that's not what he was refering to...he was refering to the tendacy for the hard drive containing your data to find itself being auctioned off after the company that used to own it went under....expect it to happen about 6 months to a year after the company is formed.
The trouble is, that the moment you give a 16 year old the smallest piece of information about something, he immediately assumes he is an expert, and is the only one on the planet informed enough to know the correct use of that piece of information.
Whether it be the handling characteristics of a car, or how to use SSH.
No, how much information they want is not your call to make , it's definitely theirs.
But it is entirely your call whether or not to give that information, or forego the use of their service.
They all know damned well that just becase they ask for information doesn't mean they'll get it. They're also probably aware that their readership will go down proportional to how much information they want, so they make a judgement as to how valuable that information is to them. You make that same judgement....
Also, the parent was not equating incorrect information with piracy, he was comparing...there is a big difference. His comparison was not entirely without merit. You can choose to ignore the nag screens on Shareware, and continue using it for free, just as you can enter false data in the registration pages of a service, therefore getting it for free. In both cases the providers of the software or the service are aware that this will happen, and are counting on enough people to be honest to make it worthwhile. But being one of the expected dishonest people does not make you any less dishonest....
I don't care if your mother might happen to like it. I also don't care how many so called "Useability studies" tell me they might like it.
_I_ use computers, and I want _my_ needs catered for, not some mythical mother, or aunt, or grandmother, or whatever the current model "Average User" is.
I am a real user, I use computers now, I use them for fun, and I use them for getting work done. I want an interface that caters to my needs - in other words, it doesn't force someone else's interpretation of my needs on me, and lets me configure and set things up how I like it without having to hunt around in configuration files. I'm no stranger to a text editor, or the command line, but I also don't feel that editing config files by hand somehow makes you 1337 (god I hate that term). A desktop environment that makes you leave the desktop environment (ie, go to a terminal session and fire up vi) to change it's settings, because having an option in the GUI to change it _might_ confuse one of these mythical users, is just a pain in the neck for us real users.
I recognise that there are benefits to be made by making things easy for new users. But too many people make the mistake of concentrating only on new users, and forgetting that existing users - even the advanced ones are users too.
That's right, designers of a "User Friendly" interface usualy forget two things.
1. There's no such thing as an "Average User" - if you design for one and only one type of user, then you'll pretty much piss everyone off somewhere in your design. 2. (really just an extension of 1) Advanced users are users too! (though probably wont be for long if you keep arbitrarily preventing them from doing, or making it difficult to do things they damned well know are possible)
KDE seems to do a good job of still providing a very useable interface whilst at the same time resisting reoccuring calls for some of the more stupid ideas made in the name of "Useability". I think the reason they manage this, is because they recognise that not alienating your existing user base is equally as important as attracting new users.
> extension modules available in default installation
NONONONO oh god NO!!
Unless you mean extension modules that follow a clearly defined framework, that are well separated from the main language interepreter, allowing you to compile some, all, or none when you compile the language, and easily add more later - with no inherent difference between a bundled and a third party extension.
> Heavily produced albums, lyrics oriented towards their target demographic
Um, I certainly hope that ANY band that seriously wants people to listen to them makes sure they do a good job in the production and post production stage, and you're pretty bloody stupid if you're not writing stuff targeted at your audience. Either that or admit that you're writing for yourself and you dont expect anyone else to like it (Which there's certainly nothing wrong with).
So that when you need to troubleshoot a problem -say with the ethernet support in your kernel - you can have multiple dynamically resizable xterms on the screen at once.
Sure, you don't need a top end video card - the Rage Pros that Dell servers come with are even overkill, but there's nothing wrong with a having X on a server - it can be very convenient at times.
Though I suspect you intended the comment in a tongue in cheek sort of way, given the contents of your site - so this is more of a reply to all the other "You don't run X on a server" comments I've seen here over the years than specifically to yours...
> 1st story: my friend's brother was stabbed in the heart by a white trash metalhead
So in your opinion, the music made him do it? Or was there some other reason for mentioning musical taste?
> portland and seattle are famous for this kind of death metal nonsense.
Ahh, I see you _do_ think it was the music that made him do it. I'm not sure I see the connection myself. Even less so than I'd see a connection with playing violent video games (and I definitely don't see any connections there either).
Personally, I'd rather meet a group of metalheads in a dark alley in the middle of the night, than a whole lot of other types of people.
