So why don't people simply accept that legal will make stupid patent applications, and sales will lie about the product, and marketing will lie about the competition, and accounting will "spin" the financials? Why don't we simply accept these evils as necessary for doing business on a large scale, and not blame the company for them? If these are reliably the sources of evil in a company, why does it reflect badly on a company when those departments do evil things?
Doesn't it seem like when Apple produces a bad commercial, we should say "evil marketers!" instead of "evil company!"? It just seems unfair to blame the company unless they can somehow acquire a non-evil version of these departments.
I'm always confused by the way people claim Microsoft is an evil company. The leadership of Microsoft has never been evil. To the contrary, they do tremendous good for all sorts of charitable causes. It doesn't really seem that any "evil" layer exists as you travel down the chain. I can trace the org chart all the way from myself up to the top layers, and I can honestly say nobody I find anywhere in that chain is evil.
Where exactly does the evil come from? How do a group of people who are not evil get together and do something evil? Why is it that we can recognise everyone's intentions as being good and honest and pure outside of Microsoft, but then they come to work here and they're producing evil plots to rule the world?
I'm just fascinated by this whole thing. It reminds me of Klansmen; when a Klansman claims to hate "niggers", but then grudgingly admits he doesn't hate actual black people - claiming instead that they aren't *really* "niggers" - this is evidence that his worldview is fundamentally flawed, and the "nigger" he hates doesn't even really exist. It's a fictional creation serving only as a target for hatred. Is the anti-Microsoft opinion in the world similar? When does it go away? Will it take other anti-corporate sentiment with it?
That's cheating. Why not tesselate the sides of an icosahedron into fours?
Alternately, and for zero cost to most gamers, you could just use 1d8 and 1d10. Multiply the d8's value by ten and subtract the number on the d10. Or, for ease, just use them as digits but read the 8 as a 0 with a 00 result indicating 80.
I used to keep a small plastic disc in my dice bag as a d2, and a marble as a d1. I always wanted to get an actual d3 made - a triangular prism with rounded ends. And I never did manage to come up with a good d7 design.
A couple of good points upon which I wanted to expand, in the context of "PCs are not just Windows".
> people begin to accept that suckiness is > the way computers are supposed to be.
However, using something that sucks is a sign of expertise. Culturally, we associate "ugly and ineffective tool" with "brilliant and experienced user". We actively select for this in tech circles. I get a little flak from people because I don't use Linux on my desktop, but I still run several Linux boxes - I just run them entirely from shell windows over SSH. That way I can leave them sitting in the garage where they run cooler and the noise doesn't bother anyone; it sounds like an airplane hangar in there. The respect I would get for running Linux on my desktop is nothing compared to the respect I get when people see a ragtag collection of mismatched boxes in all sizes, most of them with partial or no outer casings, roaring like a racecar in my garage.
> The reason people "don't buy" Macs is the > same reason people "don't buy" BMW cars
There are plenty of people who could afford a BMW just fine, but don't buy one. It's not just because they can find something cheaper that meets their needs, but also because they can find something that meets needs the BMW can't. I like 1970s muscle cars. I don't want a BMW. I want a classic Dodge Charger with a big-ass Hemi and glass packs. I want the engine to roar like a pride of lions and the tires to scream like a banshee when I hit the accelerator. I can't get that from a BMW. Sure, on the average day, a BMW would probably be a more comfortable commute - but it's just the wrong attitude. A car should be scary.
Basically, I don't mind the PC/Apple commercials. They just market to someone else. They market to the whiny little pussy who plays the Mac. I know he's supposed to be cool and hip and approachable, but I just keep looking at him and thinking "is he supposed to be gay?" or "I could break him in half". I don't get offended about the PC guy, because that's not me. Sure, I wear a tie, I use a PC, I do a lot of businessy stuff. But that's not me. That's the people I used to work with.
I see these commercials as "don't be the PC guy, be the Mac guy". But I'm not the PC guy, and I don't want to be the Mac guy. I don't relate to these commercials. I don't see them as speaking to me at all.
I think there are certainly ways you Should Not use AJAX. There are strengths and weaknesses to the technology. AJAX works best when small parts of the screen change in response to user action. If large parts of the screen will change, just use a link. And if the screen needs to change constantly without user interaction, PLEASE don't do it with JavaScript! Write a control or something!
The big flaw is this stupid idea that we will find the One True Way that every application needs to work. I don't want to run Word or Excel over the internet, but I don't want my email stored locally on every machine I use. What's hard about that?
> I'd happily pay $750 to set up a full Windows > AD domain at home with Win2K3 + five Vista clients.
Any good Microsoft Software Advisor, such as myself, can handily point you at the Microsoft Partner Program - where just registering is enough to qualify you for the Action Pack subscription at about $700 annually. It includes Windows Server and *ten* Vista Business clients.
Of course, there's no money in it for *us*, so most won't bother. But maybe you should go check it out.
> What if the item has become less valuable for > the bidder?
Then the bidder probably shouldn't have already made a binding contract with the seller.
It's a life lesson. Just like the first time you try to type `rm -rF *.o` and type `rm -rF *>o` instead. It's not a failure of the system; it's a learning experience which teaches you "don't do that".
I'm of the opinion that most software patent applications are bogus. The problem is that if you don't get your bogus claim in before the other guy, you have to spend lots of money proving you didn't steal his bogus invention.
In reality, most software "inventions" aren't really patentable. Look at the BlueJ feature in question. How else could you implement it? What other format would be even remotely understandable? It's obvious; that's pretty much the only way you could do it. So much so, in fact, that if you did invent another way to do it - you would be filing TWO patents.
But that doesn't stop people! They patent obvious crap all the time! So patents aren't just filed when you invent something, but also when you write something you think someone else could and would patent. And since most patent filings are bogus... that means anyone who is working seriously in the software industry needs to file a lot of bogus patents.
