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User: Belial6

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  1. Re:Then don't buy it! on Will AT&T Charge Extra For MMS & Tethering? · · Score: 1

    Does the Touch do email? My wife wants PDA and she wants a better MP3 player. If she could sync her email on the touch, that would be a very good solution.

  2. Re:Remeber it is practicing on Teen Diagnoses Her Own Disease In Science Class · · Score: 1

    Basically, there are three diagnosis that usually get made for non-obvious problems. Virus, Allergies, IBS. All are 'just go home and deal with it.' diagnoses. The IBS is the worst. Since it stands for Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Syndrome being a list of symptoms. So, the patient comes in and says "Doctor, my bowels are irritated. It hurts!" The doctors diagnoses. "You have IBS." Great help that is. Repeating back what the patent just said in acronym for isn't a diagnosis. No one should ever leave a doctors office with a "diagnosis" of Irritable Bowel Syndrome. A doctor making that their final diagnosis is the same as saying "your too much trouble to bother with."

  3. Re:Hi, Kettle? It's me, black! on Ray Ozzie Calls Google Wave "Anti-Web" · · Score: 1

    You're missing the point. The point isn't that F5 didn't refresh, it's that it didn't refresh and, additionally, forced you to log-in again from scratch. If it just didn't work, like in Outlook, nobody would be complaining. People complain because not only does it not work, but it wastes an incredible amount of their time in the process.

    No, your missing the point. It has already been established that F5 is NOT a standard refresh button. Yes, there are people too stupid to push the right button. Just because some program came along and started using the Lock Application button as their non-standard key for refresh does not make Notes wrong. You are falling for the old 'The first way I saw it must be the "right" way.' mentality.

    And on that note: why the hell does Notes need its own "lock workstation" command when the OS it's running in has one? They go *out of the way* to make their product more obnoxious.

    That would be due to two VERY good reasons. One is that Notes predates security on the desktop. They implemented locking because back before your your obviously limited time, 'locking' Windows wasn't security. The second reason is that Notes has been cross platform for most of it's existence. In fact it didn't even start on the PC. When you run on a multitude of platforms and cannot count on the OSes providing services, you write your own. You also make a point to have the software run the same on all platforms. Hence, if half the platforms don't have desktop locking, you include a hot key. Your ignorance of computers beyond WindowsXP and Vista is not a fault with Notes/Domino, nor is it IBM making their software 'obnoxious'.

    The second point is regardless of the "standardness" of it, there exists a large population of people who expect F5 to refresh their email list. These people exist: fact. It doesn't matter why they exist, nor does it matter what the standard for refresh is. Lotus Notes needs to run in the real world, with real users, who really exist. It's not used by robots (although it seems to be designed and defended by robots, or at least humans who have no clue how to make things usable for other humans.)

    So, now it isn't that it doesn't follow the standard? It is amazing that you are seriously arguing that because there is a group of people who blindly press a function key that has no standard function, people who know what the buttons they press do must be robots. Your argument makes as much sense as saying that because there exists a large population of people who expect the backspace key to take them back a page (e.g. Internet Explorer and Firefox) that any software that deletes characters when the backspace is pressed isn't right because it needs to run in the real world with real users. Seriously. It is just plan dumb to claim that a button that has no standard function does not do what you expect it to do because it behaves differently in different applications. The problem here is that you have limited experience in the 'real world' and due to that limited experience, when faced with something different, you see it as scary and bad.

  4. Re:Hi, Kettle? It's me, black! on Ray Ozzie Calls Google Wave "Anti-Web" · · Score: 1

    In every web browser, F5 is refresh. Windows Explorer too. And Crystal Reports. And Query Analyzer/SQL Server Management Studio (F5 executes the query, refreshing any data you had before). And others I don't have at my fingertips at the moment.

    There is a difference between 'standard', and 'I've use other programs that don't match your key bindings'. Given that many of the many of the most used PC software applications in the world use F9, and many popular but less used applications use F5, the only rational conclusion is that F5 is NOT the standard. Clearly the standard is that it is F9 or F5. If Notes disappeared from the face of the earth tomorrow, F5 would still not be the standard, as MS Office still uses F9.

    Completely non-intuitive, and couldn't be explained to me even by Notes developers. Useless, unless someone dug through a manual to find whatever documentation there was on it, if it existed.

    The fact that you met a crappy developer doesn't make a feature non-intuitive. The images were no less intuitive than putting * on the screen in place of the actual characters pressed, or worse yet putting a random number of * for every button pressed. You have intuitive and I've seen it in other programs confused. After all, how hard is it to figure out that the images right next to the password field change every time you type a character, and that when you were done typing your password, the four images were always the same. Of course complaining about it show just how good Notes has always been. When a persons big complaint is that there is a non-intrusive graphic on their password box that they don't know what it means, so they can just ignore it with no harm, it is a clear sign that the individual is determined to find fault but is having a hard time finding real problems. It sounds like when people complain about Ubuntu because they don't like brown desktops.

