They are talking about an ant-based algorithm, often used in optimization (routing, for example).
I'm sorry, but neither you nor the article make any fucking sense whatsoever. This is an IT geek site, stop with the fucking metaphores. Why do these people expect us to understand "virtual ants wander around the network" any more than "a network scanner that looks for the same security holes as the worms, only this notifies the sysadmin about them"?
But how can they install this plugin then? It's normal exe and probably requires even more admin rights to get inside IE than just installing Chrome on your userbase. And other than that I dont see a point in wrapping another browser plugin to work inside browser. If people are knowledge about this plugin, they're knowledge about the actual Chrome browser too.
When company policy or existing contracts force the sysadmins into IE, they might still have the option to install plugins.
And IE user experience and GUI sucks.
Irrelevant when you are verboten to use anything else.
Why are these "obscure" rules used as a "canary test" of your intelligence and noteworthiness?
Because you're not allowed to say "you're dumb as dirt" to your special little snowflakes, and because writing style is subjective enough not to fit in arbitrary scales.
I suspect sleeping has a higher level function as well, like getting rid of all the crap you accumulate in your head throughout the day. Maybe some (perhaps non-essential, just useful) chemicals in our brain tend to run out when awake, and sleep is needed to restock them.
However, awake is only one state of mind out of many, it'd be foolish to disregard most of them. (I don't consider "auto-pilot on the highway" awake, for example.)
I only said that so you have a chance at modding my post on its own merits, and not based on your perception of my motives. I fully expect that post to fluctuate between -1, Flamebait and +3, Insightful, and I'm fine with either. I have enough karma to speak my mind on occasion:)
Overall, Windows Mobile is clearly suffering from that Microsoft problem that once they think they are in charge of a market, all innovation completely stops.
I'm going to get modded to hell and back for this, but Microsoft never really did "innovation". What they did was "buy up competitors who innovate, and integrate the result poorly".
Balancing those factors and still shipping a working result on time is really quite hard, and requires a skilled individual.
Yes. However, merely blurting out truisms will not help anyone. It's not what they achieve that's important, but how. More precisely, what can I do to achieve the same level of success.
GP: "Write good programs fast, and ship on time." TFA: "If someone proposes an architecture that's way more complicated than it is necessary for the task, just say no and stop caring what they'll think."
After reading the article, there's nothing we didn't know before: release early, release often. But here's the killer quote all of you need to duct tape somewhere in your office right now:
Duct tape programmers dont give a shit what you think about them. They stick to simple basic and easy to use tools and use the extra brainpower that these tools leave them to write more useful features for their customers.
I thought Slashdot was opposed to copyright law and that you couldn't "steal" intellectual property because it wasn't physically taken from someone else?
We also don't want double standards. As long as RIAA can defend their rights, so can we.
Why is copyright bad in pro-piracy articles and good in free software articles?
Perhaps because of the intent of the licences violated?
You know that look your parents gave you when you said something really stupid but they didn't want to correct you because you weren't old enough for the truth? Well, that's how everyone is looking at you right now.
It cracks me up how "taint" originally was a noun referring to the perineum - the region between the ass and balls/muff, and now all of a sudden everyone just uses it to mean "to soil". It's so fascinating, how language evolves...
When Microsoft could copy over the descriptive buttons from MacOS ("Overwrite:" [yes|no] and "Keep this setting [yes|no]" to File exists: [overwrite|don't overwrite] and "[Keep setting|abandon setting]" etc.), we're actually finished building a UI metaphor.
Yes/No questions are horrible. You can only answer it if you read and correctly interpreted the question, which can be tricky if the question is phrased wrong. A [Delete]/[Cancel] pair is much clearer and faster to interpret (See, you already know which dialog this is, and there isn't even a question).
And please don't confuse themes/skins with usability. It's not the color of the menu that counts, but how much you have to wait for the shiny animation to finish before you can click again.
People are used to MS, and anything different is "wrong".
If people expect it, anything different is wrong. But there is nothing stopping us to make a compatible interface at least an option, if not the default.
In user interface design, programming language design, and ergonomics, the principle (or rule or law) of least astonishment (or surprise) states that, when two elements of an interface conflict, or are ambiguous, the behaviour should be that which will least surprise the human user or programmer at the time the conflict arises.
