One thing that scares me is that Mickey Mouse can't tell children to vote, but the RIAA sells products to kids (and to everyone), and with that money they lobby congressmen into approving the laws they want.
Suddenly i remember that biblical prophecy about the number of the beast and that everyone must put it in their foreheads to get what they want. Why does it seem SO similar to me?:(
And here we have it, folks: the key weak point of OSS. Perhaps, more accurately, the key failing point of the OSS fanboys.
EXACTLY!:)
Fanboys fail to understand that there is something in the world called CUSTOMERS, unable to program, unable to send patches, but with specific needs. Fanboys like software made "by programmers, for programmers". Or actually "by programmers, for themselves and screw everyone else, if you don't like MY software, fork it or fork you!".
In the link I mentioned about "a better pile of poo" we see that this kind of software, by programmers for programmers, was made in the early stages of software developers. Today, software is made by teams of developers, artists and user interface experts (aka "interaction dudes").
You know what's interesting? That fanboyism is usually greater in linux circles. Windows developers are used, accustomed to nice, friendly user interfaces - and although most of the time they make crappy software with awful programming techniques in Visual Basic, sometimes they excel and make wonderful user interfaces. (Now mix nice user interfaces with an MVC approach and woo hoo! )
I tend to think that Linux programmers are so used to hack and slash code, that they forgot what it feels like to have a nice UI, with keyboard,mouse shortcuts, context help, cut-copy-paste, etc etc. Most of the Linux open source software I've tried have a crappy interface. This is why I prefer Irfanview, Pixia and Virtualdub to the GIMP or AVIDemux respectively. By the way, I tried Jahshaka once. What an awful UI.
Update: This is just in. A friend of mine just told me: "gimp is a bunch of garbage. I downloaded it and the gui is adobe photoshop chewed up and sneezed at the monitor". Your honor, I rest my case:)
Another key to remember is that it's free. That goes miles in my book.
That is an awful mistake for F/OSS fanboys. "Oh, it's free, so we shouldn't complain". This is like being blind to the problem. If it's free and it works, why isn't EVERYBODY using it? (In other words, why is Mozilla Firefox MUCH MORE popular than the GIMP? Think about it).
Sometimes we can forget that graphical applications are meant to be used by designers who use most of their time retouching photographs and stuff. Here, time is money. And if the lack of usability in the GIMP makes me spend 5 times more the time than I would with Photoshop (and i'm being considerate), it's just not worth switching. To put it another way, Photoshop's user interface _IS_ worth the price. I still can't believe the GIMP guys CANNOT make something as user friendly (or don't want to, which is worse). It shocks me and frustrates me.
You know that Linux is ready for governments and businesses when a 30 day review points out DVD and photo editing as the main weaknesses -- and not because there are no Free Code replacements, but because they aren't quite good enough yet. The reviewer only tried two applications, GIMP and Kino. I share his feelings towards the GIMP photo editor, which I regard as an "old school" Free Code project where the developers would rather tell the users why their program is, in fact, highly usable than conducting serious usability tests and making improvements. To be fair, the existing GIMP user base, which is used to the current implementation, may also resist significant changes.
That is not to say that the quite remarkable GIMP functionality could not be wrapped into a nicer user interface. GIMPShop is one such attempt, which I have not tried. I hope that it will become a well-maintained fork; I don't have much hope for GIMP itself to improve in the UI department. I am personally partial to Krita which, while still young, seems to have generally made the right implementation decisions, and is truly user-focused (as is all of KDE -- I love those guys). I am not a professional photo editor, so I don't know how mature Krita is for serious work. It is good enough for everything I do.
Ooooh... what a bold statement! The GIMP is *NOT* user-focused. Don't tell me.
See, professionals don't want just "a better pile of poo" to do their imaging work. They (and I, too) want something that IS EASY TO HANDLE. Because in graphical applications, form is function. And this is something that many programmers (at least many of those that I've discussed with) simply fail to understand.
Who would have thought that the blind leading the blind could actually work?
