Re:The best tools stay out of the way...
on
Goodbye Cruel Word
·
· Score: 1
I do tend to interact with the ribbon using the mouse rather than shortcuts but usually if I'm switching something I'm using some pre-defined style and I've got keyboard shortcuts set to the styles I use. The easy access to styles is one of my favorite features of 2007. But if I were to use keyboard shortcuts to access the tools on the ribbon itself I could see being a tad annoyed. I played with the 2007 shortcuts some but decided that for the most part they were too cumbersome to bother with. Since I didn't use shortcuts much anyway, no big loss. For those who like shortcuts I could see this docking points.
The ribbon does take up a bit of space. But even on my desktop I'm running 1680x1050 resolution so it doesn't get in my way. Like you, I would never want to hide the ribbon, that would just be annoying to deal with. If my screen was small I could see the ribbon being another annoyance.
Re:The best tools stay out of the way... (shill)
on
Goodbye Cruel Word
·
· Score: 1, Interesting
Anyone actually enjoying Microsoft products must be a shill, ehh? Thanks for helping to prove my point about anti-MS rhetoric. And considering the vast majority of the Slashdot crowd is in the must-kill-MS crowd, a few voices actually supporting Microsoft hardly constitute a force.
(P.S., your comment loses 50 credibility points for saying M$... Can't the anti-MS crowd ever grow up?)
Re:The best tools stay out of the way...
on
Goodbye Cruel Word
·
· Score: 1
2008 will be better than 2004 and it will be a bit like 2007 but it still looks a little clunky, IMO. Mac fans will likely disagree with me for this, but a lot of for-Mac Software had a clunky feel to it. I know, clunky is not exactly a precise or descriptive word,... Many aspects of the Mac UI were quite nice and I like the "keep it simple, stupid!" approach that Apple takes, though they can go too far with that at times. But I was really surprised with apps like Pages to find the interface more clunky than smooth and simple. Word wasn't as bad but still wasn't quite as crisp as Word 2007 on the PC. From pictures I saw of 2008 it looks like it might have a similar issue. Again, I won't know until I try it. Since I just recently purchased my copy of Office 2004 I'm eligible for the cheap upgrade so I will be able to try 2008 soon after they start shipping.
Re:The best tools stay out of the way...
on
Goodbye Cruel Word
·
· Score: 1
I've used both since the betas and I've not encountered major bugs that have stopped me from enjoying both Vista and Office... Some things are annoying (UAC goes way too far) but that's about my only gripe with Vista since its release. I know other problems are out there but they haven't caused me any trouble and I'm not exactly an average computer user.
Re:The best tools stay out of the way...
on
Goodbye Cruel Word
·
· Score: -1, Offtopic
People may not like the new interface but there's no question that Office 2007 and Vista have brought many changes to the interface. Vista is not as big a change from XP as 2007 is from 2003, but the changes are numerous and real and, I think, useful.
All of the anti-Vista and anti-2007 rhetoric frequently strikes me as just anti-MS drivel. Granted there are people like you who don't care for the 2007 interface but most of the criticism is rather empty and shallow and often from people who have done little more than spend 5 minutes trying out the products.
For myself, I love both Vista and 2007. I've just finished about a month of exclusively using OS X Leopard and while there are things about Leopard I really like, I was very glad to return to my PC. One reason I was glad to return is Office 2007. Pages and Word for Mac are, IMO, just not as good as Office 2007 (I'll play with Word 2008 for Mac when I get my copy but I suspect my feeling will remain the same). 2007 does indeed look nice and for me it also works nice, giving me easy access to everything I need and making it easy to reconfigure many actions.
Microsoft gets a lot of stuff wrong, but they also get a lot of stuff right. The problem with the anti-MS crowd is they refuse to acknowledge when things are done well, pretending that nothing from MS is done well.
brevity I do not think it means what you think it means... "concise and exact use of words in writing or speech"
I suspect you meant to say levity, "humor or frivolity"
Either way it's the wrong word... Your post was neither a concise restatement nor was it humorous. Though I agree the original summary does sound a bit smug and a tad disconnected from reality.
