I don't think it's awful. The original poster might but I don't really mind. A SCO story here and there to keep up with things isn't that unwelcome from my perspective. I can only imagine how many there are that are getting filtered off my home page.
Geez, how lazy are you people? Just check the box next to "Caldera."
That only gets some of the stories-- the ones that have Caldera as the main topic icon. This one had "the courts" as the main topic icon. I have Caldera turned off in my preferences but this story still showed up because of that. Oh well.
A car can have a consistent user interface because the functions that it performs are specific and limited. The same goes for cell phones and VCRs. That's also why cell phones, VCRs, and microwaves turn on instantly instead of having to boot up; Their functionality is usually fixed.
Computers, on the other hand, are multi-purpose machines that people want to use to process information in lots of different ways. How you want to process your information will determine what software you will run. Some people have simple courses of actions that they wish to perform and might use a program that does it all for them (say, a word processor).
Others might need more flexibility in how they deal with their data. The tools they use will be more specialized and there will be more of them. (say, Perl, unix cmd line tools, etc). They will prefer a literate interface where they can be more articulate in explaining to the computer exactly what it is that they want the computer to do for them.
GUIs don't map very well to the way that computers actually function.
GUIs map very well to how computers actually function, and that's one of the current problems with them. Example: If I drag a file from one folder to another on the same hard drive, it moves it. If I drag it from one folder to another folder that is on another hard drive or a network share, it copies it. Why isn't the UI consistent? Why must the user be exposed to the underlying physical storage structure to know if their file will be moved or copied?
I'd say instead that GUIs don't always map very well to the specific task or set of tasks that the user wants to accomplish.
Within 50 years, the average secretary will need to know how to program or will be unable to perform his or her job.
I can see that happening. In 50 years we're going to want/need to process data in all sorts of different ways that we can't think of now. I suspect that there will be better ways to give a set of instructions to a computer to accomplish a task than the current GUIs that we have now. Programming for the average Joe will probably be much simpler than writing a Perl script is today while still having as much power, or more.
So for alll you who think flash is only used for annoying ads, well, why don't you switch to text based browsers instead?
Yet the number of annoying Flash ads outnumbers your useful Flash app a million to one.
Because ads are still made as.gif and.jeg as well.
The difference is that people can, and do, disable GIF animations. 99% of the flash ads out there I can't stop from playing because they disable the Play/Stop menu.
You must be a terribly, terribly disappointed person, if you're truly a Windows user. It was only two years ago that it was observed that in three different programs in the Windows Office suite, selecting a chunk of text and then hitting the backspace button DID THREE ENTIRELY DIFFERENT THINGS.
That's one program out of millions. Care to share the context of when the delete key was being pressed? It could be that was the best and expected action for the context in which it was used. An example would be that pressing the delete key on a cell in a spreadsheet deletes the cell rather than deleting the last character displayed in the cell.
So... is there some hypocracy there? I'm not sure I'd call it hypocracy, I think I'd call it *revenge*. Apple is tired of having their HIG ignored by masses of companies. They're trying to show Windows users what Mac programs are like, and at the same time poke a little fun.
Ahh, I see where you are coming from now. You feel that Apple's attitude is "we are right and we need to share it with everyone and convert them as they don't know that we have the better method." This would be analogous christians feeling that they must "save" everyone and show them that they know the only true way to accomplish something. I find this type of attitude uncomfortable because it doesn't take into account the fact that people may have made their choice based on things that are not immediately obvious or important to the person insisting upon "helping" the user.
Meanwhile, I look at it from a different perspective. I take the attitude that one should treat others as you would like them to treat you. If Apple and Apple users want people who port their software to the Mac to follow the Apple guidelines then it's equally important that they make the effort to do the same when porting to another operating system. Even Microsoft, who you seem focused on here, has followed Apple's guidelines when porting Office to the Mac. Cooperation works both ways.
Technically, you are correct, but they are also part of the brands just like the Apple logo that you speak of. The fact that those graphic elements were and are trademarked is neither here nor there.
Branding is what you do when you haven't got a better product than the other guy, but you want people to think you do.
Wrong. Branding is what you do when you take something, associate it with your or your company, and impress it upon the public consciousness. It doesn't have to be a real thing. It can just be an idea.
The AT&T logo is a good example of branding. Show the globe part of the logo to people and most of them will know it's AT&T. The same goes for the Coca-Cola "wave" and the Nike check mark. Those are brands.