  5. Re:Hi, Kettle? It's me, black! on Ray Ozzie Calls Google Wave "Anti-Web" · · Score: 1

    The non-standard keybindings (F5 to lock, F9 to refresh, when the rest of the Windows world uses F5 to refresh, for example)?

    The "non-standard" keybindings are "non-standard" because they were implemented before there was a "standard". Besides, on what planet is F5 the standard. In Excel it is F9 In Outlook it is F9. In Word it is F9.

    Apparently you have taken the fact that MS is totally inconsistent as a flaw with Notes.

    The useless changing hieroglyphics as you typed in your password?

    The hieroglyphics had a use. Nobody bothered with them, but they had a use. It was a non-text hash of your password. That way you could see that you had typed in your password correctly without revieling what it was. Turns out that most people would rather just type their password, and if they got it wrong, try again. Given that they didn't hurt anything, complaining that there was a feature you didn't use seems silly at best. Of course these days I just use Single Sign In so that the the credentials from the OS gets used to log me into Notes.

    Make it not a massive memory hog?

    I'll give you that one, but then memory is cheap now, and what isn't a memory hog?

    Make it an actual usable MDI app, instead of allowing only tabs in a single window (so you couldn't have 2 emails side by side for reference)?

    Yes, they have. (I always could do MDI) Of course now that everybody else is jumping on the Tabs bandwagon, I expect that there will be complains about that too.

    So, what was the complaint? Since other than having a high memory footprint, there doesn't seem to be a valid one in your post other than the common, 'Its not a shiny as Outlook.'

  6. Re:Hi, Kettle? It's me, black! on Ray Ozzie Calls Google Wave "Anti-Web" · · Score: 1

    The Notes client did have frequent crashes on Windows a decade ago, but it was more stable than the OS at that time. The server has been extremely stable for as long as I have ever used it which is the v3 days. That was over a decade ago and a half ago. Are you really complaining that a version of software a over a decade out of date was unstable? If your apps were flimsy, you should have talked to your developers. The Domino system is and has been for a long time a very robust system.

    The anti-Notes trolls always crack me up. They basically say "I once saw a badly implemented application in Notes a decade ago, and it didn't compare to applications that are being written today." It makes about as much sense as complaining about Windows because you didn't like WindowsME.

  7. Re:Hi, Kettle? It's me, black! on Ray Ozzie Calls Google Wave "Anti-Web" · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It is a Database centric application development platform. You don't say that it is hard to understand what an OS is if it comes with an email application, or a web browser do you? Lotus Notes/Domino is EXTREMELY simple to develop on and use. It's biggest problem is that because it is and has been an Enterprise environment first all of the features that it pioneered got renamed and the look changed a little when competitors finally got around to trying to implement what Notes had been doing for years. Since the competitors were desktop apps, most people got their first taste of these features with MS or their like, and assumed that Notes was 'non-standard'.

    The other problem Notes has is that it is so simple that companies frequently assign the first user to touch it as a developer. I'm not saying that it is impossible that the Kelly Girl Temp that is in your office this week is a great developer. I'm just say that on average, the code they tend not to be. So, a lot of companies have bad apps written by people who simply are not developers.

  8. Re:Disaster waiting to happen on Direct-To-Consumer Genetics Testing Makes a Splash In Boston · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Seriously, just look at how complex a CPU is now, and think about the fact that everything from airplanes to street lights to your personal finances are controlled by the devices that are insanely complex with insanely complex production processes. Yet people trust these just fine.

    Then there is the "But this is your health" idea. People are making huge choices every day with information that is already known to be loaded with errors. Why worry about this being any different. Hell, people are buying "health water" because it has few calories than the other brand of "health water". I would be WAY more concerned with people causing problems to their health due to misinformation about what "water" is than the same person being told that they have a low risk for breast cancer.

  9. Re:Also in some cases on 11-Year-Old Graduates With Degree In Astrophysics · · Score: 1

    Oh yeah. I forgot that puberty hit on a hard schedule. For some reason I was thinking that the range that different people hit puberty was was something like a 6 year span, and it is not entirely uncommon for it to be even wider. That and they will never be interacting with people who are thinking about boners and periods and sex and dating when they are not.

  10. Re:I am incredibly upset about this. on iPhone Users Angry Over AT&T Upgrade Policy · · Score: 1

    According to the huge banner in front of the public school down the street from me, you don't have to wait five years for a free lunch. They are available today.

  11. Re:usury. on iPhone Users Angry Over AT&T Upgrade Policy · · Score: 1

    I might agree with you if the cell phone companies actually had to keep up their end of the contract. I am no longer with AT&T because when they were bought by Cingular, they started cutting service to the existing AT&T customers. Their response to me when I called about it was that they would restore my service if I paid more money for less minutes and signed a new two year contract. The best I was able to get out of them was to cancel the existing contract. Fulfilling their end of the contract was simply not on the table for them.

