Even on the beautiful OS X, which that we (Slashdot communal mind) know is of course perfect;), a search facility is very necessary when you have to deal with hundreds of menu options, or better yet, documents.
As far as OS X's organization of the control panel and system utilities: I have to say I don't particularly care for it, nor do I care much for its finder. It's certainly usable and a huge step up from Explorer, but KDE's konqueror has really spoiled me.
Also: Linux has typically lagged far behind the rest when it comes to desktop usability. This isn't so any more. In SuSE 10.0, Novell integrated a kmenu search feature. Just type part of what you are looking for in the kmenu (the kmenu contains a textbox) and it will grey out any menus/submenus which do not contain what you are looking for. It's actually quite useful. Also, kcontrol (the KDE Control Center - aka control panel on other OSes) has had a search feature for quite a few versions now.
On the file search: I find it's great that not only did Apple beat Microsoft to the punch with Spotlight, but even Linux, which has tended to lag far behind Windows (in terms of desktop usability) not only has a vastly superior file manager/explorer (konqueror - and heck, even Nautilus is superior in many respects) but has a great indexed search utility now (beagle).
It doesn't matter HOW well one organizes files - eventually you will reach a point where finding a specific file is going to require a search facility. Microsoft has had one for ages (Find Fast) but it never worked well. I have to admit, that if their new search mechanism in Windows Vista actually works (I haven't run it since very early on when it was still called Longhorn) it may very well be worth the upgrade to get it. On the other hand, I don't know if it would really justify upgrading an entire OS which will likely break backwards compatibility (consider the typical Windows market) but it is a necessary feature.
FYI I used to hate and I mean HATE KDE. Now there is no other environment I'd rather work on. My desktop is laid out very similar in style to OS X but is far more usable. Nothing against OS X, I just don't think their environment was designed for power users, but more for uber-novices. It certainly is gorgeous and much better than Windows' explorer desktop, but I've found it quite limiting.
I like Windows 2000 a lot. I USED to like Windows XP, until I got fed up with the activation process. It sucks having to continually reactivate when making multiple hardware changes (if you work in a test environment it's very easy to trigger the need to reactivate). Aside from the constant phoning home XP requires, I like it. I just happen to like the freedom that Linux brings more, and I MUCH prefer Konqueror's fike management over Windows Explorer. Explorer sucks. Period.
They (Microsoft) ought to implement a DE-activate feature to facilitate migration, upgrades, and license transfers, like Adobe did in their creative suite. Adobe is the ONLY major software company I've seen get an activation scheme right.
Windows also needs to drop the DRM and stop sucking the MPAA's privates. If a user has a high-resolution VGA or DVI display, the machine should output ALL content at the correct resolution, NOT downsample paid-for content. Implementing that idiotic DRM is a surefire way to guarantee that professional "pirates" will be taking a much larger slice of the content market in the very near future.
I wonder if Gates is going to buy rights to any classic rock hits like he did for the last true major upgrade - remember the "Start me up" commercials for Windows 95?
No, it's like building a piece-for-piece replica of the other person's car (e.g., a kit car replica) and then complaining it doesn't have air conditioning. The owner has not lost his original car.
"Pirating only reinforces the concept that stuff like "Gigli" has a viable market that is being robbed by P2P and BT services."
I watched Gigli when it was being rerun on the cable networks ad nauseum. It's definitely worth watching if it happens to come on a channel one is currently subscribed to (I've watched worse movies - namely Police Academy 1 through 4 and both Bill & Ted movies) but I would never pay to see it in the theater, nor would I pay even the cost of a pirate DVD for it. I might consider buying a $.99 Xvid version of it, or consider spending bandwidth and CPU time to download it. Not all movies that people download are movies that people would bother buying. On the other hand, some people use bittorrent to download movies to see if they like them enough to buy the DVD. For example: I've never seen THX1138 (just a few minutes here and there the rare times I see it in the cable guide) but am downloading an Xvid version of it right now to see if I like it, and if I do I will be ordering the DVD through Amazon. *shrug* If it weren't for Bittorrent, I would not even be considering purchasing THX1138 based on the crap Lucas has produced. Every bit of his work other than the original Star Wars trilogy has, well, not been to my liking, to put it politely. If I buy THX1138, the MPAA members involved in its distribution/licensing will have Bittorrent "pirates" to thank for making the sale (of course THX1138 should be public domain by now were it not for the mickey mouse legislation but that's beside the point)
Well, apparantly being a whistleblower and notifying the citizenship of an incident of treason (e.g., illegal NSA wiretapping) is now illegal. Scratch that off your list of exceptions.;)
Does this mean they are going to try to be more aggressive in trying to gain market share? The last time I checked Qt licensing the price was outrageous for each seat. Compared to developing apps using Qt, it is much, much cheaper to subscribe to MSDN and gain access to about $50K worth of development tools for around $2K, and if worried about cross-platform interoperability look at Crossover Office or.wine as either porting or runtime solutions.