The most important part of branding is consistency. When I look at the linux penguin I think of Linux. That doesn't happen when I look at other penguins. It's not going to happen for the averge person either and that's the person you want to target. For people to associate Linux with that penguin, they have to see that pengiun image and hear about Linux at the same time, over and over and over again. The same thing needs to happen with Mozilla. There needs to be an official logo and it needs to be used on everything. The average joe needs to be able to look at that logo and think Mozilla.
Yah patents! I love my X10 home automation stuff. Its useful. But equally, I think that a new and innovative idea about opening one window *underneath* another one is worth $4.3 million.
This has nothing to do with patents. The $4.3 million is in unpaid bills to their advertising agency.
Re:Upgrade to a modern distribution like debian
on
Post Cobalt Alternatives?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Does this include the MIPS based raqs like the Raq2 or just the Intel based ones?
Ahhh...And that is a big problem with Windows, it attaches the menus to the window. On Mac the menus have always been anchored to the top left of the screen so you can just throw your mouse to the upper left without even looking or thinking and you've got the menu.
Agreed. That aspect of the Mac is nice but that's only the menus. You still have the same problem with the objects in the windows. I expect every widget to be in the same place every time I use an app. And with a window maximized the window is immobile. I can't move it. I haven't found a way to do that on the Mac.
the racks are all bolted to the wals suck that a little shake up doesn't turn into a shake down.
Although bolting the racks to the wall or floor will prevent them from falling over, it'll transfer the shock of any movement of the building right into the rack and your equipment. You should look at installing some form of isolation platform instead.
I'm a PC user, but one thing I've never been able to figure out about most PC users is this: WHY do so many people run all their apps full-screen?
I can't tell you why other people run maximized all the time but I can tell you why I do it.
I only use one application at a time. I may have several applications open but at any given time I'm only using one of them. If I'm in XEmacs then I'm not using Mozilla. Therefore I don't want any part of Mozilla or any other application on my screen. I want as much of my screen as possible devoted to the application at hand. Most programs will let me take advantage of that real estate. In XEmacs I can split the window every which way. With Mozilla I can have my bookmarks be available to the left of my browser pane. I also have NewsMonster open between my bookmarks and my browsing pane. All of this takes room on the screen. Maximizing ensures that I'm using as much of it as reasonably possible.
Another reason is that I prefer to find things in the same place every time. If windows are maximized then the buttons, widgets, text fields, etc are all in the same place every time I use an application. With a bunch of unmaximized windows I have to expend more energy to think about where something is that I want to click on.
The last reason is that I feel that the window manager should manage my windows. The concept of "screens" on the Amiga was the ideal environment for me. MS Windows' maximize function gives me the closest thing to that which I can find. The Mac doesn't even come close to working the way I want.
It totally defeats the purpose of a windowed OS.
What alternative is there? The only things I can find are Ratpoison and Ion and those are only for X11. Besides, I don't really like the concept of "windows" that overlap and I have to move out of the way. It's busy and cluttered. It doesn't work well for me.
So anyway, that's why I do it. I'm most comfortable and productive when I work with everything maximized.
I believe that about as much as a politician's campaign promises. There's no guarantee that three years from now that promise will be kept. They could yank that web page and pretend it never existed.
I don't make purchasing decisions based on vapourware and promises. I make them based upon the fact of what I get for my money *today*.
So for $30 does it have a plugin for PowerPoint that will send realtime slide change information to the encoding server wich will encode the slide change information which I can then pull out of the stream on the client computer using Javascript to display the next slide (which is a PNG) in an iframe?
Even if it did, my company is standardized on Windows Media Services so quicktime doesn't help me solve my problem.
You're right. What was I thinking? We should be reactive not proactive. Let's wait until something becomes a big problem before we try to prevent it from becoming an issue.
While we're at it let's just toss those letters of objection about European software patents and wait until we actually have software patents that are causing problems. No need to chase non-existant "what if" scenarios.
This is bigger than Adobe. What happens when the smaller vendors start using product activation and aren't so generous? What happens when those small vendors go out of business and you're left with useless software? We need to fight this now before the smaller software companies see the larger software companies doing it and jump on the bandwagon.
