Who mods this crap up? IE is still over 50% and by far the most popular browser. Mainstream web developers need to test in IE or have a workaround for IE. IE's dominance is still a huge influence on Web development. The difference is, there are now practical ways to rewrite code on the fly for IE, or install a plug-in in IE that makes it behave as though it were standards compliant for a site.
To be fair, I think the "selling more units" thing suggests that Android already "outcompetes Apple in the mobile space". At least by conventional measures.
Is "outcompeting" defined by number of units, profit made, or quality of products? All are valid uses of the term. I was thinking in terms of competing for application development human resources for the platform, but there are many interpretations.
Yeah, because we all remember how Hypercard completely eliminated the need for regular software on the Mac, right?
No, but I certainly remember how it allowed primary school teachers to develop custom apps for education, some of which are still in use today. I remember how it gave rise to thousands of niche apps not profitable for commercial developers, but greatly useful nonetheless. Speak an obscure language? Guess what, now you can have some simple apps anyway, because it's easy enough for non-experts who speak that language to code things.
Programming environments for non-programmers, when usable enough, extend the long tail.
Or the way Flash made Visual Basic obsolete?
Umm, isn't that kind of like saying dog crap made donkey crap obsolete? They're both crap and they're both used for different crappy purposes. Who cares about "obsolete" anyway. That's a strawman. This is about providing new tools for new purposes, not replacing all existing tools.
"Programming for Everyone" *sounds* like a good idea, but ultimately all you get is unusable toy applications and/or teetering unmaintainable clusterfuck applications - the latter typically written by the boss, who is *sure* that any problems with his app have to be somebody else's fault.
You're just an elitist afraid of competition. Good programming will win out 90% of the time, but now programmers will have to take into account competition from amateurs who may not be any good at actual coding, but might make a better product anyway by being more creative or making for better usability, or simply filling a niche market better than a mainstream app designed to target a more general market does. Deal with it.
So, as a "usability expert", you advocate dumbing things down to a preschooler level...instead of advocating people learning how to distinguish between button #1 and button #2?
Maybe you don't understand what usability is. It's making tasks as easy and efficient as possible. For the most part, two button mice are wasted because the interfaces are designed by someone who does not know what the user's tasks are. For example, on a machine that ships with a single button mouse, nothing stops you from installing a three button mouse. I'm using one right now. But instead of a developer who does not know my workflow choosing what two of those buttons do, and me getting to program one of them in a customized way, I get two to customize and one is preprogrammed. That also means no functionality is "hidden" in a context menu. All of it is accessible from the regular menus, which means if a person with a mouth controlled joystick needs to use the software, they can actually get to everything.
Simple DEFAULTS don't dumb down an interface. They make it usable.
Seriously...if someone is struggling with two buttons, they shouldn't be using a computer.
In my experience that would be about 30% of users in a given day, including a network security expert that is running the show for one of the largest telecomm companies in the world and has an IQ, PhD's, and enough experience to make your resume look like crap. You want to bet you never look in the wrong menu using the wrong mouse button when trying to perform tasks? I bet you do. Almost everyone does. It's just part of how people use computers these days and something we don't pay attention to.
You can call that being a dick, you can call that not listening to user's problems...
I call that idiocy and ignoring problems and blaming users for shitty usability. That would make you the average programmer then... maybe even one at MS:)
The truth is, a one button mouse setup leads to a great many usability improvements.
Source?
Umm, every book on computing usability ever published; or very nearly. Are you joking? Have you bothered to do any research on the topic, ever?
You would have to use the keyboard to modify how that one mouse button functions.
That's one option. It's called "chording". Another, more common, option is to make everything accessible without needing a second button. A third option, for more advanced users, is to add a device with multiple buttons, or enable those buttons when present in devices with a flexible number of buttons (ala magic mouse or whatever they call it).
So now, instead of just clicking the button next to one the user is already using, you want them to have to find a specific key on a keyboard to act as a modifier?
For some advanced options and shortcuts to actions, sure. For regular users, they should never need to use options only available there. It should strictly be for shortcuts, advanced options, and user programmable functions.
They already have trouble using two buttons on the same object...what makes you think they could choose one out of 104 buttons on a separate object?
The point is, if you only have one button by default, they never have to because no programmer in their right mind puts functionality ONLY in that place, as programmers routinely do for right click menus.
Look. I can understand what you're getting at...I just think you are way off base.
But you clearly haven't bothered to do any research on the topic. You just have an opinion formed out of your own emotional baggage and with no scientific basis or evidence.
Your point about tablets have some credence to them, but their problem isn't that the interfaces weren't originally designed fo
"high school girls" Why the fluck do they do this? Why pick "girls" or "boys" don't they think we can think?
It's not a matter of whether or not women can think. Rather it's about exploiting the social trends and biases that result on gender disparity in the programming industry. Today, a girl in high school is 5-10 times less likely to become a programmer than a boy in the same high school. When trying to develop a tool that caters to people with no inherent ability or experience, then, in makes sense to target girls in your study group, maybe not exclusively, but primarily. Recognizing the current trends in society and using them is not an endorsement of them, nor an implication that one gender is inherently less suited to a task. The arrangement of our society is the primary factor pushing various gender disparities in particular professions (in both directions).
Yup. Thank goodness we're all using one-button mice!
Actually, as a usability expert, I really wish we were using one button mice. Well, not really. I wish Windows was designed to work with a single button mouse and that was the default type of mouse shipped with consumer systems. I'm also happy with variable-button mice which can become multi-button mice depending upon the software or user settings; but which default to a single button setup.
