential Internet protocol for revealing the power of collective thought. It never failed to amaze me what could happen if you grouped the passionate and learned practitioners of every common and exotic discipline known to man, and exposed a simple, textual communication interface. In one swoop you could be following a lively discussion on the new Giant downhill mountain bike, while your question on Fourier expansion edge cases spawns a bunch of responses.
But one cannot deny that Usenet, like email, has fallen prey to challenges that were simply not on the radar in their genesis. The only difference is that the ubiquity and return on investment ratios for email supply a dirty life line to an already dead technology.
What then, I earnestly ask, could replace Usenet? What's right and wrong with Usenet and what's right and wrong with phpbb et al? It seems to me that these features are essential:
One protocol. Not a thousand different forums with no hierarchy and no common interface.
Web access and client access. Web is critical for widespread adoption and access when the client is not available. Client access is critical for high volume users.
Options for moderation. If a group wants it, it can.
Distributed storage. There's too much traffic to expect every host to be a universal gateway. Perhaps storage could be hierarchal.
User registration required to post. Spam and bots are easier to manage that way.
Text first. Similar to the Twitter philosophy - it's the text that matters but multimedia solutions are easily integrated.
As well as the significant technical issues, there are major governance issues in developing Usenet 2.0. But I am genuinely curious - what do you think the successor to Usenet should be, and where do you think it will come from?
Google do do a lot of nice things like this. Their Zeitgeist is one of the more interesting.
They expand on their results on significant dates, such as the end of the year. It's particularly interesting to see seemingly unusual searches peaking for brief periods. They might relate to big news in another country, or even the million dollar question on some game show!
What? Me use the preview button? Ha! How could I ever make a mistake in that little post?
Of course, I meant "...and then consider that your average $2000..."
Interesting point, but clearly your university is not the right market or environment for the ToughBook. Consider the scenarios where we use then (underground mines, on large mining equipment, transported via back-of-ute method) and then consider than you average $2000 laptop would last about 1 day in this environment, if it were lucky. Perhaps you can start to see why the high price is justified.
This isn't the laptop to buy if you're unsure whether it will ever leave your desk;)
the tires should be better for off-roading since they will wrap around the bumps/rocks easier
Nah, I disagree. That's easily achieved with todays tyres by dropping down to <15psi (even <0psi on light buggies with big stiff tyres). What you can't do with the tweels is adjust this firmness/wrapping factor. The tweels do let you gain some lateral stability without sacrificing radial cushioning, but you are still left with a fixed tradeoff - either you have: stiff, responsive, less flex causing heat/wear, short contact patch giving light steering, high road performance tyres; or you have soft, cushy, traction enhancing wrap on uneven surfaces, long contact patch giving high floatation, high offroad performance tyres.
With pneumatic tyres at least the tradeoff has a degree of adjustability.
Still... I'm very interested in the possibilities of purpose built off-road tweels. Hmm....
When a teacher submits a paper to turnitin.com the paper is archived indefinitely in their database for comparison to future paper submissions. In nearly all cases this is done without the student's knowledge or permission, which violates that student's copyrights.
And so many universities (mine included) have done just what is necessary to avoid this "little" legality issue - simply force the students to sign a disclaimer saying they agree to have their copyright abused to the max. If the student doesn't sign, their work is not marked, and their $AUD500 course goes down the gurgler without academic credit.
Believe me, this technique has pissed me off no end, so much so that I wrote a lengthy essay detailing my criticism, as well as a supporting open source application. I cover a lot of the points mentioned in these comments as well as a few others. Please have a read and comment if you wish. It is an important issue for current and commencing students.
then osx has a broken bsd socket implementation. ntohs should be a function.
Better let the BSD team know that then, because they'll surely want to make sure their code complies with the "bsd socket implementation" spec you mention. Or... and here's a crazy idea, you could realise you're wrong and that Apple didn't decide to deliberately break the BSD code they used and actually have a very similar implementation to the BSD code.
/* * Copyright (c) 1987, 1991, 1993 * The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. * * Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without * modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions * are met: * 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright * notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. * 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright * notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the * documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. * 3. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors * may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software * without specific prior written permission. * * THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND * ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE * IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE * ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE * FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL * DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS * OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) * HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT * LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY * OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF * SUCH DAMAGE. * * @(#)endian.h 8.1 (Berkeley) 6/11/93 */ --SNIP-- #if BYTE_ORDER == BIG_ENDIAN && !defined(lint) #define ntohl(x) (x) #define ntohs(x) (x) #define htonl(x) (x) #define htons(x) (x) --SNIP--
Slashdot Mirror
Amen - so much so that I voted with my cash by avoiding the 2011 Holden and buying a 2010 second hand instead. The 2011 model's greatest selling point (according to the ads) is the "iQ" touchscreen interface - making them Holden's "smartest" cars yet. I hired one for a few days and found it a grand step backwards. With no tactic feedback it was almost impossible to operate while driving. You basically had to have a passenger, or pull over to change the radio station.