> one that assumes most advertisers are marketing a product that most viewers of a particular program can afford
Starting to get off topic but anyway -
I don't think that in a lot of cases they are marketing towards people that can afford the item. At least in the case of things like cars or other non trivial or mundane stuff. If someone was in the market for a new car, and could afford one - they'd buy one. They wouldn't see an ad and suddenly decide to. So what the ads are doing, is trying to put the desire for the product in you - regardless of whether or not you can afford it now. Because one day, you might be able to. And you're far more likely to buy a product after having lusted after it for years, seeing the ads wishing that you could afford one, and now finaly being able to, than if you could already afford it, and you saw the ad for the first time.
> I'm always torn about trying to explain science to the masses, since they're clearly too dumb/uninterested to ever truly understand.
The only way to guarantee that this is true, is to never try to explain it.
Also, never, ever confuse ignorance with stupidity. Someone can have no knowledge, or interest in something without being stupid, and assuming their lack of interest is due to stupidity only makes you look bad.
I was always under the impression that war*ing was not about maintaining a link, but about locating hotspots.
Didn't it start with "warchalking" where somone would put a chalk mark on a wall or footpath or something indicating that you could get wireless access from there?
From what I understand, these war driving / flying / sailing events are about producing a map that someone can use later to find the locations.
spoken by someone who has never used Debian, or even invetigated it.
The question was when will it get in to Unstable - probably only Gentoo is more up to date than Debian Sid, and I'd guess that it's less stable than Debian too...
However, as stated elsewhere they do take a little longer than most on X updates as they are pretty much the only testing that XFree86 got on a lot of plaforms....
Slashdot Mirror
You've never read the QT documentation then have you?
It really is very, very good.
Though it's not Linux/Unix documentation, it is the documentation that was being compared....
that's not what he was refering to...he was refering to the tendacy for the hard drive containing your data to find itself being auctioned off after the company that used to own it went under....expect it to happen about 6 months to a year after the company is formed.
The trouble is, that the moment you give a 16 year old the smallest piece of information about something, he immediately assumes he is an expert, and is the only one on the planet informed enough to know the correct use of that piece of information.
Whether it be the handling characteristics of a car, or how to use SSH.
No, how much information they want is not your call to make , it's definitely theirs.
But it is entirely your call whether or not to give that information, or forego the use of their service.
They all know damned well that just becase they ask for information doesn't mean they'll get it. They're also probably aware that their readership will go down proportional to how much information they want, so they make a judgement as to how valuable that information is to them.
You make that same judgement....
Also, the parent was not equating incorrect information with piracy, he was comparing...there is a big difference. His comparison was not entirely without merit. You can choose to ignore the nag screens on Shareware, and continue using it for free, just as you can enter false data in the registration pages of a service, therefore getting it for free. In both cases the providers of the software or the service are aware that this will happen, and are counting on enough people to be honest to make it worthwhile. But being one of the expected dishonest people does not make you any less dishonest....
> I can simply drag and drop the UI objects into the configuration I like
HUH?
where on earth can you do that?
or are you only talking about the toolbars?
Whatever happened to "New Here"?
;)
I keep expecting him to pop up with "no, I'm New Here" on all these posts
I don't care if your mother might happen to like it. I also don't care how many so called "Useability studies" tell me they might like it.
_I_ use computers, and I want _my_ needs catered for, not some mythical mother, or aunt, or grandmother, or whatever the current model "Average User" is.
I am a real user, I use computers now, I use them for fun, and I use them for getting work done.
I want an interface that caters to my needs - in other words, it doesn't force someone else's interpretation of my needs on me, and lets me configure and set things up how I like it without having to hunt around in configuration files.
I'm no stranger to a text editor, or the command line, but I also don't feel that editing config files by hand somehow makes you 1337 (god I hate that term).
A desktop environment that makes you leave the desktop environment (ie, go to a terminal session and fire up vi) to change it's settings, because having an option in the GUI to change it _might_ confuse one of these mythical users, is just a pain in the neck for us real users.
I recognise that there are benefits to be made by making things easy for new users. But too many people make the mistake of concentrating only on new users, and forgetting that existing users - even the advanced ones are users too.
That's right, designers of a "User Friendly" interface usualy forget two things.
1. There's no such thing as an "Average User" - if you design for one and only one type of user, then you'll pretty much piss everyone off somewhere in your design.
2. (really just an extension of 1) Advanced users are users too! (though probably wont be for long if you keep arbitrarily preventing them from doing, or making it difficult to do things they damned well know are possible)
KDE seems to do a good job of still providing a very useable interface whilst at the same time resisting reoccuring calls for some of the more stupid ideas made in the name of "Useability".