I'm also willing to bet that at the show they demonstrated other UI abilities that the article didn't talk about
I'm willing to bet that if such abilities existed, they would have made it not just into the article, but the summary as well. Maybe selective zooming for Photoshop or something, once it'll support this.
The keyboard + mouse combination is a powerful one, there are basically no UI input problems that need to be solved anymore.
You could try using a windowing system where you don't need to fart around with things like xorg.conf.
Let's pretend I do. Can I use this in a meaningful manner with a browser? How about a video player, an IDE, an image viewer, IM, anything that wasn't specifically written for this?
What's with all the hype about touch screens? And THREE of them? What possible use could the third one serve when no OS I know of plays nicely with even the first one? Do they have fingerprint protection at least?
Yes, it looks cool, I'll give you that. But so does the 3 megabytes of xorg.conf to make them work properly, and you still don't get application support.
(Heck, Windows has pretty much _always_ had one of the most responsive UIs.)
If and only if you had at least 3x the Recommended processor and RAM, and the scheduler didn't suddenly decide your hard drive needs a little excercise.
When the system is trying to contextually offer the "best" options to user, in seemingly random places it thinks are most relevant, they just get confused.
Confused is not the right word. Usability can be measured in the time and brainpower it takes to get to where you want to be. If you constantly rearrange the buttons, the user has to interpret all buttons to figure out which one he needs. Also see The Rule of Least Surprise.
Slashdot Mirror
They are talking about an ant-based algorithm, often used in optimization (routing, for example).
I'm sorry, but neither you nor the article make any fucking sense whatsoever. This is an IT geek site, stop with the fucking metaphores. Why do these people expect us to understand "virtual ants wander around the network" any more than "a network scanner that looks for the same security holes as the worms, only this notifies the sysadmin about them"?
But how can they install this plugin then? It's normal exe and probably requires even more admin rights to get inside IE than just installing Chrome on your userbase. And other than that I dont see a point in wrapping another browser plugin to work inside browser. If people are knowledge about this plugin, they're knowledge about the actual Chrome browser too.
When company policy or existing contracts force the sysadmins into IE, they might still have the option to install plugins.
And IE user experience and GUI sucks.
Irrelevant when you are verboten to use anything else.
Why are these "obscure" rules used as a "canary test" of your intelligence and noteworthiness?
Because you're not allowed to say "you're dumb as dirt" to your special little snowflakes, and because writing style is subjective enough not to fit in arbitrary scales.
Sleeping is basically a good chance to get eaten.
I suspect sleeping has a higher level function as well, like getting rid of all the crap you accumulate in your head throughout the day. Maybe some (perhaps non-essential, just useful) chemicals in our brain tend to run out when awake, and sleep is needed to restock them.
However, awake is only one state of mind out of many, it'd be foolish to disregard most of them. (I don't consider "auto-pilot on the highway" awake, for example.)
I only said that so you have a chance at modding my post on its own merits, and not based on your perception of my motives. I fully expect that post to fluctuate between -1, Flamebait and +3, Insightful, and I'm fine with either. I have enough karma to speak my mind on occasion :)
Overall, Windows Mobile is clearly suffering from that Microsoft problem that once they think they are in charge of a market, all innovation completely stops.
I'm going to get modded to hell and back for this, but Microsoft never really did "innovation". What they did was "buy up competitors who innovate, and integrate the result poorly".
People would play with it for a bit, and then use something stable.
Exactly. Then you come out with the stable version, and win. Early releases aren't products, they're marketing.
Balancing those factors and still shipping a working result on time is really quite hard, and requires a skilled individual.
Yes. However, merely blurting out truisms will not help anyone. It's not what they achieve that's important, but how. More precisely, what can I do to achieve the same level of success.
GP: "Write good programs fast, and ship on time."
TFA: "If someone proposes an architecture that's way more complicated than it is necessary for the task, just say no and stop caring what they'll think."
See the difference?
According to TFA, there are times when you have to choose between unit tests and staying ahead of the competition. What would you do?
