It is even more annoying than WinXP in so far as something small as the file manager in Win7. You can select the files, it tells you how many you selected, but it no longer says how many MB / GB of files you selected.
Odd - mine shows the size of the selected files at the bottom. I'm running Win 7-64bit Ultimate.
Just so you guys know, Draftsight is actually actually an OEM'd version of ARES (http://www.graebert.com/en/cad/ares) from Graebert. So it could be available as long as Dasault continues to pay Grabert. Autodesk has been trying to move into Dasault's teritory (3D solids modeling and simulation), and has been in several lawsuits with Dasault's Soldworks group. I suspect this is a way for Dasault to stick it to Autodesk's cash cow AutoCAD. Cut their cash flow by giving away a program for a market (2D drafting) that Dasault has little interest in.
It's not a bad package. I'm an AutoCAD Certified Expert and I find it pretty usable. Does OK on older DWG files, but has issues with the latest versions.
Hey, if HP offers a touch screen "PC" with WebOS that includes a 5250 emulator (old IBM terminal) then they'll sell well to a lot of big companies.
Now, if you add the ability to use NFC to detect my badge and switch to my session, you've got a winner.
I know companies that will buy pallets of these things. We need less than a PC, easier than a keyboard/mouse interface, and totally locked down. HP has a lot of experience with thin clients and this could be a wonderful option.
Meanwhile, over at Microsoft, they're still selling buggy, vulnerable Windows NT in a 7th-generation wrapper.....
Hey you insensitive clod! I'm using Windows right now and all the bugs are long gone. I think you need to take a hard look at lkj;aou9i 'fwo9u...............Carrier Lost...........
My generation and Generation X are looking at a bleak future because of what is being done by the Boomers.
I have a simple solution: take away the Boomers' Social Security and Medicare. All of it.
OK. We'll be taking away your computer, iPod, iPhone and the Internet, since we created those things as well.
All jesting aside, I think you are a bit short sighted. Every generation has to clean up the sins of the previous generation, but benefits from the advancements of the previous. Believe it or not - your generation will create quite a mess for your children and be surprised when they complain about how stupid and horrible your generation is for doing that to them.
Sun was the leading provider of workstations and Unix servers and could do no wrong - until the Unix wars. Rather that unifying the market, the Unix wars fragmented the vendors and opened the door for someone else to walk in with a hardware-neutral OS. That was Microsoft with Windows NT.
I was deeply involved in the CAD world and all the good apps ran on Unix. PCs were low-power toys. Customers were tired of supporting different platforms for different apps and wanted a single OS for all platforms. Just as it looked like it was close to happening (the Year of Unix), it turned into a battle between AT&T/Sun and OSF (Open Software Foundation - DEC, HP, SGI, IBM and others). Sun chose the (annoying to me) OpenLook interface, while Microsoft offered OSF a Windows-lookalike interface called "Motif". Microsoft supported OSF, while working on Windows NT to replace Unix. Upon adding SGI's Open GL interface to NT, CAD vendors began to see NT as an alternate to Unix. When Solidworks appeared on NT, the race to port Unix apps to NT was on.
So I think Sun wasted their energy in trying to beat their Unix rivals while Microsoft focused on what customers wanted (one OS for all) and won.
(Yes - in those days MS focused on customers.)
The funny thing is the Unix wars were won by an open-source product - GNU/Linux. Image where Sun could have been had they united the Unix world. McNeely lacked vision and let Gates take it all. Pretty stupid. Sun was an asshole company at the time and treated us like jerks. Karma is a bitch, ea?
I was seeing myself in this question. I'm pretty much done with most games - they seem to be remakes of the same old stuff. Then I ran across a rather refreshing game - Portal.
In the game, you have a single device (not really a weapon) - the portal gun. In effect, you can create two linked wormhole-like holes that teleport objects from one to another. You can also pick up objects. That's it. Simple.
In the game you find yourself in a bit of a puzzle - you enter a section and simply need to exit the section, but have obstacles to overcome, with nothing but the portal gun. It is a thinking mans game, and you can stop at any time.
You really should check out the video at Valve's web site, as my description does not do it justice. This is the most entertaining game I've played in years. It's old enough that system requirements are pretty low. Great fun.
