Nice the way you make it sound like you do have the opportunity to make decisions about the direction of proprietary software. I take it you're on the Adobe UI Review board, then?
Of course not. If I can't find the time to be a part of the community for application x, I can't find the time for giving input to the commercial application y either. Yet, strangely, further development of y is, in my experience, much more likely to be positive for me than for x. The reason is that the company that develops y has very strong incentives to add stuff that makes sense to typical users, and more often than not, I am a typical user.
I know Photoshop stopped going in the direction I wanted it to go after about version 4.0.
That's sad to hear. I don't use it, so I can't comment, but I do know that Excel, MS SQL Server, BusinessObjects and UltraEdit, which are the four applications I use the most, have improved incredibly much in the ten years I have used them (shorter for UltraEdit. I don't even know if that has been around ten years.)
MS has kept things crummy for six years but that's beside the point.
No, it's not. This was a comment to someone who suggested that if something had stayed in a certain way for six years that was because it was good enough as it was and there were no user demands to change it. I just pointed out that that was a silly argument.
The project is responsive to it's community.
Yes, that's my point exactly! And also the point of several others in this thread. In fact, I'm starting to think that a majority of/. posters agree on what I'm about to say here.
Open Source projects are built by their communities, but they are also built *for* their communities. This is in very sharp contrast to traditional software companies. The software they build is built by them, but built for *users*. That makes a huge difference.
Before you all go overboard about how crappy commercial software is, let me state that just because they build it for users, it doesn't follow that they are successful. However, some companies are. In particular, Microsoft are extremely successful with the Office Suite (in particular Excel), and Adobe are with Photoshop.
The difference between developing for the community and developing for users is pretty profound. How do you measure success? How do you measure usability? How do you rate the importance of different feature sets? These questions are answered in wildly different ways by MS/Adobe on the one hand, and the Open Source community on the other hand.
If one wants software to be used outside of the development community, that software will have to be developed in a different way. I'm not saying that is the way open source *should* go. I don't have any right to demand anything, since I don't contribute. But I can say that I personally would wish for them to go that way. And I can guarantee that if they want to spread their software outside of the community, they will have to do things differently.
The TFA is about that, all the/. comments are nothing but bashing the GIMP developers for not giving them a free version of Photoshop.
We agree about what TFA is about, then. The way I interpret the comments, they are not about "bashing". They are about usability issues with GIMP that makes it an impossible sell for PS users. I certainly see how that can be taken as bashing by someone wearing different glasses. But if you want GIMP to have a stronger presence outside of its current community, you will have to change your glasses.
People who don't use GIMP are the ones bashing it. This doesn't make sense to me. If you don't like then use Photoshop and be happy.
Thos who "bash" it are people who tried it but didn't like it. I guess a huge majority of those people are just like me. We would like to see free software blossom and we hope it will one day be very successful. But we have real work to do. Accordingly, we can't use software that is worse than what is currently best in class.
Please note the difference, then, between using PS instead of GIMP (out of a necessity) and being happy about it (which doesn't follow).
Everyone who is in the community will have to ask themselves this question: Do I want this software to be used outside of the community? If the answer is no, then please don't post stupid comments about why everyone in the world is a moron for using M$ products. (You don't think those comments exist? Try reading/. comments. You'll be surprised...)
If the answer is yes, you will have to realise that *you* will have to change how the software is developed. Asking for users to change is wrong on so many levels.
First of all, for the record it should be noted that I never use either GIMP or PS. I'm talking about the open source community and their attitudes in general. I do feel very strongly that the thoughts dicussed in the post I replied to applies to most, if not all, free software projects. That's my opinion, not a verifiable fact. If you differ, fine, but please be aware that just having a different opinion won't make me use alternative software. Nor will it convince many others.
Closed source companies in general, and Microsoft in particular, are incredibly much better at building applications that are usable for regular, professional users. By professional I mean users who use the software for work and who, accordingly, are prepared to pay for the service of using the software. I do not mean "super power users".
Too many people in the open source community dismisses these people as morons or worse. That's fine, I suppose. It's not like the "morons" care on way or the other. The problem is that a lot of pepople really want to affect lasting change, making users switch from MS to free stuff. And if one wants that, that attitude simply won't cut it.