What's not clear is where exactly the line is between a patent that's bogus by nature, and a patent that's only bogus in the way every software patent is bogus.
Bingo! IMO, eBay works perfectly; you go in and say "I will pay X amount for this". There are only two reasons you would change your mind and want to pay more.
1. The item actually becomes more valuable to you. (This incorporates all supply and demand metrics.)
2. You feel obligated to compete with other bidders.
Shill bidding leverages the stupidity of people who easily fall prey to motivation #2.
However, shill bidding does something else. Assume you place an item on eBay for $10 reserve, and the bidding rapidly goes to $100. You do a little research, and find the actual fair market value for this item is $500. A shill bid can effectively raise your reserve to $300, actually correcting your mistake during the auction. If nobody takes that bait, you keep the $500 item and pay the commission on $300.
Additionally, I may have a legitimate offer from someone local. Perhaps someone came by and saw the item on a shelf somewhere, and actually offered $300 for it. The $300 "shill" bid is then perfectly reasonable, because there is a bona fide offer for it.
These two instances are actual cases of motivation #1 on the part of the seller: the item actually becoming more valuable. It seems perfectly reasonable to me.
I apologise for the delay; we've had a busy week here in the lab, and I keep starting to reply, but then something comes up. (I hear something coming up now. I hope it doesn't end up blocking this reply, too.)
> you're still not convincing me.
That's not my job. If PowerPoint isn't the right tool for you, I'd prefer you get and use the right tool. It's irresponsible to offer someone a screwdriver for driving nails.
> On the zoom, I've already told you that you > don't allow the slides to zoom up in size > till you're able to read the text
In the slide sorter, the zoom function is supposed to let you tell the slides apart. If you have to read the text to tell your slides apart, you have a problem: your slides look too similar. If you can't read the text in the sorter, you have another problem: your text is too small. If you can't make the text larger, you have still another problem: there is too much text.
None of these problems can be solved by anyone except you. The problem is not PowerPoint, it's your presentation design. You need to take a class, or read a book, or at least do some web searches.
> you also still haven't said how I'm supposed > to know what the "100%" size refers to.
Theoretically, you're familiar with the "zoom" function in Office 2003, which accepts settings of 33%, 50%, 66%, and 100% for the slide sorter. The sizes in Office 2007 are the same, but you have a slider that goes all the way from 10% to 100%. So if you want to view your slides at 26%, you can do that.
> On copying and pasting, I'm sorry but your > answer is just silly. If the clipboard is > clever enough...
Stop right there. You don't understand what I've told you.
The clipboard doesn't convert anything. The application where you COPY does the converting. Then it puts the converted data on the clipboard. When you paste, the application where you do the pasting just goes to the clipboard and gets what's there. There's literally nothing that PowerPoint or the clipboard can do about what gets copied out of the first application.
There are several things the application can do to make things work better; some simple, like asking you exactly what you want to copy, and some complex - like providing multiple data formats in priority order. But if you go to whomever made this application and tell them what's happening, they'll probably stare at you for a moment and ask why you don't just use the insert function. After all, you know that this doesn't do what you want; you know that the insert function does do what you want; it's not exactly a MENSA brainteaser.
Fundamentally, you are doing the wrong thing when you know what the right thing is. I don't believe it's abnormal to think you should just do the right thing in the first place.
> You can swap two objects horizontally or > vertically, using two different buttons.
How amusing; I expected your homegrown feature to be better than it actually is, and I still thought it was inadequate.
> the top edge of the top object and the > bottom edge of the bottom object are the > reference points for vertical swaps
What if they're not collinear in the selected plane? Suppose I have a wide image X positioned over a narrow image Y, both centered on the slide. If I swap these horizontally, doesn't X stay where it is and Y move? After all, X controls both the leftmost AND rightmost edges.
And which direction does Y move? Does it depend on which one I selected first? If you try it on your function, I'll bet it does. I'll bet that if you select X first, Y moves left, but if you select Y first it moves right.
> your questions [...] don't matter, because > there's never a situation in which you'd do this
If the two objects you swap are the same size, the function you're describing works just fine. The problem is that the objects might NOT be the same size. In fact, they will *usually* not be the same size.
> How about giving me a substantive answer > as to why what I want to do, which is 60% > done by the current functionality already, > would be either a bad or impossible thing > for you to provide?
Because that's not the right question. The question is why the other 40% of this functionality is a good and useful thing for us to provide. The zoom slider already lets you make the slides bigger so you can read the text, and smaller so you can fit more on the screen. That's what you need to do, right? Why should a developer spend more time on this feature instead of something else?
> all I want to be able to do is click on > a picture, hit ctrl-c and hit ctrl-v to > paste into ppt without it becoming huge
Then you need to understand how the clipboard works. The clipboard accepts data from an application, then hands that data to another application. If the application that puts data on the clipboard uses a stupid format, you will get that same stupid format when you paste the data into another application.
The problem here is that when you copy, your image is being converted from a nice compact JPEG into a massive bloated BMP. The conversion is done by the application where you copy the image. The massive bloated image isn't PowerPoint's fault, because PowerPoint is just taking what it got from the clipboard, which in turn is just passing along what it got from the other application.
The other application is doing this because multiple generations of lossy compression are degenerative, so we can't use lossy compression on the clipboard. We have to use a lossless true-color format. That pretty much means BMP, TIFF, or PNG. PNG doesn't have as much support as BMP or TIFF, and since every Windows application is effectively required to support BMP, most applications don't choose TIFF (which can use a superior LZW compression algorithm but isn't universally supported). But BMP only supports RLE compression, which sucks rocks for photographic images and may actually produce an image larger than the uncompressed source.
Now, undoubtedly, you're sitting there thinking "he's pointing the finger at the other application" - but I'm not. The other application cannot select an appropriate file format and associated compression scheme without input from the user, which is you. You need to identify what your image is and what compression scheme best suits it and what level of loss is acceptable and which file formats provide that. You do this through a nifty feature called "Save As" which produces a file. And THAT is the key to doing what you want.