Technically, it's an incorrect analogy. It would be more like a guide dog leading the blind. The dog (in this case the robot) is trained to produce specific responses to specific situations, helping the user (the autistic child) to deal with those situations. Now the advantage is that autistic kids CAN learn... so they won't be dependent on the robots forever... I hope.
There are companies and scientists trying to get us worried about disinfection 100% of the time. I can imagine the ads zooming on our skin and little CGI critters talk about how they're ready to strike.
Your answer sounds to me very much like knee-jerk reaction derived from watching too much environmentalist propaganda ("ZOMG antibiotics are killing us!!!1"). Sarcasm aside, I assume you didn't RTFA or even TFSummary:
When they accumulate in hard to reach places such as the insides of food processing machines or medical catheters, however, they become persistent sources of infection.
This isn't about snake oil, you know. In the first place, it was developed by MIT. In the second place, they're working to solve an already existing problem: Persistent sources of infection. People CAN DIE if they eat contaminated food that comes from an unclean processing machine, just as patients can die from an infection if the doctors use an unclean catheter. If the MIT researchers can get rid of 99.997% of the bacteria in this stuff, hospitals around the world will be very glad at the invention.
Scientists don't want to sell us anything. Scientists do science and research, and publish the results. In case you're wondering, we got this link from ScienceDaily, not FOX news or CNN.
So, when you say "There are companies and scientists trying to get us worried about disinfection", you should really say "There are companies trying to get us worried". Do you want to protest against companies trying to sell us their ultra-effective antibacterial soaps? Fine by me, but don't generalize and start accusing scientists.
And BTW, NOWHERE in the article is mentioned about disinfecting yourself 100% of the time. Where did you get that idea, anyway?
Where do the deadliest viruses appear? Hospitals. Why? Because hospitals keep killing them and they mutate to survive
Uh... hello, weren't hospitals made to CURE diseases? What's your solution then? Oh, right. Instead of making viruses surviving by killing them, we'll just let them survive and kill us instead! Welcome back to the 12th century. Congratulations!
Before this new 7 wonders stuff... I had never really appreciated the pyramid of Chichen Itza (I'm mexican). I said, yeah it's just an old building so what? The egyptian pyramids are cooler.
But due to the new 7 wonders poll, Discovery Channel made a documentary about Chichen Itza. I was amazed of the cultural richness of that thing. Not only the pyramid, but the whole temple and mayan culture. It really helped me appreciate my own roots.
So, how should we mod the new 7 wonders phenomenon? Troll? Interesting? Insightful? Informative?
I'd say both interesting and insightful, and if we count the future documentaries done on these wonders, I'd add "Informative", too.
"only sue if they can prove they were affected". Now that is the most stupid thing I've ever heard in my life.
- Hello, my name is Damocles, and I want to sue the emperor, because he got this f***ing Sword hanging above my head! - Sorry, sir, but unless you've been hurt by that sword, you cannot sue. - WTF? - I'm sorry, sir. Good bye.
i'm really not that interested in benchmarks. Besides my personal position is that AMD are the "good guys" and Intel are the "bad guys" because of their monopolistic practices.
It's kinda hard when you see your "heroes" do bad things, and I feel tempted to give excuses. In any case, the news won't make me trade my 3800+ dual core Athlon 64 for an intel Core 2 duo of the same speed and have to pay twice the price.
Telmex and Microsoft use the same monopolistic practices, Gates and Slim are not very different. They both may be monopolies, but there IS quite a difference. The difference is that Telmex *IS* a competitive and efficient company. If it wasn't for Slim's investment in telecom infrastructure, we mexicans would still be calling the state-driven phone company to complain that our 24K modems disconnect too often. I do remember those times... Slim practically saved the country from stagnating in the information era.
Microsoft is an artificial monopoly, reeking with planned obsolescence and lack of innovation. In contrast, Telmex already gives us the videophone service.
Slashdot Mirror
"Funny" just doesn't make him justice.
I wrote them down in my diary so i wouldn't HAVE to remember.