This thread explains why perfectly clearly, but too many people here refuses to acknowledge that. To me, that is disappointing, because it means that Excel will continue to be better than the alternatives. So will SQL Server, Visio and Photoshop. It doesn't *have* to be that way, because usability isn't that difficult. But it requires a completely different mindset than what is currently prevailing.
Finally, good usability requires huge amounts of humility. Isn't it ironic (in the English sense of the word) that in this particular case Microsoft has that humility, whereas the open source community lacks it?
It seems to me that if it hasn't been changed in six years then it's not that great of a problem for most users.
Oh My God. Oh My God.
That is the single least insightful thing I have ever read at/.. Could there possibly be another reason for things not changing? If Microsoft has kept something crummy for six years, would it be reasonable for you to state that it's not a problem for most users, and thus nothing to complain about?
My suggestion to all the people bitching about how GIMP sucks (...) is to become a part of the community.
This is so typical of what is wrong with the open source movement. In real life (which was what TFA was about) most people can't afford to "become part of the community" because they have real, actual work to do. I use at least ten applications on a very regular basis. I most certainly can't afford to "be part of the community" for all of those. In the real world, what counts is how well stuff actually works right now, not how good they could possibly become in the future if everybody would just help out. Sorry, but that's the way it is.
I think it's a little unseemly to bash people who give you something for free.
TFA is about why people don't use the free stuff. That makes this comment a bit disingenious, don't you think?
It doesn't make sense to be oblivious to real user needs and, simultaneously, to bash real users for not using specific stuff. I know I'm Captain Obvious for spelling this out, but it seems to be needed.
That seemed quite interesting. There was also a link to an incredibly exhaustive list of prgramming games here. Does anyone know which of these are good and alive? Since there are supposedly 1000+ links there, going through them all will be quite a task.
I have always wondered why there are almost no "programming" games where you write code/algorithms/logic/instructions for an object and let it compete against other people's objects.
There used to be C robots and I've heard of a few other games, but nothing even remotely successful. Why? If it was implemented well, I'd waste my life on it.
What would be cool would be a game like Civilization where instead of micromanaging, you enter a "program" and let it run for, say, 40 turns. Then you get to reevaluate your situation and make any modifications you feel like for the next forty turns. A game of Civilization would then consist of ten major turns instead of 400 small turns, each requiring tinkering an insane amount of "units".
This really isn't news - Microsoft has been actively trying to limit hobbyists and small businesses entry into creating new applications for the PC for ten years or more. This is just one more way to squeeze them (us) out.
Visual Studio Express is free, and so are fully functioning versions fo SQL Server 200 and 2005.
I was about to say that they disappeared in Sweden about five years ago as well, but some research showed that Telia, the state owned phone company, still (or, probably, again) offers them. They are now branded "Luxury Telegrams" and cost SEK 245 (USD$30).
They are still widely used at weddings where it is customary to send a telegram if you can't make it to the reception. They are never used for business purposes anymore, as the motifs available are all roses, wedding couples etc.
Telex numbers (I think) had a different number of digits
Welcome to the rest of the world, where already regular telephone numbers have a different number of digits.
In Sweden, for instance, phone numbers are anywhere from five to eight digits, and area codes are two, three or four digits long.
The most common combination is 2+7, 3+6 or 4+5 so that a phone number including area code is 9 digits, but other variations abound, such as 2+8, 2+6 and 3+5. Also, cell phones are always 4+6.
Oh, here I was suggesting I was a troll for liking weird music, when in fact I was a troll for suggesting a site that doesn't run well on stuff other than IE. Sorry bout that...
I've also used Launchcast quite a bit, and just like you I have found a bunch of new bands and songs.
Has anyone used this and Pandora or Last.fm? I'd like to see the comparison between something I know and something I don't, as opposed to between two things I don't know at all.
Also, this thread should contain semispamming in the form of bands we all have discovered using apps like these. I'll start by introducing The F-Ups. (No links or stuff like that. Google works...)
Recommending Aerosmith to Bob Marley fans is like recommending Slayer to Beach Boys fans.