The resulting file can be highlighted in the Explorer, where you can press Control-C to copy and then Control-V to paste into your presentation. When the clipboard contains a file object, PowerPoint quite properly performs an "Insert" on that file, which gives you the image without the attendant bloat you get from copying the data.
Alternately, you can simply drag the file from the Explorer into your presentation. And since the common file dialogs are, in fact, miniature Explorers... you can get to them from pretty much whatever application you happen to be using. You can also press the Windows logo key and E at the same time to open an Explorer window.
Or you can select "Insert" from PowerPoint. But the long and the short of it is: you have to insert the file. There are at least three ways to do that, and if you're really attached to Control-C and Control-V, there's a way to use them.
> You haven't shown why the solution to the > specific problem you saw with the "swap > objects" comand wasn't an answer
It's not an answer because it doesn't answer the whole question. Swap these two objects how? Should they remain within the same bounding box? Should they be swapped vertically? Horizontally? Both? Which one goes on top? Should they be resized? Which edge of which object is the reference point?
This is not an easy question. You think it's an easy question bec
> You've got to be kidding, right? Why wouldn't this > work like iPhoto
Just as an offhand guess, I'd say probably because it's *not* iPhoto. PowerPoint is not and never has been a way to organise and store photographs.
> Then make clipboard copy work as insert picture > behind the scenes
What's wrong with using insert picture? Pasting isn't what you want to do. Don't do it. Use insert picture, which IS what you want to do. We've already given you a command that does what you want. Why do you want to keep using the command that doesn't?
> You're seeing problems where none exist.
Actually, I'm seeing problems where you don't care, which is a slightly different issue. It's a myopic view of the system: what YOU do in YOUR job on a daily basis. But millions of people use PowerPoint, and they do thousands of different jobs in thousands of different ways. We have to think about all of them, not just you and people like you. I completely understand if you don't care about them and their jobs, but we don't get to do that.
> It sounds like you guys are thinking too hard and > thinking the wrong way. A colleague of mine wrote > an add-in that does the swap objects perfectly
You could make a lot of money selling a library of things like that. If all it takes is asking a few basic questions and writing some simple code, why aren't you selling that library?
I mean, perhaps I'm biased, but I tend to think the evidence indicates we know something about how to build software. If we haven't done something, there's generally a reason, and it's certainly not that we're all stupid.
> I wasn't around for the DOS to Windows 3.1 switch, but > it's pretty obvious that 3.1 was superior.
Hindsight is 20/20. I was very much opposed to the GUI revolution and fought valiantly on the side of the command line. In my opinion, no Windows release prior to XP was even close to the level of stability and reliability I personally wanted in my operating system.
> the average user wants to see some tanglible improvement > to the UI
Oh, we've made some. There are search boxes everywhere. At first, you barely notice them. Then you start looking for something and think "oh, heck, I might as well try this search box". And a week or two later, you go back to an XP machine and open the start menu, and you go "WTF, where's my search box?! I can't use this backwards technology!"
There's a bunch of other cool stuff, too. It won't do much for you on day one, but around day 100 you'll find you can't live without it. Mostly what you'll be doing on day one is complaining that everything's been moved and you don't know where it is.
> all the spyware, "windows rot", virus infections, > etc are a thing of the past
What really needs to happen for those to be things of the past is the users themselves have to appreciate the need for security, and do what needs to be done for reliable protection. We've made that a lot easier in Vista, but some people are truly dedicated to making bad decisions, and no matter how many advances we make in heuristic scanning... it's effectively impossible to distinguish between a program that is SUPPOSED to repartition your hard disk, and a program that just does it to make your life miserable.
Besides, if someone really wants to download and install the Gator toolbar or Bonzi Buddy, technically it's their computer and we have to let them do it. What kind of hellish situation would it be if you could only ever download and install programs previously approved by Microsoft? It would be like... like... I don't know, like an iPhone or something.
> Ultimately I think it indicates a larger > problem at Microsoft.
I work on Vista at Microsoft, and I'm confused.
For roughly a decade, we released an upgrade every year, much like you might expect of an auto manufacturer. These upgrades were criticised for not really being important, and introducing little more than compatibility issues. People wanted a bigger and better upgrade on a longer timeline, with due attention paid to security and compatibility.
So that's what we did. We constructed an internal culture and philosophy that emphasised security, compatibility, and reliability at every stage of the process. We have fundamentally changed the way we are going to design, build, test, and support the Windows operating system in the future. And for five years, we've told people about that. One Microsoft executive after another has said "we're changing our culture, and it's hard, and it's expensive, and it takes a long time, but it's ultimately going to make everything better".
And it is better. A lot better. It's just that a lot of what makes it better isn't in the operating system; it's here at Microsoft. You won't see it right now. You'll see it over the next ten years, when you're comparing the Win3 - XP history to the progress we make starting with Vista.
So why the criticism for releasing an operating system which, instead of being about new features and the gee-whiz factor, is primarily about security and compatibility and reliability? Isn't that what you wanted in the first place?
This is a question of companies and consumers. It is that simple. The companies don't know how to sustain their business model, so they're not trying - they're just scrambling madly to suck as much money out of it as they can before it collapses. In the long run, this money is just being stolen from the tail end of the same business, so it doesn't really matter. Long tail or short tail, the business still dies. Demand for an alternative rises steeply instead of slowly as the end nears, so the startup of the Next Big Thing makes a lot of money very quickly instead of ramping up slow and steady.
When you drag the government into it, YOU'RE complicating things. The government doesn't matter, because legislation is just another tactic being used by the media companies to prevent the death of their business. It's not the government's idea. It's just a trivial detail of *how* the companies are trying to inflate profits today at the expense of profits tomorrow.
