Did you ever see the "lazy susan" design pattern utilized at a checkout like that before? I certainly had not. And, to be completely honest, it's a significant advance over the "usual" checkout "technology" of either grab the bags from the clerk as they fill them or swing the cart around and let the clerk fling your fruit into the cart.
I agree with grandparent; that's an actual, legitimate patent, for a physical product with a discrete use which had not been seen before.
Now, if Wal*Mart had taken that patent and gone after Sears for using rotary clothes hangers andor handing bags to their customers, then in either case it would have been thrown out with good reason. Essentially, if you buy the software-patent-as-analog-to-physical-device-paten t argument, that's what this guy is claiming here. He made a very nice and novel (so far as I know) player piano interface. He did not make a media jukebox interface, nor did he make a player piano. Each of those would quite demonstrably invalidate his claim due to prior art.
To the great-grandparent's point, the objective here seems harassment of the company so that they pay him to go away. While I, too, ANAL, I really can't see this being any more legitimate than that.
Hving attended a couple weddings in the recent past, neither of which had such a draconian restriction, where the only thing said about other people weilding cameras was that they were not allowed to take pictures of the posed shots... everything went really well, and really fast. The posed shots, obviously, are a problem.
But keeping all other cameras out of the wedding? Great, that makes your job a little easier, but guess what? The wedding's not about you, or your portfolio. It's about the bride and groom. They are the ones who miss out on the candids and unplanned photos, given that it is unlikely that you will have a dozen assistants getting reaction shots and moment shots of everyone present at the ceremony.
Personally, I'd walk away from any contract that says no one can bring a camera to the ceremony. It's not about you, not at all.
In other words, instead of being up front and explaining why you cost x amount, and why you are worth it, to the happy couple, you low-ball them and hold their wedding photos as ransom to get the full amount you believe you are entitled. Obviously, after the wedding's done they aren't going to say, "no, sorry, we don't want any pictures"...
Life is so much simpler when people deal up-front. You know you need $5000 for the wedding for it to make sense. Tell them that up front. Yes, say if they don't like you pictures, etc, etc, they don't have to buy them and they'll end up paying less. But $5000 is your cost. Period. If they want to cost-compare make sure they include all the prints and rights you are including (which should be everything, 'cause you just want to get $5000 out of the deal), and, more importantly, understand the benefits of not having to run crying to you to get another copy of their wedding photo so they can hang it in the vet's center fifty years from now.
Also, the "if you want to only do weddings, nothing else" thing: yeah, and if I wanted to earn a living playing Santa Clause at the local mall I'd need to get paid $1000 per hour too! But, unfortunately, that just doesn't happen. Find something profitable to do in those other six months of the year, or don't complain that you make half the wage to which you feel you are entitled.
If I had to choose either Notepad or Quark any time I wanted to create a text document, I'd be an unhappy camper.
Note that the grandparent was talking about TextEdit, not Notepad. TextEdit allows for basic formatting of text, and can easily produce nice, simple, text-based documents. But it doesn't work once you start wanting to add in a bunch of tables and graphics and floating frames that need to be right justified at the top of the page after Paragraph 17.
TextEdit does really well for simple text documents. It loads in a tenth the time (or less; I haven't measured it, but it feels at least that) of Word, is significantly simpler in terms of interface, and Just Plain Works.
The problem is that small text-only documents occasionally "grow up". "Ohh, let's include the TPS report graph in here! Let's make this a three-page nested table instead!" That's where starting in Word (or Pages) helps: you have "room" to grow. The question is if it makes sense enough of the time to justify the extra baggage for all those times that all you really need is simple text formatting.
Re:Death to folders/directories death to discovery
on
The Death of Folders?
·
· Score: 1
type: applications... HEY where are all my/usr/bin files I know I have ls on my computer somewhere.
Okay, I misread your original problem as looking for applications as opposed to command-line utilities. Yeah, if you're looking for command line utilities, you should use the command line (well, yeah, you can do it in Finder too, but 'ls' is much easier and sitting on the command line you can try each of them out). Spotlight excludes command line utilities because... you can't use them from the Spotlight/Finder/Gui interface!