At the risk of sounding like a troll, I will hereby confess to liking both Slayer and Beach Boys, but neither Aerosmith nor Bob Marley. So a service that would make those exact recommendations would make sense to me. (I know your example was made up.)
As others have pointed out, there's no accounting for taste, so a "statistical" approach tends to work quite well. It will give some surprises, but that's good, not bad.
I spent a fair amount of time configuring MyStation at Yahoos Launchcast, and it has introduced me to several atrists whose records I have since purchased.
My, admittedly very limited, experience is that the learning curve for C# is sharper (hehe) than for VB, enough so to not make it worthwile if you are only ever going to build one small app.
Of course, my far broader experience in all things software development related tell me that the probability that the OP will only ever build just that one app in this environment is much smaller than he thinks it is. Probably small enough for C# to become a better choice.
Re:Scoffing Posts Are From Those With Sort/No Memo
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It was illegal because, well, it was not allowed by law...
The same reason you couldn't plug anything you wanted into Ma Bell equipment in the US twenty plus years ago (according to another comment to this article). They had a monopoly and saw no particular reason to allow competitors to sell equipment.
And they didn't sell 2400 baud modems becuase they sold other, more expensive technologies to businesses and saw no reason to compete internally. They did start selling 2400 baud modems in the late eighties, and the law against using non proprietary equipment was subsequently revoked, probably 15 years ago.
Re:Scoffing Posts Are From Those With Sort/No Memo
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· Score: 1
A 9600 modem? You guys had it good! My first modem was 300 baud, which was almost exactly as fast as I could read. Then I upgraded to a 1200/75 modem, and realized that 75 was actually slower than I could type...
Back in those days, it was illegal and a criminal offense to use a 2400 baud modem here in Sweden. It was also illegal to use phones bought abroad.
One day, my kid was watching Teletubbies, and wouldn't you know it, the very next day she'd constructed a strange Orwellian closed-box experiment consisting of four deformed, fat, homosexual retardates.
Actually, only one of the teletubbies was homosexual, according to the moronic pastor who ranted about it in a paper I read many a moons ago.
Actually, what the original article by Ms. Sahlin said was that by 2020 there should be viable alternatives to oil for everyone. That is a very far cry from "no one uses any oil at all", which was how TFA put it. In fact, the TFA was probably much worse that the average slashdot article, which shold tell you all you need to know.
But your point still stands. This is an election year, and the Social Democrats have no clue on energy matters.
Slashdot Mirror
Nice the way you make it sound like you do have the opportunity to make decisions about the direction of proprietary software. I take it you're on the Adobe UI Review board, then?
Of course not. If I can't find the time to be a part of the community for application x, I can't find the time for giving input to the commercial application y either. Yet, strangely, further development of y is, in my experience, much more likely to be positive for me than for x. The reason is that the company that develops y has very strong incentives to add stuff that makes sense to typical users, and more often than not, I am a typical user.
I know Photoshop stopped going in the direction I wanted it to go after about version 4.0.
That's sad to hear. I don't use it, so I can't comment, but I do know that Excel, MS SQL Server, BusinessObjects and UltraEdit, which are the four applications I use the most, have improved incredibly much in the ten years I have used them (shorter for UltraEdit. I don't even know if that has been around ten years.)
MS has kept things crummy for six years but that's beside the point.
/. posters agree on what I'm about to say here.
/. comments are nothing but bashing the GIMP developers for not giving them a free version of Photoshop.
/. comments. You'll be surprised...)
No, it's not. This was a comment to someone who suggested that if something had stayed in a certain way for six years that was because it was good enough as it was and there were no user demands to change it. I just pointed out that that was a silly argument.
The project is responsive to it's community.
Yes, that's my point exactly! And also the point of several others in this thread. In fact, I'm starting to think that a majority of
Open Source projects are built by their communities, but they are also built *for* their communities. This is in very sharp contrast to traditional software companies. The software they build is built by them, but built for *users*. That makes a huge difference.