The truth is, a one button mouse setup leads to a great many usability improvements. Clicking the wrong mouse button is probably one of the most common mistakes seen in usability tests, and not just among novices. Even experts occasionally click the wrong one for a task. On top of that, the default of having multi-button mice means that software is designed and tested for that setup primarily and often exclusively. This results in software that is unusable with a single button mouse. You simply can't accomplish necessary tasks without multiple buttons. This absolutely sucks for anyone using any sort of alternate interface, like a tablet, voice command system, joystick, most interfaces for the disabled, etc. The advent of trackpads that you can click and multi-touch is alleviating the problem somewhat, but not near enough.
Since you brought it up, I just wanted to make sure you're aware of the implications. Apple doesn't promote a single button mouse. They don't even sell one anymore as far as I know. They promote a single button mouse default setup, with the ability to add more buttons for more advanced users. In that, I devoutly wish the rest of the industry would follow.
A simple App maker like hypercard was? It is supported on Windows, OS X, and Ubuntu. It also works with both Java 1.5 and 1.6. Way to go Google! You may have finally hit upon a great way to outcompete Apple in the mobile space. I just hope you're working on improving the Android Market in a big hurry.
Malware often uses low-level code and tricks which makes them break when they are being run in an emulator. They also often have checks and tricks in place to detect if they are being run in a virtual machine and either crash itself or act differently. How do you run Windows executables with this so that they actually work normally?
While some malware detects VMs and some fails to run in VMs, not much that I've seen detects VMs then behaves significantly differently or intentionally refuses to run. The Conficker family, for example, detects VMs, then reports on connection to the control channel that it is a VM in addition to the other system info.
As to working around this problem, the way I've seen it done is expensive hardware designed for the purpose, that lets you analyze what is happening from a "watcher" machine and revert the machine once you are done. This was being used in a network security company to analyze the behavior of worms.
Try pointing out any negative trait on Apple products. Then do the same for Microsoft products. Then for Linux. Then watch how you get moderated. The results are... interesting.
Speaking of mods, the person to whom you are replying was modded down as flambait, despite clearly being anything but. It kind of refutes your assertion about unfair moderation, no?
Anyway, I regularly point out negative traits about Apple products and Microsoft product and Linux. Linux is the least fairly modded (as would be expected) with negative comments routinely modded down for no reason other than that people don't like hearing about the areas where Linux still needs work. Similar comments about flaws in OS X or the iPhone regularly get modded up.
Apple was one of the three companies that wrote the CalDAV RFC and they implemented it immediately in iCal in 2007. (iCal is the built in calendaring app in OS X.) Previous to that that iCal already used WebDAV. They offer an OSS CalDAV server in OS X server. Why would anyone find it surprising that the rewritten WebApp version of iCal is using CalDAV?Apple has already been pushing it as hard as possible as an open standard alternative to Exchange.
A single flaw in a common security architecture is a pervasive vulnerability whereas a heterogenous system is robust to targeted attacks.
Agreed, however, given the way software is procured and "certified" for security by the government, that is the least of the problem. Secure software in the government requires motivated players who will work around the security regulations in order to get secure software, and the NSA is one of the few branches of government that seems motivated.
They would do better to solicit bids for multiple systems from private contractors and place the NSA as well as the public security community in the roles of auditors.
In theory that sounds great, but in practice do you have any idea hope nighmarish that would be for people who are actually try to create a secure system?
I am not saying that there is no roll[sic] for government here, but rather than the rolls[sic] played by government are typically either useless or harmful and it would be nice if it took a different approach; Give the Harvard MBAs and MIT and Caltech Ph.D engineeers working at Cisco and IBM opportunities to innovate and place the government and public in the role of customers holding contractors accountable for supplying quality products.
Have you dealt with the combination of giant private firms and obtuse and impossible government appropriations? I've worked in the security field and let me tell you, Cisco bought three of our failed competitors and sold the fairly useless software to the government while using the product we made internally for their own security. They were our biggest competitor and a large customer. Do you know what the PhD's at Cisco can do for us? They can lobby to have several third party firms "certify" software in entirely useless ways that take huge amounts of time and money, effectively driving all but a handful of players out of the bidding. Often none of those remaining have the expertise of product to do a decent job, but that doesn't matter because they're "certified" to be secure, in that third parties have signed off on the fact that their product does not promise to be useful for any given task.
If you've ever wondered why the NSA makes software in house, here's a clue, it's pretty much the only way to work around the nonsense and get a decent product, and the NSA does open source some of that software, BTW. And no, this isn't about sour grapes. Some of the software I worked on is being used by big government agencies to secure their infrastructure, but the ability to get that to happen was so awful that I cringe when I hear your proposal. Cisco is a great company for buying up other companies and marketing the hell out of their products using all their contacts and partnerships. They're terrible at acquiring or creating actually good, let alone the best products and getting them to the people that need them. My take is, if it's between letting the NSA "do something" and having any government agency audit and certify things, only the former has any chance in hell of doing anything useful.
Those traffic shifts, along with the introduction of new technologies (such as IPv6, cloud computing, and smaller things like the next twitter) will create false positives. And an attacker, knowing that there are these bursts fairly frequently and that during them there will be false triggers, will time the launch his attack so that it occurs during or shortly after one of those events.
This is pretty much a solved problem. You're picturing a system that monitors traffic level, then automatically shuts off the traffic in an emergency. That's not the state of the art and hasn't been for a long time. Rather, you deploy IDS systems that build a relational database of "normal" traffic on a network over time. Administrators look at the traffic ad mark some of it as "critically important" like the connection between the control system update board and the deployed sensors, and the connection between the payroll server and the payroll administrator's office. The rest of the traffic is stuff you don't care about that much, like the public facing Web server or the FTP server used by developers on site, or the desktop computers ability to access random ports to run P2P or play Quake after hours.
