There are three types of questions: The ones you ask your parents before moving from home, the kind you take to Google, and the kind you just look up:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_universe
Caps Lock. [...] hAS aNYONE eVER rEALLY nEEDED tHIS fUNCTIONALITY bEFORE?
Removing this most annoying button is on my wish list for a Good Keyboard, including:
Scroll lock - Who ever used that except for in FreeBSD shells? And what could users possibly think that it does?
Prt Scr/Sys Rq - Means nothing to the average user, and is much better achieved using screen grabbers. How often do users need screen shots anyway?
Pause/Break - Maybe they could map it to Windows-L by default, that would save me a few clicks at work:)
F1-F12 - Isn't it about time that F1 is renamed "help", F2 "edit", and so on? Maybe users would even start touching them once in a while.
F lock - Whoever set that to be off by default should be first against the wall blah blah blah.
[that pesky little thing by the right Windows button, which looks like a list] - Which non-Mac user today doesn't have a two-button mouse? At least you could rename the button "Context Menu" or something, not make it look like something which would be totally different just by skinning or using ~Windows...
Proper answer: "dunno. thats sort of a zen-ish q, isnt it?" (f-ups intended). See? No more accusations. Of course, some people might like being called an idiot even less.
How about credit-based payment? You pay for X items (or $X) whenever you are out of credit, and can at any time say that you want the rest back on your account. Due to the amount of users who don't bother reclaiming their 2 cents (literally), and the extra buying because "credit is free", there shouldn't be any need for fees for reclaiming.
Sure there's heaps of advantages, but take this example of how "user friendly" the newest Ubuntu is:
After installing updates some time or another the last month with the graphical client, it stopped working ("child application exited with error code 1", or some such). Wondering why, I set one of my more competent friends on the job. Turns out the sudoers file (which from installation included the default user to be able to update w/o using root) had been overwritten! What kind of [bleep] [bleep] installation script does that? How could this make me want to use the updater again? And how big trouble would MS be if they ever did this?
Einstein's _theories_ will last until evidence no longer supports them (just like all science).
That's just half the story. Newton's laws/theories/whatever still "exist", and they are still useful in many real-world situations. Due to the vast amount of evidence for the accuracy of the theories of relativity, they will not just be thrown away when the inconsistencies with quantum physics are resolved (neither will quantum physics, for the same reasons), because they will still be useful.
OTOH, theories like the falling velocity of an object being related to its mass (excluding the effects of air friction) are discarded, because there never was evidence to support them.
The chicken-and-egg problem of getting a large enough user base to get application support exists for all new standards, proprietary or not. But according to TFA: All browsers will support SVG import by 2008, with most (IE being the exception, except with a plugin) by 2006.
You don't think Flash and SVG can live side by side? For me personally, the prospect of SVG in the near future lies in non-animated interfaces - Application skins (go from bulky Media Player to slick Winamp with two clicks), faster loading of graphics-heavy web pages, building on previous work easily by checking the source of pages, getting away from non-XML syntax for advanced styling (CSS), and such.
Have you ever tried viewing the source of a Flash file? That should give an indication of how easy it is to use a piece of it inside another file, or how easy a screen reader or non-textual browser would display the contents. SVG with XHTML embedded can easily be stripped down to just the contents.
This is a very similar story. SVG has to compete with semantically void images, and it was clearly a technically better solution (although complex if written by hand). Everybody will be using SVG because it is the only way to separate the content of images from their presentation, and to make them properly scalable.
The situation of CSS was very similar. (Presentational) HTML was already a very mature platform which did almost everything that CSS does now years ago and it did this in a very coherent way (they didn't have to worry too much about interoperability). HTML browsers were installed on virtually every networked computer, and it worked the same everywhere. If CSS wanted to have the smallest chance of replacing presentational HTML it would have to match this (it did). So full implementations of the CSS standard are not just nice extras, they are mandatory for the success of CSS (no, they aren't).
