The UI is one of the most forefront things in Windows, and if theyre radically changing how applications are going to interact with the user (single fullscreen app, two contexts metro / regular, new widgets) thats going to affect 99% of users.
I mean maybe there are new commandline commands or powershell cmdlets, but Im going to go out on a limb and say those arent why people get a new desktop version of windows.
I don't think anyone rushed out to upgrade to Vista or Win 7 for the Aero interface, at least I hope they didn't. I took the plunge with Vista, and it wasn't a great experience, but I always run fairly current hardware, so the bloat was not as apparent, it was almost tolerable post SP1.
I did it in part for the DirectX 11 support, which admittedly wasn't at all impressive for the GPUs and games available at the time, in retrospect I should have just stayed with XP until Windows 7 was released.
I'm curious how right click -> "Make Alias" is "one of the most counter intuitive things [you've] ever experienced in any UI."
I found an article on Microsoft's site describing how to do it on Windows, and I'm not sure how:
1. Right-click an open area on the desktop, point to New, and then click Shortcut. 2. Click Browse. 3. Locate the program or file to which you want to create a shortcut, click the program or file, click Open, and then click Next. 4. Type a name for the shortcut. If a Finish button appears at the bottom of the dialog box, click it. If a Next button appears at the bottom of the dialog box, click it, click the icon you want to use for the shortcut, and then click Finish.
counts as more intuitive in any universe.
And while I certainly agree that struggling to figure out why a particular program isn't working can be very frustrating, surely you're not suggesting that this issue is unique to MacOS? Go dig through the technical support forums for, oh, any Windows game ever if you'd like to disabuse yourself of that notion.
Try right clicking a folder or file in windows, selecting copy, then going to your target location and right clicking again to "paste shortcut"
As opposed to whatever hoops you have to jump through to make an alias pointing to a specific directory or drive in OSX.
I've not experienced _any_ problems running _any_ games in Windows since XP SP1, you know why?
Because I hand pick my hardware in a manner that ensures a more problem free experience.
It's not difficult: Intel Chipsets (I prefer Gigabyte motherboards.) Intel CPUs (because now they have the best price to performance when overclocked and are available in conveniently multiplier unlocked models.) nVidia graphics cards (because as much as I like ATI, Crapalyst drivers are still more prone to hiccups.)
Even macs are running the same hardware now you know?
What's wrong with OS X? It's GUI is so sparse, I long for Windows when I have to use it. Now, the OS itself I like. I just think the GUI is stuck in the 80s.
I didn't most of OSX, aside from the UI. As someone who only very recently started using a Mac (partially out of professional curiosity, partially to support semi-PC/Mac illiterate users)
But I immediately found most of it's evangelists claims of it being user friendly, more stable than windows etc to be almost totally marketing/fanboy rubbish.
For starters, trying to make a Shortcut (alias) to the desktop was one of the most counter intuitive things I've ever experienced in any UI. Also I once had to figure out why Dragon Age 2 wasn't working on a Macbook Pro, and that left me fumbling in the dark for almost an hour.
Game developer support for the OSX platform is also sorely lacking, and most of the Mac users I know have also given up and just caved in to using Bootcamp.
The 50% divorce rate has coincided with the doubling of the human lifespan. It's quite possible that tripling our lifespan will raise divorce rates to 33%.
I'm no mathematician, but the math seems wrong here..
I thought exactly the same thing. He has nothing to apologize for, Windows 8 is bad. It has one of the worst UI designs I've ever seen.
Frankly though, I don't really care about the UI, I've been using the Win2K classic mode since well..win2K. There have already been user mods and themes to restore the classic interface.
I'm interested more in the kernel and stability/updates and underlying parts of the OS.
I've never liked Aero, or the ME or Vista interfaces or bloated junk like the OSX interface.
I'm not curmudgeonly enough to work purely in a CLI environment, I don't want my OS to look pretty, I want it to run applications, preferably faster and more stably than it's previous iterations on the same hardware.
I have read somewhere that McDonald's is NOT a corporate entity. It is instead a trade mark and business model that can be licensed by anybody willing to become local McDonald's. If so, it's futile to look for McDonald's representative a.s.o. - they have no relation with this specific McDonald's except collecting the license fees. The local police is the only place to ask for help.