Ok *.plist no results found Ok....plist here we go. A huge list of files. What!!!! There are about 20 different info.plist that is not going to help me. Without folders I don't have any context on what they are used for.
You do have folder context, you just have to click on each and every file to get it (the "info" button). You asked for all "pfiles", that's what you got. You want the plist for a specific application, include that application name in the search. For instance "Automator plist" puts the Automator plist right there at the top (along with a mail message from an XCode mailing list which talks about problems with an Automator plist setting.. which is both kinda useful to show up right then and very unlikely to have ever come to my mind had I instead rooted around in Finder looking for com.apple.Automator.plist, but YMMV).
Or are you complaining that you wanted only the plists under/Library/Application Support/ (which, of course, is done by going to that folder and doing a Spotlight search under there) or just the ones in/Library/Preferences (in which case, obviously, use the Finder's folder interface alone!)
My point is, and was, if you want "all" your potential configuration options, a Spotlight search will get you a lot faster than poking around in the Finder trying to find them. As I thought was obvious, but apparently needs to be stated, if you are looking for the contents of a particular FOLDER, then Spotlight is not the right tool to use (except perhaps to find the folder).
Dock Transparency in Prefs... nope not a thing Um Just dock well it is only giveing me files with dock in it still not much help, for someone who doesn't really know what it is called that they are looking for.
Um, okay. My bad. I didn't look this one up and took your word for it that "dock clearness" led somewhere.
So where, exactly, do you see an option to set dock transparency? Anywhere at all outside of a third party application? And just how do you expect Spotlight to show you to a preference page which doesn't exist?
The Spotlight results seem like they'd be pretty clear to the average user: no, you can't set dock transparency with what's on your computer. Unsaid: search the web and find the haxie to do it if you really need to.
type: document... Holy Crap I never though I made that many documents. Oh wait I didn't a lot of them are OS X help files. Umm Ill guess ill give you a point there. But I would probably be more efficient with finder though.
If you want only documents you created, add "Authors" equal to your name. Again, i'm not sure how a scan of your entire hard drive can possibly be more efficient than narrowing down the list by known criteria (which would include the folder you saved it in, if you know that, but you didn't indicate that originally).
Spotlight narrows the possibilities down. The more bits you know about the document you are searching for (that it had a footnote regarding Othello, perhaps, or that it dealt with evaporative coolers, or that you saved it somewhere in your Documents folder) the more Spotlight can narrow your search.
In the end, it always comes down to picking what you want from a list. The beauty of Spotlight is that it makes that list flat (instead of having to descend your folder tree and look in each fo
Re:Death to folders/directories death to discovery
on
The Death of Folders?
·
· Score: 1
cd/usr/bin ls
Try Search type:Application
Or on MacOS take a look at all the pfiles and see what they can control and what they can't
Try Search *.plist
Or say you want to find a way to make the dock transperent and you search for Dock Transperance. While the real term that the search will find is Dock Clearness.
Try Search Dock Transparency in Prefs, and, chances are, you get Dock Clearness. It's really smart about such things. Or, try search Dock, then browse the results. A whole lot better than sorting through pref tab after pref tab trying each label on for size.
Or that file you saved way back when you don't know the date you did it or what it is about but once you see it you know that is the one you need.
Do you know anything about the file? Then search for that. Nothing? Then search for type:document and start browsing!
Sure I like spotlight but there are some cases where it just fails me mostly because I am absent minded.
That's funny, cause as much as I like Spotlight, the only places it works for me is where I'm absent minded. My current project I can get right to in Finder; I need the search to find the project dealing with vampire bunnies I worked on last year. My last 20 emails I can find something in easier by just scrolling down in the list; I need the search when someone asks me about something they sent three days ago (or, exceedingly commonly, three hours ago).
IMHO, search is never a replacement for organization. I did some support work for a girls' softball team this year and thought I'd try out using Spotlight as my key organizer. So, I created a stored folder for Softball, etc. I found it was an order of magnitude faster just finding the file and opening it rather than going to the Spotlight saved search folder, waiting for the files to appear (Spotlight's quick, but not quick like Finder!), and then finding the file amongst the smaller stack.