[I originally posted this on a digital video forum so I'm reposting it here on slashdot]
I have a problem with product activation because it puts too much control into the software publisher's hands over how I use the software I've paid for. There are a lot of legitimate reasons to need to reactivate. I want to plan my software and hardware upgrades according to *my* schedule, not some vendor's. Fortunately, some companies are already learning hard lessons about product activation. Check out this story on Intuit: http://money.cnn.com/2003/05/19/technology/techinv estor/hellweg/
The company I work for bought a program called Stream Anywhere from Sonic Foundry a while back. It's great. We use it on every streaming media production that comes out of our video edit suite. But Sonic Foundry doesn't sell it anymore and they were just bought by Sony. Will Sony issue me a new activation code in the future if/when I move to a new computer? Will they even keep the key-generator around for an end-of-life product? What if I upgrade my computer in two years and I need to reactivate but they can't or won't give me a code?
We also spent $6,000 on a product to let us sync PowerPoint slides to live streaming video. When you install it and run it for the first time, it wants to connect over the internet to register. When we installed it on a different machine that we bought just for this purpose, I had to call them and talk them into letting me activate it again. This isn't an activation code -- it actually talks to their servers to activate.
What do I do if this small vendor goes out of business and I have to reinstall Windows for whatever reason? Am I just SOL? I wouldn't be able to reactivate even on the same machine because of the method they use. This isn't as much an issue with someone big like Microsoft or Adobe, but smaller companies usually follow ideas of the larger companies. I could see in a few years where everything from big commercial apps down to small shareware programs require activation.
Even with a big vendor, what's going to happen when they end-of-life the product? Will I still be able to reactivate PhotoShop CS or Windows XP several years down the road when there's a newer verison out? Or will they refuse to reactivate it and tell me I have to purchase a copy of whatever newer program they are currently selling? I wouldn't be surprised if it was the later. They have everything to gain yet the customer stands only to lose.
Anyway, for what it's worth, I'm writing to Abode to let them know I don't like it and won't purchase any of their products that use product activation. Most importantly, I'm going to vote with my wallet (and my company's wallet where applicable).
I've never had that problem with Resin before and I've been using it for over two years. Then again, I have enough self control not to upgrade ever time a minor release comes out.
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What about people who are blind or visually impared? Does your implementation take that into account?
I don't think it's awful. The original poster might but I don't really mind. A SCO story here and there to keep up with things isn't that unwelcome from my perspective. I can only imagine how many there are that are getting filtered off my home page.
A car can have a consistent user interface because the functions that it performs are specific and limited. The same goes for cell phones and VCRs. That's also why cell phones, VCRs, and microwaves turn on instantly instead of having to boot up; Their functionality is usually fixed.
Computers, on the other hand, are multi-purpose machines that people want to use to process information in lots of different ways. How you want to process your information will determine what software you will run. Some people have simple courses of actions that they wish to perform and might use a program that does it all for them (say, a word processor).
Others might need more flexibility in how they deal with their data. The tools they use will be more specialized and there will be more of them. (say, Perl, unix cmd line tools, etc). They will prefer a literate interface where they can be more articulate in explaining to the computer exactly what it is that they want the computer to do for them.
GUIs map very well to how computers actually function, and that's one of the current problems with them. Example: If I drag a file from one folder to another on the same hard drive, it moves it. If I drag it from one folder to another folder that is on another hard drive or a network share, it copies it. Why isn't the UI consistent? Why must the user be exposed to the underlying physical storage structure to know if their file will be moved or copied?I'd say instead that GUIs don't always map very well to the specific task or set of tasks that the user wants to accomplish.
I can see that happening. In 50 years we're going to want/need to process data in all sorts of different ways that we can't think of now. I suspect that there will be better ways to give a set of instructions to a computer to accomplish a task than the current GUIs that we have now. Programming for the average Joe will probably be much simpler than writing a Perl script is today while still having as much power, or more.I never said Flash is bad.
Meanwhile, I look at it from a different perspective. I take the attitude that one should treat others as you would like them to treat you. If Apple and Apple users want people who port their software to the Mac to follow the Apple guidelines then it's equally important that they make the effort to do the same when porting to another operating system. Even Microsoft, who you seem focused on here, has followed Apple's guidelines when porting Office to the Mac. Cooperation works both ways.
Technically, you are correct, but they are also part of the brands just like the Apple logo that you speak of. The fact that those graphic elements were and are trademarked is neither here nor there.
The AT&T logo is a good example of branding. Show the globe part of the logo to people and most of them will know it's AT&T. The same goes for the Coca-Cola "wave" and the Nike check mark. Those are brands.
The most important part of branding is consistency. When I look at the linux penguin I think of Linux. That doesn't happen when I look at other penguins. It's not going to happen for the averge person either and that's the person you want to target. For people to associate Linux with that penguin, they have to see that pengiun image and hear about Linux at the same time, over and over and over again. The same thing needs to happen with Mozilla. There needs to be an official logo and it needs to be used on everything. The average joe needs to be able to look at that logo and think Mozilla.