Yet I am fairly certain that when you introduce the McShitburger as your new seasonal menu special, or decide to apply pedobear wallpaper to the interior of your franchise it will not fly for long.
Less drastically if you decide to change the corporate colours of your "restaurant" to pink and purple it probably wouldn't fly either. Same goes for beating up paying customers, augmented, handicapped or otherwise.
What brain-dead gas supplier sold these idiots enough helium to attempt this stunt? Don't they know that there's a worldwide helium shortage - that even now, a new restriction of He allocation has cut gas levels available to suppliers to 50-70% of last year's levels, and He prices on what's left have doubled?
Those of us who use helium for our jobs don't appreciate it being wasted on this crap. If these morons want to float on lawn chairs, use hydrogen - that'll get even more people watching them, and maybe when the first two or three go up in fireballs people will stop doing this idiotic stunt.
Helium is still obviously too cheap then, you'll just have to patiently wait till market forces correct the prices, so no kid will ever have a magically floating balloon again. (Not for less than $20 at least)
Deleting all traces and pretending it never happened is still the safest and sanest route. Even the smallest chance of being labeled (officially or not) a pedo is too large.
This is so totally true, making a report or having any personal connection whatsoever to pedo pornography is beyond stupid.
What they need to do is so simple it's amazing they haven't implemented it yet. They need a totally anonymous reporting system for such websites, because they have no reason to want to know who the sender is, or what their intentions are except that they object to the exploitation of children, and want to prevent such sites from surviving and propagating this exploitation and abuse.
The root of the problem seems to be that the **AAs just cannot conceive of a reality where a person who "pirates" an article of music or a movie would sooner not watch or listen to it than be compelled to pay money to consume it.
Many of these swashbucklers download and watch movies that they would never pay to watch.
The sheer volume of movies in recent years that most landlubbers wouldn't even watch for free is staggering. I don't think I could even watch some of these motion pictures if they were offering anything less than a Spanish doubloon an hour.
The reality is many of these buccaneers would just cease to consume this (mostly crappy) content and marketing if they could not plunder it from other travelers out on the open ocean.
Some privateers I've spoken to also reckon that if they choked off and controlled every possible shipping lane and channel on the planet, people would just find other ways to transport their cargo, perhaps use submarines or darknets.
Clearly the thing to do would be to start a porn site where the talent make political speeches against David Cameron. Then he'll be repressing political speech.
Naked News is the closest thing I've seen to this, heh.
This is an interesting direction for collecting metrics, and could obviously be used to evil(tm)
Depending on how they collect the data there are multiple potential sources for data collection.
DPI/Sensitivity of the mouse (which users generally do not change) Algorithm/mouse smoothing (with enough data resolution can even narrow this down the sensor and processor used or even brand and model of mouse) speed of click/double click user inputs. degree and pitch of side to side or top to bottom of screen mouse tracking. Possibly even imperfections on the mousing surface or table.
Most people tend to use the same mouse for 1 - 5 years, so there is more than sufficient time to build up a usage patterns database, this would be a rather evil way of tracking users if it is eventually refined enough.
This is likely going to be far more useful for tracking and advertising than as a security mechanism.
Don't be ridiculous. I was replacing wall outlets and light switches at that age, sometimes without turning the power off. It's easy, you just be really careful (so you don't short something and make sparks), and wear some rubber gloves. It's only 110V so as long as you're not wet and wearing rubber-soled shoes, it can't hurt you, only give you a small jolt. Obviously it's better to turn off the breaker if you can, but it's not that big a deal if you can't. Not sure I'd try this with 220V systems however.
I've received a few shocks doing stuff like this with both 110v and 220v, with 220v the jolt is a little worse, and your appendage may feel a little number after the jolt, but it's not that big of a difference between the two.
Not sure that anyone at MIT would stoop so low as to use X10 modules for a dorm project. Somehow I would tend to expect them to design their own solution that wasn't so noisy, or prone to being affected by someone in the next room with an X10 timer, or lamp control pad.