Before you all go overboard about how crappy commercial software is, let me state that just because they build it for users, it doesn't follow that they are successful. However, some companies are. In particular, Microsoft are extremely successful with the Office Suite (in particular Excel), and Adobe are with Photoshop.
The difference between developing for the community and developing for users is pretty profound. How do you measure success? How do you measure usability? How do you rate the importance of different feature sets? These questions are answered in wildly different ways by MS/Adobe on the one hand, and the Open Source community on the other hand.
If one wants software to be used outside of the development community, that software will have to be developed in a different way. I'm not saying that is the way open source *should* go. I don't have any right to demand anything, since I don't contribute. But I can say that I personally would wish for them to go that way. And I can guarantee that if they want to spread their software outside of the community, they will have to do things differently.
The TFA is about that, all the
We agree about what TFA is about, then. The way I interpret the comments, they are not about "bashing". They are about usability issues with GIMP that makes it an impossible sell for PS users. I certainly see how that can be taken as bashing by someone wearing different glasses. But if you want GIMP to have a stronger presence outside of its current community, you will have to change your glasses.
People who don't use GIMP are the ones bashing it. This doesn't make sense to me. If you don't like then use Photoshop and be happy.
Thos who "bash" it are people who tried it but didn't like it. I guess a huge majority of those people are just like me. We would like to see free software blossom and we hope it will one day be very successful. But we have real work to do. Accordingly, we can't use software that is worse than what is currently best in class.
Please note the difference, then, between using PS instead of GIMP (out of a necessity) and being happy about it (which doesn't follow).
Everyone who is in the community will have to ask themselves this question: Do I want this software to be used outside of the community? If the answer is no, then please don't post stupid comments about why everyone in the world is a moron for using M$ products. (You don't think those comments exist? Try reading
If the answer is yes, you will have to realise that *you* will have to change how the software is developed. Asking for users to change is wrong on so many levels.
Well, I'm not pissed off, but I am disappointed.
First of all, for the record it should be noted that I never use either GIMP or PS. I'm talking about the open source community and their attitudes in general. I do feel very strongly that the thoughts dicussed in the post I replied to applies to most, if not all, free software projects. That's my opinion, not a verifiable fact. If you differ, fine, but please be aware that just having a different opinion won't make me use alternative software. Nor will it convince many others.
Closed source companies in general, and Microsoft in particular, are incredibly much better at building applications that are usable for regular, professional users. By professional I mean users who use the software for work and who, accordingly, are prepared to pay for the service of using the software. I do not mean "super power users".
Too many people in the open source community dismisses these people as morons or worse. That's fine, I suppose. It's not like the "morons" care on way or the other. The problem is that a lot of pepople really want to affect lasting change, making users switch from MS to free stuff. And if one wants that, that attitude simply won't cut it.
This thread explains why perfectly clearly, but too many people here refuses to acknowledge that. To me, that is disappointing, because it means that Excel will continue to be better than the alternatives. So will SQL Server, Visio and Photoshop. It doesn't *have* to be that way, because usability isn't that difficult. But it requires a completely different mindset than what is currently prevailing.
Finally, good usability requires huge amounts of humility. Isn't it ironic (in the English sense of the word) that in this particular case Microsoft has that humility, whereas the open source community lacks it?
It use to be a plain text file, but now I can't find it, even in the registry. Where is it now (i.e. on XP)?
Oh My God. Oh My God.
That is the single least insightful thing I have ever read at /.. Could there possibly be another reason for things not changing? If Microsoft has kept something crummy for six years, would it be reasonable for you to state that it's not a problem for most users, and thus nothing to complain about?
My suggestion to all the people bitching about how GIMP sucks (...) is to become a part of the community.
This is so typical of what is wrong with the open source movement. In real life (which was what TFA was about) most people can't afford to "become part of the community" because they have real, actual work to do. I use at least ten applications on a very regular basis. I most certainly can't afford to "be part of the community" for all of those. In the real world, what counts is how well stuff actually works right now, not how good they could possibly become in the future if everybody would just help out. Sorry, but that's the way it is.
I think it's a little unseemly to bash people who give you something for free.
TFA is about why people don't use the free stuff. That makes this comment a bit disingenious, don't you think?
