...and so often it's the shop floor worker who pushed the light green button and not the dark green one, when in fact the buttons should have been RED and GREEN.
To take a small tangent.... Red and green may very well be worse. Color blind people aren't exactly rare.:) Better to label them very clearly in addition to the color coding.
As for the keyboard shortcut things, I am surprised how much you feel they are necessary. I don't believe, but admit I could be wrong, there is anything that cannot be done with just the mouse that can with a keyboard shortcut.
You are correct: almost anything that can be done with a keyboard shortcut can be done in some way with a mouse. But... so what?
When I switched from Windows to OS X, one of my biggest frustrations was that OS X has such a reduced number of keyboard shortcuts. Sure, I can do it with a mouse, but that's not the point. The point is that keyboard shortcuts are a means by which intermediate and advanced users can work faster. Taking my hand off the keyboard, grabbing the mouse, and navigating the GUI takes a LOT longer than a simple keyboard combo. It also causes a much greater interruption to my work flow.
In the grand scheme of things, that alone isn't enough to make me stop using Macs. I still use a Mac as my primary machine, and I would pick OS X over Windows any day. But there's definitely areas they should consider improving -- GUI shouldn't always be the only answer.
From the article write-up (and reflecting the thoughts of quite a few of the comments I just read):
Perhaps Six Apart wasn't quite prepared for the responsibilities of a website of this size?
I'd love to know what makes you think this has anything to do with Six Apart. The very first line at http://www.livejournal.com states:
Our data center (Internap, the same one we've been at for many years)...
They've been with Internap for years, predating Six Apart's takeover. Unless LJ staff is lying, the fault here sounds like it lies entirely with Internap.
And as far as I can tell, Six Apart didn't ditch the LJ team when they bought them out, so you probably have the exact same people working on bringing the site back up now as you would have if Six Apart had never got involved.
Actually, Sollog denies that it means "Son of light, light of god" and says it's derived from "sol" and "logos", giving a meaning of "the word of the sun" (which is clearly mentioned in the Sollog article).
H&R Block IRS Free File - Online Tax Programs - "FREE online federal tax prep and e-file for filers with AGI of $34,000 or less." They also have a few relatively inexpensive options if you don't quite qualify for that. I've used the free option for the past few years and it works great. (Even handles some of the non-standard stuff.)
The article states "Hence the mail server was shut down for approximately 2 days/48 hours (4th Dec evening to 5th Dec noon)." -- 4th Dec evening to 5th Dec noon would be less than 24 hours. He says it's 48 hours, the equivalent of 2 days. Before giving the world bad anti-spam advice, perhaps he should at least learn to tell and measure time better.
I would suggest you get involved with the Mozilla project directly if you want to contribute.
Wow, he followed that suggestion fast:
Who is working on Firefox?
Currently Ben Goodger (working for the Mozilla Foundation), Brian Ryner (for IBM), Pierre Chanial, Blake Ross, Dave Hyatt, Benjamin Smedberg, Darin Fisher and the wider community contributing to the Mozilla codebase.
So change the.htaccess to use Follow, NoIndex and google should be blind to them. Or the robots.txt file to block access.
Shouldn't that be the the other way around? The robots.txt file can use Follow, NoIndex to ask Google to go blind, while.htaccess can be used to block access.
I'm not too well versed in.htaccess files, but I'm fairly certain they aren't used to tell spiders to not index pages. And I know for a fact that a robots.txt file isn't going to block access to anything--it's merely a request that most spiders politely follow.
Actually, you just provided the answer for how to use PearPC without breaking Apple's EULA (which dictates that OS X can only be installed on Apple's hardware, or something to that effect).
Get an Apple and install OS X.
Install Windows through Virtual PC under OS X.
Install OS X through PearPC under Windows.
Or if you prefer to use Linux as the primary operating system on your Mac...
Get an Apple and install <insert your favorite distro of Linux here>.
Install Windows through Bochs under Linux.
Install OS X through PearPC under Windows.
Or perhaps...
Get an Apple and install <insert your favorite distro of Linux here>.
Install OS X through Mac-on-Linux under Linux.
Install Windows through Virtual PC under OS X.
Install OS X through PearPC under Windows.
Granted, it seems pretty pointless to emulate the PPC under an emulated x86 on a PPC, but at least Apple can't say that there's no legal way of using the software to install OS X.:)
To all of you who are complaining about sqrt(2) bein g a bad factor because it's irregular and to all you who keep saying that you can put two 8.5x11's together to get 11x17, you're missing the point.
Take a moment to think about it mathematically. Paper has two dimensions, length (L) and width (W). If you take two pieces of paper of size L x W and put them side by side, the new paper's size would be of width L and length 2W. So we have to sizes of paper here: L x W and 2W x L. What would really be nice is if the proportion of the width to the length of both sets was equal, that way you could keep doubling or halfing paper infinitely. So mathematically, you want to solve for W/L = L/2W. If you solve the only solution to that problem is L = sqrt(2) * W. So if you want to half paper or double paper and keep the same proportion, you have no choice but to use sqrt(2). It's not some number somebody pulled out of their ass.
As for the crowd who keeps saying that the English system is better because 12 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6 while 10 is only divisible by 2 and 5, you people need to think a bit more about the numbers too. I think I can divide 12 centimeters into thirds much easier than I can divide 10 inches into thirds. Since you people obviously aren't concerned about the actual specific length involved (given that your only complaint in comparing meters to yards or inches to centimeters is divisibility) and are only concerned about divisibility, you can easily accomodate any divisor in either system merely by choosing a size that is divisible by your divisor. Neither the metric nor the English system accomodates dividing a length into seven portions evenly using a single unit (or the multiplier), but if you use seven or fourteen or twenty-one of a given unit, it works pretty damn well in any system you care to use.