I've owned and used Top View, GEM, DESQview and Windows 1.0 and all later editions. And I think the real reason Windows won was simple - Drivers.
I was running Lotus 123, Word Perfect, Ventura Publisher, and AutoCAD. I had expensive ($3000+) graphics cards, a 21" monitor and a laser printer (when they were $5000 beasts). Every time a new software release came out, I had to wait months for drivers to appear for the graphics card and printer. Sometimes they never arrived.
When Windows appeared, it wasn't very useful. But they always seemed to have drivers. I switched to Ami Pro, Excel and PageMaker because they all ran on a system (Windows) that had drivers for all my equipment. It was wonderful to be out of the waiting-for-drivers quandary. When Windows 386 appeared, I could run my DOS apps in a Window and not have to switch back-and-forth to DOS.
I'm pretty sure the younger crowd would have no idea what we went through. Every single app either ran at 640x480 (pretty bad on a 21" monitor) or had to have custom drivers. And you only had text printing - no graphics - without drivers. And you only had text printing if your printer emulated the IBM Graphics Printer.
Pretty soon, the hardware vendors started noticing that the availability of Windows driver became a binary decision for consumers - graphics boards with just Windows drivers would sell, while devices without became hard to sell. Companies that focused on Windows-only got the jump on those that had to write dozens of drivers.
Stop and think about the effort of keeping track of drivers for graphics, printer, mouse, modem, keyboard, sound card for EVERY app. And then do it again for each new release of every app. This is why Windows won - at least in my opinion.
All the designers in the world can't create a working product. That still takes engineers, programmers, etc.
Sorry, but I call BS on this.
I'm not an engineer, but I've designed a lot of products, and have several patents. Don't assume engineers can't design and designers can't engineer. The best people tend to be multi-talented (programmer/musician, engineer/photographer).
I have noticed that a LOT of people attribute their success to their degree, and wrongly assume someone with no degree cannot be successful. I think your "without engineers..." line of thinking smacks of this.
But you are spot-on about most companies doing design as an afterthought.
After I got my first HP-41c, everyone on our engineering team ended up buying one. We loved those things and had all the add-ons, including the timer module, printer and mag card reader.
Then one fine day the boss came in with new Sharp calculators for us all. He insisted we all standardize on a single model, so he could grab anyone's calculator and use it anytime he wanted. We pitched the HP, but were overruled. We had to keep our HP's hidden. Jerk.
The 41c is an amazing device. I doubt they'll ever make anything like that again. The PC killed the market for any calculator with expansion ports.
In other news, Ford has set a new land speed record by attaching a Mustang to a solid-fuel rocket from the space shuttle. Funeral services for the driver/pilot will be held next week.
A sensor beyond 20 MP is of limited use - it out-resolves nearly all commercially available lenses. This is when professionals move up to medium format cameras and lenses to achieve a larger image area. Diffraction and noise are just of the few problems that have not been resolved with small dense sensors.
I hope it doesn't turn out that Flash is the x86 code of the Internet age.
While I dislike Apple's my-way-or-the-highway approach, I'll give them credit for sticking to their guns about open standards for the web. This will be interesting to see what happens with Flash, given the growing gap between devices that support it and those that don't.
I just sent the paperwork in to copyright my IP address. I hope the RIAA will use it, thus exposing themselves to liability for the unlicensed use of my work.
Hey, if I copyright all my torrent packets, I'd get them on multiple violations!
1 - copyright IP address 2 - copyright all my IP packets 3 - wait for RIAA action 4 - ? 5 - PROFIT!
Slashdot Mirror
Google the term "humor" and "joke".
Ugh. Slashdot has become a place for kiddies to feel 1337 about themselves by recycling cans of snide.
Aw - thanks. I haven't been called a kiddie since I was programming a GE Multics via teletype.
You need four browsers on a system?
A developer or tester of a web site needs each browser.
Bingo! Congratulations, you win a no-prize.
Uh... Internet Explorer? Oh yeah - that thing I use to load Chrome, Firefox and Opera on a new PC?
Why? Does it do something else i'm unaware of?
It is even more annoying than WinXP in so far as something small as the file manager in Win7. You can select the files, it tells you how many you selected, but it no longer says how many MB / GB of files you selected.
Odd - mine shows the size of the selected files at the bottom. I'm running Win 7-64bit Ultimate.