Does this include the MIPS based raqs like the Raq2 or just the Intel based ones?
I can't recommend Gandi.net enough. About $12/year for a domain and their service is top notch.
Although bolting the racks to the wall or floor will prevent them from falling over, it'll transfer the shock of any movement of the building right into the rack and your equipment. You should look at installing some form of isolation platform instead.
I only use one application at a time. I may have several applications open but at any given time I'm only using one of them. If I'm in XEmacs then I'm not using Mozilla. Therefore I don't want any part of Mozilla or any other application on my screen. I want as much of my screen as possible devoted to the application at hand. Most programs will let me take advantage of that real estate. In XEmacs I can split the window every which way. With Mozilla I can have my bookmarks be available to the left of my browser pane. I also have NewsMonster open between my bookmarks and my browsing pane. All of this takes room on the screen. Maximizing ensures that I'm using as much of it as reasonably possible.
Another reason is that I prefer to find things in the same place every time. If windows are maximized then the buttons, widgets, text fields, etc are all in the same place every time I use an application. With a bunch of unmaximized windows I have to expend more energy to think about where something is that I want to click on.
The last reason is that I feel that the window manager should manage my windows. The concept of "screens" on the Amiga was the ideal environment for me. MS Windows' maximize function gives me the closest thing to that which I can find. The Mac doesn't even come close to working the way I want.
What alternative is there? The only things I can find are Ratpoison and Ion and those are only for X11. Besides, I don't really like the concept of "windows" that overlap and I have to move out of the way. It's busy and cluttered. It doesn't work well for me.So anyway, that's why I do it. I'm most comfortable and productive when I work with everything maximized.
I don't make purchasing decisions based on vapourware and promises. I make them based upon the fact of what I get for my money *today*.
Even if it did, my company is standardized on Windows Media Services so quicktime doesn't help me solve my problem.
While we're at it let's just toss those letters of objection about European software patents and wait until we actually have software patents that are causing problems. No need to chase non-existant "what if" scenarios.
This is bigger than Adobe. What happens when the smaller vendors start using product activation and aren't so generous? What happens when those small vendors go out of business and you're left with useless software? We need to fight this now before the smaller software companies see the larger software companies doing it and jump on the bandwagon.
I have a problem with product activation because it puts too much control into the software publisher's hands over how I use the software I've paid for. There are a lot of legitimate reasons to need to reactivate. I want to plan my software and hardware upgrades according to *my* schedule, not some vendor's. Fortunately, some companies are already learning hard lessons about product activation. Check out this story on Intuit: http://money.cnn.com/2003/05/19/technology/techinv estor/hellweg/
The company I work for bought a program called Stream Anywhere from Sonic Foundry a while back. It's great. We use it on every streaming media production that comes out of our video edit suite. But Sonic Foundry doesn't sell it anymore and they were just bought by Sony. Will Sony issue me a new activation code in the future if/when I move to a new computer? Will they even keep the key-generator around for an end-of-life product? What if I upgrade my computer in two years and I need to reactivate but they can't or won't give me a code?
We also spent $6,000 on a product to let us sync PowerPoint slides to live streaming video. When you install it and run it for the first time, it wants to connect over the internet to register. When we installed it on a different machine that we bought just for this purpose, I had to call them and talk them into letting me activate it again. This isn't an activation code -- it actually talks to their servers to activate.
What do I do if this small vendor goes out of business and I have to reinstall Windows for whatever reason? Am I just SOL? I wouldn't be able to reactivate even on the same machine because of the method they use. This isn't as much an issue with someone big like Microsoft or Adobe, but smaller companies usually follow ideas of the larger companies. I could see in a few years where everything from big commercial apps down to small shareware programs require activation.
Even with a big vendor, what's going to happen when they end-of-life the product? Will I still be able to reactivate PhotoShop CS or Windows XP several years down the road when there's a newer verison out? Or will they refuse to reactivate it and tell me I have to purchase a copy of whatever newer program they are currently selling? I wouldn't be surprised if it was the later. They have everything to gain yet the customer stands only to lose.
Anyway, for what it's worth, I'm writing to Abode to let them know I don't like it and won't purchase any of their products that use product activation. Most importantly, I'm going to vote with my wallet (and my company's wallet where applicable).
I've never had that problem with Resin before and I've been using it for over two years. Then again, I have enough self control not to upgrade ever time a minor release comes out.