As for the language barrier. before bablefish, people did things like ask someone who knew, or heaven forbid, tried learning themselves. Which is exactly where your problem starts. Americans are famous for being uni-lingual, and that's not because they are dumb but because the vast majority don't care enough about anything outside their borders to learn a foreign language.
Makes no sense to me. A director of science can't say what all scientists agree about - that ID is scientific nonsense (or, more precisely, not science at all).
There are things where an agency that has "science" in its name does not "need to" or even should be "neutral".
Yeah, but that can really make it hard to complete projects. You know what? That's true. I'm much better at starting projects than at completing them. At work, that means I build the prototypes in record time and then hand them off to external contractors to put the finishing touches in. You've got to cover your weaknesses.:-)
Challenges are energizing rather than intimidating offering opportunities to learn. That, for all I know, is the crucial point. All the unusually intelligent people I know (myself included) see the challenge as the interesting part, and the "victory" when you've overcome it much less so, in fact "winning" is the boring part.
Most of the more down-to-earth people I know see it exactly the other way around: The struggle is what they hate, the kill is what gives them satisfaction.
There'd have to be support to cover the language barrier, but where there's a will, there's a way*. There is also a cultural barrier that is vastly underestimated. Do you really think a starving farmer from somewhere in Iraq has even a common ground for a conversation with a fat redneck senator? Or a wallstreet broker? Or even a WalMart cleaner? Their worlds are so different that finding even something where they can relate would be a challenge.
and that's much better than the jungle we had back then. That is debateable.
Many of the great things of today would not have come to pass if it hadn't been for the "jungle" to weed the good from the bad. Evolution needs choice and alternative routes. "back then" we not only had a "jungle", we also made massive advances in all areas. Now look at windos and tell me which really evolutionary stop forward has it made since 95? I don't mean things it does better now or other minor improvements - tell me where it has fundamentally improved in 12 years, before you complain that the "jungle" was so awful.
We will know that there is competition in the marketplace when:
a) your computer doesn't come with an OS/browser pre-loaded or b) you can choose which one when you buy it and you actually have a number of real choices
Violent games might increase the risk of violence.
That is two layers of probability inbetween. If we weren't all hyped up with potential dangers (terrorism! look! terrorists everywhere!), we'd probably notice...
While I understand the general objection to the word "Start" being chosen for the button label, I hardly think it's a deal breaker when it comes to the issue of the task bar or the menus in it. Personally, I see the logic in it -- it's the place you can always go to (start from) to perform most any action. They should have labeled it "Everything", then at least it would've been more or less correct. But some other comment already made the point: That exactly is why it's a fuckup.
Not sure if it is or not, but I would imagine this would be covered by the accessibility setup or skins. In other words, it's configurable. Which is the beginning, not the end of the problem. The exact kind of people I mentioned as examples who need this changed are the last people who are able to mess with some well-hidden possibility of configuration.
It's up to you how you use it. Not quite. You describe it correctly, and stop just short of calling the problem out: It's unuseable in the default state and you have to put additional work into getting it running. Would you buy a car that you have to assemble first? Why then, do you accept that in an OS?
I myself use it in its default position, but I've also seen plenty of people put it where-ever and they don't seem to have a problem with it. Just try it, and you'll see what I mean. Drag it to the right-hand of the screen and scream.:-)
But seriously, you can resize the taskbar by dragging too. Yes, I spoke hastily. You can resize the space the taskbar takes up. Resizing the dock, however, means scaling, including the icons. In the context I was speaking, it should have been clear that is what's important (e.g. for elderly people, icon size matters, not how much empty space you can add beneath them). When you drag the taskbar, no icon is scaled. Not even the "Start" button. Not the clock, well actually nothing at all. You just add some empty space that can be used for running programs. It's pretty much a useless feature, a perfect example for my initial comment that MS copies all the time, but never understands and thus copies badly.
I'm not clear on this. Maybe it's the longtime Windows user in me talking, but what does the dock give you that the taskbar doesn't? I can make the taskbar disappear when not in use. It can group windows of the same app under one item. You can put buttons on it for single-click launch functionality. What am I missing? I'm sure people who work professionally in the field of HCI have ripped the taskbar apart much better than I can, but here's a short summary of my personal grieve with it:
The "Start" button, the most stupid invention in HCI ever, maybe short of MS Bob, but I'm not sure. A randomized menu of several layers depth where starting an application becomes a game of hide and seek, and where contrary to its title it contains lots of things that have nothing to do with "Start". Wrong metaphor, bad implementation, bad useability, way too many implicit assumptions.
Size. Have you ever tried working with the tiny icons on a 1680x1050 screen or larger? Have you ever seen an elderly person or someone with motor problems struggle with it?