> ".... there should be a similar requirement for PC vendors to list all the bloat/crap/ad-ware they include on their products. "
Your PC already comes with such a list.
To see it, run this command:
dir c: /s /a
Do less evil....
(meant to poke fun - I actually like Google)
Hey, it compiles without error. It crashes when run. I'm thinking this has to be Windows code. Where was Gates in 1999?
Just so you guys know, Draftsight is actually actually an OEM'd version of ARES (http://www.graebert.com/en/cad/ares) from Graebert. So it could be available as long as Dasault continues to pay Grabert. Autodesk has been trying to move into Dasault's teritory (3D solids modeling and simulation), and has been in several lawsuits with Dasault's Soldworks group. I suspect this is a way for Dasault to stick it to Autodesk's cash cow AutoCAD. Cut their cash flow by giving away a program for a market (2D drafting) that Dasault has little interest in.
It's not a bad package. I'm an AutoCAD Certified Expert and I find it pretty usable. Does OK on older DWG files, but has issues with the latest versions.
Hey, if HP offers a touch screen "PC" with WebOS that includes a 5250 emulator (old IBM terminal) then they'll sell well to a lot of big companies.
Now, if you add the ability to use NFC to detect my badge and switch to my session, you've got a winner.
I know companies that will buy pallets of these things. We need less than a PC, easier than a keyboard/mouse interface, and totally locked down. HP has a lot of experience with thin clients and this could be a wonderful option.
Meanwhile, over at Microsoft, they're still selling buggy, vulnerable Windows NT in a 7th-generation wrapper .....
Hey you insensitive clod! I'm using Windows right now and all the bugs are long gone. I think you need to take a hard look at lkj;aou9i 'fwo9u ...............Carrier Lost ...........
My generation and Generation X are looking at a bleak future because of what is being done by the Boomers.
I have a simple solution: take away the Boomers' Social Security and Medicare. All of it.
OK. We'll be taking away your computer, iPod, iPhone and the Internet, since we created those things as well.
All jesting aside, I think you are a bit short sighted. Every generation has to clean up the sins of the previous generation, but benefits from the advancements of the previous. Believe it or not - your generation will create quite a mess for your children and be surprised when they complain about how stupid and horrible your generation is for doing that to them.
I gave away half my net worth yesterday. I have now idea what the Salvation Army will do with the entire $20, but it sure felt good.
Sun was the leading provider of workstations and Unix servers and could do no wrong - until the Unix wars. Rather that unifying the market, the Unix wars fragmented the vendors and opened the door for someone else to walk in with a hardware-neutral OS. That was Microsoft with Windows NT.
I was deeply involved in the CAD world and all the good apps ran on Unix. PCs were low-power toys. Customers were tired of supporting different platforms for different apps and wanted a single OS for all platforms. Just as it looked like it was close to happening (the Year of Unix), it turned into a battle between AT&T/Sun and OSF (Open Software Foundation - DEC, HP, SGI, IBM and others). Sun chose the (annoying to me) OpenLook interface, while Microsoft offered OSF a Windows-lookalike interface called "Motif". Microsoft supported OSF, while working on Windows NT to replace Unix. Upon adding SGI's Open GL interface to NT, CAD vendors began to see NT as an alternate to Unix. When Solidworks appeared on NT, the race to port Unix apps to NT was on.
So I think Sun wasted their energy in trying to beat their Unix rivals while Microsoft focused on what customers wanted (one OS for all) and won.
(Yes - in those days MS focused on customers.)
The funny thing is the Unix wars were won by an open-source product - GNU/Linux. Image where Sun could have been had they united the Unix world. McNeely lacked vision and let Gates take it all. Pretty stupid. Sun was an asshole company at the time and treated us like jerks. Karma is a bitch, ea?
From TFA:
" IBM can lay claim to not only inventing the personal computer..."
I guess the writer thinks Steve Jobs invented the telephone, too.
I was seeing myself in this question. I'm pretty much done with most games - they seem to be remakes of the same old stuff. Then I ran across a rather refreshing game - Portal.
In the game, you have a single device (not really a weapon) - the portal gun. In effect, you can create two linked wormhole-like holes that teleport objects from one to another. You can also pick up objects. That's it. Simple.