I think the reason they manage this, is because they recognise that not alienating your existing user base is equally as important as attracting new users.
DB Server in Prolog -
SELECT column1, column2, column3
FROM table1
WHERE column2 IN
(SELECT columna from table2
WHERE columna IN (1, 2, 3));
Results
-------
YES
actually, while I'm making broad sweeping stereotypical claims, I'll take it further - as it's certainly not limited to tech support.
It seems to be a very strong thing in a lot of people that they'd rather guess, or lie than be seen to not know the answer to something.
My experience has been that ALL tech support people lie any time they don't know the answer.
> extension modules available in default installation
NONONONO oh god NO!!
Unless you mean extension modules that follow a clearly defined framework, that are well separated from the main language interepreter, allowing you to compile some, all, or none when you compile the language, and easily add more later - with no inherent difference between a bundled and a third party extension.
Have you noticed how the same people that think this is a great achievement are the same ones who also compare PHP to Perl and even Java?
> Heavily produced albums, lyrics oriented towards their target demographic
Um, I certainly hope that ANY band that seriously wants people to listen to them makes sure they do a good job in the production and post production stage, and you're pretty bloody stupid if you're not writing stuff targeted at your audience. Either that or admit that you're writing for yourself and you dont expect anyone else to like it (Which there's certainly nothing wrong with).
I agree with most of what you said....but I'd still use a StringBuffer rather than a String for multiple concatenations...
There are some things which are just a good idea regardless....
So that when you need to troubleshoot a problem -say with the ethernet support in your kernel - you can have multiple dynamically resizable xterms on the screen at once.
Sure, you don't need a top end video card - the Rage Pros that Dell servers come with are even overkill, but there's nothing wrong with a having X on a server - it can be very convenient at times.
Though I suspect you intended the comment in a tongue in cheek sort of way, given the contents of your site - so this is more of a reply to all the other "You don't run X on a server" comments I've seen here over the years than specifically to yours...
Why don't they just do like the rest of us do, and put a roof over the pumps?
And personally, I'd hate not being allowed to do it myself.
> 1st story: my friend's brother was stabbed in the heart by a white trash metalhead
So in your opinion, the music made him do it?
Or was there some other reason for mentioning musical taste?
> portland and seattle are famous for this kind of death metal nonsense.
Ahh, I see you _do_ think it was the music that made him do it.
I'm not sure I see the connection myself. Even less so than I'd see a connection with playing violent video games (and I definitely don't see any connections there either).
Personally, I'd rather meet a group of metalheads in a dark alley in the middle of the night, than a whole lot of other types of people.
> one that assumes most advertisers are marketing a product that most viewers of a particular program can afford
Starting to get off topic but anyway -
I don't think that in a lot of cases they are marketing towards people that can afford the item. At least in the case of things like cars or other non trivial or mundane stuff. If someone was in the market for a new car, and could afford one - they'd buy one. They wouldn't see an ad and suddenly decide to. So what the ads are doing, is trying to put the desire for the product in you - regardless of whether or not you can afford it now. Because one day, you might be able to. And you're far more likely to buy a product after having lusted after it for years, seeing the ads wishing that you could afford one, and now finaly being able to, than if you could already afford it, and you saw the ad for the first time.
> I'm always torn about trying to explain science to the masses, since they're clearly too dumb/uninterested to ever truly understand.
The only way to guarantee that this is true, is to never try to explain it.
Also, never, ever confuse ignorance with stupidity.
Someone can have no knowledge, or interest in something without being stupid, and assuming their lack of interest is due to stupidity only makes you look bad.
We heard plenty of coverage about the agreement, but most of it was complaining from Sugar farmers......
I was always under the impression that war*ing was not about maintaining a link, but about locating hotspots.
Didn't it start with "warchalking" where somone would put a chalk mark on a wall or footpath or something indicating that you could get wireless access from there?
From what I understand, these war driving / flying / sailing events are about producing a map that someone can use later to find the locations.
Threat, threat, threat, threat, THREAT!
Seriously, where do you come from that you can confuse thread with threat?
spoken by someone who has never used Debian, or even invetigated it.
The question was when will it get in to Unstable - probably only Gentoo is more up to date than Debian Sid, and I'd guess that it's less stable than Debian too...
However, as stated elsewhere they do take a little longer than most on X updates as they are pretty much the only testing that XFree86 got on a lot of plaforms....
> php doesn't have threads and never will i think. they'd probably would have to rewrite most of the code to make it work.
and that would be a bad thing because........?