Half the web designers I know still only trust HTML TABLEs for their layout, and while they grudgingly use CSS font specs because the '' solution is just so unwieldy
What a coincidence - Most web designers* I know haven't a clue how CSS should be used in real world situations today. Check out e.g. Designing with web standards by Jeffrey Zeldman - IIRC, he argues that as long as CSS support is as broken as it is today, the transitional approach of tables for layout and CSS for other styles is perfectly justifiable for businesses which do not care about SEO and blind people.
Also, there are plenty of examples(1, 2, 3) of how to make a table-free site look just as good as one with tables.
*These are not primarily web designers, but creators of data-driven web interfaces who use e.g.
It seems to me that any W3C standard needs a complete and free reference implementation before it should be ratified as a W3C standard.
This is insightful? Nobody has ever made a full implementation of CSS2, and it's very popular. And the word "standard" doesn't come from the W3C - Their finished documents are called "recommendations".
IMNSHO: SVG will become popular because it can be used to make tiny, scalable, non-blocky-printable images, which will be popular with the average joes on modem/ISDN, shortsighted and blind people, and graphical design companies, respectively and not exclusively.
At this point we are in big trouble and still lots of folks are coming up with irrational arguments for ignoring it.
Very first argument which comes to mind: There is no political gain in being proactive - "X is more important right now!" before the problem gets huge / "We could have used all that money for something useful" after the problem has been avoided, vs "This guy is really doing something" when the problem affects everyone, and panic actions are taken.
In a presentation by Fast Search and Transfer in 1999, a couple hundred students were shown their audio search by microphone. The presenter whistled (quite badly, according to the laughter of most of the students) a part of the "Pink Panther" theme song, and searched for MIDI files on the web with the result. At least 80% of the hits were relevant...
You can't draw conclusions from what is in the dev kits.
Well, there's always the totally obvious conclusion that Apple is interested in such hardware. And who ever tested hardware with absolutely 0% chance of it appearing in the finished product?
I think that we are just used to software being an exception.
I expect that's because software is still a very young profession, and we're still in the "building the home from straws" phase, not knowing what to do when the Sobig, bad, wolf comes knocking on the door.
As an aside: Sure, motherboards haven't been available that long, but the laws of electricity (the "Assembly" of electronics) have indeed.
Anyone else think of that horror scene where Our Hero gets on the public transportation thingie? Anyone else think it looked like something the Apple design office would do if in Hell?
ObQuote: "Seems? Well, it seems like you're wasting my time. This baby is 900 knickers in any store you're lucky enough to find one in, and you're ogling over 200? Tighter than a duck's butt, you are."
Slashdot Mirror
There are three types of questions: The ones you ask your parents before moving from home, the kind you take to Google, and the kind you just look up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_universe
Caps Lock. [...] hAS aNYONE eVER rEALLY nEEDED tHIS fUNCTIONALITY bEFORE?
Removing this most annoying button is on my wish list for a Good Keyboard, including:
Proper answer: "dunno. thats sort of a zen-ish q, isnt it?" (f-ups intended). See? No more accusations. Of course, some people might like being called an idiot even less.
How about credit-based payment? You pay for X items (or $X) whenever you are out of credit, and can at any time say that you want the rest back on your account. Due to the amount of users who don't bother reclaiming their 2 cents (literally), and the extra buying because "credit is free", there shouldn't be any need for fees for reclaiming.
I've got two words for you: Turn based. Who needs FPSes anyway?
Prototypes? We don't need no steenking prototypes!
Good points all, but I believe religion will weasel itself away from this the usual way:
Sure there's heaps of advantages, but take this example of how "user friendly" the newest Ubuntu is:
After installing updates some time or another the last month with the graphical client, it stopped working ("child application exited with error code 1", or some such). Wondering why, I set one of my more competent friends on the job. Turns out the sudoers file (which from installation included the default user to be able to update w/o using root) had been overwritten! What kind of [bleep] [bleep] installation script does that? How could this make me want to use the updater again? And how big trouble would MS be if they ever did this?
That's just half the story. Newton's laws/theories/whatever still "exist", and they are still useful in many real-world situations. Due to the vast amount of evidence for the accuracy of the theories of relativity, they will not just be thrown away when the inconsistencies with quantum physics are resolved (neither will quantum physics, for the same reasons), because they will still be useful.