So it's worth noting that Apple is releasing an iPhone SDK sometime in 2008, opening up room for 3rd party apps... And the iPhone OS of 2010 will not be the iPhone OS of 2007. However, if things in the OSS community continue as normal, any OSS phone OS of 2010 will likely be like a phone OS of 2005. Android might possibly be an exception and since that's the one you mentioned, we'll just have to wait and see.
I may well be moving to this soon. There are a few issues though they are more in my head than reality. Laptop drive space is one, I've been amazed at how fast my iTunes directory has grown over the last year. External hard drive can solve that problem, though. Another issue is dual monitors. But I don't use dual monitors, just want to when I an afford the second monitor but I'm not aware of laptops with dual monitor support; could be my own ignorance, I've not looked into it. And as another poster mentioned, I do like power to play games, which mostly means hefty video cards not usually present in laptops. But my gameplaying has reduced significantly over the years so this isn't nearly the factor it once was.
I'm pondering a complete switch from PC to Mac, and may just go with a Macbook Pro rather than both laptop and desktop (their machines are all so expensive!) so just using one machine is certainly something in my mind these days.
But some of us still like the desktop. My ideal world has me keeping all my data on my computer yet synchronized between my desktop and laptop. So far I haven't found that world but some things have gotten close. Microsoft does a pretty good job of keeping things organized locally, but some of what I need it doesn't handle too well (RSS reader in Outlook is quirky at best, etc). Google has some great online products - I love gmail and google reader - but I want to keep things with me, something more than google gears. iMap for gmail solved that one, but a good, synchronizable RSS reader is still somewhere in dreamworld. As for docs, various sync programs work. Google Docs and other online word processors simply are not an option. Despite what the critics say Word 2007 is a great product and no online product comes close, plus none of them travel with me (I'm aware of upcoming solutions using Google Gears but I still prefer the power of Word 2007).
Just recently I've started playing with a Mac and so far I'm pleased with what it can do..Mac almost gets my synchronization taken care of. There are several quirks in Mac that I'm trying to figure out, but it might end up being my solution. I'll lose Word 2007, but there are decent enough options on the Mac. We'll see.
All that to say, Google is decidedly not making the desktop moot. I'm sure there are quite a few people out there like me who prefer managing and storing information locally.
Since, you know, that money would have no better use than to get a new museum piece... I support funding science, but something like this would not be science, it would just be a tremendous waste of money.
Efnet hasn't changed much over the years, though enough so that channels are pretty stable these days. But it's also dead. Lots of channels, lots of clients, but no activity. Bots and idlers are the name of the game.
I don't see where you are going, no. The one is completely unlike the other. Saying people shouldn't log chats and make them into websites is completely unlike locking down copyrighted materials.
As for Freenode's response, I would be surprised if this had anything to do with resources. Maybe I missed it in the article somewhere, but resources is not the issue, privacy is the issue. What I say in a chat room is for that moment and to the people I say it to in the context of a current chat. It is not my intention for it to be splayed across the net. It is not reasonable that I should have to lock down the room, but it's also not reasonable that I should expect someone to throw it across the net.
I started using Usenet in High School with no idea that the content might be available later. Now I'm amazed at how much can be found. Just a week or so ago I dug through Google Groups looking at archives of messages I posted over a decade ago. Amazing stuff, and sort of scary in many ways. I can see the value of such archives, but I also would prefer not to have any of my old content online anymore. Like most people, my High School years would be best left forgotten.:)
This is like DRM? Oh please. A public chat room means available for public chat - anyone can come in and chat. It has nothing to do with internet archives so people can go back later and see what was going on. Channels like to encourage public chat, not some loser staying up late at night to dig through old logs on the web.
Teachers experience this everyday. Classroom full of kids, only two really "there"...
But as for IRC, when I'm on IRC I always leave the client going, even if I'm not active. People can still msg me and such and I can see it later when I get back, and I can scroll back and see what I've missed on current conversations, etc. For my own use I always tend to log conversations so I can always look back at stuff, though even that practice is frowned on by some.