Regarding "labels", OS X has had them for a few revisions, although you're limited to seven different colors which can not be added to, and each file can only have ONE label, not many. However, the one label per file is of course in addition to the organization you give your folders, so it fits many but not all requirements. Right click any file and set it's label color; voila! And you can use them as metadata in Spotlight.
The logical extension here are "instant" searches. For instance, sitting in my "Documents" directory, be able to filter the direct contents by the "Red" label with 1-2 button clicks, then be able to flatten the heirarchy and see everything in Documents or below with the Red label, then be able to select a file and see where it actually lies in the file system. I'm not talking about creating a new smart folder, specifying my search, selecting to search only in , etc; I'm talking about clicking a "flatten" and a "filter by label" button in the toolbar and the display changing to only those... if you've seen WinCVS or MacCVS (http://www.cvsgui.org/) then you know what I'm talking about.
Er, yeah, you had to slip them in and out of the protective caddy if you were a cheapskate and only bought 1-2 caddies for your library of disks. The idea is to spend the extra $0.50 on a caddy per disk so that you gain 100% protection 100% of the time for your data. Caddy-based systems would spin the disk inside the caddy inside the drive... they'd never leave the caddy (although of course you had to worry about damage to the caddy causing physical damage to the disk).
'Course, the alternative is to back up to multiple disks and store in multiple locations which also has positive aspects.
To add just a little information, Dashboard brings up all your commonly used widgets at the touch of a single (default F12) key. In other words, yes, it requires a key press, and the OS hasn't figured out how to grow new keys on whatever keyboard you own, but for that one key press you get your calculator up as well as your package tracker, the weather, a phone book, a dictionary, etc... Of course, it's not a useful dashboard without a Hula Homer on it.
To the original point, though, the keyboard focus after the Magic F12 action is whatever widget you last used. So if you've been playing with your WAR driving companion and hit F12, it's not gonna be ready to calculate. However, once you click on the Calculator F12 does bring you right back to it.
A lot of explanation for a facetious comment to begin with, but isn't that what makes/. great?
Slashdot Mirror
Not to defend Wal*Mart, but ...
n t argument, that's what this guy is claiming here. He made a very nice and novel (so far as I know) player piano interface. He did not make a media jukebox interface, nor did he make a player piano. Each of those would quite demonstrably invalidate his claim due to prior art.
Did you ever see the "lazy susan" design pattern utilized at a checkout like that before? I certainly had not. And, to be completely honest, it's a significant advance over the "usual" checkout "technology" of either grab the bags from the clerk as they fill them or swing the cart around and let the clerk fling your fruit into the cart.
I agree with grandparent; that's an actual, legitimate patent, for a physical product with a discrete use which had not been seen before.
Now, if Wal*Mart had taken that patent and gone after Sears for using rotary clothes hangers andor handing bags to their customers, then in either case it would have been thrown out with good reason. Essentially, if you buy the software-patent-as-analog-to-physical-device-pate
To the great-grandparent's point, the objective here seems harassment of the company so that they pay him to go away. While I, too, ANAL, I really can't see this being any more legitimate than that.
Hving attended a couple weddings in the recent past, neither of which had such a draconian restriction, where the only thing said about other people weilding cameras was that they were not allowed to take pictures of the posed shots ... everything went really well, and really fast. The posed shots, obviously, are a problem.
But keeping all other cameras out of the wedding? Great, that makes your job a little easier, but guess what? The wedding's not about you, or your portfolio. It's about the bride and groom. They are the ones who miss out on the candids and unplanned photos, given that it is unlikely that you will have a dozen assistants getting reaction shots and moment shots of everyone present at the ceremony.
Personally, I'd walk away from any contract that says no one can bring a camera to the ceremony. It's not about you, not at all.
In other words, instead of being up front and explaining why you cost x amount, and why you are worth it, to the happy couple, you low-ball them and hold their wedding photos as ransom to get the full amount you believe you are entitled. Obviously, after the wedding's done they aren't going to say, "no, sorry, we don't want any pictures" ...