Mixture of metaphors. There is the abomination "Start", there are launch icons, there are running applications, there are services and whatever else wants to stuff an icon into that right-hand thingy, and there's a few minor things. Most of the crap is unnecessary (how often do you need the launch button of an application that is currently running? OS X way of using just one icon is much better).
No ability to stuff it somewhere else. Well, you can, strictly speaking, put the taskbar on the left or right hand side of the screen, but if you ever did you know that whoever added that feature didn't talk to the rest of the guys and pretty much nothing is designed for the taskbar being there.
Much harder to configure than the dock. In Leopard, for example, I can change the size of the dock with one click-and-drag, without opening any menus, system settings or even right-clicking.
It is also ugly. And I'm pretty sure I just scratched the surface.
I think he will go down on this. So do I. I'm fairly sure this is the kind of hearings that you don't even open unless you are fairly sure of the outcome already.
TFA clearly shows why MS and everyone of the same mindset will never copy Apple: They focus on the entirely wrong things.
Sure, Expose is nice, and the dock is better than the stupid taskbar (hey, what isn't?). But that isn't the point.
The really good things about OS X, that you can't emulate with a couple shareware tools, or choosing an OS X like skin/theme. What sold me on OS X is that things just work. It really is that simple. Plug in some USB device, it just works. No annoying "looky, hardware!" wizard. You need something, anything (text, picture, diagram) from one app in another - drag & drop. Just works. On windos, it sometimes does, sometimes doesn't and the rest of the time gives you something you didn't expect (like the URL of the picture, or weirdly formatted text). The list goes on pretty much endless, and it all boils down to the computer doing what you want and expect it to do, instead of being a fairly accurate simulation of a wild beast that needs taming before you can use it, and where you should still never let your guard down.
And that is the point, the nice GUI and useful additions are just icing on the cake.
Basically, sailors have been out there getting killed by giant waves for decades, but a bunch of scientists decreed that such waves could not exist, [...] I find it amazing that anyone would blindly trust an academic institution with any matter of policy, What's amazing about that? Mankind has been working that way for thousands of years, only worse. Millions upon millions of people have died because the church said diseases were a punishment from god and praying, not hygiene or medicine, was the proper way to do something about it. Same with almost everything else that kills people. As a species we've been living on the "someone important said it, so it must be true" meme for most of our existence, and are only very slowly struggling to free ourselves from it.
The simple answer is: It wouldn't have happened at all.
When is the last time that MS has really innovated anything, in the sense of either a) coming up with a unique and novel idea? b) refining a previously fringe thing (webmail) to a user-friendly, attractive offering?
No, seriously. I can't think of even a single example that wasn't invented elsewhere and then bought out, or outright copied. MS fanboys, enlighten me.
Now I really feel old. Anyone else here who remembers the times when nicknames were used to cover your real identity, instead of just being either a cooler name than your parents thought of or a necessary evil because "yourname@aol.com" was already taken?
Mod parent up. That's exactly what's going on. Right now the probably mentally unstable (and I actually do mean that in a medical sense, google a bit and you'll find many articles about the fact) minister Schäuble is trying to force through the absurd idea of "online computer searches", or in other words: Installing a trojan everywhere, in his ongoing crusade for pseudo-security.
This is just one more "we really need this, look how desperate we are" PR stunt.
Do you think the EU would allow for some European company to provide tools to "terrorists" without having eavesdropping ability? As a matter of fact, yes. Totalitarian police states fell out of favour here twice - once around 1945 and then again in the 90s. The remaining wannabe-dictators are right now importing as much as they can from the USA, but we're not quite there, yet. Especially regarding cryptography, Europe has always been more open than the US.
That doesn't mean I can guarantee there's no backdoor in Skype, but I wouldn't wager any high bets one way or the other.
You are falsely assuming that the police is some kind of super-intelligent spin-doctoring agency. It isn't. They've got their problems, blunders and idiots, just like everyone else. I'll follow Ockham's razor and say "if everything looks like some idiot opened his mouth instead of thinking a bit first, then very likely that's exactly what happened."
The encryption with Skype telephone software... creates grave difficulties for us... We can't decipher it. Yes, that's why they call it encryption, you know? That's the purpose of it. Because, you know, if you can decrypt it, so can every other clueless fool.
it all seems to be based on the flawed assumption that users always make the same response to all dialog boxes. Why would one assume this? Because, knowing users, for 99% of them this is a good assumption.
It isn't their fault, really. It's very simple psychology. They get thrown incomprehensible dialog boxes with warnings and more warnings and "are you sure?" in their face all the time, and for all they know, the only purpose this shit serves is interrupting their work.
As I've said many times: Confirmation and warning dialogs are a deeply flawed method that is fundamentally broken and is training the users in all the wrong reactions. That, essentially, is very close to the point TFA makes.