  12. Re:Education's sake? on Kids Score 40 Percent Higher When They Get Paid For Grades · · Score: 3, Interesting

    As I said. The home school "wackos" and the public school "general public" describe the public school systems goals to be the same thing. Unfortunately academic education is not it.

  13. Re:Education's sake? on Kids Score 40 Percent Higher When They Get Paid For Grades · · Score: 4, Interesting

    When I first started home schooling my son, I went into a 'home school store' where they were giving a little seminar on how to legally home school. After it was over, the owner of the store came over and talked to me. I had flagged her as a wacko when she tried to convince me that the school system was specifically designed to do exactly what you describe. Since then, those that have tried to convince me that home schooling is a bad idea, almost always end up falling back on the whole "but kids need to 'socialized' to fit into society" line of reasoning. It's a little creepy how the general public whole heartily agrees with the "wackos".

  14. Re:Aspergers on 11-Year-Old Graduates With Degree In Astrophysics · · Score: 1

    Seriously, The Onion is supposed to be comedy. Your not supposed to take is seriously.

  15. Re:Also in some cases on 11-Year-Old Graduates With Degree In Astrophysics · · Score: 1

    Hey now, It is important for kids to spend a dozen years in rooms full of people the exact same age as them. After all, we all know that for the rest of their lives, they are going to be spending most of their time in rooms full of people the exact same age as them.

  16. Re:Anti-monopoly? on Russia Launches Anti-trust Probe of Microsoft · · Score: 1

    No one is suggesting that every niche OS, or old OS be supported. What IS being suggested is that a business that is refusing to sell a software package that is the single most wanted package is clearly abusing a monopoly. Pointing to DOS 1.0 is at best a strawman argument.

  17. Re:Two Things on Dinosaur Posture Still Wrong, Says Study · · Score: 1

    Understand that I am posing this as a real theory, but since we don't have a lot of the soft tissue, there is no way of knowing that the they didn't have more than one 'heart'. If their was a secondary, heart, or even many small pumps, there would be no need for extremely high blood pressure, one giant heart.

  18. Re:That's great, but... on Qualcomm Demos Eee PC Running Android OS · · Score: 1

    Seriously, Give me enough unmetered bandwidth and a client to run VNC and RDP along with 8-9 hours of battery life, and I would be their in a heartbeat. At that point, I don't much care if it is running Windows, Linux, or AROS. Of course being able to play audio and video would sweeten the deal a bit.

  19. Re:make users adapt to hardware on Triangular Buttons Make On-Screen Keyboards More Usable · · Score: 2, Funny

    I agree with you, and have actually had a problem with voice recognition because of it. When I got my bluetooth earpiece, I tried to use the speech dial. I just couldn't understand me. Every time it got it wrong, I would speak slower and enunciate better. It just wouldn't work. It turns out that I had to slur my speech to get it to understand me.

  20. Re:Philosophy of Mind on The Perils of Pop Philosophy · · Score: 1

    The fact that new pathways can be created is not a difference between computers and the brain. A simple example of a computer that can use software to make new pathways would be to hook two FPGAs up to each other, and have a program that instructs one FPGA to make changes to the second, and then the second reprograms the first. This could go on indefinitely. We certainly have computers that can make new hardware pathways to themselves.

    Continue on with the rest of the argument...

  21. Re:Holy Crap! Calm down on Making a Child Locating System · · Score: 1

    While the Mcanns child was a couple of years younger than the poster's, It still always amazes me that people think it is horrific child abuse to leave a child alone in their own home, but it is just fine if they are out in public.

  22. Re:Cell phone on Making a Child Locating System · · Score: 1

    It is insane that people are OK with sending their kids off with adults who have a rule that they cannot be in contact with their parents.

  23. Re:Holy Crap! Calm down on Making a Child Locating System · · Score: 1

    In my city, having enough money to install water slides (Yes, the big three story amusement park kind) doesn't count as fully funded. Having enough money to put in water slides still counts as 'badly underfunded' around here.

  24. Re:The real reason. on Why Our "Amazing" Science Fiction Future Fizzled · · Score: 1

    That is a cop out. Unless you are claiming that the only way technology can improve our lives is for it to create a perfect communist state, there will always be some people that have some more wealth than others, and the quality of life for those on the bottom today are WAY better than those that were on the top 200 years ago. Your cop out claims that no matter how good it gets, if it isn't a perfect communist state, then the 'poor' cannot have it good.

  25. Re:The real reason. on Why Our "Amazing" Science Fiction Future Fizzled · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Hear, Hear! The present is an amazing world of fantastic technology. To add to yours...

    I had detailed moving pictures of my son months before he was born and those in 'poverty' live better than kings and queens of 200 years ago.