In the game you find yourself in a bit of a puzzle - you enter a section and simply need to exit the section, but have obstacles to overcome, with nothing but the portal gun. It is a thinking mans game, and you can stop at any time.
You really should check out the video at Valve's web site, as my description does not do it justice. This is the most entertaining game I've played in years. It's old enough that system requirements are pretty low. Great fun.
I've owned and used Top View, GEM, DESQview and Windows 1.0 and all later editions. And I think the real reason Windows won was simple - Drivers.
I was running Lotus 123, Word Perfect, Ventura Publisher, and AutoCAD. I had expensive ($3000+) graphics cards, a 21" monitor and a laser printer (when they were $5000 beasts). Every time a new software release came out, I had to wait months for drivers to appear for the graphics card and printer. Sometimes they never arrived.
When Windows appeared, it wasn't very useful. But they always seemed to have drivers. I switched to Ami Pro, Excel and PageMaker because they all ran on a system (Windows) that had drivers for all my equipment. It was wonderful to be out of the waiting-for-drivers quandary. When Windows 386 appeared, I could run my DOS apps in a Window and not have to switch back-and-forth to DOS.
I'm pretty sure the younger crowd would have no idea what we went through. Every single app either ran at 640x480 (pretty bad on a 21" monitor) or had to have custom drivers. And you only had text printing - no graphics - without drivers. And you only had text printing if your printer emulated the IBM Graphics Printer.
Pretty soon, the hardware vendors started noticing that the availability of Windows driver became a binary decision for consumers - graphics boards with just Windows drivers would sell, while devices without became hard to sell. Companies that focused on Windows-only got the jump on those that had to write dozens of drivers.
Stop and think about the effort of keeping track of drivers for graphics, printer, mouse, modem, keyboard, sound card for EVERY app. And then do it again for each new release of every app. This is why Windows won - at least in my opinion.
With the thought of Apple extracting 30% of sales, Adobe announces Adobe Linux with the full CS6 suite.
> "Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?"
Yes, but you'd get a "All comments below your viewing level" condition.
When you said "All the designers in the world can't create a working product", I think you were pretty clear. And (in my opinion) quite wrong.
But I accept the idea that I may have misunderstood your point, and not responded properly.
All the designers in the world can't create a working product. That still takes engineers, programmers, etc.
Sorry, but I call BS on this.
I'm not an engineer, but I've designed a lot of products, and have several patents. Don't assume engineers can't design and designers can't engineer. The best people tend to be multi-talented (programmer/musician, engineer/photographer).
I have noticed that a LOT of people attribute their success to their degree, and wrongly assume someone with no degree cannot be successful. I think your "without engineers..." line of thinking smacks of this.
But you are spot-on about most companies doing design as an afterthought.
I have four. I don't ever want to be without one.
After I got my first HP-41c, everyone on our engineering team ended up buying one. We loved those things and had all the add-ons, including the timer module, printer and mag card reader.
Then one fine day the boss came in with new Sharp calculators for us all. He insisted we all standardize on a single model, so he could grab anyone's calculator and use it anytime he wanted. We pitched the HP, but were overruled. We had to keep our HP's hidden. Jerk.
The 41c is an amazing device. I doubt they'll ever make anything like that again. The PC killed the market for any calculator with expansion ports.
In other news, Ford has set a new land speed record by attaching a Mustang to a solid-fuel rocket from the space shuttle. Funeral services for the driver/pilot will be held next week.
A sensor beyond 20 MP is of limited use - it out-resolves nearly all commercially available lenses. This is when professionals move up to medium format cameras and lenses to achieve a larger image area. Diffraction and noise are just of the few problems that have not been resolved with small dense sensors.
I hope it doesn't turn out that Flash is the x86 code of the Internet age.
While I dislike Apple's my-way-or-the-highway approach, I'll give them credit for sticking to their guns about open standards for the web. This will be interesting to see what happens with Flash, given the growing gap between devices that support it and those that don't.
I just sent the paperwork in to copyright my IP address. I hope the RIAA will use it, thus exposing themselves to liability for the unlicensed use of my work.
Hey, if I copyright all my torrent packets, I'd get them on multiple violations!
1 - copyright IP address
2 - copyright all my IP packets
3 - wait for RIAA action
4 - ?
5 - PROFIT!