In the end, the people who get those profits will probably invest them in the new business model that replaces them, once they know which one is going to "win". The revolution will happen, and we'll overthrow Bob with this new system... which will ultimately be run by Bob. The more things change, and all that.
> I would not characterize this as a > particularly 'good' thing.
In the long run it tends to be good, because market forces tend to balance things out before they do too much damage.
Don't get me wrong: predatory pricing does real damage to real people. But in general, this damage is limited by the seller's ability to control the market. The problem isn't the pricing, it's the control of the market. If we remove people's ability to control the market, which is what we've tried to do with antitrust laws, then we also drastically limit their ability to cause damage.
Unfortunately, control of the market is the entire purpose of intellectual property.
> DRM and the idea of Intellectual Property > are based on fearful assumptions
I don't think this is completely true. DRM is based on the idea that people do not value IP, and would prefer not to pay for it, which is the absolute fact. IP is based on the idea that if you have to work a traditional job, you don't have time to pursue artistic endeavors - and certainly not to the degree necessary for works of profound genius.
The fear we ought to have, but apparently don't, is that the lack of a strong IP foundation will make it impossible for a brilliant artist to make a living from his art. We're far too interested in how we can get to watch the latest Jack Black movie, and not interested enough in how Jack Black gets paid for it. People in general don't get the idea of "investment". They say "Jack Black already got paid, so I'm not hurting anyone". But he only got paid because an investor expects to get paid later. If that doesn't happen, Jack Black doesn't get paid next time, because no investor will front the money that pays him. If products don't make a profit, people stop producing them, and we stop getting them.
There are still problems with our IP laws, but the fundamental idea is a good one. Patent and copyright reform are long overdue in the digital age. I just think it's a massive mistake to have that reform directed by the corporate behemoths who profit from it, instead of the artists for whom it is intended.
All you're really doing here is redefining "item" and "customer" to complicate the question. It doesn't actually change the answer: once you wrap up a bundle of disparate products and services and call them an "item", and you wrap up a bundle of consumers and call them a "customer", it's still about charging whatever the customer will pay for the item. Creative definitions of your product might raise the price someone will pay, but it's still the same process of getting whatever the customer will pay.
> a real capitalist responds to that by > changing his business model
Not when he doesn't understand what business model will work. If you don't know how to sell decks of cards without putting pictures of enemy generals on them, a lack of enemy generals kills your ability to sell decks of cards. When the end of the war is imminent, your goal becomes "sell as many decks of cards as possible NOW".
> The term for government intervention to > artificially support people...is completely irrelevant, because the government is not intervening to support anyone. It is simply standing by while the media conglomerates push their own personal agenda into the legislature, which does not understand the question and has no real interest in learning about it. If you can get an anticompetitive law passed that means you get to collect money forever, that's a very capitalist thing to do.
If I can buy a product for $5, and shipping it to market costs $2, how much should I charge for it?
a) $5, the same as I paid to acquire the product b) $7, the same as I paid to acquire and distribute c) $9, all of my expenses plus a reasonable margin d) Whatever I can convince people to pay for it
A real capitalist answers "D".
> Squeezing every last cent out of consumers only works
Define "works"! It's certainly not sustainable in the long term, but the media industry as we know it today DOES NOT HAVE a long term. The long term loss of the price increase simply isn't a factor. It's like war profiteering; once the war is over, your reputation doesn't matter because your business becomes unsustainable anyway.
You are confusing a copyright interest with the application of a license. If I write a work that is derivative of yours, you can compel me to withhold it from distribution unless I agree to your terms, but you cannot under any circumstances compel me to distribute it.
> The example you've given is so far down the list > of day-to-day annoyances for regular ppt users, > it's not funny.
Speed of completion is my A-#1 priority in using PowerPoint. Appearance is an afterthought, and I don't have an hour to waste on it. Previously, I would apply a couple styles, saving whenever it looked less crappy than the last one, and reload the deck when I ran out of time. That gave me the least-crappy version of the ones I had time to check. Now, I can actually find something that looks good. I like that.
> easy shuffling of slides (because the "slide > sorter" view won't let you view a slide at a > large enough scale to see what's on it)
There's a "zoom" slider in the lower right that lets you set the size of the slides in that view. At the default size on my 19" LCD monitor running at 1280 * 1024, I can read titles easily but not regular text. At 100%, I can read regular text easily. You should be pretty happy with that.
> a photo that's *pasted* into a presentation > takes up a vast amount of memory
This is the clipboard's problem, not PowerPoint's. It's an issue with the historical operations of a critical system component buried in the depths of system code that absolutely positively CANNOT lose backward compatibility.
> there's no command that...
These are great ideas. However, they are also very hard problems. Let's take the "swap positions" idea. When the objects in question are the same size and have the same place in the Z-order, it's a no-brainer, but that's the only time it consistently works as expected. Imagine that we have a 100 by 100 image at position (100, 100), and a 200 by 200 image at position (200, 200). When we swap them, the larger image covers the other image entirely. Should the small image be moved forward in the Z-order? Should the two images have been resized when we swapped them? Since I had the bottom right of one image touching the top left of the other, should the application detect this and alter its behavior to retain this relationship? And what the hell happens if I have three objects selected?
It's not clear to me that any system which addresses these issues will be any less complex than swapping the object positions manually. It will certainly not be any easier to explain. It's not that the idea is bad, it's just that there's no payoff at the end of the road, and it's a rough road.
Slashdot Mirror
So why don't people simply accept that legal will make stupid patent applications, and sales will lie about the product, and marketing will lie about the competition, and accounting will "spin" the financials? Why don't we simply accept these evils as necessary for doing business on a large scale, and not blame the company for them? If these are reliably the sources of evil in a company, why does it reflect badly on a company when those departments do evil things?