The pricing for proprietary use of Qt is unreasonable (compare to other class libraries, especially in the Windows world. Even Stingray with its slew of libraries is MUCH cheaper) and until Trolltech brings their licensing costs down to more reasonable levels, you're going to see proprietary developers continue to use harder-to-code-for-but-up-front-startup-cost friendlier Gtk for proprietary applications, despite STUPID dumbed-down user-unfriendly dialogs like the GtK file dialog that nearly everybody hates.
If you consider fluid dynamics that actually makes a lot of sense, especially since every other heliosphere around every other star (I'm assuming every stellar object has one) would have a reactive effect with other nearby objects, so the rippling would make sense, as would the "leading edge" of our helisphere being squished relative to the "trailing edge" based on our relative motion in the galaxy (ignoring other possible effects such as solar wind from other stars, gravitational pull from possible nearby-but-as-of-yet undetected massive objects, etc.).
I don't know whether your post should be modded up informative, insightful, or "pretty f'ing funny smartass here" but it should definitely be modded up.
(I'm not a trekkie. Honest! I swear! I've never worn pointy ears nor a nurse chapel or uhura uniform. Furthermore, as additional evidence I am not a trekkie, I have only seen about half the episodes of TOS, about 1/3 of TNG, 1/2 of Voyager, two of the Enterprise atrocity, about 10 episodes of DS9. I just happen to think it's fun to watch funny-although-not-intentionally-funny SciFi.)
Oh man you had me going until I got to and my mom got scared and said "you're moving" then I looked and saw you had a funny tag. I kept reading though, because a) you suckered me and b) it was pretty darn funny. Your post makes me think that/. should run daily contests for "funniest post of the day."
Your post is definitely the funniest post I've read on here all month, let alone today. The Yoko Ono "screeching MP3" post would be a close second for the day.:)
RMS is very up honest about what they mean by "free" and "Open Source" and define their terms up front. So is Sun.
Others are not so honest. Take Apple with their Darwin shenanigans for example, or SugarCRM with their releasing the original SugarCRM under the MPL and then threatening to sue others when they tool the MPL project. rebranded it as the license requires, modified the installer so the installer actually worked and extended several modules, and then released it. Well, the SugarCRM founders threw a hissy fit, crying copyright infringement, plagarism, brand dilution, etc. all while continuing to brag that they released as Open Source under the Mozilla license. When the other organization's legal representation broke down the MPL and explained what the license actually allows, nay, what it REQUIRES, they quickly dropped the MPL and introduced their own "Open Source" license. The thing is, if you actually READ the ENTIRE license (if you read just the part with the open source release you're actually not reading the entire license) you will soon discover that a) it's not so open and b) you can end up suffering a severe case of vendor lock if you ever decide to "upgrade" to the commercial release of Sugar, because when you read and accept the commercial edition's license you'll discover that not only is it actually not open, but you lose the right to use the open source edition or to use your data stored in the commercial version of Sugar if you ever decide to stop subscribing to the commercial version. You cannot run the "open source" version of Sugar and the commercial version in parallel, and you cannot "downgrade" to the "open source" version. Their use of the term "Open Source" is dishonest/deceptive, er, downright FRAUDULENT because they do not disclose UP FRONT what they consider "open source" to mean.
This is exactly the kind of shit you do NOT see Sun, RMS, or even RedHat trying to pull when they use the terms "free" or "open source" - they define the terms VERY clearly using understandable verbage in their licenses. In Sun's case they are very up front about wanting to avoid forking because they want Java to gain momentum and reach a critical mass to help keep the ASP.Net beast at bay. What Sun is doing is perfectly reasonable, and a fine balance between the BSD/GPL route and the proprietary vendor-lock route.
I admit I did. Before I got into psychadelic/progressive rock I was really, really into '80s pop. I have an excuse though - I was a preteen. Okay, that's not much of an excuse, I admit, I fell victim to rampant consumerism thanks to MTV.:D
I don't know about NY, but in most states unemployment insurance is a separate deduction. Unemployment insurance is just that - INSURANCE, and unfortunately it's insurance you're forced to buy by the state whether or not you want it.
They have NO justification for levying income taxes against nonresident citizens who are not represented by elected officials on their behalf in that jurisdiction, Deduct for UI, sure, it's INSURANCE. Better yet, make UI optional and don't deduct ANYTHING.
