Replying to myself, I just realized said skyscraper would probably have a cell tower right there on its roof, limiting the wattage of cell phones inside.
I don't think anyone was offended. It just seems... I don't know, so juvenile. The dialog speaks so loudly about the Gentoo experience that you can almost hear the programmer chuckling to himself as he wrote it, can even almost smell the stale beer and unwashed geek. The "joke" isn't even witty or amusing. It's just stupid.
Doesn't work in Safari--therefore, useless. And I'm certainly not dragging that slow, bloated, ugly thing they call Firefox out of the dungeon just in order to see more of something that's already got "Windows" painted all over it.
No, there was no point to this comment, and I apologize for having written it. I have anger issues.
You still think there's norealdifferencebetween Republicans and Democrats? Fine, I suppose, if you're ready to dismiss the real, life-and-death concerns of 99% of the nation. Sounds a little selfish to me.
The phenomenon's so predictable and the causation's so direct, it's become a central tenet of urban studies and planning over the past couple decades that adding free, unmetered roads ultimately results in more congestion, not less. I remember learning in college this general rule of thumb: 10% more roads results in 15% more traffic. It's pretty much as pure and reliable as economic theory ever gets.
Primarily, this happens because building new (non-toll) lanes and roads increases the attractiveness of driving in the short term, which tempts existing residents to buy cars instead of using public transit. Your city then develops sprawlingly, and in 10-15 years you're stuck with just as much traffic as you began with.
Automobiles are a funny beast in urban planning because their network effects are negative--i.e., the more traffic you have, they very quickly become terribly ineffective. This is exactly opposite the behavior of light rail, buses, and indeed most other concepts that make a city work and move.
A cursory Google search turns up this summary, which references some studies for further reading (if you can look past the source for a moment--nothing against the Sierra Club).
If you make it a sparse disk image, you can set the volume size as large as you want to start, but the.dmg (actually.sparseimage) file starts at zero bytes and only grows as you add stuff to it. Compact it every so often, if you're concerned about wasting space. Screenshot. Note custom volume size.
I'm with you for the most part, but it's not quite as simple as you suggest. For instance, you bring up the issue of "rice and medicine" donations contributing to "welfare dependency." This effect is real, but it's usually outweighed by the fact that a regime of private property rights in a smoothly functioning market economy--the conceptualized ideal, I'm assuming, for both you and me--is hampered somewhat by conditions in a famine-ravaged village where nobody bothers to learn useful (and peaceful) skills because chances are they'll be dead of malaria, TB, or AIDS in a couple years anyway.
In such a situation, it certainly can happen that donations of food, medicine, and free education go a long way towards accelerating the development of a peaceful, stable market economy.
Blame the user! Yes, that's one way of looking at it. Another perspective is that the product designers could have built the systems in a way so as not to encourage activities that distract the driver, or at least not to tempt the driver to fiddle with accessories on the road. Or--best option--hire aesthetes and HCI experts to design your mapping systems to be intuitive and predictive enough not to require the driver's full attention to operate. Some of the dash-mounted interactive mapping devices I've seen ought to be criminal, they're such a frustration to use.
Responsibility may lie ultimately with the end user, especially for having chosen such terribly-designed products. But many problems could be avoided if only automakers put some thought into how real human beings interact with their systems.
Me, I believe in capitalism. I pay otherpeople to do the dirty work.
Oh yeah, and also keep in mind that it helps if your attention's drawn immediately to the default button, regardless of position. OS X does it with bright colors and a subtle animation. This way it doesn't matter that you read top to bottom, left to right--you see the default button immediately. (This won't work if it's named "Yes" instead of "Save" or "Copy" or "Detonate" or what have you.)
Also, re: your hypothetical pizza situation, I have long been of the opinion that Yes/No/Cancel dialogs could usually stand to benefit from a "Maybe" button.
Nothing? Really? Hmm, that's interesting. I guess some people are just more perceptive to semiotic subtext than others (not meant as a slam--I'm quite oblivious to non-visual, non-linguistic cues, personally). These are probably the prima donnas among us who demand good product names and icons. The Mac users, perhaps?
It's a great idea for Gnome to clarify applications' visual representations with "Web Browser," "Music Player," &c. That's something I wish other OSes would start doing as well.
That's a brilliant argument from an engineering P.O.V. The myriad reasons it fails utterly from an aesthetic, creative, humanistic viewpoint is something I'd rather not waste time trying to explain to the likes of you.
Does Gnome actually even have action buttons labeled, literally, "Yes" and "No"? Seems a little Windowseque, if you ask me.