So what happens when Michael Jackson dies and all the desktops start going to a few Web sites and at the same time a hacker compromises a desktop and starts spreading a worm in the LAN? The IDS system freezes traffic levels and automatically prevents the desktops from talking on any non-critical ports while at the same time throttling Web traffic to sites about Michael Jackson. At the some time it contacts the security admin, shows them the traffic, attempts to identify some of it as a propagating worm, and lets the administrator decide what to do about it... all the while all the critical business is still getting done.
Personally I don't think NSA has the chops to do this monitoring job. Why? Because to do a good job a lot of data needs to be correlated and NSA, if anything, is very unwilling to share its data with others who may also be watching - like ISPs
There are already programs among ISPs and large network operators that do share just this kind of attack data (anonymized) to better coordinate security. I was involved in the creation of one of them. The DoD and NSA do participate.
I think that our real emphasis needs to be on needs to be the successful implementation of renewable energy sources in automobiles.
I sort of agree. Rather, I think we should be focusing on electric cars and simultaneously technology to renewably and without pollution, generate massive amounts of electricity. Nuclear, solar, wind, tidal, other... it needs to funded as research projects with assessment of efficiency and impact. We could start by taking all the money we subsidize oil companies with and redirecting it. Then we could start taxing all industries that profit by creating a part of a polluting product (oil, coal, gas powered devices, etc.) and adding that into the pool. I mean seriously, is there any significant portion of any electoral base in the US that wouldn't vote for ending subsidies to oil companies if it were up for a vote?
Walk in the forrest, and carry a.50 Desert Eagle then...
--
:)
Seriously though, those things are fast. I used to hike/hunt/walk though some forest with a lot of bears in them. I used to carry a big pistol even when I wasn't hunting. That said, those critters are fast. More than once, my first indication that they were there was when they suddenly went crashing off through the brush running away from me at high speed. If they'd been coming at me (which the unpredictable critters do sometimes) I doubt I would have been able to draw, aim, and fire in time. DO NOT count on being able to defend yourself against a bear using a firearm. Have another plan as well.
...but just grab a trailmap from wherever you buy your pass.
It's almost like another culture altogether; buying a pass to go backpacking, heck buying a map even. I used to take a compass and head off into a nice big chink of the unexplored and uninhabited state owned land. Follow game trails and streams for a few days making something vaguely like a loop so I'd get back to my vehicle eventually. Some people had plat maps they'd bring, but I'd never even heard of the idea of buying a "pass" or trail map. It was a sad day when a book on fishing published a map to my favorite forgotten lake, billing it as the best secret spot in the state for lake trout. Previous to that, the only people I'd ever seen there were some crazy militia guys playing soldier, and that only once.
Okay, now I'm rambling. All of your suggestions are excellent. He did say "primitive" so let me add, if you're going to "live off the land" bring a couple cans of food or MREs as backup. Some weeks there just isn't much game about and you can only eat so many berries before it becomes a bad scene. Also, you travel much shorter distances in a day if you're stopping to fish and clean game and cook native plants well enough that they taste reasonable.
Unless one has a mortgage and should really be out looking for a job or solving the other real problems that cause stressful things.
Stress is usually caused by lack of control in the first place. It's not the things that are problems in your life, but the things that are problems that you seem to have no ability to change. Sometimes this perception is wrong and there are always things that can be done, but that doesn't mean you can always "do something" to make your life less stressful by solving the sources of stress.
Actually my first thought upon reading the summary was, that people who have enough free time and live somewhere with access to forests are probably going to have lower blood pressure and many other better health attributes than the norm, regardless of whether or not they actually go walking regularly.
Unfortunately I'm with the security people on this. Disclosure of vulnerabilities is the only way to get them fixed. On top of that, how does a "security researcher" validate their claims of finding bugs if they don't release them?
This all depends upon the company. Microsoft has no one but themselves to blame when researchers don't bother notifying them or giving them a reasonable window to fix it. Other vendors have been much better about fixing things in a timely manner. Apple (for example) goes so far as to provide credit for vulnerability discovery in all their security fixes and has been fairly responsive to the cases I knew about firsthand.
I suggest reading This Page about bulding homes out of shipping containers. Also, be really, really careful if you're going to bury anything, with regard to both corrosion and the amount of pressure that gets exerted on the sides of it, which is usually greatly underestimated.
If its just look and feel then yes that is an issue but one that is easily overcome. I don't expect them to rewrite the UI to please an audience that will just look for reasons why Apple's Safari is better anyway TBH.
Apple's Safari has the home court advantage, but there is lots of room for other players. Firefox has significant share on OS X. The idea that no matter how much work is done, Mac users won't use opera seems more of an excuse to me than anything. I try every major new version, then abandon it and move on because it doesn't support the native features of the OS upon which I rely.
If its just look and feel then yes that is an issue but one that is easily overcome. I don't expect them to rewrite the UI to please an audience that will just look for reasons why Apple's Safari is better anyway TBH.
I think your opinion here is just as wrong. There's plenty of money to go around for third party developers who actually write software for the Wii platform. The Wii is not just like every other platform either in the control schemes or in the user base. Companies that write for that control scheme and for that audience do well. Not so much those who instead tryto revamp a game designed for a different control scheme and a different audience or who write a game using their many years of experience but without rethinking their development for the Wii.
If your mindset is that OS X and OS X users re just like Windows and Windows users, you aren't going to do so well. And if you don't put the resources in to do it right, you'll fail. The same goes for the Wii. People that fail can claim it is because of brand loyalty, but to me that just rings hollow; an excuse for failure not a reason.