One thing that scares me is that Mickey Mouse can't tell children to vote, but the RIAA sells products to kids (and to everyone), and with that money they lobby congressmen into approving the laws they want.
:(
Suddenly i remember that biblical prophecy about the number of the beast and that everyone must put it in their foreheads to get what they want. Why does it seem SO similar to me?
I better copyright those kids and claim them as my own, this way the RIAA will have to pay ME royalties whenever they sue them! :D
And here we have it, folks: the key weak point of OSS. Perhaps, more accurately, the key failing point of the OSS fanboys.
EXACTLY!
Fanboys fail to understand that there is something in the world called CUSTOMERS, unable to program, unable to send patches, but with specific needs. Fanboys like software made "by programmers, for programmers". Or actually "by programmers, for themselves and screw everyone else, if you don't like MY software, fork it or fork you!".
In the link I mentioned about "a better pile of poo" we see that this kind of software, by programmers for programmers, was made in the early stages of software developers. Today, software is made by teams of developers, artists and user interface experts (aka "interaction dudes").
You know what's interesting? That fanboyism is usually greater in linux circles. Windows developers are used, accustomed to nice, friendly user interfaces - and although most of the time they make crappy software with awful programming techniques in Visual Basic, sometimes they excel and make wonderful user interfaces. (Now mix nice user interfaces with an MVC approach and woo hoo! )
I tend to think that Linux programmers are so used to hack and slash code, that they forgot what it feels like to have a nice UI, with keyboard,mouse shortcuts, context help, cut-copy-paste, etc etc. Most of the Linux open source software I've tried have a crappy interface. This is why I prefer Irfanview, Pixia and Virtualdub to the GIMP or AVIDemux respectively. By the way, I tried Jahshaka once. What an awful UI.
Update: This is just in. A friend of mine just told me: "gimp is a bunch of garbage. I downloaded it and the gui is adobe photoshop chewed up and sneezed at the monitor". Your honor, I rest my case
That is an awful mistake for F/OSS fanboys. "Oh, it's free, so we shouldn't complain". This is like being blind to the problem. If it's free and it works, why isn't EVERYBODY using it? (In other words, why is Mozilla Firefox MUCH MORE popular than the GIMP? Think about it).
Sometimes we can forget that graphical applications are meant to be used by designers who use most of their time retouching photographs and stuff. Here, time is money. And if the lack of usability in the GIMP makes me spend 5 times more the time than I would with Photoshop (and i'm being considerate), it's just not worth switching. To put it another way, Photoshop's user interface _IS_ worth the price. I still can't believe the GIMP guys CANNOT make something as user friendly (or don't want to, which is worse). It shocks me and frustrates me.
A quote from a designer's blog:
Ooooh... what a bold statement! The GIMP is *NOT* user-focused. Don't tell me.
See, professionals don't want just "a better pile of poo" to do their imaging work. They (and I, too) want something that IS EASY TO HANDLE. Because in graphical applications, form is function. And this is something that many programmers (at least many of those that I've discussed with) simply fail to understand.
I AM collecting paychecks, and I use mySQL.
Of course... with InnoDB.
Who would have thought that the blind leading the blind could actually work?
Technically, it's an incorrect analogy. It would be more like a guide dog leading the blind. The dog (in this case the robot) is trained to produce specific responses to specific situations, helping the user (the autistic child) to deal with those situations. Now the advantage is that autistic kids CAN learn... so they won't be dependent on the robots forever... I hope.
I think someone's been watching android girls animes too much.
There are companies and scientists trying to get us worried about disinfection 100% of the time. I can imagine the ads zooming on our skin and little CGI critters talk about how they're ready to strike.
Your answer sounds to me very much like knee-jerk reaction derived from watching too much environmentalist propaganda ("ZOMG antibiotics are killing us!!!1"). Sarcasm aside, I assume you didn't RTFA or even TFSummary:
When they accumulate in hard to reach places such as the insides of food processing machines or medical catheters, however, they become persistent sources of infection.