My philosophy on IRC has always been an op can pretty much ban anyone for any reason. Not everyone likes that, and certain rooms have policies saying when an op can or can't ban but my general approach has always been to just ban if I think there is any reason to do so. I've been wrong at times and so the bans were lifted, but usually it turns out to be a good call. So yes, it's fine to kick lurkers off the channel because they might be bots. If they prove otherwise, sure, let them back in.
Good luck defending something like that in court. I think you have a pretty fundamental misunderstanding of the scope of copyright or the nature of conversations.
And to clarify, the constitution protects you from the government performing unnecessary search and seizure. Granted if it is performed by a non-government entity we tend to call such things breaking and entering.
Slight difference between the two. I am annoyed by logbots and have tended to ban anything I suspected of being one. I don't like them, I don't want to see them, I want all of them gone, but they are breaking no laws. Media pirates are breaking laws.
But it's nothing like it used to be. Cesspools are everywhere. Most channels have died. Most connections are bots or idle clients. This varies from network to network but I don't know of any network that has actually grown stronger over the years, all have weakened. Freenode might be the exception just because of the amount of OSS discussions that take place there. But I know that my IRC home, Efnet, and others I visit on occasion, Undernet and Dalnet, are nothing like they used to be.
Release candidate? Come on, I know people are pretty lax about terms to use - alpha, beta, RC, what do they even mean anymore? But come on, this is going a bit far:
This release candidate marks that the majority of the components of KDE 4.0 are now approaching release quality...
And so on. Now, unless I missed something, a release candidate is when you think your product is about ready for public release but you want to have people test its "final form" first. You think it is ready, but you want to real-world test it to iron out bugs that have escaped you. Release candidates are not packages that are known to be incomplete. Is KDE doing this just to show some progress since the year is stretching on without a release of KDE 4? Just call it another beta. Heck, it sounds like it might should be alpha still. They are not yet to the final bugging stage, it is not feature complete, they are still adding new code. I can forgive them for calling an alpha a beta, but calling an alpha a release candidate? Come on!
(P.S., I know I'm hijacking a thread to get higher position with my post. Please forgive me. This post is in release-candidate status and the final form of this post is expected to be relevant to the current discussion thread.)
Slashdot Mirror
I do tend to interact with the ribbon using the mouse rather than shortcuts but usually if I'm switching something I'm using some pre-defined style and I've got keyboard shortcuts set to the styles I use. The easy access to styles is one of my favorite features of 2007. But if I were to use keyboard shortcuts to access the tools on the ribbon itself I could see being a tad annoyed. I played with the 2007 shortcuts some but decided that for the most part they were too cumbersome to bother with. Since I didn't use shortcuts much anyway, no big loss. For those who like shortcuts I could see this docking points.
The ribbon does take up a bit of space. But even on my desktop I'm running 1680x1050 resolution so it doesn't get in my way. Like you, I would never want to hide the ribbon, that would just be annoying to deal with. If my screen was small I could see the ribbon being another annoyance.
Anyone actually enjoying Microsoft products must be a shill, ehh? Thanks for helping to prove my point about anti-MS rhetoric. And considering the vast majority of the Slashdot crowd is in the must-kill-MS crowd, a few voices actually supporting Microsoft hardly constitute a force.
(P.S., your comment loses 50 credibility points for saying M$... Can't the anti-MS crowd ever grow up?)
2008 will be better than 2004 and it will be a bit like 2007 but it still looks a little clunky, IMO. Mac fans will likely disagree with me for this, but a lot of for-Mac Software had a clunky feel to it. I know, clunky is not exactly a precise or descriptive word,... Many aspects of the Mac UI were quite nice and I like the "keep it simple, stupid!" approach that Apple takes, though they can go too far with that at times. But I was really surprised with apps like Pages to find the interface more clunky than smooth and simple. Word wasn't as bad but still wasn't quite as crisp as Word 2007 on the PC. From pictures I saw of 2008 it looks like it might have a similar issue. Again, I won't know until I try it. Since I just recently purchased my copy of Office 2004 I'm eligible for the cheap upgrade so I will be able to try 2008 soon after they start shipping.