It is a minority audience on Mac for anything without an Apple logo.
iWork has about 20% of the Office suite install base on OS X, compared to MS Office's 80%. Lightroom has double Aperture's share on OS X. Final Cut is at what, 50%? So I guess my question is, what the hell are you talking about? What software is Apple selling where they are driving out all the non-Apple competitors on OS X? Even at much lower price points, the majority of OS X users aren't picking Apple software over third party software. Your theory sort of falls down there, doesn't it?
So you're prepared to criticize Opera for their (allegedly) poor quality Mac port but aren't prepared to actually file a bug report or make any attempt to bring your dissatisfaction to their attention?
While the previous poster may not have filed a bug report, I certainly did, almost a decade ago now. I filed several in fact. But they haven't done anything about the subject, so yeah, when someone says Opera for the Mac is great, I bring up where it is deficient. Maybe some of the developers will notice, or at least people will begin to understand why it has such low install share on the Mac.
There are system mouse gestures? Since when? Do you mean multitouch gestures?
OS X supports system services which can be installed by themselves or be supplied by an application. There are two different services available for OS X that can be used in pretty much all applications that use the Cocoa APIs, but won't work in Opera. So while I can use gestures in Opera, I have to configure them independently of all my other mouse gestures, which rather sucks.
. As for all those other services, I don't need a grammar checker (generally...), there is a spell checker built-in to Opera (which, again, I don't need)
Maybe you don't like grammar checking, but it's nice to have the option. As for spell checking, it's a lot less useful when it hasn't been trained with all the words I've taught the native spell checker. I meant really, why would I want to have to teach it twice that MSDP isn't a misspelling, and do the same for every other word? Why for the love of buddha can't it simply use the native spell checker offered to all apps?
Opera can send you straight to MW.com for dictionary/thesaurus or Wikipedia for encyclopedia
Right, but it can't use the native dictionary/thesaurus already installed on my machine, and which also goes to wikipedia and online resources all at once. Why does it have to be different and not behave the same as all the other native apps that aren't badly ported?
and I don't know what "text manipulation" services you're talking about; the ones that show up in the services menu for me are the same that show up in Safari's services menu.
I take it you haven't installed any services that operate on text, like something to fix those terrible line endings left by notepad, or to replace smart quotes with straight ones, or to automatically change a URL into a proper bibliography citation? I use them heavily, but last check they still didn't work at all in Opera.
I'm sure better Mac OS X integration will come in time; it already looks like a native Mac app. More so than Firefox, at any rate.
I put in feature requests to fix the problem, wow, forever ago. It just doesn't seem to be a priority there. It is too bad because I do like it on Windows. It's about the same as Safari on Windows, just not there.
Plus it also has Inspect Element (like Chrome), mouse gestures (like the Firefox addons), and it looks good in Mac OS X and Windows (although not so much in Linux).
I really like Opera on Windows, but I find it dreadful on OS X. I like mouse gestures and use them regularly, but Opera only supports the mouse gestures built into Opera, not the system service ones that work in all my other apps. The same goes for the rest of the system services. No support for the native spellchecker or grammar checker or word statistics. No automatic language translation, dictionary/thesaurus lookup, or text manipulation services. If you give up all the cool OS supplied features of OS X, you might as well be on Windows. I always seems to me like a badly ported Windows app, which is too bad because it is a very nice Windows app.
I fail to see how it would be of any benefit to us for IBM to take that stance.
Regardless of if end users have to use a site, other vendors will, and that affects what browsers are in use at those other vendors. It also determines what Web development skills, developers, and tools benefit most moving forward. Companies being pressured to spend money and comply with standards or lose deals will suddenly care about standards, which means their Web developers will and their tool providers will. So now you have more Web development tools and developers who make standards compliant sites and that will almost certainly bleed over into other Web sites that average people do use.
I'm a strong supporter of web standards (a real one, unlike Steve).
Yeah, that will boost your credibility.
I hope this means that if IBM can't navigate a vendor's site with Firefox, they'll just look elsewhere.
The fact that a company employed wrong web designers/programmers doesn't mean it's not good in what *it* does (save if what they do are websites, of course).
That's completely true, but not really relevant. You see, doing business means being good at working with others. Standards are a big part of that. If you have to go out of your way to do business with someone, like if they refuse to be paid in US dollars and will only accept canned tuna fish as payment, well, they have to be a whole lot better for you to go out of your way. Normally, who cares? I mean really, if some company wants to make it hard to do business with them, well that sucks and we move on.
The difference here is "embrace, extend, extinguish". It was Microsoft's largely successful plan to break and fragment the Web itself to make it harder for companies to write cross platform solutions and to, in turn, use anything other than Windows. Because a monopolist specifically went out and leveraged their monopoly to encourage the bad behavior on the part of people who make Web sites, we all have a vested interest in correcting that market damage and allowing the state of the art to progress at a normal rate again. To continue with the analogy, imagine if the RIAA had required all purchases of music to be paid for with canned tuna fish for many years, then finally lost in court and now we're in the situation where many record stores don't even have cash registers, but just special canned tuna counting machines. A big player in the market encouraging a move back to normalcy, while the record stores still are being pressured to only take tuna fish, is then important to all of us.
Now I recognize my example was downright silly. That was by design. I'm trying to explain the concepts involved, divorced from any real situation so everyone can see why it is important in principal. Then, if necessary, we can have a discussion about how the principal applies in this case. This isn't about punishing companies with IE only Web sites. It's about pressuring them to correct our broken market. That they have to suffer for what has happened is just one more piece of damage to be laid at MS's feet.
