You install it, there's no apps (or crap ones - compare IE to Firefox or Outlook Express to Evolution), or you pay lots of money to get them.
Of course, if Microsoft included a whole bunch of free programs with Windows, you guys would all bitch about how they're using monopoly tactics to crush competition in the (insert software genre) industry.
I think what he's saying is that it would be a lot more convenient to just tell the computer, software-wise, to use a Dvorak lay-out (easily done in a few clicks on Windows and Mac OS, i don't know about Linux) than it would be to carry around an actual, physical Dvorak keyboard.
Really. Opera's default interface has seven buttons on the address bar. Firefox has six. On the other hand, Opera shows six menus by default, while Firefox shows seven.
Yeah, they fixed it in the new one. It still looks dopey to me because of the theme, but whatever.
In other words, all browsers have too many buttons according to you.
All browsers with mouse gestures do. You didn't think i was speaking in objective terms, anyway, did you?
Not enough is disabled by default. Opera up until version 8 had THE SINGLE MOST RIDICULOUS DEFAULT INTERFACE OF ALL TIME. They managed to add pretty much all 6000 buttons and tool bars that come with the browser to the default configuration for you, so you could go back and remove all the stupid ones. (Whereas one of the few good things about Firetruck is that its default configuration is just back, forward, stop, refresh, address bar, search, and that's all. Very easy, especially for someone switching from Internet Explorer.) They fixed that sort of with version 8 (now there are only like 2000 buttons), but i still disable pretty much everything but the tab bar and the address bar.
And i'm pretty sure you still have to disable mail and IRC if you don't want Opera to try to get you to open links up in the browser (unless you have some other default program set to open it that Opera can see).
And... i don't have any words to eat. I like Opera.
That's what i base everything that Opera does on, basically. Whether or not it's still smaller than Firefox and whether or not you can still disable all the junk if you don't want it.
I'm a huge Opera fan, but when i read that it was going to be getting a BT client, i kinda thought, OK, you're starting to cross a line here, guys.... I honestly don't think i'll ever use it, just like i won't ever use the IRC thing or the mail thing or the RSS thing or the notes thing.
BUT... as long as it's still just as small and fast and as long as i can still disable it if i don't want it... good enough for me.:shrug:
I'm not a logician, so all i know about this is what i've read on the Internet, but there are ways that you're supposed to 'logically' conclude the existence of God. For example (i got this from Wikipedia):
All things in nature are caused.
Nothing in nature can cause itself.
Therefore, everything that is caused is caused by something other than itself.
A causal chain cannot stretch infinitely backward in time.
If the causal chain cannot stretch infinitely backward in time, there must be a first cause.
The word God means uncaused first cause.
Therefore, God exists.
Not that i necessarily believe in that, but it's not all just completely ignorant faith.
As i recall, something like that did happen before. Prior to the discovery of Pluto, one of the astrological signs was 'in the domain of'* one of the inner planets. After Pluto was discovered, that sign was moved from that other planet and became 'in the domain of' Pluto... which makes you wonder how anyone could possibly put any stock into the practice at all.
* I don't know the actual term for this, since i don't follow astrology, but it's something like that.
Konfabulator -- you'll remember that that's the program that everybody cried bloody murder over when Apple announced Dashboard, because it's pretty much the same thing -- allows you to run widgets. It's been available for Windows since 2004. It does all the same basic things that Dashboard does -- calculator, calendar, world clock, search boxes, weather, Winamp/iTunes control. They look and function almost exactly the same.
Based on the idea of Konfabulator is a newer program called Kapsules, which works the same way, with the major difference being that instead of just writing widgets in JavaScript (which is how you do it in Dashboard and Konfabulator), you can write Kapsules widgets in any language that works with Windows Scripting Host (PHP, VBScript, Perl, whatever you want).
Before Kapsules and before Konfabulator was ported to Windows, there was also AveDesk, which does sort of the same thing (well, it can do the same thing, although i don't think most people use it for the stereotypical widgets you see in Dashboard and Konfabulator; they usually use it for stuff like 'emulating' OS X-style desk-top icons).
Before AveDesk, there was Samurize. Originally it was intended to be just another system-monitoring application (sort of like CoolMon, but a little fancier), but later versions get pretty advanced, and they let you create, or use pre-made, widgets using VBScript. Same thing again -- they let you control Winamp/iTunes, check TV Guide listings, check weather, and so forth, just like Dashboard.
Before AveDesk, there was DesktopX, which is a Stardock program released in 2000, that, yet again, does exactly the same thing as Dashboard and Konfabulator. Clocks and calendars and things like that.