Actually the architects and engineers and general contractor (and hopefully the foremen) are the experts. The rest are mostly general laborers - often illegal aliens, most are just typical union laborers with no particular specialty aside from general pipefitting (which pays well in and of itself) and welding. They are not experts in skyscraper design - the designers (architects) and engineers and hopefully the foremen are. The laborers just do what they're told and cobble together what the engineers and blueprints tell them to.
I have no problem with unobtrusive ads that in essence read "click here to view our ad"
I don't even have a problem with attractive, subtle animated GIF or flash ads.
I don't have a problem with "free" web content, paid for by the above.
I have a big problem with fugly epileptic-causing flashing GIF ads. I have a big problem with flash or javascript ads which overlay the content or attempt to monopolize my browser without my content. That sort of advertisement prompted me to install Flashblocker, and when I visit certain mainstream media sites I have to turn that on to read the content without some stupid company mascot or logo popping up over the article or op-ed I'm trying to read.
There is a happy medium and Google has found it. Some other advertising outfits have yet to discover this happy medium and believe that bad publicity/annoying potential customers is a great marketing plan. Sorry, it's not.
Well, considering that much of the pirated content , ranging from "professional" pirate material ("Professional" pirate single-layer DVD versions of what was originally dual-layer DVD movies sold in New York, Boston, etc.) to Divx torrents are easily as good as or better than digital cable quality (MPEG artifacts with some cable systems is atrocious) and most consumers are apparantly very happy with digital cable quality. I think it's fair to say that once HD content goes truly mainstream, that pirate content will be very acceptable to the alternative.
Slashdot Mirror
Even on the beautiful OS X, which that we (Slashdot communal mind) know is of course perfect ;), a search facility is very necessary when you have to deal with hundreds of menu options, or better yet, documents.
As far as OS X's organization of the control panel and system utilities: I have to say I don't particularly care for it, nor do I care much for its finder. It's certainly usable and a huge step up from Explorer, but KDE's konqueror has really spoiled me.
Also: Linux has typically lagged far behind the rest when it comes to desktop usability. This isn't so any more. In SuSE 10.0, Novell integrated a kmenu search feature. Just type part of what you are looking for in the kmenu (the kmenu contains a textbox) and it will grey out any menus/submenus which do not contain what you are looking for. It's actually quite useful. Also, kcontrol (the KDE Control Center - aka control panel on other OSes) has had a search feature for quite a few versions now.
On the file search: I find it's great that not only did Apple beat Microsoft to the punch with Spotlight, but even Linux, which has tended to lag far behind Windows (in terms of desktop usability) not only has a vastly superior file manager/explorer (konqueror - and heck, even Nautilus is superior in many respects) but has a great indexed search utility now (beagle).
It doesn't matter HOW well one organizes files - eventually you will reach a point where finding a specific file is going to require a search facility. Microsoft has had one for ages (Find Fast) but it never worked well. I have to admit, that if their new search mechanism in Windows Vista actually works (I haven't run it since very early on when it was still called Longhorn) it may very well be worth the upgrade to get it. On the other hand, I don't know if it would really justify upgrading an entire OS which will likely break backwards compatibility (consider the typical Windows market) but it is a necessary feature.
FYI I used to hate and I mean HATE KDE. Now there is no other environment I'd rather work on. My desktop is laid out very similar in style to OS X but is far more usable. Nothing against OS X, I just don't think their environment was designed for power users, but more for uber-novices. It certainly is gorgeous and much better than Windows' explorer desktop, but I've found it quite limiting.
I like Windows 2000 a lot. I USED to like Windows XP, until I got fed up with the activation process. It sucks having to continually reactivate when making multiple hardware changes (if you work in a test environment it's very easy to trigger the need to reactivate). Aside from the constant phoning home XP requires, I like it. I just happen to like the freedom that Linux brings more, and I MUCH prefer Konqueror's fike management over Windows Explorer. Explorer sucks. Period.
They (Microsoft) ought to implement a DE-activate feature to facilitate migration, upgrades, and license transfers, like Adobe did in their creative suite. Adobe is the ONLY major software company I've seen get an activation scheme right.
Windows also needs to drop the DRM and stop sucking the MPAA's privates. If a user has a high-resolution VGA or DVI display, the machine should output ALL content at the correct resolution, NOT downsample paid-for content. Implementing that idiotic DRM is a surefire way to guarantee that professional "pirates" will be taking a much larger slice of the content market in the very near future.