I've used both since the betas and I've not encountered major bugs that have stopped me from enjoying both Vista and Office... Some things are annoying (UAC goes way too far) but that's about my only gripe with Vista since its release. I know other problems are out there but they haven't caused me any trouble and I'm not exactly an average computer user.
People may not like the new interface but there's no question that Office 2007 and Vista have brought many changes to the interface. Vista is not as big a change from XP as 2007 is from 2003, but the changes are numerous and real and, I think, useful.
All of the anti-Vista and anti-2007 rhetoric frequently strikes me as just anti-MS drivel. Granted there are people like you who don't care for the 2007 interface but most of the criticism is rather empty and shallow and often from people who have done little more than spend 5 minutes trying out the products.
For myself, I love both Vista and 2007. I've just finished about a month of exclusively using OS X Leopard and while there are things about Leopard I really like, I was very glad to return to my PC. One reason I was glad to return is Office 2007. Pages and Word for Mac are, IMO, just not as good as Office 2007 (I'll play with Word 2008 for Mac when I get my copy but I suspect my feeling will remain the same). 2007 does indeed look nice and for me it also works nice, giving me easy access to everything I need and making it easy to reconfigure many actions.
Microsoft gets a lot of stuff wrong, but they also get a lot of stuff right. The problem with the anti-MS crowd is they refuse to acknowledge when things are done well, pretending that nothing from MS is done well.
Offtopic nitpicking.
brevity I do not think it means what you think it means... "concise and exact use of words in writing or speech"
I suspect you meant to say levity, "humor or frivolity"
Either way it's the wrong word... Your post was neither a concise restatement nor was it humorous. Though I agree the original summary does sound a bit smug and a tad disconnected from reality.
How is this totalitarian? How is this scary? It's completely non-invasive and in no way violates privacy.
So it's worth noting that Apple is releasing an iPhone SDK sometime in 2008, opening up room for 3rd party apps... And the iPhone OS of 2010 will not be the iPhone OS of 2007. However, if things in the OSS community continue as normal, any OSS phone OS of 2010 will likely be like a phone OS of 2005. Android might possibly be an exception and since that's the one you mentioned, we'll just have to wait and see.
I may well be moving to this soon. There are a few issues though they are more in my head than reality. Laptop drive space is one, I've been amazed at how fast my iTunes directory has grown over the last year. External hard drive can solve that problem, though. Another issue is dual monitors. But I don't use dual monitors, just want to when I an afford the second monitor but I'm not aware of laptops with dual monitor support; could be my own ignorance, I've not looked into it. And as another poster mentioned, I do like power to play games, which mostly means hefty video cards not usually present in laptops. But my gameplaying has reduced significantly over the years so this isn't nearly the factor it once was.
I'm pondering a complete switch from PC to Mac, and may just go with a Macbook Pro rather than both laptop and desktop (their machines are all so expensive!) so just using one machine is certainly something in my mind these days.
But some of us still like the desktop. My ideal world has me keeping all my data on my computer yet synchronized between my desktop and laptop. So far I haven't found that world but some things have gotten close. Microsoft does a pretty good job of keeping things organized locally, but some of what I need it doesn't handle too well (RSS reader in Outlook is quirky at best, etc). Google has some great online products - I love gmail and google reader - but I want to keep things with me, something more than google gears. iMap for gmail solved that one, but a good, synchronizable RSS reader is still somewhere in dreamworld. As for docs, various sync programs work. Google Docs and other online word processors simply are not an option. Despite what the critics say Word 2007 is a great product and no online product comes close, plus none of them travel with me (I'm aware of upcoming solutions using Google Gears but I still prefer the power of Word 2007).
.Mac almost gets my synchronization taken care of. There are several quirks in Mac that I'm trying to figure out, but it might end up being my solution. I'll lose Word 2007, but there are decent enough options on the Mac. We'll see.
Just recently I've started playing with a Mac and so far I'm pleased with what it can do.
All that to say, Google is decidedly not making the desktop moot. I'm sure there are quite a few people out there like me who prefer managing and storing information locally.