I agree, I already did this more than 10 years ago when I was in college. I guess the youtube crowd is easy to impress.
Once it gets into your home and goes through the physical bridge device, it's going out to your computer either on copper or wireless.
They're talking about wiring the home itself with fiber. Which is expensive overkill and adds nothing to the venture other than cost.
CAT6 and 1Gbps are several orders of magnitude cheaper than a full in-house fiber setup and deliver identical or superior performance to Gigabit fiber.
Ah internally I agree, I don't even bother with CAT6, my residential runs are all quality CAT5E, and I haven't had problems running it at gigabit speeds.
Dude, if you think the future of connectivity is fiber, you need to leave the 90s and come join us here in 2012. I'm not sure what's so 'future proof' about a relatively temperamental connectivity media that is supported by exactly *no* household devices, and very few wifi access points. As for the "future," I would point out that every high-speed LAN technology started as fiber and then became copper...because fiber is a colossal pain in the ass compared to copper. When something consistently goes from one thing to another, this is called a "trend," and trends tell you about the future. It ain't fiber.
Fiber is what the countries with the (presently) fastest residential user internet infrastructure in the world are using.
Singapore is presently rolling out it's nation wide fiber network and somewhere close to 70% of the households have been fiber connected. 95% of the households islandwide are scheduled/projected to be connected by the end of 2012.
I recently had fiber installed in my home, though 1000Mbps is an option at $319 per month, I opted to go for 100Mbps for $47 per month.
The media's periodic focus on unintended accelleration always focuses on the cars, when rational observers almost always conclude the failing part of the system was the driver. Car magazines have done these articles debunking, explaining, etc a number of times with these cycles. The general public doesn't care, doesn't want to learn, and wants it to be some else's fault, preferably someone with deep pockets. Media serves up exactly that.:-(
This is probably because it is very politically incorrect for a manufacturer or industry to blame a dead user...
I was actually taught by one of my dad's friends how to handle this situation.
Let's say you're in the passenger seat and the driver passes out, foot stuck on the accelerator. What do you do?
One of two things. You could change the gear to neutral. There's a chance it will destroy your gearbox but it's better than crashing.
The other thing is to - get this - turn the car off. Just turn the ignition and pull the keys. Either way, you have to then try to control the car to a stop.
Do try to flip on the hazard indicators if you can. You can almost never reach the brake pedal from the passenger side, and there is almost no indication to other drivers as to what's going on other than the fact that you are slowing down. Someone inattentive might miss it and rear-end you.
I have had some defensive driving instruction during military service.
The very first thing you want to do if you driver is shot, incapacitated or otherwise unconscious is
1) Grab hold of the steering wheel, and do not take your eyes off the road.
This is not optional, and omitting or delaying this first step is frequently a Very Bad Thing(tm)
2) Grab the drivers pant leg and yank his foot off the accelerator.
3) If you feel you have reasonable control of the vehicle and it is still at speed,
Forcibly engage the vehicle into 1st or 2nd gear and slow it down with Engine Braking.
4) Put the vehicle in Neutral. DO NOT TURN OFF THE ENGINE if you are still going more than 20 - 30 MPH.
Turning off the engine in many vehicles disables the power steering, and if you're not in the driver's seat with appropriate leverage on the
steering wheel, this could throw you totally out of control.
Optional: Turn on Hazard lights if you are able to.
5) If you have managed to get said vehicle to below 30 - 40 MPH, gradually apply the Emergency (Hand) Brake.
Or if necessary, look for dividers, walls or other obstacles to grind against to bring your vehicle to a complete stop.
Have one hand on the steering wheel at all times, this is not optional.
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The UI is one of the most forefront things in Windows, and if theyre radically changing how applications are going to interact with the user (single fullscreen app, two contexts metro / regular, new widgets) thats going to affect 99% of users.
I mean maybe there are new commandline commands or powershell cmdlets, but Im going to go out on a limb and say those arent why people get a new desktop version of windows.
I don't think anyone rushed out to upgrade to Vista or Win 7 for the Aero interface, at least I hope they didn't. I took the plunge with Vista, and it wasn't a great experience, but I always run fairly current hardware, so the bloat was not as apparent, it was almost tolerable post SP1.