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Who mods this crap up? IE is still over 50% and by far the most popular browser. Mainstream web developers need to test in IE or have a workaround for IE. IE's dominance is still a huge influence on Web development. The difference is, there are now practical ways to rewrite code on the fly for IE, or install a plug-in in IE that makes it behave as though it were standards compliant for a site.
But why do I have a sinking feeling that adoption of this new standard will be held back by Internet Explorer's atrocious handling of it?
I think between Google Chrome Frame and HTML 5 Shiv, MS will have a lot less power to hold back Web standards than they usually wield.
To be fair, I think the "selling more units" thing suggests that Android already "outcompetes Apple in the mobile space". At least by conventional measures.
Is "outcompeting" defined by number of units, profit made, or quality of products? All are valid uses of the term. I was thinking in terms of competing for application development human resources for the platform, but there are many interpretations.
Yeah, because we all remember how Hypercard completely eliminated the need for regular software on the Mac, right?
No, but I certainly remember how it allowed primary school teachers to develop custom apps for education, some of which are still in use today. I remember how it gave rise to thousands of niche apps not profitable for commercial developers, but greatly useful nonetheless. Speak an obscure language? Guess what, now you can have some simple apps anyway, because it's easy enough for non-experts who speak that language to code things.
Programming environments for non-programmers, when usable enough, extend the long tail.
Or the way Flash made Visual Basic obsolete?
Umm, isn't that kind of like saying dog crap made donkey crap obsolete? They're both crap and they're both used for different crappy purposes. Who cares about "obsolete" anyway. That's a strawman. This is about providing new tools for new purposes, not replacing all existing tools.
"Programming for Everyone" *sounds* like a good idea, but ultimately all you get is unusable toy applications and/or teetering unmaintainable clusterfuck applications - the latter typically written by the boss, who is *sure* that any problems with his app have to be somebody else's fault.
You're just an elitist afraid of competition. Good programming will win out 90% of the time, but now programmers will have to take into account competition from amateurs who may not be any good at actual coding, but might make a better product anyway by being more creative or making for better usability, or simply filling a niche market better than a mainstream app designed to target a more general market does. Deal with it.
So, as a "usability expert", you advocate dumbing things down to a preschooler level...instead of advocating people learning how to distinguish between button #1 and button #2?
Maybe you don't understand what usability is. It's making tasks as easy and efficient as possible. For the most part, two button mice are wasted because the interfaces are designed by someone who does not know what the user's tasks are. For example, on a machine that ships with a single button mouse, nothing stops you from installing a three button mouse. I'm using one right now. But instead of a developer who does not know my workflow choosing what two of those buttons do, and me getting to program one of them in a customized way, I get two to customize and one is preprogrammed. That also means no functionality is "hidden" in a context menu. All of it is accessible from the regular menus, which means if a person with a mouth controlled joystick needs to use the software, they can actually get to everything.
Simple DEFAULTS don't dumb down an interface. They make it usable.
Seriously...if someone is struggling with two buttons, they shouldn't be using a computer.
In my experience that would be about 30% of users in a given day, including a network security expert that is running the show for one of the largest telecomm companies in the world and has an IQ, PhD's, and enough experience to make your resume look like crap. You want to bet you never look in the wrong menu using the wrong mouse button when trying to perform tasks? I bet you do. Almost everyone does. It's just part of how people use computers these days and something we don't pay attention to.
You can call that being a dick, you can call that not listening to user's problems...
I call that idiocy and ignoring problems and blaming users for shitty usability. That would make you the average programmer then... maybe even one at MS :)
The truth is, a one button mouse setup leads to a great many usability improvements.
Source?
Umm, every book on computing usability ever published; or very nearly. Are you joking? Have you bothered to do any research on the topic, ever?
You would have to use the keyboard to modify how that one mouse button functions.
That's one option. It's called "chording". Another, more common, option is to make everything accessible without needing a second button. A third option, for more advanced users, is to add a device with multiple buttons, or enable those buttons when present in devices with a flexible number of buttons (ala magic mouse or whatever they call it).
So now, instead of just clicking the button next to one the user is already using, you want them to have to find a specific key on a keyboard to act as a modifier?
For some advanced options and shortcuts to actions, sure. For regular users, they should never need to use options only available there. It should strictly be for shortcuts, advanced options, and user programmable functions.
They already have trouble using two buttons on the same object...what makes you think they could choose one out of 104 buttons on a separate object?
The point is, if you only have one button by default, they never have to because no programmer in their right mind puts functionality ONLY in that place, as programmers routinely do for right click menus.
Look. I can understand what you're getting at...I just think you are way off base.
But you clearly haven't bothered to do any research on the topic. You just have an opinion formed out of your own emotional baggage and with no scientific basis or evidence.
Your point about tablets have some credence to them, but their problem isn't that the interfaces weren't originally designed fo
"high school girls" Why the fluck do they do this? Why pick "girls" or "boys" don't they think we can think?
It's not a matter of whether or not women can think. Rather it's about exploiting the social trends and biases that result on gender disparity in the programming industry. Today, a girl in high school is 5-10 times less likely to become a programmer than a boy in the same high school. When trying to develop a tool that caters to people with no inherent ability or experience, then, in makes sense to target girls in your study group, maybe not exclusively, but primarily. Recognizing the current trends in society and using them is not an endorsement of them, nor an implication that one gender is inherently less suited to a task. The arrangement of our society is the primary factor pushing various gender disparities in particular professions (in both directions).
Yup. Thank goodness we're all using one-button mice!
Actually, as a usability expert, I really wish we were using one button mice. Well, not really. I wish Windows was designed to work with a single button mouse and that was the default type of mouse shipped with consumer systems. I'm also happy with variable-button mice which can become multi-button mice depending upon the software or user settings; but which default to a single button setup.