The ideal user interface for car entertainment/information devices has already been invented. It's a button for binary operations and a knob for analog operations. It's incredibly clever because get this - you can feel it!
Just because a touchscreen is a wonderful interface for a mobile phone doesn't mean everything else in your life will get better with one.
Ah yes, I miss those days when the Mac OS didn't have to be dumbed down to appear less confusing to Windows users.
It appears Gnome is trying to rid itself of this lowest common denominator style too. One must keep in mind in UI design that familiarity sometimes feels a hell of a lot like superiority. In fact, there are often superior paradigms out there, but they can take quite a while to become familiar.
I see all the time people bringing their familiar "maximise" and "minimise" ideas to the Mac OS and it's frustrating. There are better ways. The "Zoom" button is one - it only made the window as big as necessary to show the contents, without needlessly obscuring other windows. The "Minimise" button on Mac OS was rarely used and only when one wanted to, literally, keep a miniaturised version of the window handy in the Dock. If you just wanted to hide it, hide it with Command-H. Better yet, leave it there and just switch to the window you're interested in.
I'm not familiar with Gnome's implementation, but I can well imagine a superior interface could be designed without the maximise and minimise buttons.
I read SMH regularly but it's articles like this that have me looking elsewhere. Some days it's like reading the Sensationalism Morning Herald. How "scathing" is this attack?
Oooo, bitter. Nope, it's another beat-up of a minor event.
The rest of the article (Apple is doomed, closed never works, blah, blah), is vacuous, unoriginal dribble. And yet this article gets published, and then to my shock, gets posted on /.!
Could I be so bold as to satisfy all your concerns with one word?
"wooooosh"
I thought it was all very amusing. I read it a week or so ago and when I saw it appear on Slashdot I thought, heh, that'll be some idle entertainment. But now I see indignant criticisms about veracity! The whole thing is a joke! .... right? If, by some gross miscomprehension I'm wrong, then wow, some pearlers have gone begging there.
To me, Usenet was the quintessential Internet protocol for revealing the power of collective thought. It never failed to amaze me what could happen if you grouped the passionate and learned practitioners of every common and exotic discipline known to man, and exposed a simple, textual communication interface. In one swoop you could be following a lively discussion on the new Giant downhill mountain bike, while your question on Fourier expansion edge cases spawns a bunch of responses.
But one cannot deny that Usenet, like email, has fallen prey to challenges that were simply not on the radar in their genesis. The only difference is that the ubiquity and return on investment ratios for email supply a dirty life line to an already dead technology.
What then, I earnestly ask, could replace Usenet? What's right and wrong with Usenet and what's right and wrong with phpbb et al? It seems to me that these features are essential:
As well as the significant technical issues, there are major governance issues in developing Usenet 2.0. But I am genuinely curious - what do you think the successor to Usenet should be, and where do you think it will come from?
Google do do a lot of nice things like this. Their Zeitgeist is one of the more interesting.
They expand on their results on significant dates, such as the end of the year. It's particularly interesting to see seemingly unusual searches peaking for brief periods. They might relate to big news in another country, or even the million dollar question on some game show!
What? Me use the preview button? Ha! How could I ever make a mistake in that little post? Of course, I meant "...and then consider that your average $2000..."
Interesting point, but clearly your university is not the right market or environment for the ToughBook. Consider the scenarios where we use then (underground mines, on large mining equipment, transported via back-of-ute method) and then consider than you average $2000 laptop would last about 1 day in this environment, if it were lucky. Perhaps you can start to see why the high price is justified.
;)
This isn't the laptop to buy if you're unsure whether it will ever leave your desk
Believe me, this technique has pissed me off no end, so much so that I wrote a lengthy essay detailing my criticism, as well as a supporting open source application. I cover a lot of the points mentioned in these comments as well as a few others. Please have a read and comment if you wish. It is an important issue for current and commencing students.
Better let the BSD team know that then, because they'll surely want to make sure their code complies with the "bsd socket implementation" spec you mention. Or... and here's a crazy idea, you could realise you're wrong and that Apple didn't decide to deliberately break the BSD code they used and actually have a very similar implementation to the BSD code.
Source: http://cvsweb.netbsd.org/bsdweb.cgi/src/sys/sys/e"Grub is a distributed web crawler."
"Last week, LookSmart released a screensaver that harnesses the spare computing power of volunteers whose machines are indexing the Web.
Like SETI@Home, LookSmart's Grub screensaver runs in the background or when the computer is idle. But instead of searching for signs of intelligent aliens, Grub crawls the Net to build an index for Web searches."
Interesting idea indeed.