I don't really know what you're talking about but a quick Google turned up the following which seems to be what you're looking for: http://www.glprogramming.com/red/chapter06.html
Since, you know, that money would have no better use than to get a new museum piece... I support funding science, but something like this would not be science, it would just be a tremendous waste of money.
Efnet hasn't changed much over the years, though enough so that channels are pretty stable these days. But it's also dead. Lots of channels, lots of clients, but no activity. Bots and idlers are the name of the game.
I don't see where you are going, no. The one is completely unlike the other. Saying people shouldn't log chats and make them into websites is completely unlike locking down copyrighted materials.
As for Freenode's response, I would be surprised if this had anything to do with resources. Maybe I missed it in the article somewhere, but resources is not the issue, privacy is the issue. What I say in a chat room is for that moment and to the people I say it to in the context of a current chat. It is not my intention for it to be splayed across the net. It is not reasonable that I should have to lock down the room, but it's also not reasonable that I should expect someone to throw it across the net.
I started using Usenet in High School with no idea that the content might be available later. Now I'm amazed at how much can be found. Just a week or so ago I dug through Google Groups looking at archives of messages I posted over a decade ago. Amazing stuff, and sort of scary in many ways. I can see the value of such archives, but I also would prefer not to have any of my old content online anymore. Like most people, my High School years would be best left forgotten. :)
This is like DRM? Oh please. A public chat room means available for public chat - anyone can come in and chat. It has nothing to do with internet archives so people can go back later and see what was going on. Channels like to encourage public chat, not some loser staying up late at night to dig through old logs on the web.
Teachers experience this everyday. Classroom full of kids, only two really "there"...
But as for IRC, when I'm on IRC I always leave the client going, even if I'm not active. People can still msg me and such and I can see it later when I get back, and I can scroll back and see what I've missed on current conversations, etc. For my own use I always tend to log conversations so I can always look back at stuff, though even that practice is frowned on by some.
My philosophy on IRC has always been an op can pretty much ban anyone for any reason. Not everyone likes that, and certain rooms have policies saying when an op can or can't ban but my general approach has always been to just ban if I think there is any reason to do so. I've been wrong at times and so the bans were lifted, but usually it turns out to be a good call. So yes, it's fine to kick lurkers off the channel because they might be bots. If they prove otherwise, sure, let them back in.
Good luck defending something like that in court. I think you have a pretty fundamental misunderstanding of the scope of copyright or the nature of conversations.
And to clarify, the constitution protects you from the government performing unnecessary search and seizure. Granted if it is performed by a non-government entity we tend to call such things breaking and entering.
Slight difference between the two. I am annoyed by logbots and have tended to ban anything I suspected of being one. I don't like them, I don't want to see them, I want all of them gone, but they are breaking no laws. Media pirates are breaking laws.
But it's nothing like it used to be. Cesspools are everywhere. Most channels have died. Most connections are bots or idle clients. This varies from network to network but I don't know of any network that has actually grown stronger over the years, all have weakened. Freenode might be the exception just because of the amount of OSS discussions that take place there. But I know that my IRC home, Efnet, and others I visit on occasion, Undernet and Dalnet, are nothing like they used to be.
so you are including Canadians, Mexicans, Peruvians, etc, rather than just the people of the USA? There are many countries in America, you know...
Release candidate? Come on, I know people are pretty lax about terms to use - alpha, beta, RC, what do they even mean anymore? But come on, this is going a bit far:
This release candidate marks that the majority of the components of KDE 4.0 are now approaching release quality...
And so on. Now, unless I missed something, a release candidate is when you think your product is about ready for public release but you want to have people test its "final form" first. You think it is ready, but you want to real-world test it to iron out bugs that have escaped you. Release candidates are not packages that are known to be incomplete. Is KDE doing this just to show some progress since the year is stretching on without a release of KDE 4? Just call it another beta. Heck, it sounds like it might should be alpha still. They are not yet to the final bugging stage, it is not feature complete, they are still adding new code. I can forgive them for calling an alpha a beta, but calling an alpha a release candidate? Come on!
(P.S., I know I'm hijacking a thread to get higher position with my post. Please forgive me. This post is in release-candidate status and the final form of this post is expected to be relevant to the current discussion thread.)
no