The truth is, a one button mouse setup leads to a great many usability improvements. Clicking the wrong mouse button is probably one of the most common mistakes seen in usability tests, and not just among novices. Even experts occasionally click the wrong one for a task. On top of that, the default of having multi-button mice means that software is designed and tested for that setup primarily and often exclusively. This results in software that is unusable with a single button mouse. You simply can't accomplish necessary tasks without multiple buttons. This absolutely sucks for anyone using any sort of alternate interface, like a tablet, voice command system, joystick, most interfaces for the disabled, etc. The advent of trackpads that you can click and multi-touch is alleviating the problem somewhat, but not near enough.
Since you brought it up, I just wanted to make sure you're aware of the implications. Apple doesn't promote a single button mouse. They don't even sell one anymore as far as I know. They promote a single button mouse default setup, with the ability to add more buttons for more advanced users. In that, I devoutly wish the rest of the industry would follow.
A simple App maker like hypercard was? It is supported on Windows, OS X, and Ubuntu. It also works with both Java 1.5 and 1.6. Way to go Google! You may have finally hit upon a great way to outcompete Apple in the mobile space. I just hope you're working on improving the Android Market in a big hurry.
Malware often uses low-level code and tricks which makes them break when they are being run in an emulator. They also often have checks and tricks in place to detect if they are being run in a virtual machine and either crash itself or act differently. How do you run Windows executables with this so that they actually work normally?
While some malware detects VMs and some fails to run in VMs, not much that I've seen detects VMs then behaves significantly differently or intentionally refuses to run. The Conficker family, for example, detects VMs, then reports on connection to the control channel that it is a VM in addition to the other system info.
As to working around this problem, the way I've seen it done is expensive hardware designed for the purpose, that lets you analyze what is happening from a "watcher" machine and revert the machine once you are done. This was being used in a network security company to analyze the behavior of worms.
Try pointing out any negative trait on Apple products. Then do the same for Microsoft products. Then for Linux. Then watch how you get moderated. The results are... interesting.
Speaking of mods, the person to whom you are replying was modded down as flambait, despite clearly being anything but. It kind of refutes your assertion about unfair moderation, no?
Anyway, I regularly point out negative traits about Apple products and Microsoft product and Linux. Linux is the least fairly modded (as would be expected) with negative comments routinely modded down for no reason other than that people don't like hearing about the areas where Linux still needs work. Similar comments about flaws in OS X or the iPhone regularly get modded up.
Apple was one of the three companies that wrote the CalDAV RFC and they implemented it immediately in iCal in 2007. (iCal is the built in calendaring app in OS X.) Previous to that that iCal already used WebDAV. They offer an OSS CalDAV server in OS X server. Why would anyone find it surprising that the rewritten WebApp version of iCal is using CalDAV?Apple has already been pushing it as hard as possible as an open standard alternative to Exchange.
A single flaw in a common security architecture is a pervasive vulnerability whereas a heterogenous system is robust to targeted attacks.
Agreed, however, given the way software is procured and "certified" for security by the government, that is the least of the problem. Secure software in the government requires motivated players who will work around the security regulations in order to get secure software, and the NSA is one of the few branches of government that seems motivated.
They would do better to solicit bids for multiple systems from private contractors and place the NSA as well as the public security community in the roles of auditors.
In theory that sounds great, but in practice do you have any idea hope nighmarish that would be for people who are actually try to create a secure system?
I am not saying that there is no roll[sic] for government here, but rather than the rolls[sic] played by government are typically either useless or harmful and it would be nice if it took a different approach; Give the Harvard MBAs and MIT and Caltech Ph.D engineeers working at Cisco and IBM opportunities to innovate and place the government and public in the role of customers holding contractors accountable for supplying quality products.
Have you dealt with the combination of giant private firms and obtuse and impossible government appropriations? I've worked in the security field and let me tell you, Cisco bought three of our failed competitors and sold the fairly useless software to the government while using the product we made internally for their own security. They were our biggest competitor and a large customer. Do you know what the PhD's at Cisco can do for us? They can lobby to have several third party firms "certify" software in entirely useless ways that take huge amounts of time and money, effectively driving all but a handful of players out of the bidding. Often none of those remaining have the expertise of product to do a decent job, but that doesn't matter because they're "certified" to be secure, in that third parties have signed off on the fact that their product does not promise to be useful for any given task.
If you've ever wondered why the NSA makes software in house, here's a clue, it's pretty much the only way to work around the nonsense and get a decent product, and the NSA does open source some of that software, BTW. And no, this isn't about sour grapes. Some of the software I worked on is being used by big government agencies to secure their infrastructure, but the ability to get that to happen was so awful that I cringe when I hear your proposal. Cisco is a great company for buying up other companies and marketing the hell out of their products using all their contacts and partnerships. They're terrible at acquiring or creating actually good, let alone the best products and getting them to the people that need them. My take is, if it's between letting the NSA "do something" and having any government agency audit and certify things, only the former has any chance in hell of doing anything useful.
Those traffic shifts, along with the introduction of new technologies (such as IPv6, cloud computing, and smaller things like the next twitter) will create false positives. And an attacker, knowing that there are these bursts fairly frequently and that during them there will be false triggers, will time the launch his attack so that it occurs during or shortly after one of those events.
This is pretty much a solved problem. You're picturing a system that monitors traffic level, then automatically shuts off the traffic in an emergency. That's not the state of the art and hasn't been for a long time. Rather, you deploy IDS systems that build a relational database of "normal" traffic on a network over time. Administrators look at the traffic ad mark some of it as "critically important" like the connection between the control system update board and the deployed sensors, and the connection between the payroll server and the payroll administrator's office. The rest of the traffic is stuff you don't care about that much, like the public facing Web server or the FTP server used by developers on site, or the desktop computers ability to access random ports to run P2P or play Quake after hours.