In any case, most of that stuff is just FYI. The point is that all of these things work exactly the same as Dashboard. The singular difference is that the Windows ones aren't tied in to the operating system. But... that really makes little difference. I think the only widget Apple has released where that makes any difference at all is the address-book one; all of the other ones are basic generic stuff like calculators and world clocks that could be written regardless of how close the engine works with the operating system. And even then, maybe you could work out some kind of address-book tie-in on Windows, i don't know. (I've never used the address book, so i guess it beats me.)
Excuse me, but Widgets are easily the most retarded thing out of Apple since the Dock.
Not to mention, they're available for Windows, and if you count things like Samurize and DesktopX, they have been available for ages, much much longer than they have for OS X. Maybe they aren't as tied into the operating system as they can be in Dashboard, but they're pretty close.
It isn't even always that simple in humans, either. There are females with only one X chromosome. There are also males with two X chromosomes plus a Y chromosome, and males with two Y chromosomes plus an X chromosome. There are even males and females that are completely opposite of the way they should be (males with XX and females with XY). And then there are some that are even crazier, like with three or four or maybe even five chromosomes.
This is pretty rare (like 1% of all people, i think, and a lot of them get surgery or hormone treatment or something to 'counter-act' the obvious effects), but it still occurs.
You mispunctuated 'it's', you misspelt 'auropunctata', you forgot a comma before 'not', you used a comma to link two independent clauses, you forgot a comma before 'though', and you didn't end your second sentence (ellipses aren't end punctuation marks, although that's probably arguable). No chance in hell you would catch that, though.
('really screw someone over', lol. Because i'm going to crash some big company's Windows NT server by installing Sasser on it, or what?)
I'm quite aware of Windows's security short-comings (and if i wasn't, it's kind of mentioned in the article summary, so gg redundancy), in any case. The point is that the notion of 'Windows sucks so bad that not even having half a brain can save you' (which is what the person i replied to was apparently getting at) is retarded. It obviously is not the case, because me and all the other people i know who don't know a damned thing about security seem to get along just fine.
OK, first of all, i've been using Windows (without only, at most, a very basic cheap-o router to protect me) since i was... um... 9 years old, maybe? Probably earlier? Never once have i had a virus or been 'owned'. For some reason an uneducated teen-age prole like me manages to keep my Windows computer virus-free and running for months on end without a single problem, whereas all the king's fancy-pants Linux experts on the Internet can't get Windows to do anything. Way to go, guys.
But anyway, in response to your post, it's cool how you say that it has nothing to do with whether users can 'not do this or do that', and then you go on to list how Microsoft can correct it... and... it's... all stuff that, you know, users can do or not do.
I mean, if i wanted the network to be turned off when i installed Windows, i could do that. It's an option during set-up. (And even if it wasn't, i'm pretty sure i'm capable of pulling the cable out of the router.) And the other stuff you listed is also workable to anybody with a ninth-grade reading level as well.
So basically what you said in your second paragraph (which more or less breaks down to 'Windows sucks inherently, it doesn't matter how smart the user is') kinda contradicts your list (which more or less breaks down to 'Windows should cripple itself automatically, even though a smart user can do this herself'). Yeah, that makes total sense. WAY TO GO AGAIN, GUYS.
(b) You probably shouldn't have used a comma there (in your subject), if you wanted to be totally strict, although i'm sure we could cut you some slack since this is supposed to be conversational English.
(c) You probably shouldn't have used a comma in your post there, but we could probably cut you some slack on this one, also.
(d) No, he shouldn't have used colons. Maybe you meant commas, but that's arguable (you're free to use semicolons where you think that commas would be confusing).
I don't think the United States 'altered' British spelling in this case. The British used to use z instead of s in a lot of those words just like the Americans do now; they only changed it after the fact. (I think they actually borrowed it from French spelling after the American colonies were established.) In other words, the British altered their own spelling later on, and the Americans (and some of the British, too, like Oxford) just kept using the old ones.
I personally think using s instead of z is more consistent, anyway. There seem to be more words in American spelling that keep the s than there are words in British spelling that keep the z.
(I don't know a whole ton about French, so if i'm talking out of my ass here, somebody can feel free to call me on it, but this is the way i see it....)
French has letter combinations that may all be pronounced the same, but the letters individually have about eighty-bajillion different pronunciations. So does English, of course, but English is kind of a Frankenstein language, so at least it has an excuse.
So, while the French are completely hard-core about keeping their language intact, it doesn't seem to do much better than English in the phonetics department. Which is one of the minor reasons i'm not a big fan of it. (Well, it looks cool, in writing, but i'd never want to actually use it.)
Slashdot Mirror
You install it, there's no apps (or crap ones - compare IE to Firefox or Outlook Express to Evolution), or you pay lots of money to get them.
Of course, if Microsoft included a whole bunch of free programs with Windows, you guys would all bitch about how they're using monopoly tactics to crush competition in the (insert software genre) industry.