It doesn't make sense to be oblivious to real user needs and, simultaneously, to bash real users for not using specific stuff. I know I'm Captain Obvious for spelling this out, but it seems to be needed.
I call urban legend on that.
That seemed quite interesting. There was also a link to an incredibly exhaustive list of prgramming games here. Does anyone know which of these are good and alive? Since there are supposedly 1000+ links there, going through them all will be quite a task.
Angband Borgs are incredibly impressive, but not really what I'm looking for. I want to compete against other players, not automate a walk-through.
There used to be C robots and I've heard of a few other games, but nothing even remotely successful. Why? If it was implemented well, I'd waste my life on it.
What would be cool would be a game like Civilization where instead of micromanaging, you enter a "program" and let it run for, say, 40 turns. Then you get to reevaluate your situation and make any modifications you feel like for the next forty turns. A game of Civilization would then consist of ten major turns instead of 400 small turns, each requiring tinkering an insane amount of "units".
Is there anything out there like that?
Talk about conflicting objectives! Small wonder the game developers doesn't succeed, or even bother trying.
Visual Studio Express is free, and so are fully functioning versions fo SQL Server 200 and 2005.
Strangely, though, some people believe that no-legged analogies can stay up forever.
Sure. After three years in beta, most of the bugs have usually been removed.
They are still widely used at weddings where it is customary to send a telegram if you can't make it to the reception. They are never used for business purposes anymore, as the motifs available are all roses, wedding couples etc.
Welcome to the rest of the world, where already regular telephone numbers have a different number of digits.
In Sweden, for instance, phone numbers are anywhere from five to eight digits, and area codes are two, three or four digits long.
The most common combination is 2+7, 3+6 or 4+5 so that a phone number including area code is 9 digits, but other variations abound, such as 2+8, 2+6 and 3+5. Also, cell phones are always 4+6.
The moral of the story is that Pandora tried to give you a clue and improve your taste in music...
Oh, here I was suggesting I was a troll for liking weird music, when in fact I was a troll for suggesting a site that doesn't run well on stuff other than IE. Sorry bout that...
Has anyone used this and Pandora or Last.fm? I'd like to see the comparison between something I know and something I don't, as opposed to between two things I don't know at all.
Also, this thread should contain semispamming in the form of bands we all have discovered using apps like these. I'll start by introducing The F-Ups. (No links or stuff like that. Google works...)
At the risk of sounding like a troll, I will hereby confess to liking both Slayer and Beach Boys, but neither Aerosmith nor Bob Marley. So a service that would make those exact recommendations would make sense to me. (I know your example was made up.)
As others have pointed out, there's no accounting for taste, so a "statistical" approach tends to work quite well. It will give some surprises, but that's good, not bad.
I spent a fair amount of time configuring MyStation at Yahoos Launchcast, and it has introduced me to several atrists whose records I have since purchased.
Of course, my far broader experience in all things software development related tell me that the probability that the OP will only ever build just that one app in this environment is much smaller than he thinks it is. Probably small enough for C# to become a better choice.
It was illegal because, well, it was not allowed by law... The same reason you couldn't plug anything you wanted into Ma Bell equipment in the US twenty plus years ago (according to another comment to this article). They had a monopoly and saw no particular reason to allow competitors to sell equipment. And they didn't sell 2400 baud modems becuase they sold other, more expensive technologies to businesses and saw no reason to compete internally. They did start selling 2400 baud modems in the late eighties, and the law against using non proprietary equipment was subsequently revoked, probably 15 years ago.
A 9600 modem? You guys had it good! My first modem was 300 baud, which was almost exactly as fast as I could read. Then I upgraded to a 1200/75 modem, and realized that 75 was actually slower than I could type... Back in those days, it was illegal and a criminal offense to use a 2400 baud modem here in Sweden. It was also illegal to use phones bought abroad.
You can make your IP address change every hour, but you can't spell "wikipedia" correctly? Somehow, I'm underwhelmed...
Actually, only one of the teletubbies was homosexual, according to the moronic pastor who ranted about it in a paper I read many a moons ago.
But your point still stands. This is an election year, and the Social Democrats have no clue on energy matters.