After reading the article, there's nothing we didn't know before: release early, release often. But here's the killer quote all of you need to duct tape somewhere in your office right now:
Duct tape programmers dont give a shit what you think about them. They stick to simple basic and easy to use tools and use the extra brainpower that these tools leave them to write more useful features for their customers.
A good architect is someone with the experience to know when to cut corners and when to enforce rigid discipline.
Which is entirely subjective by definition, so we're back to the basics: a good programmer writes working programs.
I thought Slashdot was opposed to copyright law and that you couldn't "steal" intellectual property because it wasn't physically taken from someone else?
We also don't want double standards. As long as RIAA can defend their rights, so can we.
Why is copyright bad in pro-piracy articles and good in free software articles?
Perhaps because of the intent of the licences violated?
modern web standards
You know that look your parents gave you when you said something really stupid but they didn't want to correct you because you weren't old enough for the truth? Well, that's how everyone is looking at you right now.
It cracks me up how "taint" originally was a noun referring to the perineum - the region between the ass and balls/muff, and now all of a sudden everyone just uses it to mean "to soil". It's so fascinating, how language evolves...
BTW soil, guess where the earth chakra is.
When Microsoft could copy over the descriptive buttons from MacOS ("Overwrite:" [yes|no] and "Keep this setting [yes|no]" to File exists: [overwrite|don't overwrite] and "[Keep setting|abandon setting]" etc.), we're actually finished building a UI metaphor.
Yes/No questions are horrible. You can only answer it if you read and correctly interpreted the question, which can be tricky if the question is phrased wrong. A [Delete]/[Cancel] pair is much clearer and faster to interpret (See, you already know which dialog this is, and there isn't even a question).
And please don't confuse themes/skins with usability. It's not the color of the menu that counts, but how much you have to wait for the shiny animation to finish before you can click again.
People are used to MS, and anything different is "wrong".
If people expect it, anything different is wrong. But there is nothing stopping us to make a compatible interface at least an option, if not the default.
In user interface design, programming language design, and ergonomics, the principle (or rule or law) of least astonishment (or surprise) states that, when two elements of an interface conflict, or are ambiguous, the behaviour should be that which will least surprise the human user or programmer at the time the conflict arises.
However it seems like they only measured JavaScript engine, which by no means contribute everything to how fast browser or browsing feels.
Yeah, we should include Average Time To Root in the benchmarks, too. Google wouldn't stand a chance.
I'm also willing to bet that at the show they demonstrated other UI abilities that the article didn't talk about
I'm willing to bet that if such abilities existed, they would have made it not just into the article, but the summary as well. Maybe selective zooming for Photoshop or something, once it'll support this.
The keyboard + mouse combination is a powerful one, there are basically no UI input problems that need to be solved anymore.
You could try using a windowing system where you don't need to fart around with things like xorg.conf.
Let's pretend I do. Can I use this in a meaningful manner with a browser? How about a video player, an IDE, an image viewer, IM, anything that wasn't specifically written for this?
What's with all the hype about touch screens? And THREE of them? What possible use could the third one serve when no OS I know of plays nicely with even the first one? Do they have fingerprint protection at least?
Yes, it looks cool, I'll give you that. But so does the 3 megabytes of xorg.conf to make them work properly, and you still don't get application support.
Is it just that they've given it a new name, as that's all that I can get out of the article.
So the non-article-reading crowd wins again. I gathered this much from the summary.
When have you heard about a political speech and reality having any connection?
Oooh, I have one! It even has its own article in Wikipedia.
You can't tell how much something weighs by how fast it falls. :p
I think you're confusing mass with weight. In Newtonian physics, mass is constant, and weight = mass*gravity.
(Heck, Windows has pretty much _always_ had one of the most responsive UIs.)
If and only if you had at least 3x the Recommended processor and RAM, and the scheduler didn't suddenly decide your hard drive needs a little excercise.
When the system is trying to contextually offer the "best" options to user, in seemingly random places it thinks are most relevant, they just get confused.
Confused is not the right word. Usability can be measured in the time and brainpower it takes to get to where you want to be. If you constantly rearrange the buttons, the user has to interpret all buttons to figure out which one he needs. Also see The Rule of Least Surprise.