Google Maps, GMail and many Rails sites beg to differ.
How many hands did it take you to count those?
I didn't miss the part where you said you were going to reply to him anyway, though, ass hole.
I think what he's saying is that it would be a lot more convenient to just tell the computer, software-wise, to use a Dvorak lay-out (easily done in a few clicks on Windows and Mac OS, i don't know about Linux) than it would be to carry around an actual, physical Dvorak keyboard.
So how well do you speak monkey?
Assuming that any time someone states an opinion without adding 'imho' they mean it absolutely is shoddy thinking. ... IF YOU ASK ME.
But i apologise if i was overly impolite!
Really. Opera's default interface has seven buttons on the address bar. Firefox has six. On the other hand, Opera shows six menus by default, while Firefox shows seven.
Yeah, they fixed it in the new one. It still looks dopey to me because of the theme, but whatever.
In other words, all browsers have too many buttons according to you.
All browsers with mouse gestures do. You didn't think i was speaking in objective terms, anyway, did you?
Not enough is disabled by default. Opera up until version 8 had THE SINGLE MOST RIDICULOUS DEFAULT INTERFACE OF ALL TIME. They managed to add pretty much all 6000 buttons and tool bars that come with the browser to the default configuration for you, so you could go back and remove all the stupid ones. (Whereas one of the few good things about Firetruck is that its default configuration is just back, forward, stop, refresh, address bar, search, and that's all. Very easy, especially for someone switching from Internet Explorer.) They fixed that sort of with version 8 (now there are only like 2000 buttons), but i still disable pretty much everything but the tab bar and the address bar.
And i'm pretty sure you still have to disable mail and IRC if you don't want Opera to try to get you to open links up in the browser (unless you have some other default program set to open it that Opera can see).
And... i don't have any words to eat. I like Opera.
Um, i don't get it. What does that have to do with the client being part of the browser...?
That's what i base everything that Opera does on, basically. Whether or not it's still smaller than Firefox and whether or not you can still disable all the junk if you don't want it.
I'm a huge Opera fan, but when i read that it was going to be getting a BT client, i kinda thought, OK, you're starting to cross a line here, guys.... I honestly don't think i'll ever use it, just like i won't ever use the IRC thing or the mail thing or the RSS thing or the notes thing.
BUT... as long as it's still just as small and fast and as long as i can still disable it if i don't want it... good enough for me. :shrug:
I'm not a logician, so all i know about this is what i've read on the Internet, but there are ways that you're supposed to 'logically' conclude the existence of God. For example (i got this from Wikipedia):
Not that i necessarily believe in that, but it's not all just completely ignorant faith.
As i recall, something like that did happen before. Prior to the discovery of Pluto, one of the astrological signs was 'in the domain of'* one of the inner planets. After Pluto was discovered, that sign was moved from that other planet and became 'in the domain of' Pluto... which makes you wonder how anyone could possibly put any stock into the practice at all.
* I don't know the actual term for this, since i don't follow astrology, but it's something like that.
I'm glad you put that, 'cause you really had me going there for a second.
I guess i don't understand what you mean. It does run widgets, it just doesn't run ones written for Dashboard.
Konfabulator -- you'll remember that that's the program that everybody cried bloody murder over when Apple announced Dashboard, because it's pretty much the same thing -- allows you to run widgets. It's been available for Windows since 2004. It does all the same basic things that Dashboard does -- calculator, calendar, world clock, search boxes, weather, Winamp/iTunes control. They look and function almost exactly the same.
Based on the idea of Konfabulator is a newer program called Kapsules, which works the same way, with the major difference being that instead of just writing widgets in JavaScript (which is how you do it in Dashboard and Konfabulator), you can write Kapsules widgets in any language that works with Windows Scripting Host (PHP, VBScript, Perl, whatever you want).
Before Kapsules and before Konfabulator was ported to Windows, there was also AveDesk, which does sort of the same thing (well, it can do the same thing, although i don't think most people use it for the stereotypical widgets you see in Dashboard and Konfabulator; they usually use it for stuff like 'emulating' OS X-style desk-top icons).
Before AveDesk, there was Samurize. Originally it was intended to be just another system-monitoring application (sort of like CoolMon, but a little fancier), but later versions get pretty advanced, and they let you create, or use pre-made, widgets using VBScript. Same thing again -- they let you control Winamp/iTunes, check TV Guide listings, check weather, and so forth, just like Dashboard.
Before AveDesk, there was DesktopX, which is a Stardock program released in 2000, that, yet again, does exactly the same thing as Dashboard and Konfabulator. Clocks and calendars and things like that.