Slashdot Mirror
To take a small tangent.... Red and green may very well be worse. Color blind people aren't exactly rare. :) Better to label them very clearly in addition to the color coding.
You are correct: almost anything that can be done with a keyboard shortcut can be done in some way with a mouse. But... so what?
When I switched from Windows to OS X, one of my biggest frustrations was that OS X has such a reduced number of keyboard shortcuts. Sure, I can do it with a mouse, but that's not the point. The point is that keyboard shortcuts are a means by which intermediate and advanced users can work faster. Taking my hand off the keyboard, grabbing the mouse, and navigating the GUI takes a LOT longer than a simple keyboard combo. It also causes a much greater interruption to my work flow.
In the grand scheme of things, that alone isn't enough to make me stop using Macs. I still use a Mac as my primary machine, and I would pick OS X over Windows any day. But there's definitely areas they should consider improving -- GUI shouldn't always be the only answer.
I doubt it's needed by now, but here's another mirror (it'll stop working after 100 GB of traffic though).
From the article write-up (and reflecting the thoughts of quite a few of the comments I just read):
I'd love to know what makes you think this has anything to do with Six Apart. The very first line at http://www.livejournal.com states:
They've been with Internap for years, predating Six Apart's takeover. Unless LJ staff is lying, the fault here sounds like it lies entirely with Internap.
And as far as I can tell, Six Apart didn't ditch the LJ team when they bought them out, so you probably have the exact same people working on bringing the site back up now as you would have if Six Apart had never got involved.
Actually, Sollog denies that it means "Son of light, light of god" and says it's derived from "sol" and "logos", giving a meaning of "the word of the sun" (which is clearly mentioned in the Sollog article).
The Sollog/Wikipedia incident was covered on Slashdot back on December 14, 2004.
H&R Block IRS Free File - Online Tax Programs - "FREE online federal tax prep and e-file for filers with AGI of $34,000 or less." They also have a few relatively inexpensive options if you don't quite qualify for that. I've used the free option for the past few years and it works great. (Even handles some of the non-standard stuff.)
Does anyone know if it provides VNC client software? The website makes no mention of it.
The article states "Hence the mail server was shut down for approximately 2 days/48 hours (4th Dec evening to 5th Dec noon)." -- 4th Dec evening to 5th Dec noon would be less than 24 hours. He says it's 48 hours, the equivalent of 2 days. Before giving the world bad anti-spam advice, perhaps he should at least learn to tell and measure time better.
Wow, he followed that suggestion fast:
From Mozilla Firefox 0.9 (One Tree Hill) Release Notes
I don't know if he's a "programming god," but I seriously doubt he's "some highschool kid with all summer to screw around."
Shouldn't that be the the other way around? The robots.txt file can use Follow, NoIndex to ask Google to go blind, while .htaccess can be used to block access.
I'm not too well versed in .htaccess files, but I'm fairly certain they aren't used to tell spiders to not index pages. And I know for a fact that a robots.txt file isn't going to block access to anything--it's merely a request that most spiders politely follow.
Actually, you just provided the answer for how to use PearPC without breaking Apple's EULA (which dictates that OS X can only be installed on Apple's hardware, or something to that effect).
Or if you prefer to use Linux as the primary operating system on your Mac...
Or perhaps...
Granted, it seems pretty pointless to emulate the PPC under an emulated x86 on a PPC, but at least Apple can't say that there's no legal way of using the software to install OS X. :)
To all of you who are complaining about sqrt(2) bein g a bad factor because it's irregular and to all you who keep saying that you can put two 8.5x11's together to get 11x17, you're missing the point.
Take a moment to think about it mathematically. Paper has two dimensions, length (L) and width (W). If you take two pieces of paper of size L x W and put them side by side, the new paper's size would be of width L and length 2W. So we have to sizes of paper here: L x W and 2W x L. What would really be nice is if the proportion of the width to the length of both sets was equal, that way you could keep doubling or halfing paper infinitely. So mathematically, you want to solve for W/L = L/2W. If you solve the only solution to that problem is L = sqrt(2) * W. So if you want to half paper or double paper and keep the same proportion, you have no choice but to use sqrt(2). It's not some number somebody pulled out of their ass.
As for the crowd who keeps saying that the English system is better because 12 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6 while 10 is only divisible by 2 and 5, you people need to think a bit more about the numbers too. I think I can divide 12 centimeters into thirds much easier than I can divide 10 inches into thirds. Since you people obviously aren't concerned about the actual specific length involved (given that your only complaint in comparing meters to yards or inches to centimeters is divisibility) and are only concerned about divisibility, you can easily accomodate any divisor in either system merely by choosing a size that is divisible by your divisor. Neither the metric nor the English system accomodates dividing a length into seven portions evenly using a single unit (or the multiplier), but if you use seven or fourteen or twenty-one of a given unit, it works pretty damn well in any system you care to use.
I often use PriceScan and PriceGrabber, among some of the others already mentioned by others. PriceGrabber even has a link under "Services" here on /.
Let's just hope that NCTOW and NTTOW don't coincide or we'll all be left with nothing to do. ;)
From what I understand, Playfair's functionality is rooted in the OpenSource FAAD2 project, isn't it?
Why, then, is Apple pursuing Playfair so strenuously and not really bothering with FAAD2?