I did it in part for the DirectX 11 support, which admittedly wasn't at all impressive for the GPUs and games available at the time, in retrospect I should have just stayed with XP until Windows 7 was released.
I'm curious how right click -> "Make Alias" is "one of the most counter intuitive things [you've] ever experienced in any UI."
I found an article on Microsoft's site describing how to do it on Windows, and I'm not sure how:
1. Right-click an open area on the desktop, point to New, and then click Shortcut.
2. Click Browse.
3. Locate the program or file to which you want to create a shortcut, click the program or file, click Open, and then click Next.
4. Type a name for the shortcut. If a Finish button appears at the bottom of the dialog box, click it. If a Next button appears at the bottom of the dialog box, click it, click the icon you want to use for the shortcut, and then click Finish.
counts as more intuitive in any universe.
And while I certainly agree that struggling to figure out why a particular program isn't working can be very frustrating, surely you're not suggesting that this issue is unique to MacOS? Go dig through the technical support forums for, oh, any Windows game ever if you'd like to disabuse yourself of that notion.
Try right clicking a folder or file in windows, selecting copy, then going to your target location and right clicking again to "paste shortcut"
As opposed to whatever hoops you have to jump through to make an alias pointing to a specific directory or drive in OSX.
I've not experienced _any_ problems running _any_ games in Windows since XP SP1, you know why?
Because I hand pick my hardware in a manner that ensures a more problem free experience.
It's not difficult:
Intel Chipsets (I prefer Gigabyte motherboards.)
Intel CPUs (because now they have the best price to performance when overclocked and are available in conveniently multiplier unlocked models.)
nVidia graphics cards (because as much as I like ATI, Crapalyst drivers are still more prone to hiccups.)
Even macs are running the same hardware now you know?
dang it...I really need to start using the preview button as intended..
What's wrong with OS X? It's GUI is so sparse, I long for Windows when I have to use it. Now, the OS itself I like. I just think the GUI is stuck in the 80s.
I didn't most of OSX, aside from the UI. As someone who only very recently started using a Mac (partially out of professional curiosity, partially to support semi-PC/Mac illiterate users)
But I immediately found most of it's evangelists claims of it being user friendly, more stable than windows etc to be almost totally marketing/fanboy rubbish.
For starters, trying to make a Shortcut (alias) to the desktop was one of the most counter intuitive things I've ever experienced in any UI. Also I once had to figure out why Dragon Age 2 wasn't working on a Macbook Pro, and that left me fumbling in the dark for almost an hour.
Game developer support for the OSX platform is also sorely lacking, and most of the Mac users I know have also given up and just caved in to using Bootcamp.
The 50% divorce rate has coincided with the doubling of the human lifespan. It's quite possible that tripling our lifespan will raise divorce rates to 33%.
I'm no mathematician, but the math seems wrong here..
I thought exactly the same thing. He has nothing to apologize for, Windows 8 is bad. It has one of the worst UI designs I've ever seen.
Frankly though, I don't really care about the UI, I've been using the Win2K classic mode since well..win2K.
There have already been user mods and themes to restore the classic interface.
I'm interested more in the kernel and stability/updates and underlying parts of the OS.
I've never liked Aero, or the ME or Vista interfaces or bloated junk like the OSX interface.
I'm not curmudgeonly enough to work purely in a CLI environment, I don't want my OS to look pretty, I want it to run applications, preferably faster and more stably than it's previous iterations on the same hardware.
I guess the Microsoft check finally cleared.
Give the guy the benefit of the doubt, he might have been trying to type "Awesome" and just typoed (before the check cleared.)
I have read somewhere that McDonald's is NOT a corporate entity. It is instead a trade mark and business model that can be licensed by anybody willing to become local McDonald's. If so, it's futile to look for McDonald's representative a.s.o. - they have no relation with this specific McDonald's except collecting the license fees. The local police is the only place to ask for help.
Yet I am fairly certain that when you introduce the McShitburger as your new seasonal menu special, or decide to apply pedobear wallpaper to the interior of your franchise it will not fly for long.