Life is so much simpler when people deal up-front. You know you need $5000 for the wedding for it to make sense. Tell them that up front. Yes, say if they don't like you pictures, etc, etc, they don't have to buy them and they'll end up paying less. But $5000 is your cost. Period. If they want to cost-compare make sure they include all the prints and rights you are including (which should be everything, 'cause you just want to get $5000 out of the deal), and, more importantly, understand the benefits of not having to run crying to you to get another copy of their wedding photo so they can hang it in the vet's center fifty years from now.
Also, the "if you want to only do weddings, nothing else" thing: yeah, and if I wanted to earn a living playing Santa Clause at the local mall I'd need to get paid $1000 per hour too! But, unfortunately, that just doesn't happen. Find something profitable to do in those other six months of the year, or don't complain that you make half the wage to which you feel you are entitled.
If I had to choose either Notepad or Quark any time I wanted to create a text document, I'd be an unhappy camper.
Note that the grandparent was talking about TextEdit, not Notepad. TextEdit allows for basic formatting of text, and can easily produce nice, simple, text-based documents. But it doesn't work once you start wanting to add in a bunch of tables and graphics and floating frames that need to be right justified at the top of the page after Paragraph 17.
TextEdit does really well for simple text documents. It loads in a tenth the time (or less; I haven't measured it, but it feels at least that) of Word, is significantly simpler in terms of interface, and Just Plain Works.
The problem is that small text-only documents occasionally "grow up". "Ohh, let's include the TPS report graph in here! Let's make this a three-page nested table instead!" That's where starting in Word (or Pages) helps: you have "room" to grow. The question is if it makes sense enough of the time to justify the extra baggage for all those times that all you really need is simple text formatting.
type: applications... HEY where are all my /usr/bin files I know I have ls on my computer somewhere.
... you can't use them from the Spotlight/Finder/Gui interface!
.plist here we go. A huge list of files. What!!!! There are about 20 different info.plist that is not going to help me. Without folders I don't have any context on what they are used for.
.. which is both kinda useful to show up right then and very unlikely to have ever come to my mind had I instead rooted around in Finder looking for com.apple.Automator.plist, but YMMV).
/Library/Application Support/ (which, of course, is done by going to that folder and doing a Spotlight search under there) or just the ones in /Library/Preferences (in which case, obviously, use the Finder's folder interface alone!)
Okay, I misread your original problem as looking for applications as opposed to command-line utilities. Yeah, if you're looking for command line utilities, you should use the command line (well, yeah, you can do it in Finder too, but 'ls' is much easier and sitting on the command line you can try each of them out). Spotlight excludes command line utilities because
Ok *.plist no results found Ok...
You do have folder context, you just have to click on each and every file to get it (the "info" button). You asked for all "pfiles", that's what you got. You want the plist for a specific application, include that application name in the search. For instance "Automator plist" puts the Automator plist right there at the top (along with a mail message from an XCode mailing list which talks about problems with an Automator plist setting
Or are you complaining that you wanted only the plists under
My point is, and was, if you want "all" your potential configuration options, a Spotlight search will get you a lot faster than poking around in the Finder trying to find them. As I thought was obvious, but apparently needs to be stated, if you are looking for the contents of a particular FOLDER, then Spotlight is not the right tool to use (except perhaps to find the folder).
Dock Transparency in Prefs... nope not a thing Um Just dock well it is only giveing me files with dock in it still not much help, for someone who doesn't really know what it is called that they are looking for.
Um, okay. My bad. I didn't look this one up and took your word for it that "dock clearness" led somewhere.
So where, exactly, do you see an option to set dock transparency? Anywhere at all outside of a third party application? And just how do you expect Spotlight to show you to a preference page which doesn't exist?
The Spotlight results seem like they'd be pretty clear to the average user: no, you can't set dock transparency with what's on your computer. Unsaid: search the web and find the haxie to do it if you really need to.
type: document... Holy Crap I never though I made that many documents. Oh wait I didn't a lot of them are OS X help files. Umm Ill guess ill give you a point there. But I would probably be more efficient with finder though.