This isn't about snake oil, you know. In the first place, it was developed by MIT. In the second place, they're working to solve an already existing problem: Persistent sources of infection. People CAN DIE if they eat contaminated food that comes from an unclean processing machine, just as patients can die from an infection if the doctors use an unclean catheter. If the MIT researchers can get rid of 99.997% of the bacteria in this stuff, hospitals around the world will be very glad at the invention.
Scientists don't want to sell us anything. Scientists do science and research, and publish the results. In case you're wondering, we got this link from ScienceDaily, not FOX news or CNN.
So, when you say "There are companies and scientists trying to get us worried about disinfection", you should really say "There are companies trying to get us worried". Do you want to protest against companies trying to sell us their ultra-effective antibacterial soaps? Fine by me, but don't generalize and start accusing scientists.
And BTW, NOWHERE in the article is mentioned about disinfecting yourself 100% of the time. Where did you get that idea, anyway?
Where do the deadliest viruses appear? Hospitals. Why? Because hospitals keep killing them and they mutate to survive
Uh... hello, weren't hospitals made to CURE diseases? What's your solution then? Oh, right. Instead of making viruses surviving by killing them, we'll just let them survive and kill us instead! Welcome back to the 12th century. Congratulations!
1. Install wipers for the solar cells.
Something interesting happened to me.
Before this new 7 wonders stuff... I had never really appreciated the pyramid of Chichen Itza (I'm mexican). I said, yeah it's just an old building so what? The egyptian pyramids are cooler.
But due to the new 7 wonders poll, Discovery Channel made a documentary about Chichen Itza. I was amazed of the cultural richness of that thing. Not only the pyramid, but the whole temple and mayan culture. It really helped me appreciate my own roots.
So, how should we mod the new 7 wonders phenomenon? Troll? Interesting? Insightful? Informative?
I'd say both interesting and insightful, and if we count the future documentaries done on these wonders, I'd add "Informative", too.
Most philosophers today DO have internet access.
Considering that thousands of people voted today in comparison with ONE MAN in the ancient time, I'd say there was a lot of participation.
And so what if it's just a "publicity stunt"? Perhaps this will help people to appreciate other cultures, and I don't think that is bad at all.
...because it was afraid of a hacker attack or "people sending us spam."
... nah.
Suddenly an image formed in my mind: Thousands of netizens gathering and yelling "HACK POWER!".
"only sue if they can prove they were affected". Now that is the most stupid thing I've ever heard in my life.
- Hello, my name is Damocles, and I want to sue the emperor, because he got this f***ing Sword hanging above my head!
- Sorry, sir, but unless you've been hurt by that sword, you cannot sue.
- WTF?
- I'm sorry, sir. Good bye.
Won't someone please think of the children!?
Yeah, where are they going to get their free movies and music?
... for black hats :(
i'm really not that interested in benchmarks. Besides my personal position is that AMD are the "good guys" and Intel are the "bad guys" because of their monopolistic practices.
It's kinda hard when you see your "heroes" do bad things, and I feel tempted to give excuses. In any case, the news won't make me trade my 3800+ dual core Athlon 64 for an intel Core 2 duo of the same speed and have to pay twice the price.
his is why you should only use a reliable video piracy site
:)
Don't you mean a LEGAL video piracy site? Because you see... in Sweden, piracy (or at least linking to) IS legal
true pirate sites DON'T have "family filters", yarrrrr!!! :P
Because if it ain't... that's trespassing and collecting evidence illegally.
Telmex and Microsoft use the same monopolistic practices, Gates and Slim are not very different.
They both may be monopolies, but there IS quite a difference. The difference is that Telmex *IS* a competitive and efficient company. If it wasn't for Slim's investment in telecom infrastructure, we mexicans would still be calling the state-driven phone company to complain that our 24K modems disconnect too often. I do remember those times... Slim practically saved the country from stagnating in the information era.
Microsoft is an artificial monopoly, reeking with planned obsolescence and lack of innovation. In contrast, Telmex already gives us the videophone service.
:D Feels glad to be mexican.... *sigh* :)
Please, tell me it was some agents from the CIA, and by presidential orders!! It would fit this government PERFECTLY.