Less drastically if you decide to change the corporate colours of your "restaurant" to pink and purple it probably wouldn't fly either. Same goes for beating up paying customers, augmented, handicapped or otherwise.
1) Release Surface Tablet
2) Buy ATVI
3) Make WoW an exclusive for said tablet
4) Profit!!
What brain-dead gas supplier sold these idiots enough helium to attempt this stunt? Don't they know that there's a worldwide helium shortage - that even now, a new restriction of He allocation has cut gas levels available to suppliers to 50-70% of last year's levels, and He prices on what's left have doubled?
Those of us who use helium for our jobs don't appreciate it being wasted on this crap. If these morons want to float on lawn chairs, use hydrogen - that'll get even more people watching them, and maybe when the first two or three go up in fireballs people will stop doing this idiotic stunt.
Helium is still obviously too cheap then, you'll just have to patiently wait till market forces correct the prices, so no kid will ever have a magically floating balloon again. (Not for less than $20 at least)
So is LA, SF, New York, and Chicago. Your point?
My point is that it wouldn't be surprising if those airports also received $20 million dollar or higher "Hi-Tech Security Upgrades."
The Twin cities are a major transit hub for flights originating from Asia.
Most of my trips from SE Asia via Tokyo, Narita have ended with a transit through Minneapolis when I was in College in the Midwest.
Deleting all traces and pretending it never happened is still the safest and sanest route. Even the smallest chance of being labeled (officially or not) a pedo is too large.
This is so totally true, making a report or having any personal connection whatsoever to pedo pornography is beyond stupid.
What they need to do is so simple it's amazing they haven't implemented it yet.
They need a totally anonymous reporting system for such websites, because they have no reason to want to know who the sender is, or what their
intentions are except that they object to the exploitation of children, and want to prevent such sites from surviving and propagating this exploitation and abuse.
The root of the problem seems to be that the **AAs just cannot conceive of a reality where a person who "pirates" an article of music or a movie would sooner not watch or listen to it than be compelled to pay money to consume it.
Many of these swashbucklers download and watch movies that they would never pay to watch.
The sheer volume of movies in recent years that most landlubbers wouldn't even watch for free is staggering.
I don't think I could even watch some of these motion pictures if they were offering anything less than a Spanish doubloon an hour.
The reality is many of these buccaneers would just cease to consume this (mostly crappy) content and marketing if they could not plunder it from other travelers out on the open ocean.
Some privateers I've spoken to also reckon that if they choked off and controlled every possible shipping lane and channel on the planet, people would just find other ways to transport their cargo, perhaps use submarines or darknets.
This skyscraper will probably have a Protoss tower nearby, powering it.
Clearly the thing to do would be to start a porn site where the talent make political speeches against David Cameron. Then he'll be repressing political speech.
Naked News is the closest thing I've seen to this, heh.
This is an interesting direction for collecting metrics, and could obviously be used to evil(tm)
Depending on how they collect the data there are multiple potential sources for data collection.
DPI/Sensitivity of the mouse (which users generally do not change)
Algorithm/mouse smoothing (with enough data resolution can even narrow this down the sensor and processor used or even brand and model of mouse)
speed of click/double click user inputs.
degree and pitch of side to side or top to bottom of screen mouse tracking.
Possibly even imperfections on the mousing surface or table.
Most people tend to use the same mouse for 1 - 5 years, so there is more than sufficient time to build up a usage patterns database, this would be a rather evil way of tracking users if it is eventually refined enough.
This is likely going to be far more useful for tracking and advertising than as a security mechanism.
I would recommend Tin Tin, as well as Asterix and Obelix at that age as a good start.
Is no one thinking of the childr^H^H^H^H^H^H Sharks??
Don't be ridiculous. I was replacing wall outlets and light switches at that age, sometimes without turning the power off. It's easy, you just be really careful (so you don't short something and make sparks), and wear some rubber gloves. It's only 110V so as long as you're not wet and wearing rubber-soled shoes, it can't hurt you, only give you a small jolt. Obviously it's better to turn off the breaker if you can, but it's not that big a deal if you can't. Not sure I'd try this with 220V systems however.