. . . and to be fair, KDE's kwin copied the kmenu from Win9x/2k/etc. Start Menu. . . and Windows 95 copied heavily from Mac OS, IRIX, and Motif.
Want Windows Vista minus the DRM? Install Windows 2000 or Windows XP, then add the Desktop Sidebar ( http://www.desktopsidebar.com/ )
I wonder if Gates is going to buy rights to any classic rock hits like he did for the last true major upgrade - remember the "Start me up" commercials for Windows 95?
where Windows is concerned, "flawless" is a relative term. Remember Windows Me?
No, it's like building a piece-for-piece replica of the other person's car (e.g., a kit car replica) and then complaining it doesn't have air conditioning. The owner has not lost his original car.
If you can't even get people to RTFA, how can you get people to RTFG (Read The Fine Guidelines)?
"Pirating only reinforces the concept that stuff like "Gigli" has a viable market that is being robbed by P2P and BT services."
I watched Gigli when it was being rerun on the cable networks ad nauseum. It's definitely worth watching if it happens to come on a channel one is currently subscribed to (I've watched worse movies - namely Police Academy 1 through 4 and both Bill & Ted movies) but I would never pay to see it in the theater, nor would I pay even the cost of a pirate DVD for it. I might consider buying a $.99 Xvid version of it, or consider spending bandwidth and CPU time to download it. Not all movies that people download are movies that people would bother buying. On the other hand, some people use bittorrent to download movies to see if they like them enough to buy the DVD. For example: I've never seen THX1138 (just a few minutes here and there the rare times I see it in the cable guide) but am downloading an Xvid version of it right now to see if I like it, and if I do I will be ordering the DVD through Amazon. *shrug* If it weren't for Bittorrent, I would not even be considering purchasing THX1138 based on the crap Lucas has produced. Every bit of his work other than the original Star Wars trilogy has, well, not been to my liking, to put it politely. If I buy THX1138, the MPAA members involved in its distribution/licensing will have Bittorrent "pirates" to thank for making the sale (of course THX1138 should be public domain by now were it not for the mickey mouse legislation but that's beside the point)
PNG supports layers? Which apps will save PNG files with layers intact? Every app I've saved a PNG from wants to flatten the image.
Well, apparantly being a whistleblower and notifying the citizenship of an incident of treason (e.g., illegal NSA wiretapping) is now illegal. Scratch that off your list of exceptions. ;)
It is only a short time before Bender Bending Rodriguez is made in some Mexican factory.
(I am Bender. Please insert beer.)
If that's the case, then their closing the GPL version (thereby forcing Qt3 and 4 into BSD land) would be a Good Thing(tm) for Linux developers.
Does this mean they are going to try to be more aggressive in trying to gain market share? The last time I checked Qt licensing the price was outrageous for each seat. Compared to developing apps using Qt, it is much, much cheaper to subscribe to MSDN and gain access to about $50K worth of development tools for around $2K, and if worried about cross-platform interoperability look at Crossover Office or .wine as either porting or runtime solutions.
The pricing for proprietary use of Qt is unreasonable (compare to other class libraries, especially in the Windows world. Even Stingray with its slew of libraries is MUCH cheaper) and until Trolltech brings their licensing costs down to more reasonable levels, you're going to see proprietary developers continue to use harder-to-code-for-but-up-front-startup-cost friendlier Gtk for proprietary applications, despite STUPID dumbed-down user-unfriendly dialogs like the GtK file dialog that nearly everybody hates.
If you consider fluid dynamics that actually makes a lot of sense, especially since every other heliosphere around every other star (I'm assuming every stellar object has one) would have a reactive effect with other nearby objects, so the rippling would make sense, as would the "leading edge" of our helisphere being squished relative to the "trailing edge" based on our relative motion in the galaxy (ignoring other possible effects such as solar wind from other stars, gravitational pull from possible nearby-but-as-of-yet undetected massive objects, etc.).
I don't know whether your post should be modded up informative, insightful, or "pretty f'ing funny smartass here" but it should definitely be modded up.
Don't you mean Voyager 6. aka V'Ger?
(I'm not a trekkie. Honest! I swear! I've never worn pointy ears nor a nurse chapel or uhura uniform. Furthermore, as additional evidence I am not a trekkie, I have only seen about half the episodes of TOS, about 1/3 of TNG, 1/2 of Voyager, two of the Enterprise atrocity, about 10 episodes of DS9. I just happen to think it's fun to watch funny-although-not-intentionally-funny SciFi.)
Oh man you had me going until I got to and my mom got scared and said "you're moving" then I looked and saw you had a funny tag. I kept reading though, because a) you suckered me and b) it was pretty darn funny. Your post makes me think that /. should run daily contests for "funniest post of the day."