Doesn't it seem like when Apple produces a bad commercial, we should say "evil marketers!" instead of "evil company!"? It just seems unfair to blame the company unless they can somehow acquire a non-evil version of these departments.
How exactly does this saying apply to Microsoft?
And WRT Vista being bad for the environment, aren't the people saying it just a little bit... crazy?
Disclosure: yes, I work here. Duh.
I'm always confused by the way people claim Microsoft is an evil company. The leadership of Microsoft has never been evil. To the contrary, they do tremendous good for all sorts of charitable causes. It doesn't really seem that any "evil" layer exists as you travel down the chain. I can trace the org chart all the way from myself up to the top layers, and I can honestly say nobody I find anywhere in that chain is evil.
Where exactly does the evil come from? How do a group of people who are not evil get together and do something evil? Why is it that we can recognise everyone's intentions as being good and honest and pure outside of Microsoft, but then they come to work here and they're producing evil plots to rule the world?
I'm just fascinated by this whole thing. It reminds me of Klansmen; when a Klansman claims to hate "niggers", but then grudgingly admits he doesn't hate actual black people - claiming instead that they aren't *really* "niggers" - this is evidence that his worldview is fundamentally flawed, and the "nigger" he hates doesn't even really exist. It's a fictional creation serving only as a target for hatred. Is the anti-Microsoft opinion in the world similar? When does it go away? Will it take other anti-corporate sentiment with it?
That's cheating. Why not tesselate the sides of an icosahedron into fours?
Alternately, and for zero cost to most gamers, you could just use 1d8 and 1d10. Multiply the d8's value by ten and subtract the number on the d10. Or, for ease, just use them as digits but read the 8 as a 0 with a 00 result indicating 80.
I used to keep a small plastic disc in my dice bag as a d2, and a marble as a d1. I always wanted to get an actual d3 made - a triangular prism with rounded ends. And I never did manage to come up with a good d7 design.
A couple of good points upon which I wanted to expand, in the context of "PCs are not just Windows".
> people begin to accept that suckiness is
> the way computers are supposed to be.
However, using something that sucks is a sign of expertise. Culturally, we associate "ugly and ineffective tool" with "brilliant and experienced user". We actively select for this in tech circles. I get a little flak from people because I don't use Linux on my desktop, but I still run several Linux boxes - I just run them entirely from shell windows over SSH. That way I can leave them sitting in the garage where they run cooler and the noise doesn't bother anyone; it sounds like an airplane hangar in there. The respect I would get for running Linux on my desktop is nothing compared to the respect I get when people see a ragtag collection of mismatched boxes in all sizes, most of them with partial or no outer casings, roaring like a racecar in my garage.
> The reason people "don't buy" Macs is the
> same reason people "don't buy" BMW cars
There are plenty of people who could afford a BMW just fine, but don't buy one. It's not just because they can find something cheaper that meets their needs, but also because they can find something that meets needs the BMW can't. I like 1970s muscle cars. I don't want a BMW. I want a classic Dodge Charger with a big-ass Hemi and glass packs. I want the engine to roar like a pride of lions and the tires to scream like a banshee when I hit the accelerator. I can't get that from a BMW. Sure, on the average day, a BMW would probably be a more comfortable commute - but it's just the wrong attitude. A car should be scary.
Basically, I don't mind the PC/Apple commercials. They just market to someone else. They market to the whiny little pussy who plays the Mac. I know he's supposed to be cool and hip and approachable, but I just keep looking at him and thinking "is he supposed to be gay?" or "I could break him in half". I don't get offended about the PC guy, because that's not me. Sure, I wear a tie, I use a PC, I do a lot of businessy stuff. But that's not me. That's the people I used to work with.
I see these commercials as "don't be the PC guy, be the Mac guy". But I'm not the PC guy, and I don't want to be the Mac guy. I don't relate to these commercials. I don't see them as speaking to me at all.
I think there are certainly ways you Should Not use AJAX. There are strengths and weaknesses to the technology. AJAX works best when small parts of the screen change in response to user action. If large parts of the screen will change, just use a link. And if the screen needs to change constantly without user interaction, PLEASE don't do it with JavaScript! Write a control or something!
The big flaw is this stupid idea that we will find the One True Way that every application needs to work. I don't want to run Word or Excel over the internet, but I don't want my email stored locally on every machine I use. What's hard about that?
> I'd happily pay $750 to set up a full Windows
> AD domain at home with Win2K3 + five Vista clients.
Any good Microsoft Software Advisor, such as myself, can handily point you at the Microsoft Partner Program - where just registering is enough to qualify you for the Action Pack subscription at about $700 annually. It includes Windows Server and *ten* Vista Business clients.
Of course, there's no money in it for *us*, so most won't bother. But maybe you should go check it out.
> Why link to the YouTube videos?
Because QuickTime is "teh suck"?
I liked the last one, where the PC keeps freezing. Not entirely accurate, but it was funny.
> What if the item has become less valuable for
> the bidder?
Then the bidder probably shouldn't have already made a binding contract with the seller.
It's a life lesson. Just like the first time you try to type `rm -rF *.o` and type `rm -rF *>o` instead. It's not a failure of the system; it's a learning experience which teaches you "don't do that".
Disclosure: I work as a contractor at Microsoft.
I'm of the opinion that most software patent applications are bogus. The problem is that if you don't get your bogus claim in before the other guy, you have to spend lots of money proving you didn't steal his bogus invention.
In reality, most software "inventions" aren't really patentable. Look at the BlueJ feature in question. How else could you implement it? What other format would be even remotely understandable? It's obvious; that's pretty much the only way you could do it. So much so, in fact, that if you did invent another way to do it - you would be filing TWO patents.
But that doesn't stop people! They patent obvious crap all the time! So patents aren't just filed when you invent something, but also when you write something you think someone else could and would patent. And since most patent filings are bogus... that means anyone who is working seriously in the software industry needs to file a lot of bogus patents.