OTOH, theories like the falling velocity of an object being related to its mass (excluding the effects of air friction) are discarded, because there never was evidence to support them.
Waitasec... Did they just name their next generation chips "Speculations"?
The chicken-and-egg problem of getting a large enough user base to get application support exists for all new standards, proprietary or not. But according to TFA: All browsers will support SVG import by 2008, with most (IE being the exception, except with a plugin) by 2006.
You don't think Flash and SVG can live side by side? For me personally, the prospect of SVG in the near future lies in non-animated interfaces - Application skins (go from bulky Media Player to slick Winamp with two clicks), faster loading of graphics-heavy web pages, building on previous work easily by checking the source of pages, getting away from non-XML syntax for advanced styling (CSS), and such.
Have you ever tried viewing the source of a Flash file? That should give an indication of how easy it is to use a piece of it inside another file, or how easy a screen reader or non-textual browser would display the contents. SVG with XHTML embedded can easily be stripped down to just the contents.
To rephrase:
This is a very similar story. SVG has to compete with semantically void images, and it was clearly a technically better solution (although complex if written by hand). Everybody will be using SVG because it is the only way to separate the content of images from their presentation, and to make them properly scalable.
The situation of CSS was very similar. (Presentational) HTML was already a very mature platform which did almost everything that CSS does now years ago and it did this in a very coherent way (they didn't have to worry too much about interoperability). HTML browsers were installed on virtually every networked computer, and it worked the same everywhere. If CSS wanted to have the smallest chance of replacing presentational HTML it would have to match this (it did). So full implementations of the CSS standard are not just nice extras, they are mandatory for the success of CSS (no, they aren't).
What a coincidence - Most web designers* I know haven't a clue how CSS should be used in real world situations today. Check out e.g. Designing with web standards by Jeffrey Zeldman - IIRC, he argues that as long as CSS support is as broken as it is today, the transitional approach of tables for layout and CSS for other styles is perfectly justifiable for businesses which do not care about SEO and blind people.
Also, there are plenty of examples(1, 2, 3) of how to make a table-free site look just as good as one with tables.
*These are not primarily web designers, but creators of data-driven web interfaces who use e.g.
for empty TDs.This is insightful? Nobody has ever made a full implementation of CSS2, and it's very popular. And the word "standard" doesn't come from the W3C - Their finished documents are called "recommendations".
IMNSHO: SVG will become popular because it can be used to make tiny, scalable, non-blocky-printable images, which will be popular with the average joes on modem/ISDN, shortsighted and blind people, and graphical design companies, respectively and not exclusively.
Just wait till v1.5. It'll probably blow off a few hats.
With this development speed, it should be #1 by ... Longhorn A.D.?
Very first argument which comes to mind: There is no political gain in being proactive - "X is more important right now!" before the problem gets huge / "We could have used all that money for something useful" after the problem has been avoided, vs "This guy is really doing something" when the problem affects everyone, and panic actions are taken.
In a presentation by Fast Search and Transfer in 1999, a couple hundred students were shown their audio search by microphone. The presenter whistled (quite badly, according to the laughter of most of the students) a part of the "Pink Panther" theme song, and searched for MIDI files on the web with the result. At least 80% of the hits were relevant...
Well, there's always the totally obvious conclusion that Apple is interested in such hardware. And who ever tested hardware with absolutely 0% chance of it appearing in the finished product?
I expect that's because software is still a very young profession, and we're still in the "building the home from straws" phase, not knowing what to do when the Sobig, bad, wolf comes knocking on the door.
As an aside: Sure, motherboards haven't been available that long, but the laws of electricity (the "Assembly" of electronics) have indeed.
Anyone else think of that horror scene where Our Hero gets on the public transportation thingie? Anyone else think it looked like something the Apple design office would do if in Hell?
ObQuote: "Seems? Well, it seems like you're wasting my time. This baby is 900 knickers in any store you're lucky enough to find one in, and you're ogling over 200? Tighter than a duck's butt, you are."
Now, if only I could find that sine-looking graph of the fluctuations between sale of thin and thick clients the last 40 or so years...
When some company patents not buying their product!