If you want only documents you created, add "Authors" equal to your name. Again, i'm not sure how a scan of your entire hard drive can possibly be more efficient than narrowing down the list by known criteria (which would include the folder you saved it in, if you know that, but you didn't indicate that originally).
Spotlight narrows the possibilities down. The more bits you know about the document you are searching for (that it had a footnote regarding Othello, perhaps, or that it dealt with evaporative coolers, or that you saved it somewhere in your Documents folder) the more Spotlight can narrow your search.
In the end, it always comes down to picking what you want from a list. The beauty of Spotlight is that it makes that list flat (instead of having to descend your folder tree and look in each fo
cd /usr/bin
... if you've seen WinCVS or MacCVS (http://www.cvsgui.org/) then you know what I'm talking about.
ls
Try Search type:Application
Or on MacOS take a look at all the pfiles and see what they can control and what they can't
Try Search *.plist
Or say you want to find a way to make the dock transperent and you search for Dock Transperance. While the real term that the search will find is Dock Clearness.
Try Search Dock Transparency in Prefs, and, chances are, you get Dock Clearness. It's really smart about such things. Or, try search Dock, then browse the results. A whole lot better than sorting through pref tab after pref tab trying each label on for size.
Or that file you saved way back when you don't know the date you did it or what it is about but once you see it you know that is the one you need.
Do you know anything about the file? Then search for that. Nothing? Then search for type:document and start browsing!
Sure I like spotlight but there are some cases where it just fails me mostly because I am absent minded.
That's funny, cause as much as I like Spotlight, the only places it works for me is where I'm absent minded. My current project I can get right to in Finder; I need the search to find the project dealing with vampire bunnies I worked on last year. My last 20 emails I can find something in easier by just scrolling down in the list; I need the search when someone asks me about something they sent three days ago (or, exceedingly commonly, three hours ago).
IMHO, search is never a replacement for organization. I did some support work for a girls' softball team this year and thought I'd try out using Spotlight as my key organizer. So, I created a stored folder for Softball, etc. I found it was an order of magnitude faster just finding the file and opening it rather than going to the Spotlight saved search folder, waiting for the files to appear (Spotlight's quick, but not quick like Finder!), and then finding the file amongst the smaller stack.
Regarding "labels", OS X has had them for a few revisions, although you're limited to seven different colors which can not be added to, and each file can only have ONE label, not many. However, the one label per file is of course in addition to the organization you give your folders, so it fits many but not all requirements. Right click any file and set it's label color; voila! And you can use them as metadata in Spotlight.
The logical extension here are "instant" searches. For instance, sitting in my "Documents" directory, be able to filter the direct contents by the "Red" label with 1-2 button clicks, then be able to flatten the heirarchy and see everything in Documents or below with the Red label, then be able to select a file and see where it actually lies in the file system. I'm not talking about creating a new smart folder, specifying my search, selecting to search only in , etc; I'm talking about clicking a "flatten" and a "filter by label" button in the toolbar and the display changing to only those
Er, yeah, you had to slip them in and out of the protective caddy if you were a cheapskate and only bought 1-2 caddies for your library of disks. The idea is to spend the extra $0.50 on a caddy per disk so that you gain 100% protection 100% of the time for your data. Caddy-based systems would spin the disk inside the caddy inside the drive ... they'd never leave the caddy (although of course you had to worry about damage to the caddy causing physical damage to the disk).
'Course, the alternative is to back up to multiple disks and store in multiple locations which also has positive aspects.
To add just a little information, Dashboard brings up all your commonly used widgets at the touch of a single (default F12) key. In other words, yes, it requires a key press, and the OS hasn't figured out how to grow new keys on whatever keyboard you own, but for that one key press you get your calculator up as well as your package tracker, the weather, a phone book, a dictionary, etc ... Of course, it's not a useful dashboard without a Hula Homer on it.
/. great?
To the original point, though, the keyboard focus after the Magic F12 action is whatever widget you last used. So if you've been playing with your WAR driving companion and hit F12, it's not gonna be ready to calculate. However, once you click on the Calculator F12 does bring you right back to it.
A lot of explanation for a facetious comment to begin with, but isn't that what makes