In any case, most of that stuff is just FYI. The point is that all of these things work exactly the same as Dashboard. The singular difference is that the Windows ones aren't tied in to the operating system. But... that really makes little difference. I think the only widget Apple has released where that makes any difference at all is the address-book one; all of the other ones are basic generic stuff like calculators and world clocks that could be written regardless of how close the engine works with the operating system. And even then, maybe you could work out some kind of address-book tie-in on Windows, i don't know. (I've never used the address book, so i guess it beats me.)
Excuse me, but Widgets are easily the most retarded thing out of Apple since the Dock.
Not to mention, they're available for Windows, and if you count things like Samurize and DesktopX, they have been available for ages, much much longer than they have for OS X. Maybe they aren't as tied into the operating system as they can be in Dashboard, but they're pretty close.
It isn't even always that simple in humans, either. There are females with only one X chromosome. There are also males with two X chromosomes plus a Y chromosome, and males with two Y chromosomes plus an X chromosome. There are even males and females that are completely opposite of the way they should be (males with XX and females with XY). And then there are some that are even crazier, like with three or four or maybe even five chromosomes.
This is pretty rare (like 1% of all people, i think, and a lot of them get surgery or hormone treatment or something to 'counter-act' the obvious effects), but it still occurs.
You mispunctuated 'it's', you misspelt 'auropunctata', you forgot a comma before 'not', you used a comma to link two independent clauses, you forgot a comma before 'though', and you didn't end your second sentence (ellipses aren't end punctuation marks, although that's probably arguable). No chance in hell you would catch that, though.
('really screw someone over', lol. Because i'm going to crash some big company's Windows NT server by installing Sasser on it, or what?)
I'm quite aware of Windows's security short-comings (and if i wasn't, it's kind of mentioned in the article summary, so gg redundancy), in any case. The point is that the notion of 'Windows sucks so bad that not even having half a brain can save you' (which is what the person i replied to was apparently getting at) is retarded. It obviously is not the case, because me and all the other people i know who don't know a damned thing about security seem to get along just fine.
OK, first of all, i've been using Windows (without only, at most, a very basic cheap-o router to protect me) since i was... um... 9 years old, maybe? Probably earlier? Never once have i had a virus or been 'owned'. For some reason an uneducated teen-age prole like me manages to keep my Windows computer virus-free and running for months on end without a single problem, whereas all the king's fancy-pants Linux experts on the Internet can't get Windows to do anything. Way to go, guys.
But anyway, in response to your post, it's cool how you say that it has nothing to do with whether users can 'not do this or do that', and then you go on to list how Microsoft can correct it... and... it's... all stuff that, you know, users can do or not do.
I mean, if i wanted the network to be turned off when i installed Windows, i could do that. It's an option during set-up. (And even if it wasn't, i'm pretty sure i'm capable of pulling the cable out of the router.) And the other stuff you listed is also workable to anybody with a ninth-grade reading level as well.
So basically what you said in your second paragraph (which more or less breaks down to 'Windows sucks inherently, it doesn't matter how smart the user is') kinda contradicts your list (which more or less breaks down to 'Windows should cripple itself automatically, even though a smart user can do this herself'). Yeah, that makes total sense. WAY TO GO AGAIN, GUYS.
(a) 'English' is a proper noun.
(b) You probably shouldn't have used a comma there (in your subject), if you wanted to be totally strict, although i'm sure we could cut you some slack since this is supposed to be conversational English.
(c) You probably shouldn't have used a comma in your post there, but we could probably cut you some slack on this one, also.
(d) No, he shouldn't have used colons. Maybe you meant commas, but that's arguable (you're free to use semicolons where you think that commas would be confusing).
I'm pretty sure English is the only language that has the plural of 'tooth' as 'teeth'... for fairly obvious reasons.
I don't think the United States 'altered' British spelling in this case. The British used to use z instead of s in a lot of those words just like the Americans do now; they only changed it after the fact. (I think they actually borrowed it from French spelling after the American colonies were established.) In other words, the British altered their own spelling later on, and the Americans (and some of the British, too, like Oxford) just kept using the old ones.
I personally think using s instead of z is more consistent, anyway. There seem to be more words in American spelling that keep the s than there are words in British spelling that keep the z.
(I don't know a whole ton about French, so if i'm talking out of my ass here, somebody can feel free to call me on it, but this is the way i see it....)
French has letter combinations that may all be pronounced the same, but the letters individually have about eighty-bajillion different pronunciations. So does English, of course, but English is kind of a Frankenstein language, so at least it has an excuse.
So, while the French are completely hard-core about keeping their language intact, it doesn't seem to do much better than English in the phonetics department. Which is one of the minor reasons i'm not a big fan of it. (Well, it looks cool, in writing, but i'd never want to actually use it.)
Uh. Yeah. That's... kinda where i was going with that comment.