That's a good point. I think it'd apply really well to a situation where GUI elements weren't manipulated by pointing and touching, say, for instance, by speaking their names instead. But given that buttons are there to be clicked, it follows that you'll want the most frequently used buttons in the most accessible part of the dialog, and that's the lower-right (unless you want to always feel like you're reaching over the "no" button to reach "yes"--and given the right-handed pointer icon, that's exactly what you'll feel). Making "yes" stand out by placing it in the corner, instead of buried in the center underneath the dialog text, is another reason for this placement.
Er, so if it doesn't take any skill, then what exactly is keeping you from entering this world of seven-digit salaries you fantasize any old "cubicle drone" may inhabit? Pride? Self-pity? Waaah.
But as soon as you see that "Safari" is a web browser, particularly in conjunction with the icon, you go "Yeah, that makes sense!" and the knowledge sticks. (Or don't you?)
On the other hand, the name "Firefox" has nothing to do with exploration (or surfing, for that matter) and the association is never made in the first place.
In real world product design, the most often used controls are typically placed on the right, where the right-handed majority of users may more easily interact with them. Think microwave ovens, old-school TVs, even ATMs. Onscreen representations of interactive panels take their cues from real-world appliances like these, and thereby offer an immediate sense of familiarity, rewarding intuition.
Not that this revelation will change your attitude towards user friendliness, of course, nor convince you of the value of progressive disclosure.
You sure? I seem to remember the "Quit" menu item always being located under the "File" menu, at least as far back as System 4.0, and IIRC every System Software release prior to then. If I'm not mistaken, the application-specific menu was only introduced with OS X.
If you lack the right-brained, lateral thinking ability to imagine that "Rendezvous" might refer to the process of gathering disparate agents together in a single time and place for purposes of work, communication, or anything else, and instead you believe "Ekiga" is a superior name for an application that arranges network meetings--then no, I'd say you're the fucking retard.
You probably think "Firefox" is a better name than "Safari," too, am I right?
Slashdot Mirror
Replying to myself, I just realized said skyscraper would probably have a cell tower right there on its roof, limiting the wattage of cell phones inside.
I agree with that. Otherwise, why doesn't cell phone service get blocked out by an office full of people on the 100th floor of a skyscraper?
As a New Yorker, I tell you this city is better than anyplace in Canada, Europe, or the United States.
Wait, what?
I don't know about that, necessarily. Last time this story appeared on Slashdot, it did so under the title "Sony May Sell HD-DVDs".
It's true, however, that it would only have been 10% less accurate--and about that much less inflammatory--to have said "NEC May Sell Blu-Rays."
I don't think anyone was offended. It just seems... I don't know, so juvenile. The dialog speaks so loudly about the Gentoo experience that you can almost hear the programmer chuckling to himself as he wrote it, can even almost smell the stale beer and unwashed geek. The "joke" isn't even witty or amusing. It's just stupid.
"...freedom SHOULD be pushed..."
You sound like Stallman. Would society be freer if everyone were forced to remove their front doorlocks?
Doesn't work in Safari--therefore, useless. And I'm certainly not dragging that slow, bloated, ugly thing they call Firefox out of the dungeon just in order to see more of something that's already got "Windows" painted all over it.
No, there was no point to this comment, and I apologize for having written it. I have anger issues.
How condescending of you. How culturally judgmental. I'd much rather live in Istanbul than in Paris, anyway.
You still think there's no real difference between Republicans and Democrats? Fine, I suppose, if you're ready to dismiss the real, life-and-death concerns of 99% of the nation. Sounds a little selfish to me.
The phenomenon's so predictable and the causation's so direct, it's become a central tenet of urban studies and planning over the past couple decades that adding free, unmetered roads ultimately results in more congestion, not less. I remember learning in college this general rule of thumb: 10% more roads results in 15% more traffic. It's pretty much as pure and reliable as economic theory ever gets.
Primarily, this happens because building new (non-toll) lanes and roads increases the attractiveness of driving in the short term, which tempts existing residents to buy cars instead of using public transit. Your city then develops sprawlingly, and in 10-15 years you're stuck with just as much traffic as you began with.
Automobiles are a funny beast in urban planning because their network effects are negative--i.e., the more traffic you have, they very quickly become terribly ineffective. This is exactly opposite the behavior of light rail, buses, and indeed most other concepts that make a city work and move.
A cursory Google search turns up this summary, which references some studies for further reading (if you can look past the source for a moment--nothing against the Sierra Club).
Or, if you had the brains, you could have just pressed the Eject key. But why let that get in the way of a good bullshit avalanche?
If you make it a sparse disk image, you can set the volume size as large as you want to start, but the .dmg (actually .sparseimage) file starts at zero bytes and only grows as you add stuff to it. Compact it every so often, if you're concerned about wasting space. Screenshot. Note custom volume size.