:)
Your post is definitely the funniest post I've read on here all month, let alone today. The Yoko Ono "screeching MP3" post would be a close second for the day.
There IS a difference.
RMS is very up honest about what they mean by "free" and "Open Source" and define their terms up front. So is Sun.
Others are not so honest. Take Apple with their Darwin shenanigans for example, or SugarCRM with their releasing the original SugarCRM under the MPL and then threatening to sue others when they tool the MPL project. rebranded it as the license requires, modified the installer so the installer actually worked and extended several modules, and then released it. Well, the SugarCRM founders threw a hissy fit, crying copyright infringement, plagarism, brand dilution, etc. all while continuing to brag that they released as Open Source under the Mozilla license. When the other organization's legal representation broke down the MPL and explained what the license actually allows, nay, what it REQUIRES, they quickly dropped the MPL and introduced their own "Open Source" license. The thing is, if you actually READ the ENTIRE license (if you read just the part with the open source release you're actually not reading the entire license) you will soon discover that a) it's not so open and b) you can end up suffering a severe case of vendor lock if you ever decide to "upgrade" to the commercial release of Sugar, because when you read and accept the commercial edition's license you'll discover that not only is it actually not open, but you lose the right to use the open source edition or to use your data stored in the commercial version of Sugar if you ever decide to stop subscribing to the commercial version. You cannot run the "open source" version of Sugar and the commercial version in parallel, and you cannot "downgrade" to the "open source" version. Their use of the term "Open Source" is dishonest/deceptive, er, downright FRAUDULENT because they do not disclose UP FRONT what they consider "open source" to mean.
This is exactly the kind of shit you do NOT see Sun, RMS, or even RedHat trying to pull when they use the terms "free" or "open source" - they define the terms VERY clearly using understandable verbage in their licenses. In Sun's case they are very up front about wanting to avoid forking because they want Java to gain momentum and reach a critical mass to help keep the ASP.Net beast at bay. What Sun is doing is perfectly reasonable, and a fine balance between the BSD/GPL route and the proprietary vendor-lock route.
*hangs head in shame*
:D
I admit I did. Before I got into psychadelic/progressive rock I was really, really into '80s pop. I have an excuse though - I was a preteen. Okay, that's not much of an excuse, I admit, I fell victim to rampant consumerism thanks to MTV.
It means that with these suits, they get to tear consumers new wazoos!!
I don't know about NY, but in most states unemployment insurance is a separate deduction. Unemployment insurance is just that - INSURANCE, and unfortunately it's insurance you're forced to buy by the state whether or not you want it.
They have NO justification for levying income taxes against nonresident citizens who are not represented by elected officials on their behalf in that jurisdiction, Deduct for UI, sure, it's INSURANCE. Better yet, make UI optional and don't deduct ANYTHING.
Want a lists, with details?
/ HallOfShame.html
http://www.pluralsite.com/wiki/default.aspx/Keith
http://www.threatcode.com/admin_rights.htm
Actually the architects and engineers and general contractor (and hopefully the foremen) are the experts. The rest are mostly general laborers - often illegal aliens, most are just typical union laborers with no particular specialty aside from general pipefitting (which pays well in and of itself) and welding. They are not experts in skyscraper design - the designers (architects) and engineers and hopefully the foremen are. The laborers just do what they're told and cobble together what the engineers and blueprints tell them to.
I have no problem with unobtrusive ads that in essence read "click here to view our ad"
I don't even have a problem with attractive, subtle animated GIF or flash ads.
I don't have a problem with "free" web content, paid for by the above.
I have a big problem with fugly epileptic-causing flashing GIF ads.
I have a big problem with flash or javascript ads which overlay the content or attempt to monopolize my browser without my content. That sort of advertisement prompted me to install Flashblocker, and when I visit certain mainstream media sites I have to turn that on to read the content without some stupid company mascot or logo popping up over the article or op-ed I'm trying to read.
There is a happy medium and Google has found it. Some other advertising outfits have yet to discover this happy medium and believe that bad publicity/annoying potential customers is a great marketing plan. Sorry, it's not.
Well, considering that much of the pirated content , ranging from "professional" pirate material ("Professional" pirate single-layer DVD versions of what was originally dual-layer DVD movies sold in New York, Boston, etc.) to Divx torrents are easily as good as or better than digital cable quality (MPEG artifacts with some cable systems is atrocious) and most consumers are apparantly very happy with digital cable quality. I think it's fair to say that once HD content goes truly mainstream, that pirate content will be very acceptable to the alternative.