What's not clear is where exactly the line is between a patent that's bogus by nature, and a patent that's only bogus in the way every software patent is bogus.
Bogus, bogus, bogus. I like to say bogus.
Bogus!
Bingo! IMO, eBay works perfectly; you go in and say "I will pay X amount for this". There are only two reasons you would change your mind and want to pay more.
1. The item actually becomes more valuable to you. (This incorporates all supply and demand metrics.)
2. You feel obligated to compete with other bidders.
Shill bidding leverages the stupidity of people who easily fall prey to motivation #2.
However, shill bidding does something else. Assume you place an item on eBay for $10 reserve, and the bidding rapidly goes to $100. You do a little research, and find the actual fair market value for this item is $500. A shill bid can effectively raise your reserve to $300, actually correcting your mistake during the auction. If nobody takes that bait, you keep the $500 item and pay the commission on $300.
Additionally, I may have a legitimate offer from someone local. Perhaps someone came by and saw the item on a shelf somewhere, and actually offered $300 for it. The $300 "shill" bid is then perfectly reasonable, because there is a bona fide offer for it.
These two instances are actual cases of motivation #1 on the part of the seller: the item actually becoming more valuable. It seems perfectly reasonable to me.
I apologise for the delay; we've had a busy week here in the lab, and I keep starting to reply, but then something comes up. (I hear something coming up now. I hope it doesn't end up blocking this reply, too.)
> you're still not convincing me.
That's not my job. If PowerPoint isn't the right tool for you, I'd prefer you get and use the right tool. It's irresponsible to offer someone a screwdriver for driving nails.
> On the zoom, I've already told you that you
> don't allow the slides to zoom up in size
> till you're able to read the text
In the slide sorter, the zoom function is supposed to let you tell the slides apart. If you have to read the text to tell your slides apart, you have a problem: your slides look too similar. If you can't read the text in the sorter, you have another problem: your text is too small. If you can't make the text larger, you have still another problem: there is too much text.
None of these problems can be solved by anyone except you. The problem is not PowerPoint, it's your presentation design. You need to take a class, or read a book, or at least do some web searches.
> you also still haven't said how I'm supposed
> to know what the "100%" size refers to.
Theoretically, you're familiar with the "zoom" function in Office 2003, which accepts settings of 33%, 50%, 66%, and 100% for the slide sorter. The sizes in Office 2007 are the same, but you have a slider that goes all the way from 10% to 100%. So if you want to view your slides at 26%, you can do that.
> On copying and pasting, I'm sorry but your
> answer is just silly. If the clipboard is
> clever enough...
Stop right there. You don't understand what I've told you.
The clipboard doesn't convert anything. The application where you COPY does the converting. Then it puts the converted data on the clipboard. When you paste, the application where you do the pasting just goes to the clipboard and gets what's there. There's literally nothing that PowerPoint or the clipboard can do about what gets copied out of the first application.
There are several things the application can do to make things work better; some simple, like asking you exactly what you want to copy, and some complex - like providing multiple data formats in priority order. But if you go to whomever made this application and tell them what's happening, they'll probably stare at you for a moment and ask why you don't just use the insert function. After all, you know that this doesn't do what you want; you know that the insert function does do what you want; it's not exactly a MENSA brainteaser.
Fundamentally, you are doing the wrong thing when you know what the right thing is. I don't believe it's abnormal to think you should just do the right thing in the first place.
> You can swap two objects horizontally or
> vertically, using two different buttons.
How amusing; I expected your homegrown feature to be better than it actually is, and I still thought it was inadequate.
> the top edge of the top object and the
> bottom edge of the bottom object are the
> reference points for vertical swaps
What if they're not collinear in the selected plane? Suppose I have a wide image X positioned over a narrow image Y, both centered on the slide. If I swap these horizontally, doesn't X stay where it is and Y move? After all, X controls both the leftmost AND rightmost edges.
And which direction does Y move? Does it depend on which one I selected first? If you try it on your function, I'll bet it does. I'll bet that if you select X first, Y moves left, but if you select Y first it moves right.
> your questions [...] don't matter, because
> there's never a situation in which you'd do this
If the two objects you swap are the same size, the function you're describing works just fine. The problem is that the objects might NOT be the same size. In fact, they will *usually* not be the same size.
> How about giving me a substantive answer
> as to why what I want to do, which is 60%
> done by the current functionality already,
> would be either a bad or impossible thing
> for you to provide?
Because that's not the right question. The question is why the other 40% of this functionality is a good and useful thing for us to provide. The zoom slider already lets you make the slides bigger so you can read the text, and smaller so you can fit more on the screen. That's what you need to do, right? Why should a developer spend more time on this feature instead of something else?
> all I want to be able to do is click on
> a picture, hit ctrl-c and hit ctrl-v to
> paste into ppt without it becoming huge
Then you need to understand how the clipboard works. The clipboard accepts data from an application, then hands that data to another application. If the application that puts data on the clipboard uses a stupid format, you will get that same stupid format when you paste the data into another application.
The problem here is that when you copy, your image is being converted from a nice compact JPEG into a massive bloated BMP. The conversion is done by the application where you copy the image. The massive bloated image isn't PowerPoint's fault, because PowerPoint is just taking what it got from the clipboard, which in turn is just passing along what it got from the other application.
The other application is doing this because multiple generations of lossy compression are degenerative, so we can't use lossy compression on the clipboard. We have to use a lossless true-color format. That pretty much means BMP, TIFF, or PNG. PNG doesn't have as much support as BMP or TIFF, and since every Windows application is effectively required to support BMP, most applications don't choose TIFF (which can use a superior LZW compression algorithm but isn't universally supported). But BMP only supports RLE compression, which sucks rocks for photographic images and may actually produce an image larger than the uncompressed source.