I don't understand why that's an issue. Because there could be more screen where the useless keyboard is, or the whole thing could be smaller. Either would be an advantage to, you know, it's primary purpose?
feels similar to a real book and let's you concentrate on the reading. Then why did they put a keyboard on it? I don't get it. I consider it totally stupid, and that alone is a reason for me to not consider buying it. I don't need a keyboard on a book, and it takes away precious screen real-estate.
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Makes no sense to me. A director of science can't say what all scientists agree about - that ID is scientific nonsense (or, more precisely, not science at all).
There are things where an agency that has "science" in its name does not "need to" or even should be "neutral".
If Bill would be hit on the head each time one of his prophecies was completelly off - he'd be long dead with a bashed-in skull.
Seriously, betting on the opposite of whatever he says has been a fairly profitable route for at least 10 years.
Most of the more down-to-earth people I know see it exactly the other way around: The struggle is what they hate, the kill is what gives them satisfaction.
Many of the great things of today would not have come to pass if it hadn't been for the "jungle" to weed the good from the bad. Evolution needs choice and alternative routes. "back then" we not only had a "jungle", we also made massive advances in all areas. Now look at windos and tell me which really evolutionary stop forward has it made since 95? I don't mean things it does better now or other minor improvements - tell me where it has fundamentally improved in 12 years, before you complain that the "jungle" was so awful.
Bullshit.
We will know that there is competition in the marketplace when:
a) your computer doesn't come with an OS/browser pre-loaded
or
b) you can choose which one when you buy it and you actually have a number of real choices
It really is that simple.
Wow, that's just awful. This confusion of different levels of abstraction, this mixing and comparing of entirely different things.
Smoking causes actual, constant, immediate damage.
Violent games might increase the risk of violence.
That is two layers of probability inbetween. If we weren't all hyped up with potential dangers (terrorism! look! terrorists everywhere!), we'd probably notice...
When you drag the taskbar, no icon is scaled. Not even the "Start" button. Not the clock, well actually nothing at all. You just add some empty space that can be used for running programs. It's pretty much a useless feature, a perfect example for my initial comment that MS copies all the time, but never understands and thus copies badly.
If by "works" you mean "drags the thing out endlessly and brings lots of many into the lawyers' pockets" then I have to agree.
It is also ugly. And I'm pretty sure I just scratched the surface.
He is Jack Thompson. What else do you need to say?
TFA clearly shows why MS and everyone of the same mindset will never copy Apple: They focus on the entirely wrong things.
Sure, Expose is nice, and the dock is better than the stupid taskbar (hey, what isn't?). But that isn't the point.
The really good things about OS X, that you can't emulate with a couple shareware tools, or choosing an OS X like skin/theme. What sold me on OS X is that things just work. It really is that simple. Plug in some USB device, it just works. No annoying "looky, hardware!" wizard. You need something, anything (text, picture, diagram) from one app in another - drag & drop. Just works. On windos, it sometimes does, sometimes doesn't and the rest of the time gives you something you didn't expect (like the URL of the picture, or weirdly formatted text).
The list goes on pretty much endless, and it all boils down to the computer doing what you want and expect it to do, instead of being a fairly accurate simulation of a wild beast that needs taming before you can use it, and where you should still never let your guard down.
And that is the point, the nice GUI and useful additions are just icing on the cake.
The simple answer is: It wouldn't have happened at all.
When is the last time that MS has really innovated anything, in the sense of either
a) coming up with a unique and novel idea?
b) refining a previously fringe thing (webmail) to a user-friendly, attractive offering?
No, seriously. I can't think of even a single example that wasn't invented elsewhere and then bought out, or outright copied. MS fanboys, enlighten me.
Now I really feel old. Anyone else here who remembers the times when nicknames were used to cover your real identity, instead of just being either a cooler name than your parents thought of or a necessary evil because "yourname@aol.com" was already taken?
Mod parent up. That's exactly what's going on. Right now the probably mentally unstable (and I actually do mean that in a medical sense, google a bit and you'll find many articles about the fact) minister Schäuble is trying to force through the absurd idea of "online computer searches", or in other words: Installing a trojan everywhere, in his ongoing crusade for pseudo-security.
This is just one more "we really need this, look how desperate we are" PR stunt.
That doesn't mean I can guarantee there's no backdoor in Skype, but I wouldn't wager any high bets one way or the other.
You are falsely assuming that the police is some kind of super-intelligent spin-doctoring agency. It isn't. They've got their problems, blunders and idiots, just like everyone else. I'll follow Ockham's razor and say "if everything looks like some idiot opened his mouth instead of thinking a bit first, then very likely that's exactly what happened."
It isn't their fault, really. It's very simple psychology. They get thrown incomprehensible dialog boxes with warnings and more warnings and "are you sure?" in their face all the time, and for all they know, the only purpose this shit serves is interrupting their work.
As I've said many times: Confirmation and warning dialogs are a deeply flawed method that is fundamentally broken and is training the users in all the wrong reactions. That, essentially, is very close to the point TFA makes.