I've received a few shocks doing stuff like this with both 110v and 220v, with 220v the jolt is a little worse, and your appendage may feel a little number after the jolt, but it's not that big of a difference between the two.
Not sure that anyone at MIT would stoop so low as to use X10 modules for a dorm project. Somehow I would tend to expect them to design their own solution that wasn't so noisy, or prone to being affected by someone in the next room with an X10 timer, or lamp control pad.
I agree, I already did this more than 10 years ago when I was in college. I guess the youtube crowd is easy to impress.
You're talking about fiber-to-premises.
So your long-haul connection is fiber.
Once it gets into your home and goes through the physical bridge device, it's going out to your computer either on copper or wireless.
They're talking about wiring the home itself with fiber. Which is expensive overkill and adds nothing to the venture other than cost.
CAT6 and 1Gbps are several orders of magnitude cheaper than a full in-house fiber setup and deliver identical or superior performance to Gigabit fiber.
Ah internally I agree, I don't even bother with CAT6, my residential runs are all quality CAT5E, and I haven't had problems running it at gigabit speeds.
Dude, if you think the future of connectivity is fiber, you need to leave the 90s and come join us here in 2012. I'm not sure what's so 'future proof' about a relatively temperamental connectivity media that is supported by exactly *no* household devices, and very few wifi access points. As for the "future," I would point out that every high-speed LAN technology started as fiber and then became copper...because fiber is a colossal pain in the ass compared to copper. When something consistently goes from one thing to another, this is called a "trend," and trends tell you about the future. It ain't fiber.
Fiber is what the countries with the (presently) fastest residential user internet infrastructure in the world are using.
Singapore is presently rolling out it's nation wide fiber network and somewhere close to 70% of the households have been fiber connected.
95% of the households islandwide are scheduled/projected to be connected by the end of 2012.
I recently had fiber installed in my home, though 1000Mbps is an option at $319 per month, I opted to go for 100Mbps for $47 per month.
The media's periodic focus on unintended accelleration always focuses on the cars, when rational observers almost always conclude the failing part of the system was the driver. Car magazines have done these articles debunking, explaining, etc a number of times with these cycles. The general public doesn't care, doesn't want to learn, and wants it to be some else's fault, preferably someone with deep pockets. Media serves up exactly that. :-(
This is probably because it is very politically incorrect for a manufacturer or industry to blame a dead user...
I was actually taught by one of my dad's friends how to handle this situation.
Let's say you're in the passenger seat and the driver passes out, foot stuck on the accelerator. What do you do?
One of two things. You could change the gear to neutral. There's a chance it will destroy your gearbox but it's better than crashing.
The other thing is to - get this - turn the car off. Just turn the ignition and pull the keys. Either way, you have to then try to control the car to a stop.
Do try to flip on the hazard indicators if you can. You can almost never reach the brake pedal from the passenger side, and there is almost no indication to other drivers as to what's going on other than the fact that you are slowing down. Someone inattentive might miss it and rear-end you.
I have had some defensive driving instruction during military service.
The very first thing you want to do if you driver is shot, incapacitated or otherwise unconscious is
1) Grab hold of the steering wheel, and do not take your eyes off the road.
This is not optional, and omitting or delaying this first step is frequently a Very Bad Thing(tm)
2) Grab the drivers pant leg and yank his foot off the accelerator.
3) If you feel you have reasonable control of the vehicle and it is still at speed,
Forcibly engage the vehicle into 1st or 2nd gear and slow it down with Engine Braking.
4) Put the vehicle in Neutral. DO NOT TURN OFF THE ENGINE if you are still going more than 20 - 30 MPH.
Turning off the engine in many vehicles disables the power steering, and if you're not in the driver's seat with appropriate leverage on the
steering wheel, this could throw you totally out of control.
Optional: Turn on Hazard lights if you are able to.
5) If you have managed to get said vehicle to below 30 - 40 MPH, gradually apply the Emergency (Hand) Brake.
Or if necessary, look for dividers, walls or other obstacles to grind against to bring your vehicle to a complete stop.
Have one hand on the steering wheel at all times, this is not optional.