I'm with you for the most part, but it's not quite as simple as you suggest. For instance, you bring up the issue of "rice and medicine" donations contributing to "welfare dependency." This effect is real, but it's usually outweighed by the fact that a regime of private property rights in a smoothly functioning market economy--the conceptualized ideal, I'm assuming, for both you and me--is hampered somewhat by conditions in a famine-ravaged village where nobody bothers to learn useful (and peaceful) skills because chances are they'll be dead of malaria, TB, or AIDS in a couple years anyway.
In such a situation, it certainly can happen that donations of food, medicine, and free education go a long way towards accelerating the development of a peaceful, stable market economy.
Try some of the plugins available at www.pimpmysafari.com.
Did you say engrave?
Blame the user! Yes, that's one way of looking at it. Another perspective is that the product designers could have built the systems in a way so as not to encourage activities that distract the driver, or at least not to tempt the driver to fiddle with accessories on the road. Or--best option--hire aesthetes and HCI experts to design your mapping systems to be intuitive and predictive enough not to require the driver's full attention to operate. Some of the dash-mounted interactive mapping devices I've seen ought to be criminal, they're such a frustration to use.
Responsibility may lie ultimately with the end user, especially for having chosen such terribly-designed products. But many problems could be avoided if only automakers put some thought into how real human beings interact with their systems.
Me, I believe in capitalism. I pay other people to do the dirty work.
Oh yeah, and also keep in mind that it helps if your attention's drawn immediately to the default button, regardless of position. OS X does it with bright colors and a subtle animation. This way it doesn't matter that you read top to bottom, left to right--you see the default button immediately. (This won't work if it's named "Yes" instead of "Save" or "Copy" or "Detonate" or what have you.)
Also, re: your hypothetical pizza situation, I have long been of the opinion that Yes/No/Cancel dialogs could usually stand to benefit from a "Maybe" button.
Nothing? Really? Hmm, that's interesting. I guess some people are just more perceptive to semiotic subtext than others (not meant as a slam--I'm quite oblivious to non-visual, non-linguistic cues, personally). These are probably the prima donnas among us who demand good product names and icons. The Mac users, perhaps?
It's a great idea for Gnome to clarify applications' visual representations with "Web Browser," "Music Player," &c. That's something I wish other OSes would start doing as well.
That's a brilliant argument from an engineering P.O.V. The myriad reasons it fails utterly from an aesthetic, creative, humanistic viewpoint is something I'd rather not waste time trying to explain to the likes of you.
Does Gnome actually even have action buttons labeled, literally, "Yes" and "No"? Seems a little Windowseque, if you ask me.
That's a good point. I think it'd apply really well to a situation where GUI elements weren't manipulated by pointing and touching, say, for instance, by speaking their names instead. But given that buttons are there to be clicked, it follows that you'll want the most frequently used buttons in the most accessible part of the dialog, and that's the lower-right (unless you want to always feel like you're reaching over the "no" button to reach "yes"--and given the right-handed pointer icon, that's exactly what you'll feel). Making "yes" stand out by placing it in the corner, instead of buried in the center underneath the dialog text, is another reason for this placement.
Er, so if it doesn't take any skill, then what exactly is keeping you from entering this world of seven-digit salaries you fantasize any old "cubicle drone" may inhabit? Pride? Self-pity? Waaah.
But as soon as you see that "Safari" is a web browser, particularly in conjunction with the icon, you go "Yeah, that makes sense!" and the knowledge sticks. (Or don't you?)
On the other hand, the name "Firefox" has nothing to do with exploration (or surfing, for that matter) and the association is never made in the first place.
In real world product design, the most often used controls are typically placed on the right, where the right-handed majority of users may more easily interact with them. Think microwave ovens, old-school TVs, even ATMs. Onscreen representations of interactive panels take their cues from real-world appliances like these, and thereby offer an immediate sense of familiarity, rewarding intuition.
Not that this revelation will change your attitude towards user friendliness, of course, nor convince you of the value of progressive disclosure.
You sure? I seem to remember the "Quit" menu item always being located under the "File" menu, at least as far back as System 4.0, and IIRC every System Software release prior to then. If I'm not mistaken, the application-specific menu was only introduced with OS X.
If you lack the right-brained, lateral thinking ability to imagine that "Rendezvous" might refer to the process of gathering disparate agents together in a single time and place for purposes of work, communication, or anything else, and instead you believe "Ekiga" is a superior name for an application that arranges network meetings--then no, I'd say you're the fucking retard.
You probably think "Firefox" is a better name than "Safari," too, am I right?