So what happens when Michael Jackson dies and all the desktops start going to a few Web sites and at the same time a hacker compromises a desktop and starts spreading a worm in the LAN? The IDS system freezes traffic levels and automatically prevents the desktops from talking on any non-critical ports while at the same time throttling Web traffic to sites about Michael Jackson. At the some time it contacts the security admin, shows them the traffic, attempts to identify some of it as a propagating worm, and lets the administrator decide what to do about it... all the while all the critical business is still getting done.
Personally I don't think NSA has the chops to do this monitoring job. Why? Because to do a good job a lot of data needs to be correlated and NSA, if anything, is very unwilling to share its data with others who may also be watching - like ISPs
There are already programs among ISPs and large network operators that do share just this kind of attack data (anonymized) to better coordinate security. I was involved in the creation of one of them. The DoD and NSA do participate.
I think that our real emphasis needs to be on needs to be the successful implementation of renewable energy sources in automobiles.
I sort of agree. Rather, I think we should be focusing on electric cars and simultaneously technology to renewably and without pollution, generate massive amounts of electricity. Nuclear, solar, wind, tidal, other... it needs to funded as research projects with assessment of efficiency and impact. We could start by taking all the money we subsidize oil companies with and redirecting it. Then we could start taxing all industries that profit by creating a part of a polluting product (oil, coal, gas powered devices, etc.) and adding that into the pool. I mean seriously, is there any significant portion of any electoral base in the US that wouldn't vote for ending subsidies to oil companies if it were up for a vote?
Walk in the forrest, and carry a .50 Desert Eagle then...
--
:)
Seriously though, those things are fast. I used to hike/hunt/walk though some forest with a lot of bears in them. I used to carry a big pistol even when I wasn't hunting. That said, those critters are fast. More than once, my first indication that they were there was when they suddenly went crashing off through the brush running away from me at high speed. If they'd been coming at me (which the unpredictable critters do sometimes) I doubt I would have been able to draw, aim, and fire in time. DO NOT count on being able to defend yourself against a bear using a firearm. Have another plan as well.
...but just grab a trailmap from wherever you buy your pass.
It's almost like another culture altogether; buying a pass to go backpacking, heck buying a map even. I used to take a compass and head off into a nice big chink of the unexplored and uninhabited state owned land. Follow game trails and streams for a few days making something vaguely like a loop so I'd get back to my vehicle eventually. Some people had plat maps they'd bring, but I'd never even heard of the idea of buying a "pass" or trail map. It was a sad day when a book on fishing published a map to my favorite forgotten lake, billing it as the best secret spot in the state for lake trout. Previous to that, the only people I'd ever seen there were some crazy militia guys playing soldier, and that only once.
Okay, now I'm rambling. All of your suggestions are excellent. He did say "primitive" so let me add, if you're going to "live off the land" bring a couple cans of food or MREs as backup. Some weeks there just isn't much game about and you can only eat so many berries before it becomes a bad scene. Also, you travel much shorter distances in a day if you're stopping to fish and clean game and cook native plants well enough that they taste reasonable.
Unless one has a mortgage and should really be out looking for a job or solving the other real problems that cause stressful things.
Stress is usually caused by lack of control in the first place. It's not the things that are problems in your life, but the things that are problems that you seem to have no ability to change. Sometimes this perception is wrong and there are always things that can be done, but that doesn't mean you can always "do something" to make your life less stressful by solving the sources of stress.
Actually my first thought upon reading the summary was, that people who have enough free time and live somewhere with access to forests are probably going to have lower blood pressure and many other better health attributes than the norm, regardless of whether or not they actually go walking regularly.
Unfortunately I'm with the security people on this. Disclosure of vulnerabilities is the only way to get them fixed. On top of that, how does a "security researcher" validate their claims of finding bugs if they don't release them?
This all depends upon the company. Microsoft has no one but themselves to blame when researchers don't bother notifying them or giving them a reasonable window to fix it. Other vendors have been much better about fixing things in a timely manner. Apple (for example) goes so far as to provide credit for vulnerability discovery in all their security fixes and has been fairly responsive to the cases I knew about firsthand.
I suggest reading This Page about bulding homes out of shipping containers. Also, be really, really careful if you're going to bury anything, with regard to both corrosion and the amount of pressure that gets exerted on the sides of it, which is usually greatly underestimated.
If its just look and feel then yes that is an issue but one that is easily overcome. I don't expect them to rewrite the UI to please an audience that will just look for reasons why Apple's Safari is better anyway TBH.
Apple's Safari has the home court advantage, but there is lots of room for other players. Firefox has significant share on OS X. The idea that no matter how much work is done, Mac users won't use opera seems more of an excuse to me than anything. I try every major new version, then abandon it and move on because it doesn't support the native features of the OS upon which I rely.
If its just look and feel then yes that is an issue but one that is easily overcome. I don't expect them to rewrite the UI to please an audience that will just look for reasons why Apple's Safari is better anyway TBH.
I think your opinion here is just as wrong. There's plenty of money to go around for third party developers who actually write software for the Wii platform. The Wii is not just like every other platform either in the control schemes or in the user base. Companies that write for that control scheme and for that audience do well. Not so much those who instead tryto revamp a game designed for a different control scheme and a different audience or who write a game using their many years of experience but without rethinking their development for the Wii.
If your mindset is that OS X and OS X users re just like Windows and Windows users, you aren't going to do so well. And if you don't put the resources in to do it right, you'll fail. The same goes for the Wii. People that fail can claim it is because of brand loyalty, but to me that just rings hollow; an excuse for failure not a reason.