Now, undoubtedly, you're sitting there thinking "he's pointing the finger at the other application" - but I'm not. The other application cannot select an appropriate file format and associated compression scheme without input from the user, which is you. You need to identify what your image is and what compression scheme best suits it and what level of loss is acceptable and which file formats provide that. You do this through a nifty feature called "Save As" which produces a file. And THAT is the key to doing what you want.
The resulting file can be highlighted in the Explorer, where you can press Control-C to copy and then Control-V to paste into your presentation. When the clipboard contains a file object, PowerPoint quite properly performs an "Insert" on that file, which gives you the image without the attendant bloat you get from copying the data.
Alternately, you can simply drag the file from the Explorer into your presentation. And since the common file dialogs are, in fact, miniature Explorers... you can get to them from pretty much whatever application you happen to be using. You can also press the Windows logo key and E at the same time to open an Explorer window.
Or you can select "Insert" from PowerPoint. But the long and the short of it is: you have to insert the file. There are at least three ways to do that, and if you're really attached to Control-C and Control-V, there's a way to use them.
> You haven't shown why the solution to the
> specific problem you saw with the "swap
> objects" comand wasn't an answer
It's not an answer because it doesn't answer the whole question. Swap these two objects how? Should they remain within the same bounding box? Should they be swapped vertically? Horizontally? Both? Which one goes on top? Should they be resized? Which edge of which object is the reference point?
This is not an easy question. You think it's an easy question bec
Yeah... that's nice and crazy. Glad to see I was right about you.
> You've got to be kidding, right? Why wouldn't this
> work like iPhoto
Just as an offhand guess, I'd say probably because it's *not* iPhoto. PowerPoint is not and never has been a way to organise and store photographs.
> Then make clipboard copy work as insert picture
> behind the scenes
What's wrong with using insert picture? Pasting isn't what you want to do. Don't do it. Use insert picture, which IS what you want to do. We've already given you a command that does what you want. Why do you want to keep using the command that doesn't?
> You're seeing problems where none exist.
Actually, I'm seeing problems where you don't care, which is a slightly different issue. It's a myopic view of the system: what YOU do in YOUR job on a daily basis. But millions of people use PowerPoint, and they do thousands of different jobs in thousands of different ways. We have to think about all of them, not just you and people like you. I completely understand if you don't care about them and their jobs, but we don't get to do that.
> It sounds like you guys are thinking too hard and
> thinking the wrong way. A colleague of mine wrote
> an add-in that does the swap objects perfectly
You could make a lot of money selling a library of things like that. If all it takes is asking a few basic questions and writing some simple code, why aren't you selling that library?
I mean, perhaps I'm biased, but I tend to think the evidence indicates we know something about how to build software. If we haven't done something, there's generally a reason, and it's certainly not that we're all stupid.
> I wasn't around for the DOS to Windows 3.1 switch, but
> it's pretty obvious that 3.1 was superior.
Hindsight is 20/20. I was very much opposed to the GUI revolution and fought valiantly on the side of the command line. In my opinion, no Windows release prior to XP was even close to the level of stability and reliability I personally wanted in my operating system.
> the average user wants to see some tanglible improvement
> to the UI
Oh, we've made some. There are search boxes everywhere. At first, you barely notice them. Then you start looking for something and think "oh, heck, I might as well try this search box". And a week or two later, you go back to an XP machine and open the start menu, and you go "WTF, where's my search box?! I can't use this backwards technology!"
There's a bunch of other cool stuff, too. It won't do much for you on day one, but around day 100 you'll find you can't live without it. Mostly what you'll be doing on day one is complaining that everything's been moved and you don't know where it is.
> all the spyware, "windows rot", virus infections,
> etc are a thing of the past
What really needs to happen for those to be things of the past is the users themselves have to appreciate the need for security, and do what needs to be done for reliable protection. We've made that a lot easier in Vista, but some people are truly dedicated to making bad decisions, and no matter how many advances we make in heuristic scanning... it's effectively impossible to distinguish between a program that is SUPPOSED to repartition your hard disk, and a program that just does it to make your life miserable.
Besides, if someone really wants to download and install the Gator toolbar or Bonzi Buddy, technically it's their computer and we have to let them do it. What kind of hellish situation would it be if you could only ever download and install programs previously approved by Microsoft? It would be like... like... I don't know, like an iPhone or something.
Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were sane.
Carry on, then.
> Ultimately I think it indicates a larger
> problem at Microsoft.
I work on Vista at Microsoft, and I'm confused.
For roughly a decade, we released an upgrade every year, much like you might expect of an auto manufacturer. These upgrades were criticised for not really being important, and introducing little more than compatibility issues. People wanted a bigger and better upgrade on a longer timeline, with due attention paid to security and compatibility.
So that's what we did. We constructed an internal culture and philosophy that emphasised security, compatibility, and reliability at every stage of the process. We have fundamentally changed the way we are going to design, build, test, and support the Windows operating system in the future. And for five years, we've told people about that. One Microsoft executive after another has said "we're changing our culture, and it's hard, and it's expensive, and it takes a long time, but it's ultimately going to make everything better".
And it is better. A lot better. It's just that a lot of what makes it better isn't in the operating system; it's here at Microsoft. You won't see it right now. You'll see it over the next ten years, when you're comparing the Win3 - XP history to the progress we make starting with Vista.
So why the criticism for releasing an operating system which, instead of being about new features and the gee-whiz factor, is primarily about security and compatibility and reliability? Isn't that what you wanted in the first place?
This just in: poor people like free stuff.
I'm so glad we have the news media to tell us these things.
You don't seem to understand what I'm saying.
This is a question of companies and consumers. It is that simple. The companies don't know how to sustain their business model, so they're not trying - they're just scrambling madly to suck as much money out of it as they can before it collapses. In the long run, this money is just being stolen from the tail end of the same business, so it doesn't really matter. Long tail or short tail, the business still dies. Demand for an alternative rises steeply instead of slowly as the end nears, so the startup of the Next Big Thing makes a lot of money very quickly instead of ramping up slow and steady.