It is a minority audience on Mac for anything without an Apple logo.
iWork has about 20% of the Office suite install base on OS X, compared to MS Office's 80%. Lightroom has double Aperture's share on OS X. Final Cut is at what, 50%? So I guess my question is, what the hell are you talking about? What software is Apple selling where they are driving out all the non-Apple competitors on OS X? Even at much lower price points, the majority of OS X users aren't picking Apple software over third party software. Your theory sort of falls down there, doesn't it?
So you're prepared to criticize Opera for their (allegedly) poor quality Mac port but aren't prepared to actually file a bug report or make any attempt to bring your dissatisfaction to their attention?
While the previous poster may not have filed a bug report, I certainly did, almost a decade ago now. I filed several in fact. But they haven't done anything about the subject, so yeah, when someone says Opera for the Mac is great, I bring up where it is deficient. Maybe some of the developers will notice, or at least people will begin to understand why it has such low install share on the Mac.
There are system mouse gestures? Since when? Do you mean multitouch gestures?
OS X supports system services which can be installed by themselves or be supplied by an application. There are two different services available for OS X that can be used in pretty much all applications that use the Cocoa APIs, but won't work in Opera. So while I can use gestures in Opera, I have to configure them independently of all my other mouse gestures, which rather sucks.
. As for all those other services, I don't need a grammar checker (generally...), there is a spell checker built-in to Opera (which, again, I don't need)
Maybe you don't like grammar checking, but it's nice to have the option. As for spell checking, it's a lot less useful when it hasn't been trained with all the words I've taught the native spell checker. I meant really, why would I want to have to teach it twice that MSDP isn't a misspelling, and do the same for every other word? Why for the love of buddha can't it simply use the native spell checker offered to all apps?
Opera can send you straight to MW.com for dictionary/thesaurus or Wikipedia for encyclopedia
Right, but it can't use the native dictionary/thesaurus already installed on my machine, and which also goes to wikipedia and online resources all at once. Why does it have to be different and not behave the same as all the other native apps that aren't badly ported?
and I don't know what "text manipulation" services you're talking about; the ones that show up in the services menu for me are the same that show up in Safari's services menu.
I take it you haven't installed any services that operate on text, like something to fix those terrible line endings left by notepad, or to replace smart quotes with straight ones, or to automatically change a URL into a proper bibliography citation? I use them heavily, but last check they still didn't work at all in Opera.
I'm sure better Mac OS X integration will come in time; it already looks like a native Mac app. More so than Firefox, at any rate.
I put in feature requests to fix the problem, wow, forever ago. It just doesn't seem to be a priority there. It is too bad because I do like it on Windows. It's about the same as Safari on Windows, just not there.
Plus it also has Inspect Element (like Chrome), mouse gestures (like the Firefox addons), and it looks good in Mac OS X and Windows (although not so much in Linux).
I really like Opera on Windows, but I find it dreadful on OS X. I like mouse gestures and use them regularly, but Opera only supports the mouse gestures built into Opera, not the system service ones that work in all my other apps. The same goes for the rest of the system services. No support for the native spellchecker or grammar checker or word statistics. No automatic language translation, dictionary/thesaurus lookup, or text manipulation services. If you give up all the cool OS supplied features of OS X, you might as well be on Windows. I always seems to me like a badly ported Windows app, which is too bad because it is a very nice Windows app.
I fail to see how it would be of any benefit to us for IBM to take that stance.
Regardless of if end users have to use a site, other vendors will, and that affects what browsers are in use at those other vendors. It also determines what Web development skills, developers, and tools benefit most moving forward. Companies being pressured to spend money and comply with standards or lose deals will suddenly care about standards, which means their Web developers will and their tool providers will. So now you have more Web development tools and developers who make standards compliant sites and that will almost certainly bleed over into other Web sites that average people do use.
I'm a strong supporter of web standards (a real one, unlike Steve).
Yeah, that will boost your credibility.
I hope this means that if IBM can't navigate a vendor's site with Firefox, they'll just look elsewhere.
The fact that a company employed wrong web designers/programmers doesn't mean it's not good in what *it* does (save if what they do are websites, of course).
That's completely true, but not really relevant. You see, doing business means being good at working with others. Standards are a big part of that. If you have to go out of your way to do business with someone, like if they refuse to be paid in US dollars and will only accept canned tuna fish as payment, well, they have to be a whole lot better for you to go out of your way. Normally, who cares? I mean really, if some company wants to make it hard to do business with them, well that sucks and we move on.
The difference here is "embrace, extend, extinguish". It was Microsoft's largely successful plan to break and fragment the Web itself to make it harder for companies to write cross platform solutions and to, in turn, use anything other than Windows. Because a monopolist specifically went out and leveraged their monopoly to encourage the bad behavior on the part of people who make Web sites, we all have a vested interest in correcting that market damage and allowing the state of the art to progress at a normal rate again. To continue with the analogy, imagine if the RIAA had required all purchases of music to be paid for with canned tuna fish for many years, then finally lost in court and now we're in the situation where many record stores don't even have cash registers, but just special canned tuna counting machines. A big player in the market encouraging a move back to normalcy, while the record stores still are being pressured to only take tuna fish, is then important to all of us.
Now I recognize my example was downright silly. That was by design. I'm trying to explain the concepts involved, divorced from any real situation so everyone can see why it is important in principal. Then, if necessary, we can have a discussion about how the principal applies in this case. This isn't about punishing companies with IE only Web sites. It's about pressuring them to correct our broken market. That they have to suffer for what has happened is just one more piece of damage to be laid at MS's feet.