When you drag the government into it, YOU'RE complicating things. The government doesn't matter, because legislation is just another tactic being used by the media companies to prevent the death of their business. It's not the government's idea. It's just a trivial detail of *how* the companies are trying to inflate profits today at the expense of profits tomorrow.
In the end, the people who get those profits will probably invest them in the new business model that replaces them, once they know which one is going to "win". The revolution will happen, and we'll overthrow Bob with this new system... which will ultimately be run by Bob. The more things change, and all that.
> I would not characterize this as a
> particularly 'good' thing.
In the long run it tends to be good, because market forces tend to balance things out before they do too much damage.
Don't get me wrong: predatory pricing does real damage to real people. But in general, this damage is limited by the seller's ability to control the market. The problem isn't the pricing, it's the control of the market. If we remove people's ability to control the market, which is what we've tried to do with antitrust laws, then we also drastically limit their ability to cause damage.
Unfortunately, control of the market is the entire purpose of intellectual property.
> DRM and the idea of Intellectual Property
> are based on fearful assumptions
I don't think this is completely true. DRM is based on the idea that people do not value IP, and would prefer not to pay for it, which is the absolute fact. IP is based on the idea that if you have to work a traditional job, you don't have time to pursue artistic endeavors - and certainly not to the degree necessary for works of profound genius.
The fear we ought to have, but apparently don't, is that the lack of a strong IP foundation will make it impossible for a brilliant artist to make a living from his art. We're far too interested in how we can get to watch the latest Jack Black movie, and not interested enough in how Jack Black gets paid for it. People in general don't get the idea of "investment". They say "Jack Black already got paid, so I'm not hurting anyone". But he only got paid because an investor expects to get paid later. If that doesn't happen, Jack Black doesn't get paid next time, because no investor will front the money that pays him. If products don't make a profit, people stop producing them, and we stop getting them.
There are still problems with our IP laws, but the fundamental idea is a good one. Patent and copyright reform are long overdue in the digital age. I just think it's a massive mistake to have that reform directed by the corporate behemoths who profit from it, instead of the artists for whom it is intended.
> Whatever maximizes my income
...is completely irrelevant, because the government is not intervening to support anyone. It is simply standing by while the media conglomerates push their own personal agenda into the legislature, which does not understand the question and has no real interest in learning about it. If you can get an anticompetitive law passed that means you get to collect money forever, that's a very capitalist thing to do.
All you're really doing here is redefining "item" and "customer" to complicate the question. It doesn't actually change the answer: once you wrap up a bundle of disparate products and services and call them an "item", and you wrap up a bundle of consumers and call them a "customer", it's still about charging whatever the customer will pay for the item. Creative definitions of your product might raise the price someone will pay, but it's still the same process of getting whatever the customer will pay.
> a real capitalist responds to that by
> changing his business model
Not when he doesn't understand what business model will work. If you don't know how to sell decks of cards without putting pictures of enemy generals on them, a lack of enemy generals kills your ability to sell decks of cards. When the end of the war is imminent, your goal becomes "sell as many decks of cards as possible NOW".
> The term for government intervention to
> artificially support people
> Nonsense.
If I can buy a product for $5, and shipping it to market costs $2, how much should I charge for it?
a) $5, the same as I paid to acquire the product
b) $7, the same as I paid to acquire and distribute
c) $9, all of my expenses plus a reasonable margin
d) Whatever I can convince people to pay for it
A real capitalist answers "D".
> Squeezing every last cent out of consumers only works
Define "works"! It's certainly not sustainable in the long term, but the media industry as we know it today DOES NOT HAVE a long term. The long term loss of the price increase simply isn't a factor. It's like war profiteering; once the war is over, your reputation doesn't matter because your business becomes unsustainable anyway.
You are confusing a copyright interest with the application of a license. If I write a work that is derivative of yours, you can compel me to withhold it from distribution unless I agree to your terms, but you cannot under any circumstances compel me to distribute it.
> The example you've given is so far down the list
> of day-to-day annoyances for regular ppt users,
> it's not funny.
Speed of completion is my A-#1 priority in using PowerPoint. Appearance is an afterthought, and I don't have an hour to waste on it. Previously, I would apply a couple styles, saving whenever it looked less crappy than the last one, and reload the deck when I ran out of time. That gave me the least-crappy version of the ones I had time to check. Now, I can actually find something that looks good. I like that.
> easy shuffling of slides (because the "slide
> sorter" view won't let you view a slide at a
> large enough scale to see what's on it)
There's a "zoom" slider in the lower right that lets you set the size of the slides in that view. At the default size on my 19" LCD monitor running at 1280 * 1024, I can read titles easily but not regular text. At 100%, I can read regular text easily. You should be pretty happy with that.
> a photo that's *pasted* into a presentation
> takes up a vast amount of memory
This is the clipboard's problem, not PowerPoint's. It's an issue with the historical operations of a critical system component buried in the depths of system code that absolutely positively CANNOT lose backward compatibility.
> there's no command that...
These are great ideas. However, they are also very hard problems. Let's take the "swap positions" idea. When the objects in question are the same size and have the same place in the Z-order, it's a no-brainer, but that's the only time it consistently works as expected. Imagine that we have a 100 by 100 image at position (100, 100), and a 200 by 200 image at position (200, 200). When we swap them, the larger image covers the other image entirely. Should the small image be moved forward in the Z-order? Should the two images have been resized when we swapped them? Since I had the bottom right of one image touching the top left of the other, should the application detect this and alter its behavior to retain this relationship? And what the hell happens if I have three objects selected?
It's not clear to me that any system which addresses these issues will be any less complex than swapping the object positions manually. It will certainly not be any easier to explain. It's not that the idea is bad, it's just that there's no payoff at the end of the road, and it's a rough road.